About

 

My name is Grace and I hear voices.

Wait…don’t run away!  I am not Joan of Arc; nor do I write from behind the walls of an institution.

You hear them too, these voices, although perhaps you’ve never identified them.

Sometimes the Voice is beautiful, stirring a sense of wonder, of hope, of love and perhaps at times an ache or longing for a Homeland. This Voice invites and compels, drawing us “further up and further in” to a heaven that begins here.

But there are other voices too, sometime subtle, which speak doubt, fear, discouragement. They question the reality and authority of the Good Voice.  “Do you really think the infinite and all-mighty speaks to you?  To others maybe, the holy, the chosen, the perfect…but to you?” whispers the Opposition Voice.

In each of us is wired the desire for good, the desire to fight evil.  From the days of our earliest fairy tales, we thrill at the rescue of the princess from the prison tower, the defeat of the dragon, the conquering hero who restores justice and peace, and who with the princess lives happily ever after.

I was raised in the Catholic church, brought for baptism exactly four weeks from the date of my birth. I learned from the beginning to recognize and to resist the dragon.  I did not always do it well, but I always knew which side I wanted to be on. 

But there were, and are, more subtle serpents, within the castle walls, sometimes within my own heart. 

I did not always recognize these.  The closest counterfeits are the most dangerous, for they most closely mimic the true and the good.

I began this blog to write about my story, my own adventure of seeking God and learning to hear His voice—and of learning to recognize lies of the enemy, the Opposition Voice.

What does the title Guarding Paradise mean?  Heaven is not just a destination.  It is also here.  How do we discover it? Cultivate it?  Protect it?  We need to silence the Opposition Voice, and hear the Voice of the Good Shepherd, who calls us each by name.