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Author’s Note

I was three and a half when he died. I don’t remember him at all, and I don’t remember anything about the morning he died, although I was right there. I have likely repressed the memory, and I may never remember it now, since almost four decades have passed.

People tell me I was the apple of his eye. That he called me “Precious.” They tell me he was fiercely protective of me, and that he doted on me. I like to hear how my dad was with me, but I don’t remember any of it.

Funny thing is, I know I knew him. I feel it. It’s the pain bursting in my chest when I watch a movie or read a book about a child whose parent dies. It’s not empathy I feel. It’s my own loss. I know it in every fibre of my being. There’s no picture story in my head to recall…no events that flash in my mind…no smells or sounds to help me piece together the events. No memory of it at all, but I know I was loved. When I hear those stories about him, deep within me there is agreement. Some part of me remembers and says, “Yes, that is exactly how it was.” We were strongly connected.

Before I wrote this book, I had been exploring with God more of what it means, personally and intimately, to be loved by Him. As I stepped back, I could see how my entire life has been full of experiences that make up one unending love letter from Him to me. What God has shown me is that understanding His love is a lot like my experience of knowing I was loved by my dad. It’s not really something you can make sense of in your head. It’s something you have to feel and experience deep within you—at the core of who He made you.

You have your own unending love letter from Him.

Like me, you are called by God to make a difference. In my various roles as a therapist, speaker and leader, God has laid on my heart to share what truly makes a difference in a life: His love for us. This book is my attempt to show what grasping the reality of that unending love really means in the deep places where our hurts, our woundedness and the realities of our imperfect lives are hidden and often collide with His vision for our future.

Knowing the reality of His love goes deeper than anything else can, filling the crevices of our souls when we embrace the fullness of it.

I pray that you will be blessed by this book and that you will hear His heart in my words, the heart of the Author of the ultimate love story written just for you.

In Him,

Elizabeth