Cockfighting and Amazing Grace

“God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it.” Ephesians 2:8-9 (NLT)


I can still remember the excitement of getting to miss church so we could go visit my “Grandpa on the mountain.” Because there were usually surprises along the way. 

An old service station at the bottom of the mountain where we would get root beers in glass bottles; a flea market where there were puppies for sale; the feeling that we were going to fall off the mountain as my dad drove way too close to the side. 



But always, as we started down the dirt drive towards the old house, my excitement turned to nervousness.

Pictures of my Grandpa in his youth showed a tall, handsome, slightly arrogant looking man. But after years working in the coal mines, his looks and health prematurely withered. 

He and my grandmother had divorced back before divorce was accepted as the norm. Both of them had bad tempers, but my Grandpa‘s violent temper was legendary. 

Did he really beat his brother with a tire iron? You know he used to run moonshine, didn’t you? So you mean he uses those pretty roosters in fights? Does he really hit them with his cane? 

I can barely remember him looking for the perfect stump to find fiddling worms for a fishing trip with my dad. Somewhere along the line, he started using a cane to walk.

More vivid are the memories of him angrily shaking his cane, demanding someone bring him “this or that” as he coughed and gasped for air. Somewhere along the line, an oxygen tank appeared along with a folded up napkin he kept in his hand for when the coughing fits hit.

And then came the appearance of an old Bible…

When they brought in the hospital bed, the old Bible and him became inseparable. He desperately clung to it, holding it tightly to his chest. Sometimes he would shake it at us while trying to tell us something very important that I could never quite understand. 

And I remember being angry. 

How dare you, I thought. How dare you try to act like you’re good now. Now that you are dying do you think you just get to grab a Bible and it will magically wipe out all the bad things you’ve done all your life? No, Grandpa, it doesn’t work like that. You haven’t done anything good. You don’t get to just go to heaven after all that stuff. 

A couple of weeks ago, my pastor started a series of sermons on grace. How grace isn’t earned and we can’t lose it.  None of us deserve it.  It is God’s free and amazing gift to us. Tweet this!

He became emotional as he reminded us of the criminal who hung on a cross beside our Savior. About the saving grace our Lord extended to him, just moments before He died. How he wasn’t required to jump off the cross and make amends to all those he had wronged, go serve the poor and minister to the needy in order to be granted access to heaven.

My years of self righteousness melted away and in its place sprung up humility and gratefulness. And I marveled in the wonder I felt knowing that the only requirement from God was to accept His amazing gift of grace, which is wholly sufficient.  Tweet this!


Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom.” And Jesus replied, “I assure you, today you will be with me in paradise.” Luke 23:42-43 (NLT)

But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. Romans 5:8 (NLT)

For “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Romans 10:13 (NIV)

The Lion and Lamb

 “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned - every one - to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”  Isaiah 53:6 (ESV)

“Mommy, is it sick?” my youngest asked.  “Maybe not," I said in a hopeful tone.  

A sound not quite a cough but not quite a roar echoed from the big cat enclosure.  He was huge and beautiful and seemed healthy enough to me but there was a distinct weakness in that labored sound.  “Poor lion,” I thought.  “I don’t think he could hurt a lamb in the state he’s in.”




They say March comes in like a lion but leaves like a lamb.  But it’s my absolute most favorite month.  One filled with celebrations.

On March 17, 1972, St. Patrick’s Day, I was born.  

The youngest of five children, I’m sure my parents were grateful about not having to think too hard about coming up with another name.  Patricia worked out just fine.  Patty is the name I’ve gone by, well, forever but recently I’ve noticed my parents have started to call me Pat. I don’t particularly like being called Pat but since they are my parents I guess they can call me what they darn well please. 

In March of 1978, at the age of six years old, I was reborn.

I wish I could tell you all about that experience but, honestly, the only reason I know the date is because of church records uncovered recently.  As a matter of fact, I’ve been telling people for years that I got saved at the age of thirteen because I couldn’t remember and it sounded reasonable.  Was I really saved at six years old, you might ask.  Yes, I believe so and with all my heart. Because all salvation needs is a child-like faith the size of a mustard seed.  Tweet this!

On March 31, 2013, Easter Sunday night, I was rebaptized as an outward expression of my recommittment to Christ.

Not long after graduating high school, I washed my hands of stifling church sermons and narrow minded, hypocritical church people and set off to do my own thing.  Free at last! 

Twenty years later, worn and torn from being chained to addictions and paying the consequences for what I thought was freedom, God welcomed me back into the fold.  His little lost sheep had come back home.

“Where’s the lion, mommy?” my youngest asked on our next trip to the zoo. 

Hyenas were now lounging about in the enclosure where the big cat used to be.  “I don’t know, honey.  Maybe they’ve moved him somewhere else.”  And my heart hoped that was the truth.  I envisioned him in a bigger place than this one, surrounded by his pride, as his deafening roar echoed across the beautiful savannah.

