Recognizing God's Fingerprints E-Book

Susan Ceraldi Jaquith

• Herausgeber: Inscript Books
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

“Recognizing God’s Fingerprints: Miracles of Rescue, Reset and Rejoicing” is a collection of miraculous moments in the author’s life, when it was obvious that God intervened to rescue, reset, or simply pour out blessings on her life.
It is often only in hindsight that we see God’s fingerprints on our life story.  The book not only shares some of the wonderful things that God has done in her life, but also invites the reader to recognize their own miracle stories. It is an inspiring read that will deepen your faith, increase your hope, and release a spirit-lifting joy that will come by realizing that amidst the seemingly random circumstances you find yourself in, that God indeed has a plan for your life, and for the world as well.
In the author’s words: “This book is like a spiritual charm bracelet for me; each testimony commemorating a special moment where I knew beyond all doubt that God intervened in my life when I most needed Him to.  Perhaps a miracle, or a miraculous moment, is one of the most natural of all of life’s moments.”

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Other Books by Author

Author's Note

Introduction

On Being Born

On Being Born Again

A Dream about a Gold Cross

Making the “Basketball Honor Roll”

Palm Sunday 1977

Finding Answers and Finding Community

The Blizzard of ’78

“Little Girl, Arise!”

Receiving Inspired Teachings

Staying “In” on the Town

Divine Reset February ‘83

God Sees Differently than We See

The Gift of Being Named

My 30-Day Retreat…Come Away with Me

My 30-day Retreat…The Gift of Being Renamed

My 30-Day Retreat…the Shells

My 30-Day Retreat…God’s Throne

A Petite Miracle about a Petite Baby Grand Piano

Miraculous Healings – 1990

Our Wedding Date

“Meeting” my Father-in-law

Lay-Off Day

Finding a Needle in a Haystack

A Gift that Keeps on Giving

Forgiveness in Full Bloom

Following the Breadcrumbs

Exiled in St. Croix

A Rare Raffle Gift

The Miracle of Perspective

Angels Among Us

The Tome of the Unknown Miracle

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Recognizing God’s Fingerprints

Miracles of Rescue, Reset and Rejoicing

Susan Ceraldi Jaquith

Recognizing God’s Fingerprints

Copyright 2023 by Susan Ceraldi Jaquith

All rights reserved

No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission can be addressed to Inscript Books, a division of Dove Christian Publishers, P.O. Box 611, Bladensburg, MD 20710-0611, www.inscriptpublishing.com.

e-Book Edition

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked MSG are taken from THE MESSAGE, copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

Inscript and the portrayal of a pen with script are trademarks of Dove Christian Publishers.

Published in the United States of America

I dedicate this book to my husband Robert E. Jaquith, one of the greatest miracles of my life.

And posthumously to Berthe L. Gagne and Father William Dudack, who repaired and mentored me over the years, free of charge, with patience and love.

Other Books by Author

Scraps from the Father's Banquet Table: Spiritual Food for Thought

Author's Note

This book, although it describes some key events that happened in my life, is not an autobiography or a complete story of my life.

It is not about anything that I did or didn’t do; right or wrong, good or bad. It is about what God chose to do for me at times when I needed Him most, or when He chose to do something through me for someone else in need. God did these things because of who He is, not because of who I am or fail to be.

And He left His fingerprints along the way.

Introduction

I rewrote this introduction after completing the first draft of this book, which is typical, because it is easier to write an introduction after gaining a better understanding of how the book evolved during its creation. My initial vision and desire for this book was to document the more memorable times in my life when I knew beyond all doubt that God had intervened on my behalf. I did not want to forget such moments, especially as I get older, and I also thought sharing such moments could be of some benefit to others when they read about these encounters. My plan was to create the most positive book ever! I thought it would be my perfect life story without all the bad things that of course happened in between these wonderful and wonder-filled moments. This book was initially envisioned to be a beautiful collection of only mountaintop experiences!

What I quickly learned as I wrote one entry after another was that most often the miraculous moment that I intended to write about did not make sense, or could not be appreciated, without first putting it into the context of the life situation at the time God intervened. I decided that I would need to include information about the context of the miraculous moment I was describing. When I began to do that, I inevitably found myself having to share much more about the painful or dark event that preceded the miracle. Although my intent for this book was to skip over such negative circumstances, I realized that I needed to tell their story as well in order for the miracle to be grasped.

