I'm so glad you came to visit me today. There's nothing I like better than telling just how good the Lord has been to me, and what He can do for you. So make yourself comfortable and just read for yourself how He has straightened my life out, making me a brand new person, literally.

Let me tell you some of the wonderful works that the good Lord has done for me, about the  miracles He has blessed me with so that now I can rejoice in God my Saviour! The miracles I am talking about now would not seem like great earth-shattering miracles to other people, but to me they were very wonderful, marvelous, and great and turned my life around a full 180 degrees and I praise and glorify my God for them.  You see, I was not an alcoholic; I was not crippled, sick nor lame; I was never on drugs, prescribed or otherwise; I never lived an immoral life - sounds like I am really a PLAIN JANE (or Peggy) don't it?  But let me go on.

Many years ago now, I realized that due to certain events that had happened in my life, I had lost any real sense of my own identity.  All I had were roles I played or jobs I done. For example, I was a minister's wife, the children's mother, a bookkeeper on my job, etc., but who was I really?  Would the real ME that I had shut up in a shell deep inside me ever get to come to the surface again?

 I really do need to start the story when I was a child six years old, but now don't worry, I have condensed my story quite a bit. I realize at my age, that to tell my complete life's story and include all that the good Lord has done for me would just require too much space so I am telling about the miracles that made a profound difference in my life. Of course, the most wonderful blessed miracle in my life was to receive the Lord Jesus as my Savior and Lord. Lo                                          

I was born in the hills of Tennessee in a little sleepy town called Lafayette, TN way back in 1935, the third child and second daughter of my parents. By the time I was six years old, two more little ones were added to our family in the persons of my younger sister, Lamon and my baby brother Edward, born on April 30th., 1941.  At the time of his birth, my mom was a young widow, living with her dad,  trying her best to feed her little brood. Times were hard back then, we were very poor, it was just after the depression but both my mom and grandfather were hard workers and managed to keep a little food on the table.  Oh, we might get a little hungry now and then, but I remember the GOOD times I had as a child running and playing with my siblings.  My older brother Willard, six years my senior, would make us smaller children toys to play with.  We were a happy family.  Our mom would sing songs to us and tell us bedtime stories at night before we went to bed.

 But then my little world at that time came shattering down around me, and it took 42 years of my life, during which time I lost all feelings of my own self-worth, before God got my life under HIS control, finally giving me the peace, love and contentment with my life that I needed so desperately, so I could then live as HIS child and grow and mature in the Lord as a Christian.

About two weeks after baby brother Edward was born, one morning bright and early at around 5:00 a m, the Sheriff of Macon County with two of his deputies broke into our little humble home, pushed my grandfather down, and started taking out the younger children to a waiting car.  I was the oldest of the younger three children.  They took us to the jailhouse there in Lafayette and gave all of us a good scrubbing and put new clothes on us and took us to a courtroom where we were taken from our mother's care and put in an orphanage in Nashville, TN.  That was during the time of the black market of small children and babies to be sold to people that wanted to adopt babies.  Our mom cried and begged and pleaded for the Sheriff and his deputies not to take her babies from her.  But they would not listen to her pleas.

My younger sister and baby brother Edward got adopted out within three months of being placed in the home, so there I was at six years of age, left alone without any of my family in a strange world that I didn't know anything about. I ran away from the orphanage three times hunting my family.  What had happened to me?  Where was my family?  Why had I been taken from my family that I loved so well?  All these questions and more filled my troubled young mind. In present day circumstances they would have child psychologists to help children thru traumatic changes in their lives, but not then.  The answers to my running away and other episodes at the home was good switchings from the matrons.  Up till that time I had not ever remembered anyone ever laying a hand of violence on me. 

 Anyway, the orphanage tried different things with me. They sent me to a retired school teacher's home, supposedly to teach me to write and talk plainer, but she sent me to someone's house that was supposedly going to adopt me, and it didn't work out, so I landed back in the orphanage. The orphanage decided then that they would call the parents that had adopted my younger sister Lamon and ask  them if they would take me, because they could not handle me and my problems.   It seemed my younger sister Lamon had missed me so much during the year we were apart and so the parents said yes. During that one year I had been changed to different residences five times, so you can imagine what my little mind was going thru by then. I was a thoroughly confused homesick little child.  I was now seven. 

