Chapter 4
Amazed and Baffled

Let me tell you a story. When Erin was just ten years old, her mother decided to plan a trip driving around the United States and then drive up north and drive west across Canada. This was the summer after her parents sold their family’s beach house and how they were going to spend the summer. The problem was, ever since Erin had started finding her way back home alone (as you read in My First Love "Closer than a Brother") she wanted to be at home where she felt safe and peaceful. 

It was only when Erin was older that she realized this was her nature, the way God designed her to be so that later He could use this for GOOD. God formed and created Erin and created you by shaping and weaving all your traits together in a secret place, in the safety of each of our mothers’ wombs —perfectly, carefully, and skillfully each of us was made!

The skillful way God designs us and the difficult things He brings us through is so that He can reveal many amazing things others will witness and be baffled about. Those who knew Erin’s nature were the most baffled when God later called her to travel around the world many times and have no “home” to return to! God knows that when people are amazed and baffled they will begin to seek to know more and we can introduce them to their Savior, the Prince of Peace!

Driving around America was challenging for Erin because for 3 long months she wasn’t able to see or talk to her father, her father who she adored, nor could she be at home where she felt safe. It was before cell phones, before video chatting. Nevertheless, she didn’t share her feelings with anyone. She only spoke to her Heavenly Father who she knew would be with her.

The reason for this happened about halfway through their trip, after they’d traveled all the way from the West Coast of California to the East Coast to the tip of Florida. After they drove up the East Coast and moved into a house in the tiny seaside borough or town called Ocean Gate. The house was on a dead-end street next to the shore, a house that had been in their family for generations. It was there that Erin met her father’s brother, Uncle Sherman, and it was like she was spending time with her own father. But something else important happened while in Ocean Gate. Erin was called to that seaside town to rescue someone who would have died had Erin not saved them. No, not spiritually or emotionally rescuing and saving them as you read in On the Rock but physically rescuing a teenager—becoming his only lifeline!!