For Christians, this should come as no surprise, because we know that we could not have the power and joy of the Easter resurrection of Jesus without His Good Friday crucifixion. The experience of writing this book has made me realize how often I would prefer to take Jesus off His cross - and take myself and those I love off our crosses as well – even with the knowledge that resurrection lies ahead. So, I began to see that those dark times were often the backdrop for these encounters with light in my life, and that in order to really be able to see the brightness of His light and power at work in my life, I could not separate the miracles from the struggles that made God’s help so necessary (and appreciated).

I recall a statement, but do not know who said it, that “God is always with us and strengthens us to endure our life’s trials; but every once in a while, He does ‘part the Red Sea’ in our circumstance.” Considering my realization that I could not describe these miraculous moments without first explaining the trials that preceded them, I thought more about Moses and the Red Sea. If God had simply parted the Red Sea for Moses and the Israelites to cross over, yes, that would still have been quite a miraculous moment, but it loses some of its “miraculous-ness” when you forget that it happened after the Israelites were being chased by Pharaoh’s chariots and charioteers that were intent on killing them! They were running for their lives from their persecutors and found themselves up against the Red Sea with a vicious army at their heels! It is then that God intervened on their behalf. It is interesting to me that they first had to endure being abused by their Egyptian masters, had to flee, and run, and go through the trial of escape before the miracle was given to them as a pure gift and miraculous intervention. This is clearly symbolic of so much of our own lives.

There is another aspect to miracles that I discovered during the writing of this book, and that is the ordinariness of some miracles. In such cases, the Red Sea was not parted before my eyes, but the grip on me from current difficult circumstances, or my past, was. Something oppressive was either lifted, healed and/or transformed during God’s intervention. Conversely, on occasion, some of my experiences did transcend ordinariness, but for the most part, what I consider to be God’s miraculous work has been done through everyday people and situations, often in response to my prayers for His help.

Then there were those times when the miracles seemed to be God’s reassurance of His presence with me in my life. Rather than answering my question at hand or handing out an instant solution for me to grab onto, He chose instead to give me a sign of His presence with me amid my circumstance. In these miracles, somehow, God found a way to convey to me that He heard my prayer, tasted my tears, saw the injustices done to me, or was aware of the sweetness of one of my acts of kindness toward another. Sometimes God intervenes so intimately and so specifically that we know beyond all doubt that He is with us, and really does know exactly how many hairs are on our heads as the Bible says: “Indeed, the very hairs on your head are numbered.” (Luke 12:7).

In the adorable Winnie the Pooh cartoon shown below, the quote from Hans Christian Anderson states “The whole world is a series of miracles, but we are so used to them we call them ordinary things.” Perhaps a miracle, or a miraculous moment, then, is one of the most natural of all of life’s moments.

Image: A. A. Milne

This book is like a spiritual charm bracelet for me; each testimony commemorating a special moment where I knew beyond all doubt that God intervened in my life when I most needed Him to. In terms of the book’s structure, I first present my miracle story and then ask the question: “What about your story?” The vision I have for this book is to not only share the wonderful things I have seen God do in my life, but also to invite you to connect with your own miracle stories and realize God’s fingerprints on your life.

May this book be a blessing to you, my reader, and help you to allow God into your deepest, most honest inner self; and dare to believe in and take comfort in His love for you. That is when the miraculous hand of God is the freest to intervene in our lives, leaving His fingerprints of miracles of rescue, reset and rejoicing.

1

On Being Born

As I begin this entry, I am hearing the show tune in my head from the 1959 Rogers and Hammerstein musical “The Sound of Music, “Do-Re-Mi”; and the words so beautifully sung by Julie Andrews… “let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start…when we read we begin with A B C, when we sing we begin with Do- Re- Mi…”. So, I decided to make the first chapter of the book to be about my birth. This decision put me on the course of presenting the other miracle accounts chronologically. This approach offered the additional benefit of seeing the way God intervened in my life over time. Of course, I believe that every birth is a miracle of God, not just my own. So, when you read this entry, please keep in mind that I do not think of this as just my miracle story. My husband has often said, in awe, that the science required for any one of us to be conceived and born involves miracles we may not fully realize. The chances of that precise sperm surviving the journey to fertilize the precise egg that is viable for a time, that will eventually become "me," is nothing short of a miracle.