So now here I am, a little 7 year old girl that has to go to another place, to strange people that are supposedly going to adopt me.  They have Lamon and they LOVE Lamon, but they were not really wanting ME, in fact, my "new mother" told me they had taken me because the home called and told them that they could not do anything with me, and Lamon (now Judy) had missed me so much that they said they would take me.

I had problems accepting this new mother as MY mother, why I had a mom if I could just find her. And in reminiscing back thru the years, it just seemed like everything I did in my NEW home was the WRONG  thing to do, for which I would always receive a whipping.  I was a very UNHAPPY child, and started having "seizures" or convulsions.  My new mom was at her wit's end and ready to send me back to the orphanage, but my new dad said "No, she NEEDS us!  (Thank God for dads!) 

Well, getting settled down in my new home, getting my physical and medical needs met, along with quite a bit of mom's recipe of that "good ole hickory tea" gave me the stability my dad said I needed.  I did manage to grow up as normal on the outside as any other young girl of that day, mom seen to that, but my INNER SELF had suffered severe emotional scars from being torn away  from my beloved birth family where I knew I "belonged" and had been so very happy.

My new adoptive family were wonderful church going people, who took my sister and me to church every Sunday.  I gave my heart to the Lord and joined the church when I was eight years old.  They gave us every advantage in life that they could, but as far as I was concerned, there was something missing in my life.  I could not be either happy or satisfied for thinking of my birth family.  Where were they?  Oh, I missed them so much! I would cry myself to sleep at night in my bed for the longest.   

My "new dad" was a very easygoing man, who never in his life laid a hand of correction upon my sister or me.  All he had to do was to talk to us when we needed it, and he did it so nice that Judy and I wished sometime that he would have paddled us instead of talking because we all three would usually wind up crying.  He was such a gentle man as far as his girls were concerned.  We were the apple of his eye.  His older sister, would not let her children play with Judy and me, because we were adopted and we might contaminate her children with something.  My dad went two years without speaking to her and we never did visit her, we would just see her and her family when there was a death in dad's family.

My adoptive mom never showed me affectionate love in growing up.  So I went throughout the rest of my childhood feeling like I was not worthy of being loved by anyone since leaving my birth family. I remember my mom made me be the one to "give in" to any argument Judy and I would have, whether or not I was right or wrong.  She said someone had to give in, so it might as well be me, since I was the oldest.  She would come into our bedroom at night, tuck my sister in, laught and cut up with her, and kiss her goodnight,  and walk out as if I were not in the room at all.  

Now, sincerely, I am not rehashing all this to make anyone feel bad at my "adoptive" parents.  They were wonderful Christian people who were doing the best they could to raise a "troubled" homesick kid and a nice little sister. I am just telling this to let you know what kind of shape my little mind was in at that time in my life and which influenced my young adult life as well.  I can now see God's hand in directing my life down thru the years.  I have wondered at times, just where would I have been in my life, if God had not intervened in my affairs at that time in my life and directed my steps in giving me the wonderful parents He did.  God does everything in HIS own time and AT the RIGHT TIME and everything He does is GOOD and for OUR GOOD.

But I could not understand as a six and seven year old child, why I had been taken from my mother, I could not understand why I had been separated from my older brother and sister that I loved to play with so much.  I could not understand why I was getting a "new" set of parents when I had "my" mother somewhere. Why?  Why? Why?  Oh the unanswered questions my little mind could think of. 

  So I just buried all my hurts and misery deep down inside of me.  I closed myself up in a shell.  It seemed to be the only way I could survive in this new crazy world in which I found myself in.  So I grew up having a giant inferioty complex.  Oh, I was performing all my normal duties, and acting like I should, like I said before, mom seen to that, but I just felt like a NOBODY, just like a NOTHING!  I was worth NOTHING as a person, I thought. 

