Dear Daughter: Little girl, get up. Your Father the King is calling...

Acknowledgments

Jesus, only You can make these words express the gratitude that is due...

Above all and with all of my life, thank You, Jesus. Thank You for Your faithfulness and for Your love. Thank You for Your forgiveness, patience, and grace. Thank You for saving my life with Your life and for the delight and freedom of Your Holy Spirit in me. Thank You for being so sweet to me and for calling me awake. And thank You for letting me be a part of everything You’ve done between these pages. Let it all be an offering to You, God, for the glory of Your name.

To my husband, Clayte Huber, my sweetheart, thank you. I love and appreciate you. I admire and am so grateful for how the Lord designed you: the man that you are; your creativity, courage, and strength; your nerve and zest for life. You’re the perfect fit to the puzzle I am. It was one of your "what if’s" that sparked the book you’re holding today. Thank you, Clayte, for taking this journey with me; thank you for encouraging me and for believing that I can be brave too.

To my parents, Ken and Carol Prettyman—I love you both. Thank you for raising me to know and honor Jesus. So many wonderful things in my life today began with the example that you set for me. Thank you for your open hearts, your loving support, your faithful prayers, and your genuine friendship. I appreciate you a ton, and I’m so proud of who you are.

To my dear friend, Anita Foster, thank you for your beautiful heart. I’ve been so blessed by our friendship. It was four years ago that you, with such selflessness, were the first to read these pages in their earliest form before they made any sense at all. You encouraged me to keep writing and to always look ahead to what Jesus would do. Thank you so much.

To Pam Lagomarsino, thank you for being the first to go to work on polishing the readability and presentation of this manuscript. Your fine tuning and thoughtful approach trained my writing sense to a new level. And even when life got crazy (and then went bonkers), your patience with me was flawless and always generous. Thank you, Pam. The writers who work with you are blessed indeed.

And to Trilogy Publishing, wow, thank you for taking a chance on me. Thank you for embracing the heart of these pages and that the heart of your professionalism is to speak the good news of Christ Jesus to all the world. Thank you, Mark and Michele, and the entire Trilogy team, for showing me how to cross the finish line. May the Lord bring glory to His name in this endeavor and in all that you do to proclaim His kingdom.

Preface

A spiritual coma dominated my life until I was nearly thirty-three years old. Eleven thousand six hundred eighty days of breathing, serving, performing, earning, guessing, striving, and ultimately contending with both sides of expectation induced in me a nature of deep sleepwalking. Life was essentially an ebb and flow of fleeting achievements, chronic exhaustion, personal insecurity, and relational failure.

Life for a girl unaware of her lineage to Christ the King becomes this madness as usual. From early consciousness, the culture pummels her senses. Straining and striving become like breathing while expectations clad facades atop her real human condition. What should be central to her person and the basis of true beauty—forgiveness, love, and meaning—become like phantoms, eluding her of genuine relationship and true identity. Her insides bloat on the empty idolatry of self-dependent living. She is both disoriented and exhausted, unknowingly enslaved, doing her best to do her best, completely unaware that her lack of rest in Jesus is actually hardening her heart.

But thank God for God. He knows us far better than we know ourselves (Romans 8:27, MSG). Because of who He is, He guides us along right paths (see Psalm 23:3), enabling us to call to mind His steadfast love, His endless mercies, and His great faithfulness (see Lamentations 3:21–23). Because of His authority, even in the darkest valley (Psalm 23:4), we have divine weapons ready to smash warped philosophies and fit every loose thought and emotion and impulse into the structure of life shaped by Christ (see 2 Corinthians 10:4–6).

Dear Daughter is written of these very things: My testimony of awakening in an allegorical story with sixty corresponding devotional letters. In these letters, the Word of God is both quoted and paraphrased as a flow of thought without citation. And each letter is followed with its precise list of scripture references, presented in the order of their use and as they are found in their respective Bible translations: ESV, NIV, MSG, and NKJV.