Before I tell you my "being born" story, I want to share the miracle of how my parents first met. I realize it is their miracle story, not mine, but let’s just say I “inherited it,” and because of their miracle, I came to be. Prior to my parents meeting, my mother lived in East Hartford, CT and my father lived in Windsor, CT. My mother was the sixth of seven children, and my father was the youngest of four. As is the custom in high school, after my mother had her class yearbook picture taken, she gave out wallet sized pictures to some of her girlfriends and family. As their story goes, her older sister Peggy who worked at Singer Sewing Machine gave my mother’s picture to her co-worker girlfriend. I am not sure why her friend wanted my mother’s picture, but she took it and kept it in her wallet. Later she was with a friend of hers, a young man named Ray from Windsor, who saw the picture and had the audacity to ask if he could have it! Also surprising to me is that she would give my mother’s picture to a guy my mother did not even know! This was back in the 1940’s so etiquette and privacy concerns may not have been as they are today.

Well, it turned out that Ray happened to be a classmate of my future father. At one point when my father and Ray were together, my father asked him if he had change for a $2 bill. Ray took out his wallet to give him change, and my father saw my mother’s pretty face smiling back at him. It was love at first sight for my dad, and he fell head over heels in love with her via her picture! My father asked Ray “who is this girl?” The guy pretended that he knew my mother, said that she was just a girl he knew. My father asked him for my mother’s phone number, which of course he did not have, but he later got it for my father from the co-worker at Singer who got it from my Aunt Peggy.

Smitten as he was, my father made a cold phone call to the pretty girl in the picture from East Hartford, who a few years later would become his wife, my mother! He told her on that first call that someday he was going to marry her. Apparently, she giggled and kept talking to him. Mom was fifteen and Dad was seventeen at the time of the call. I can’t help but think that another real miracle here is that she did not hang up on him! They proceeded to have a phone courtship for many months, and then finally after my mother turned sixteen, they were allowed to plan a date at the movie theater accompanied by my mother’s three older sisters! Three years later they were married; my mother was nineteen and my father was twenty-one years old. As of this writing, they are still going strong at 93 and 95 years old, married 74 years.

In our family history, particularly on my mother’s side, being able to conceive, carry and deliver a baby was not always a given, with infertility and miscarriages at a frequency that defied the odds. My mother conceived twice before her pregnancy with me, however, she had two miscarriages well into both of those pregnancies. Back in the 1950’s, there was a lot more trial and error with hormone therapies than there is now, not only to help with conception issues, but also for the prevention of miscarriages. My mother took a hormone regimen to be able to carry me full term. Because of her insatiable longing to have children (my father had given up after the second miscarriage and did not want my mother, or himself, to suffer another such loss) she insisted on trying again. She was able to carry me full term.

I was successfully delivered by C-section on August 3, 1956. Throughout my life I was told repeatedly by my parents, especially at each one of my birthdays when they called to sing to me, that I was their miracle baby. I was welcomed into the most loving arms possible. I was wanted and cherished and yes, overprotected; I might have even been loved too much if there could ever be such a thing. In fact, we were such a lovely family of three that I had a bit of an emotional adjustment three years later when my sister was born as to why we needed anyone else! My sister’s birth was another miracle in their lives, and as I would later come to realize and cherish, a miracle in mine as well.

On every one of my birthdays, I celebrate the miracle of my birth and my parents’ perseverance to continue to choose life; I do not celebrate it because of any narcissistic belief that I think I am so great, but rather because I truly believe that my life, and yours, have a God given meaning and purpose in the time that we have been placed. So, on your birthday, I invite you to do the same, regardless of the circumstances of your conception. Celebrate the miracle of your birth and the number of days you have been given with which to leave your fingerprints on planet earth.

What About Your Story?

How do you feel when your birthday rolls around?

Who typically celebrates your birthday with you?

What makes you feel special on your birthday?

I think that God celebrates your birthday, even if no one else does.

And He is aware of your life every day, from “womb to tomb.”