Now, as you know, time does go on and kids grow up to be young adults, and we develop romantic notions about who we will marry and how they will be and when at age 21, I met and married my Knight in Shining Armor, I thought to myself, "Well, finally here is someone who will love ONLY ME, and I will be the most important person in his life. Oh this wonderful man would make up for all the hurts I had received in my young life.  Now I could survive in my world!  I suppose I sort of had a mental picture of the two of us riding off into the sunset of life together so to speak.

But here again, I was in for another lesson in the cold hard facts of life as I used to hear Porter Waggoner sing about!    My young knight was a very handsome, very lovable, very outgoing person and I loved him dearly.

He enjoyed life so much, he enjoyed the company of his preacher buddies, the church people enjoyed being with him so much.  He evangelized several years of our married life and was gone quite a bit.  I had to SHARE him with so many people.  Why he was not "all mine" alone, like I had dreamed of living happily ever after with.  He belonged to God and to God's people.

I just didn't seem to be too important to anyone at all,  I thought at the time.  Well, here was some more deep feelings of heartache, of hopelessness, just deep down depression. I felt like the old Hee Haw song "If it wasn't for all the bad luck in my life, I wouldn't have any luck at all!"  I seemingly was not important to ANYONE!! I wanted so much to be IMPORTANT,  SPECIAL and LOVED by SOMEONE.  But I was just a NOTHING!  a NOBODY!!  Not a soul in the world cared anything about ME, I thought!!!    

I thought now not only was I not worthy of receiving my adoptive parents love and attention, but now the enemy of my soul was telling me that I was such a NOBODY that even my husband, the only person in the world that I felt like would have been truly ALL MINE was not that at all.   I was really down and depressed, having the mother of pity parties!  You know  Satan knows each Christian's weakness and will really try his best to tear us down if we let him and I was letting him!

Adding to my troubles at that time was the fact that I had fallen three times, hitting the base of my spine each time, which, in addition to lifting on three young children, cleaning and moving furniture in our home, I began to have severe back problems and pain.  I suffered with it for about 15 years.  The base of my spine hurt continually all the time.  I would get catches in my back that would last about a week at a time.                                                                         

We had a regional meeting of our churches in our area, and on the way to church one night I would have to nearly scream out in pain when our car would hit a bump or turn a curve. At that meeting during the altar call, I received a miracle from my God!  There was a minister in the audience that gave a message out in tongues, and while the message was being given out, I felt like a warm liquid was being poured out over my head and it dripped and oozed down all thru my body and when it came to my midsection, it stopped awhile and then went on down to my feet.  I looked up at my husband at my side and said, "I've been healed!"

That has been about 26 years ago now, and I'm still healed today!  This also started a healing of my INNER SELF that was so damaged by circumstances of my life.  It started me thinking, "Well, I must be worth a LITTLE something for GOD to take notice of ME and to heal ME!" ME, of all people, just a NOTHING and a NOBODY in my eyes!

About ten years later when my husband and I were pastoring a church in Chattanooga, where I was raised, I received word that an older SISTER of mine was searching for me. The older sister I remembered so well and had missed so much down through the years! She had searched for her younger sisters and baby brother for 31 years.  When she was 19 years old, she had gotten married, and she and her husband had located our birth mom and older brother Willard, and together they had searched frantically, till our mom had died in 1968 without ever getting to see her three youngest children again in this life.  What a reunion our family is going to have when we all meet her in heaven!

My older sister Gladys kept right on searching.  She was determined to find her lost family.  She could find no peace in her life till she did.  It seemed like she was up against a brick wall every way she turned.  The Tennessee State Law keeps all adoption records sealed unless there is shown a "good cause" to open them, of which a person's normal desire to learn the "truth of their origin" to learn "who they are" is not a good enough reason.

Finally, as a last straw effort, Gladys contacted a lawyer whom she had used before, who had married a sister of a former TN Governor, she herself being a State Senator.  He gave his wife my sister's letter and she carried the matter before the State Legislature along with other similar cases and in June of 1983 God worked another miracle in my life!  He had the Tennessee State Law changed for 30 days only in May-June of 1983!  

That anyone who had adopted siblings in cases 26 years old or older, could come to court during those 30 days and the case would be reviewed and the records opened and if the judge OK'd it, the Human Services Dept would contact the adopted siblings and get the family back together if all the parties agreed to it.