And you, Daughter, are my sister in Christ, on your own journey in His love. You may not be awakening from a life of trudging along spiritually asleep like I was, but His call to you is no different than it is to me. To us, His living Word is speaking: Talitha koum [...], ‘Little girl, get up’ (Mark 5:41, MSG). One thing only is essential (Luke 10:42, MSG). Ask me for a drink of fresh, living water; know the generosity of God and Who I am (see John 4:10). Daughter, take a risk of faith be healed and whole. No one condemns you, so go, and from now on, sin no more (see John 8:11). Live well, live blessed! (See Mark 5:34.)

Such words! Hearing them, truly hearing His call, changes every essential in life. At the mere recognition of His voice inside a life, the restrictions of detachment melt away. Long cramped expressions of original God-created nature begin to breathe, flex, and extend. It was wonderfully refreshing and even shocking, the effect of Jesus on me. I tried to tell everyone about it—no doubt some will remember those bewildering phone calls. But the greatest shock of all was my own. It turned out I didn’t know myself at all. It was the realization that generations—grandsons and granddaughters—would reap what’s sown of my life that thrust forward the wife, mother, and person I’m now growing into, to finally face my most dreaded and long avoided defining question: who can love the unlovable in me? The answer, of course, is Jesus Christ. In Him, I’ve begun my healing from the inside up as the trajectory of my life transforms through the mystery of God’s grace. His touch made me aware of my self-enslavement and remade my life in ruins to ruins no more. The experience has been simultaneously utterly painful and wholly delightful, with the latter multiplying beyond anything I’d ever hoped for or imagined possible.

God’s Spirit touched my spirit, and He’s reaching to yours too. In Him, be confirmed of who you really are. In Him, we can know who He is and who we are: Father and children (see Romans 8:16), revealing the original intended shape of our lives in Christ (see Romans 8:29). His will be done on earth as it is in heaven (see Matthew 6:10). His living and active Word discerning the thoughts and intentions of our hearts (see Hebrews 4:12). His amazing grace—unconstrained by time, undiminished by more than eight billion children in need—strengthening our weak knees and directing straight paths for our feet, so that what was lame will not be put out of joint but rather healed (see Hebrews 12:12–13). He goes before us and is with us. He commands us to not be afraid, not be discouraged (see Deuteronomy 31:8) because where His Spirit is, there is freedom (see 2 Corinthians 3:17).

So this is my testimony of being set free in Him. Of being fully known, fully loved, and able to give love fully. It’s God’s pen on my heart, taken to heart by the daughter I am, scrawled out, intimate, and raw to you, Daughter—a beloved daughter of the King.

Jesus clasped the girl’s hand and said, Talitha koum, which means, Little girl, get up.

… Then He said, Give her something to eat.

Mark 5:41—43 (MSG)

Part 1

I’m never exactly sure why it happens—why this is what I do? Each different from the time before, but the resulting internal pressure is always the same. Stifled. Experienced as trepidation and self-assessed as cowardice, though often observed as wallflower or even aloof stoicism—as a child, it seemed to be something the rest of the world knew about me better than I did. Now I understand at my most basic and primal level, it is an active choice for which I am responsible, but in the vehicular moment of fight or flight, the choice is nearly always lost on me, i.e., freeze.

Too often, I’m either a deer in the headlights, jaywalking through adversity and opportunity, or a too-compliant passenger mesmerized by the passing landscape, always passing faster than I’m seeing. If only at each defining intersection, I might have pushed pause, allowing twenty minutes of respite to process and acclimate between decision and indecision, stay and go, catalyst and trajectory—that would have been magical.

But for me, Abba-God had a testimony in mind that is so much sweeter than magic. For me, He made an awakening. An arise-o-sleeper type of awakening, bringing distinction for my nature of contentment from the distortion of passive reflex to a world I was never meant to align with or be approved by.

It makes me laugh now, in a tender way, to consider my adult self in such a newborn state. If a record of my development were kept—a spiritual pediatric chart of sorts—it would begin with my "born-again-again" moment, now seven years old. A few diagnostic notations would certainly read over-trained underdeveloped woman; quite unaware of her intrinsic value as a human being, being made in the image of Abba-God. Learning, at last, to sit up facing the Lord, chew solid Scripture, and day by day receive and rest in the Builder’s work to found her life on Christ, the solid rock.

