Ruth Graham: What My Father Taught Me

[MUSIC PLAYING] I went through a rough time after my first divorce and had a rebound marriage that lasted five weeks. I became afraid of him and packed up what little I had in my– put it my station wagon and fled. And I went to see my parents.

They had told me not to marry this man. They told me to slow down, to take it easy. None of my children liked him. But I thought, you know, I had my own life. They were almost grown. I was ready to have someone take care of me. And this was a man who reportedly had come to Christ through my father’s ministry. I thought he’d be safe, but he wasn’t.

So I packed up my things and went to see mother and daddy. And it was a two day drive. And fears multiplied with every mile. Questions swirled in my mind– what was my life going to be like? What had I done to my children? What was I going to do with the rest of my life? I had really made a terrible mistake.

And as I rounded the last bend in my father’s driveway, he was standing there. And as I got out of the car, he wrapped his arms around me and he said, welcome home. And my father is not God, but he showed me that day what God is like. Because when we come to God with our brokenness, with our questions, with our whys–

I’ve told that story so many times. And there’s some times I just– I cry– but I love that story. And it changed my life. That experience with my father really changed the focus of my life. I began to focus on grace.

And that’s the heart of my ministry, Ruth Graham and Friends, is to take those that have been marginalized by the church. And I believe in the church. I want to support the church. I want to come alongside of the church. But there are many people that are marginalized in the church. And I wanted to show grace.

And we do. We go in and we talk about subjects that are often not tackled by the church, things like pornography and addictions and anger and abuse, depression, divorce, loneliness. People that experience those things– I mean, if you had addiction to pornography, would you go to church and say I have an addiction to– no, you wouldn’t. So we wanted to address these issues with knowledgeable people and offer grace and offer healing, because I believe that’s what God did for me through my father.

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