By Dawn Forman –
A feeling of disappointment, discouragement and even shame came over some fans as I watched my grandson lose with his football team at their small Christian high school, 58-0.
They got slaughtered.
When I left (early) with my husband to drive home, we stopped at In-N-Out for burgers. In line, I was overcome with feelings of affection toward my husband.
I looked into his eyes and lovingly said, “Hey! I guess we’re on a real date. We went to a football game and now we are eating burgers afterward!”
The thing is this: I ran away from home when I was 16. I was addicted to drugs. I had been abused. I was hurting. So in the chaos that was my adolescence, I missed out on all the normal experiences of other kids, including normal dating.
Growing up, my step-father took advantage of me terribly. I fell into drugs: quaaludes, cocaine, barbiturates and angel dust. I became promiscuous and danced my adolescence away to David Bowie’s “Rebel, rebel” at The Sugar Shack club in the San Fernando Valley.
Then, to escape the abandonment and abuse, I ran away. I traveled across country doing odd jobs and fell prey to a sweet-talking man who ultimately was just as much a loser as me. When I realized I was pregnant with his child, I returned home to California.
My childhood was lost.
But I found God. I started attending church and built the life I never had the chance to build.
I met and married a man of God and became a pastor’s wife. Then we became missionaries to the hardsoil nation of France. My daughter met and fell in love with an Egyptian immigrant in Marseille. Nile was the firstborn of their ill-fated marriage.
By the time we came back to America after 10 years, some of my adolescent friends were either dead or disabled. I wondered why Jesus had mercy on me and save me from my life of lostness.
I began teaching in the Lighthouse Church School of Santa Monica. My grandkids all went through or are currently going through the primary and middle school there.
Nile graduated and enrolled in the sister high school, Lighthouse Christian Academy (LCA). By then, his mom (my daughter) had divorced his dad.
Nile struggled in school. He fell into the wrong crowd. He fooled around instead of studying.
But then he did something good. He joined the football team.
He didn’t like it at first – too much discipline, too much pain, too much exercise.
But then, football slowly grew on my grandson. LCA’s football program began rebuilding after Covid. Judging from the slaughter their defeat last month against Hillcrest Christian of Thousand Oaks, it’s still rebuilding.
I actually felt embarrassed by the 0-58 scoreline.
During our visit to In-N-Out, when I was feeling romantic toward my husband, Charlie Forman, it suddenly hit me: I was 16 when I ran away. Nile was 16 playing on the football field.
All at once, I realized the news wasn’t bad. It was wonderful. Fifty years ago, my life was a cesspool. Now, I’m saved and serving in the church. I’m happily married. So too is my daughter, who remarried a devout Christian man. She has three wonderful kids and now is pregnant with her fourth.
Behind the story of the football massacre was the story of a redeemed daughter.
Oh, the tears of thankfulness that flowed in thinking about all God had done in those 50 years. It is difficult to even put into words how grateful I am for not only all the good things but also all the sorrow and trials because through it all I was drawn closer and closer to my Heavenly Father.
This is one of my favorite verses: “The Lord is close to the broken hearted, A righteous man may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers him from them all.” (Psalm 34:18-19)
Thank you, God, for my life, my four children and seven – soon to be eight – grandchildren.
Thank you for all you have delivered me from and provided me with. As we drove the final miles home, I played the song “Ventura Highway” by the group America (while driving on the Ventura Freeway referred to in the song) as I reminisced one last time about my childhood in the San Fernando Valley.
I was amazed at God’s love and how he had rescued me and carried me through so much.
I was reminded of Isaiah 46:3,4: “Listen to me oh house of Jacob, all you who remain of the house of Israel, you whom I upheld since your birth and carried since you were born, I am He who sustains you. I made you, I will carry you, I will sustain you, and I will rescue you.”
Thank you Lord for my Jubilee revelation, I am truly grateful.
To learn more about a personal relationship with Jesus, click here