And I am reminded of how Jesus came to earth, still fully God but in the form of man.  Tweet this!  Like the Lion and the Lamb, all rolled into one perfect, unblemished sacrifice offered up on a cross to give us freedom from our sins.  To provide a way for us to be reunited, once again, with a holy God for all eternity. 

And I envision us in a better place than this one, surrounded by His glory, as the music of angels echo across the unfathomable heavens.

“The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.’”  John 1:29 (ESV)

“And one of the elders said to me, ‘Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.’”  Revelation 5:5 (ESV)

“Know that the Lord, he is God!  It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.”  Psalm 100:3 (ESV)

St. John and Smiles

“This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!” 2 Corinthians 5:17 (NLT)

I once lived on St. John, a US Virgin Island. 

Worked at the Mongoose Restaurant in Cruz Bay and lived with friends on the other side of the island, near Saltpond Bay. Work days started and ended as hikes across a beautiful mountain top (when my efforts at hitchhiking weren’t productive). My off days were spent exploring luscious trails, gorgeous beaches and meeting new friends – one time even a famous one (Peter Gabriel – though youngsters may need to google him). It was a place where old, weathered island men still played dominos in the town square and the faint sound of calypso music mixed with the warm Caribbean breeze. A place where no one ever seemed to worry or be in a hurry.

I once lived on St. John, a US Virgin Island. 

Worked at the Mongoose Restaurant in Cruz Bay as a mathematically challenged waitress and bartender and lived with my always drunk ex boyfriend and some people he’d happened to make friends with a couple of months before my arrival – with $50, a back pack and return ticket my only possessions. Sharing a cramped space with strangers and their one jeep, I made long treks across a dangerous mountain back and forth to work…often walking at night and alone. Riotous living got me messed up with some native islanders, pretty nasty drug dealers that put very little value on human life, and it’s only by God’s grace that I got off that island relatively unharmed.

“My smile hides a dark story,” said my cashier with joy in her eyes. 

Checking out at Big Lots the other day, my cashier had told me she liked my Jesus pin. I happily told her my story of redemption and she - just as happily back - told me about her and her husband’s recent redemption, about a month earlier. How their lives had gotten way off track and how people often smile to cover up deep pain, a story that others would never know if they didn’t take the time to stop and find it out. Covering up the deeper story that God wants to use to help others see hope…the hope that only He can provide in this broken, sinful world where pain, death, and fear reside, behind half-truths in “I’m fine” replies, FB pictures of you at the beach, and those deceptive smiles... 

But (now GET this folks!) God gives you the power over your past story or your present story because He specializes in renewed beginnings, clean slates, and happy endings. Tweet this! Praise be to Him.

“Has the Lord redeemed you? Then speak out! Tell others he has redeemed you from your enemies.” Psalm 107:2 (NIV)

“I used to wander off until you disciplined me; but now I closely follow your word.” Psalm 119:67 (NIV)

“If anyone is ashamed of me and my message in these adulterous and sinful days, the Son of Man will be ashamed of that person when he returns in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” Mark 8:38 (NIV)

“You are my refuge and my shield; your word in my source of hope.” Psalm 119:114 (NIV)

Jesus Pin and Tattoos

“But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Don’t judge by his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The Lord doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” I Samuel 16:7 (NLT)  




People judge us and we judge other people. 

It’s part of our nature to try and figure people out and until we’ve had a chance to get to know them, what have we got to go on? Yep…how they look. 

I’ve got tattoos. Not a lot of them…well, not a lot of really visible ones, anyway. At one time, I had a ring in my nose. And pink hair. And dressed like a biker - but I rode motorcycles, so that’s why. 

And you can bet I got judged, a lot. But, if I’m honest, I actually got a kick out of it. It’s just where I was at that time in my life which, for me, was way outside of the will of God.

Fast forward to now. 

After recommitting my life to Christ in 2012, I’m a redeemed woman. Wife of a talented, longsuffering, sensitive man. Mother of two beautiful, creative, Godly girls. 

And the tattoos are still there. But I’ve got a new accessory to go along with them…a blinged out Jesus pin that my mother gave to me on the night of my rebaptism in March of this year. And I haven’t taken it off (much) since. 

And, guess what? I’m still getting judged, a lot. But, if I’m honest, I actually get a kick out of it. It’s just where I am at this time in my life which, for me, is right smack in the middle of God’s will.

You will always be judged by people but God looks at your heart. Tweet this!

Isn’t that refreshing? Breathe in the love, the freedom and the acceptance from God and let His grace flow through you to others - try not to judge them so harshly by the way they look, okay? It’s just where they are at this point in their life.

And I still streak my hair pink every once in a while. And I’d still take a ride on your motorcycle. But I wouldn’t wear that ring in my nose again because piercings just aren’t my thing. But don’t judge me.

“Do not judge others, and you will not be judged. For you will be treated as you treat others. The standard you use in judging is the standard by which you will be judged.” Matthew 7:1-2

“God alone, who gave the law, is the Judge. He alone has the power to save or to destroy. So what right do you have to judge your neighbor?” James 4:12

“Create in me a clean heart, O god; Renew a loyal spirit within me.” Psalm 51:10