2

On Being Born Again

Equally precious to me as my natural birthday is the day that I was “born again.” Now, I can almost see your eyes rolling, and I can appreciate what you might be thinking, because these words are so overused or misused, that they can hardly convey the true meaning of this moment in a person’s life. It is hard to get past the lingo that turns people off, and I wish I could find the right words to convey the moment and its power to heal and transform a life. Let me simply say that the day you discover God’s love for you, and the fact that He sent His Son Jesus to die to set you free, and then respond to that by making a deliberate decision to accept His love, is like a birthday of your own choosing, and your life will never be the same. It is one of those miracles of rescue, reset and rejoicing, all in one. Here is how my special moment happened.

When I was fourteen years old, I had my young teenage girl’s heart broken by a boyfriend that I thought for sure was “the one.” I honestly do not know how teenagers survive these years, except by the grace of God. To complicate my saga, I was friends with this boy’s sister, and still wanted to remain friends with her. She knew I was hurting and invited me to attend a movie with her at the Newington Theater. She told me it was a comedy, and that it would cheer me up. I thought that would be a good idea, so I decided to go. It was a comedy all right…one of God’s greatest jokes…for lo and behold we realized we were at a Billy Graham movie called “For Pete’s Sake.” Because the movie was being shown in my town’s “normal” movie theater, you can better understand how I could have been surprised to find myself at a Billy Graham movie, which at that time I would not have agreed to go see.

I could not believe we had to sit through such a movie! It wasn’t funny at all. As I recall, the movie was about a woman that became a believer in Jesus and began to pray and read the Bible. Her husband, however, scoffed at her newfound faith. Her Bible, as well as her reading of it, was visible in their home. One day the woman was on a stepladder doing something in the house while the husband was not home, and she fell off the ladder and eventually died from her injuries. He came home to find her on the floor, and was devastated, blaming himself for not having been there to help her, and thinking, rightly or wrongly, that he could have saved her life. He loved her and was torn with grief and guilt.

One day, well after her funeral, his eyes were drawn to her Bible on the nightstand, and he opened it and began to read certain passages she had highlighted as her favorite passages. Because of his sorrow, he had a new open space in his heart and wanted to know what meant so much to his wife in these writings. He also had a desire to find comfort in God’s love for himself in his grief. He heard about a Billy Graham crusade that was scheduled to be held close to where he lived and decided to attend. Long story short, he went forward during the altar call and accepted Jesus into his life as his Lord and Savior.

At that point in the movie, I was choked up and moved by the man’s loss, grief, and guilt. I cried at the end, grateful that he found Jesus, but not really understanding what that meant, especially the words “accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior.”

As the credits were rolling, someone went on the stage in the movie theater to a microphone and invited anyone in the theater that wanted to accept Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior to come forward. Again, I really did not understand what I was being asked, except that he said it was about being forgiven and finding and entering into a personal relationship with Jesus through prayer. All I knew was that I wanted that - a personal relationship with Jesus - whatever it was, and I needed to feel God close to me. I realized that there was such an emptiness and hurt in my heart, and a longing for more of God. Still without full understanding, and on pure impulse, I found myself walking forward to the front of the theater to accept Jesus. The leaders read a prayer that we were told to recite if we wanted to invite God into our heart. It is called “The Sinner’s Prayer,” and Billy Graham made it famous:

“Dear Lord Jesus, I know I am a sinner, and I ask for Your forgiveness. I believe You died for my sins and rose from the dead. I turn from my sins and invite You to come into my heart and life. I want to trust and follow You as my Lord and Savior. Amen.”

Those of us that came forward were then invited to give our name and phone number (there was no email back then!) if we wanted to learn more and be contacted. I gave my name and number, again not sure what this was about or what it would lead to. They also gave us a small New Testament and suggested we start by reading the Gospel of John to begin to get to know who Jesus was. To my surprise I had a genuine desire to read it and I started that night.

I still did not connect the dots and realize that the New Testament was the second half of the Bible, and that the Gospels were the first part of the New Testament. I did not realize I was really reading the Bible because my perception of the Bible was a big black book full of words that no one could ever understand. We always had a family Bible on our coffee table, the one my father received when he was in the Marines, but as good pre-Vatican II Catholics at the time, we were not supposed to open it to read and interpret it for ourselves; rather, we were to rely on the church’s teachings and sermons at mass. As I read the gospels, I was surprised to discover that the readings were those that I had heard on Sunday at mass. I had never quite realized that the readings we listened to were from the Bible.