So it’s helpful to look back and consider the whole picture. It’s not something to be embarrassed by or afraid to face, honestly. If I could speak to myself when I was just the wisp I remember being, I’d tell myself to be alert, cheerful, and at ease, that Abba will walk with you these forty years in the wilderness. You will be tested and loved. You are forgiven. Every need has been supplied. Every choice matters, and there is always a choice. Christ Jesus is the truest part of who you are. You really are His beloved, and His view of you is the only one that matters, so yield the details of your life to Him so that you may enjoy His ease and lightness for you. And every day, the most meaningful thing you’ll do is seek Him and His kingdom first, so pray without ceasing—pray to know Him. These are the lyrics of my new life in Him, strands of light I wake up with every day. His Spirit ablaze shielding and ministering, adorning and strengthening—more than I’ve ever needed or hoped for—that’s God’s fullness. More. Nothing wallflower or mundane about it!

…but what a journey it continues to be…

During my growing up years and into early adulthood, I had a particular recurring dream. I would hold my breath and grow alarmed, realizing I couldn’t breathe unless I could wake up, and I couldn’t wake up unless I could breathe. You can imagine the physical distress of my conundrum. Upon escaping to consciousness, there was always much gasping and choking, but then eventual wonderful relief. I don’t think this was a coincidence at all. I think Jesus had a wake-up planned for me from before my earliest breath-holding moments as a human being. And not surprisingly, I was a child, the first time I can remember doing just that.

I remember it in bits and pieces, the way children often do. Fragments that somehow feel like a whole. Men in suits came to pray. Tall gray legs. Pinstripe legs. Shined-up shoes, black and brown. And a bottle of anointing oil. I remember them crossing in front of me, between me and that old grandfather clock, toward the floral-patterned couch where lay the glue of my small universe, now fighting to hold itself together. I don’t remember much else, but I remember my insides got quiet and the cocoon I felt in the comfort of withdrawal.

The second time was more than just a time, and it was never a comfort or a cocoon. This time, navigating life while holding my breath was exhausting—a marathon of the most unintentional kind. One small striving choice after another, until miles and miles were tallied, and my whereabouts were nowhere I recognized or felt belonging. Living for approval, trading away the fiber of who I was meant to be for the trimmings of who I thought I should become, I hadn’t even realized I’d done it until so many apprehensively spent years later.

It’s such a sham, that demand we all feel to always know everything about who we are and where we’re going. And it makes genuine relationships nearly impossible. A true relationship requires self-forgetfulness. A willingness to die to self. We are not the center or the source. Humility to recognize and accept: I don’t know what life holds, but I’m a person who needs Jesus, and I see you are too—wanna go together? Knowing the foundation of Christ is bigger than who we are.

But instead, we launch headlong into isolating identities, degrees, and debts for the false security of perception, declaring, "I know what I’m supposed to know about who I am and my place in the world around me." And it’s all just silly. Why should we? How could we? We don’t know the first thing about tomorrow, and we can’t know ourselves apart from knowing our Maker. And yet, that knowledge is innate: the image of our Maker resides in every heart.

Life is not a game of chance, and it’s not a self-willed plan. Lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways submit to Him (Proverbs 3:5b—6a, NIV). He is our context. He is everything real and alive. It’s the distortion of self that gets in the way and the disorientation of the world that interferes with realizing we’ve missed the simplicity of His shepherding for us.

And as I acknowledged all the ways I’d missed that very thing, I spent a long time feeling stung by hindsight, grumbling, "Why didn’t anyone notice my drifting path?" But really, who can detect internal stifling from outward striving? Who, but God and you. And there’s the heart of it. It’s tough being dust until you look around and notice the light of Jesus filtering through your particles adrift and remember it was from dust He chose to create. He brings form and substance to who we are. He doesn’t force freedom or love—He just is freedom and love. He understands the dust we’re made of. And by His steadfast compassion and unremovable promise of peace, He’s given a very simple assignment for what we should actually know: the holy power of His Son’s name above every other name—Savior of the world—and the holy presence of His Spirit within us as we love others the way He loved us first.

