About Margaret Agard

From Margaret:

I always wanted to give my life to God but I was so busy I could hardly keep up with the basics of life.

A single mother-and the sole financial support-of eight children, I also attended night classes, finishing up my degree while working as a computer consultant to provide for those children. Each of those three activities was a full-time job. Even if I’d been capable of working twenty-four hours a day seven days a week, I couldn’t have done all that needed doing.

Worse, no matter what I did it was the wrong thing. If I studied for a test or finished a proposal, the test was postponed, the proposal requirements changed. But that task I put off because it could wait, suddenly became critical. How could I possibly know what to do when? I couldn’t see the future to know what was coming. But I knew who could. God.

I prayed to God saying, “Here’s my list of what I plan to do today. Please, tell me what I should do instead.”

And He did!

At first I did His list and added some of my own items. Eventually, as my trust grew, I focused on only the tasks on His list. My fast pace slowed down. My life and finances smoothed out. I was finished every night by 8 p.m. Amazing! I had never stopped before midnight before. Now I could relax and enjoy time sitting on the couch as the teens wandered in and out sharing their lives with me.

So of course, I took my life back. Because now it was under control I didn’t need to bother God anymore. Or at least that’s what I thought. Wouldn’t He want me to stand on my own two feet?

I didn’t completely stop paying attention to Him. Which is how I ended up married again and moving across the country, giving up my new well paid job in the high tech industry. Not that I wanted to do those things, at first. And in the beginning none of it looked as if it were blessings from God.

Predictably, i ended up overwhelmed all over again with consulting clients demanding results, children on both coasts, trips back and forth between those coasts, a new marriage that had struggles. Finally, to top it all off, I was asked to coordinate the spiritual, emotional, and physical care for all the women in the local church.

That’s how I ended up with a five page to-do list. And the more I did, the longer that list became.

So I turned it over to God again. This time, with no intention of taking it back. Because that’s what Christ did. As he says in John 8:29…the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him. (KJV)

But it wasn’t always easy. That’s what I share. I’m no scriptorian, no saint. I wrote it as it happened, the good, the bad, the struggles, the profound lessons from the small, every day life events.

The results of the prayer I prayed over my relationship with my arrogant fifteen year old son who I loved but didn’t like much. The screaming peacocks that my new husband Parker adored. My wise-woman friend who gave me a deep understanding of the color purple.

Here’s the point. I only share this because I know I’m not the only one with these struggles, this desire to be closer to God if only I could get the dishes out of the way.

That’s what I managed to do. Turn my life over to God and get the dishes done. In these memoirs I share how it all happened. With a miraculous result.

As I let go and let God, He gave me the most beautiful, unexpected life I didn’t even know I wanted until I had it.