True to their word, a few days later I received a phone call from a young woman who lived in my town. She told me about a Bible study that met in her home, and she invited me to attend. My mother was delighted that I wanted to attend a Bible study instead of a party with a bad crowd, or mope around over a boyfriend, so she eagerly drove me to it. My father, on the other hand, was a loyal Catholic so we had to pretend that I was going to a party and not a Protestant Bible Study!!! How funny is that!

My parents saw that I was starting to perk up and be happy again. They saw a change in me. I began to be drawn to the Bible, and I could not wait to continue reading it. I wanted to learn more about Jesus. Not about church, or denominations, or theology, but about Jesus especially when He was on the earth as a man.

I eagerly began reading the Gospels. The very last verses at the end of Matthew’s gospel grabbed my heart when Jesus said these words to His apostles, and to each of us now:

Matthew 28:19-20: “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

That promise of Jesus to be with us always, even to the end of time, were the most comforting words I had ever heard. I realized that I am never alone. When we whisper His name, Jesus, He really is as close to us as our very breath.

After I finished reading the four gospels, I began reading Acts of the Apostles (also called the Book of Acts). It is a book that documents the life of the apostles after Jesus returned to heaven. I was quite taken aback when I first read in the Book of Acts that the apostle Peter could heal people, just like Jesus did! I never knew that! Acts of the Apostles also says that the crowds gathered around when Peter passed by because even his shadow healed them when he passed by them!

I also read this account in Acts 3:6-10 that changed me. It was when Peter and John were on their way to the temple and they passed by a paralytic beggar, who was asking for alms:

6 Then Peter said, Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk.7 And he took him by the right hand and lifted him up: and immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength.”

I could not believe that the man was instantly healed, and obediently stood up and walked! My mind could not process this new information! This triggered so many questions in my mind such as “why don’t we ever hear about or even know about all the miracles the disciples were able to do in Acts of the Apostles when we are in church?” We only hear about the miracles Jesus did in the Gospels. And then an even greater question emerged within me: “Why do I not see these healings happening in church today?”

I can’t recall where I heard this account about when St. Thomas Aquinas first went to Rome and saw the Cystine chapel, his Vatican guide pointed out the beautiful gold and the artwork in the chapel. The guide said, “No longer can we say silver and gold have I none.” And St. Thomas said, “Neither can you say Rise Up and Walk.”

I am disappointed to say that this fervor of mine continued for a year and then began to wane when I began a new relationship during my junior year of high school. I slowly slid back into caring more about peers and romance than continuing down the path I had found. But I could never forget what I had experienced, and my newfound deeper faith, especially enkindled when reading the Bible. Although my teenage girl commitment to the Lord was shallow, my love for Jesus was nevertheless very real, and I could never deny, or wish to deny, all that I had learned. I was to come back to Jesus again, a few years later, in full force and with a full heart and a more stable commitment. But I suppose I must have needed to make a few more mistakes first. In the following chapters you will see that He was faithful to continue to pursue me, despite my lapses, as promised in His Word from Philippians 1:6:

6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

It was not until five years later that I would learn about the gifts of the Holy Spirit described by St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 12, and experience healing ministries in our day and age through the Holy Spirit. It made sense to me that miracles would still happen, because why would God not want to continue the ministry of Jesus through Holy Spirit-filled believers in our generation? And the Bible says, “Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today and forever.” Why would we think that miracles would cease?

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Other Books by Author

Author's Note

Introduction

On Being Born

On Being Born Again

A Dream about a Gold Cross

Making the “Basketball Honor Roll”

Palm Sunday 1977

Finding Answers and Finding Community

The Blizzard of ’78

“Little Girl, Arise!”

Receiving Inspired Teachings

Staying “In” on the Town

Divine Reset February ‘83

God Sees Differently than We See

The Gift of Being Named

My 30-Day Retreat…Come Away with Me

My 30-day Retreat…The Gift of Being Renamed

My 30-Day Retreat…the Shells

My 30-Day Retreat…God’s Throne

A Petite Miracle about a Petite Baby Grand Piano

Miraculous Healings – 1990

Our Wedding Date

“Meeting” my Father-in-law

Lay-Off Day

Finding a Needle in a Haystack

A Gift that Keeps on Giving

Forgiveness in Full Bloom

Following the Breadcrumbs

Exiled in St. Croix

A Rare Raffle Gift

The Miracle of Perspective

Angels Among Us

The Tome of the Unknown Miracle

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Landmarks

Cover

Table of Contents