To help us with the assignment, He made a remarkable provision for you and me: Abba-God uses our chosen lives to draw each child close and transform who we are. He used my choices in just this way. If I had made other choices, He would have used those too.

So awakening for me was an immediate saturation of grace. Suddenly seeing beyond myself and acutely aware of Jesus seeing me, scales fell from my eyes, care broke from my face, and my birthright voice restored as a newborn’s lungs first fill with painful, glorious, inarticulate life. Uncharted and fresh, like the finger of God reached out from heaven to me, laying His print on the center of my being. Sonic and luminous, spherical—joy—completely liberating. And previously burdensome needs—the very opposite of my newness though still a familiar, well-worn accumulation of character clutter like needs for validation, fairness, and control—seemed to evaporate from the touch of His mark on me. Wonderfully instant and yet a longsuffering sojourning that would take time, and indeed has taken much, all from then until now for my person to move toward His difference in me.

Yet there is more to go, and so is the nature of once-and-for-always salvation to be a daily sanctification, a growing into it by way of an ongoing (and sometimes start-all-over-again) commitment to re-receive it again and again. This journey—from recognizing my Shepherd’s call to recognizing who He is to me for the sake of His name abiding in me as I abide in Him—is the most wonderfully fulfilling experience I’ve ever had.

I now understand our familial connection to God is integral to our identity—yours and mine. We are believers; sons and daughters of the Father, brothers and sisters of Christ, children of Light. Because Abba-God so loved the world, He gave His only Son for us, His children. Father to child. Shepherd to sheep. The Lamb slain for the lost lamb. Woven into us by the Creator who made man and then became man so that we could live in the fullness of His selfless design.

The comprehension of His finished work on the cross, His comprehensive righteousness covering me so thoroughly, ignited and settled me; it so resoundingly identified and purposed me that when I found myself stifling, breath-holding, freezing all over again, I felt completely stunned. How could this happen? Such a challenging realization that even a heart illuminated by Christ could still be prone to shadows like enslavement and dysfunction. These are the temptations He freed me from through His death and resurrection and why He instructed us to pray, Lead us not into temptation (Matthew 6:13, NIV). But learning to take Him at His word was and is the refining process that I need to walk through. Step by step, it’s the proving of my faith, precious and genuine, that it may be found to praise, glory, and honor at Christ revealed in and around me (see 1 Peter 1:7). I’m so thankful for His patience with me for all the time I spent standing at—and even now, as I continue to encounter—the very edge of real trust.

Holding my breath on this side of awakening has been and is painful, like a spasm or seizure in my spirit. And it’s different now because I’m different. I’m no longer capable of passive observance or compliant performance. I no longer default to silence. But unless I am yielded, in full submission to the influence of Christ upon my flesh in the crucial moment—whatever it may be—my tone and volume go uncalibrated, to say nothing of my discernment being disoriented. Galatians 5:13 (ESV) lovingly admonishes, For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. How vital I’ve learned this guidance to be, for without heeding it, the experiences of an unchecked heart are always shattering. Mine have left my insides like dry powder as if dust again, but let it be so if dying to self, from dust to dust rekindles awakening—for even this is His mercy to redeem and restore. How else would I come to relinquish what I thought knew about me and the world around me.

How else would I face what I was so afraid to find out, If I am gone, who will come for me?

How else could I finally learn stifling does not equate to selflessness. There is nothing in the example of Christ that leads to breath-holding or walking on eggshells or freezing and hiding. Avoidance does not mend. Peacekeeping is not peacemaking. No one and nothing else can be my security, only Him. And there it is, the most beautiful reality check I could ever ask for—this hard thing isn’t about itself at all because this hard thing is all about Jesus, me and Him, knowing Him. In Him, this very hard thing has now become my hallelujah.

As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isaiah 55:9, ESV).

And all at once, in a single thought, transformation begins anew…

Yes, Lord.

Only He, who is Light, brings the truth that transforms. The offering of obedience gives clarity to my sight, and there’s actual gladness in my spirit to see the shambles I’m in. My rotten boards and rusted nails fail, and so freedom flows. The door I locked Jesus opens so that no one can shut