After a separation of 42 years,  my sister and I were finally reunited with our beloved birth family in October of 1983!  This was the miracle God did for me that made a completely BRAND NEW person out of me!

Everyone, my husband, my children, and our church family noticed a change in me.  Now I was a much happier person.  I was no longer inhibited by feelings of self doubt and unworthiness.   I was no longer so UNHAPPY with my life in general!  Why the God of the whole universe had noticed ME and had done great and wonderful things for ME in healing my back ailment and now bringing my beloved birth family back to me!

No longer would I have to go through life pretending to be someone I knew I wasn't!  My adoptive parents had adopted me ---changing my name and my identity and as the years went by I even forgot my last birth name ----I couldn't even remember who I was!!

But now I could be ME and feel good about it!  Because of God working some miracles in my life!  

I had buried down deep within my soul any thoughts of ever getting to see my birth family again.   As far as I was concerned it was so impossible it would never become a reality in my lifetime. But now God had done the impossible!  My older sister had been searching for us for 31 years with no idea how to get the Tennessee State Law changed but my God knew what had to be done to accomplish it.

Now folks, there I had been in church all my growing up years, but I really must be a SLOW learner, because at last I realized WHO I was really special to!  It is JESUS!  HE really loved and cared about ME just as I was, with my faults and my hang-ups in life---JESUS had taken notice of ME and granted ME, a "NOBODY" and a "NOTHING" in my eyes --- the deepest desire of my heart, that of being reunited with my birth family---to find out who I really was.  TO FIND MYSELF!

It didn't matter to me anymore at all whether or not I was SPECIAL to anyone else!  I was SPECIAL to JESUS!  Jesus truly became my ALL in ALL!

I asked my minister husband why God performed miracles in the first place.  What was the reason.  Just being curious you know.  Why would God ever look down and say, "Hey, I think I'm going to do something good for Peggy today?  What had I done to get the attention of the great God of the universe?

Well he told me that God performed miracles to bring into focus Jesus Christ as God's Annointed!  That was the perfect answer because God working those miracles for me  sure did change my concept of Jesus Christ all right! No longer did I think of HIM as being way up there in heaven, someone that I just said a nightly prayer to, but HE became a personal SAVIOR to me---someone I could talk to, telling Him my deepest innermost feelings ---He became my personal Friend and Confidante, that now would help me and love me and guide me through the rest of my life's journey.

He wasn't a God Who was watching with a club in His hand to punish me when I done wrong.  He would not scold me as my parents had done.  He would not pass my feelings off as just being a typical female, as some husbands do---but HE would listen.  He UNDERSTOOD all about ME!  Why He must have felt rejection in His life too when His disciples left him all alone at His trial and crucifixion. He felt like at one time that His heavenly Father had left Him when He was hanging on the cross. The Son of God had gone thru so much worse than I had or would ever go through in my lifetime.

So now, I could come out from the shell I had closed myself in, face the world as it was  and start LIVING LIFE to its fullest.  Now my heart was full of the JOY of my salvation! Now I could truly worship the King of Glory that had done so much for me!  

He told me in His Word that He loved ME so much that HE gave HIS life for ME.  That HE wanted ME, a "NOBODY" in my eyes, to spend eternity with HIM in heaven.

Never had I felt so LOVED in all my life!  

Just to know that I serve a God that can do the impossible!  A God who is more than enough!  A God that truly know all about YOU and all about ME and yet HE loves us anyway!  And is more than willing to prove Himself to you and me with signs, wonders and miracles in our lives.

Because JESUS is ALIVE, Hallelujah!!  He arose from death and the grave, NO situation in our lives is ever hopeless!  In finding myself as a person, I find that NOW I know a God who loves me JUST AS I AM, enough to send His Son to give His life for ME that I might enjoy life everlasting with Him in glory at the end of my life's journey.

 A journey in which I don't know what lies ahead for me, but HE KNOWS, and I can rest in peace, knowing I am truly LOVED by the FATHER, the SON and the HOLY SPIRIT and . . . 

WHATEVER comes my way, I know from my own  life's experiences that . . . .

"All things work together for GOOD to them that LOVE the LORD!!  (Romans 8:28)