When life feels as though it is collapsing all around you, it is then that you can most savor the taste of grace. When all of your opinions seem to run out, it is then that God can open your eyes to an entirely new vista. When you are at your most desperate, it is then that you can experience God's blessing.

Bonnie Keen's candid account of the devastating depression that followed the breakup of her marriage and the scandal that threatened her ministry provides a message of hope and encouragement for those who feel they have reached the end of their rope. Her journey from desperation to revelation will help move you past your pain and toward God, toward the cross, and toward a place of lasting peace and joy.

I clung to Him with all I had. My circumstances didn't change, but my heart did. He allowed me to lie down in green pastures, and He led me to still waters.

Take a moment and read a free excerpt from Blessed are the Desperate for they will Find Hope.  The contents of the book are below.  Click on One: COLORS to read the first chapter.

Chapter One 

COLORS

"it is not as a boy that I confess Christ, but my Hosanna has passed Through a great furnace Of doubt."
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

December, 1989

    I saw an interesting picture of my great-grandmother today. She was 18 years of age, standing staring straight into the camera, with one hand on her waist and flaming red hair that fell just as far. The family said, "She looks like a witch!" but I am struck by her strength and air of spirit. She was the baby, brought over from Ireland in her mother's arms when her mother went to say "good-bye" to her father and the boat taking him to America took off with her in it.

    Lyric idea for the women I admire and the ones who've come before:

"You have the heart of a fighter in your fragile frame
The red blood of courage is running through your veins
You've made an art of surviving in the middle of your pain
By holding on to what you believe."

June, 1990
    David, my counselor, told me today that as he listens to me talk, I seem to be living somewhere between the Old and New Testaments—with little sense of mercy or forgiveness.

1993
    Called mom's house tonight from the road. Courtney answered and I am flooded with gratitude, as she and Graham sounded cheerful and happy. They were making cookies at their grandmother's house! What a blessing to have my precious parents in their lives. So very much, I want my kids to make it through this wiser than I have been.

1996
    I know I'm breaking a generational pattern with the women in my family by going through my divorce. I continue to ask God in His mercy to walk me as His daughter through this with dignity and humility ... and that somehow this experience will be spared my own children and used for His glory.

1997
    Give us this day, our daily bread ... Give me this day, as a woman who wants to do the next right thing, just enough daily manna of grace to walk on ...

God and the
Wizard of Oz

* * *

"This is what the Lord says, who made you, who formed you in your mother's body, who will help you ... I will pour out water for the thirsty land and make streams flow on dry land. I will pour out my Spirit into your children and my blessing on your descendants."

—Isaiah 44:2,3 NCV

As a child, my main battles seemed to be for things like being able to watch the annual television broadcast of The Wizard of Oz, which always aired on Sunday nights. But Sunday nights were dedicated to church.

    Being in church three times a week, whether I needed it or not, must have given me some major brownie points in the heavenly records. At least I hoped it would. Because it was painful, sometimes, to miss out on life by having to sit in a pew in church. At least I felt like I was missing the best parts of life. Like The Wizard of Oz.

    When I was young, I missed The Wizard of Oz for years. We had to be in church every Sunday night, and we always left the house just when the black and white turned to magical colors as Dorothy opened her door in Oz to find the Munchkins and the Yellow Brick Road. Good grief! Wasn't life in Christ about changing our dull lives to something vivid and real and alive? Couldn't I spend just one stinking Sunday night at home watching this unbelievable movie? Would I go flaming into oblivion if I wasn't sitting in the eighth row down on the right aisle with my parents for one Sunday night of the year?

    When I look back, it's almost funny to think of how much I longed to see this movie. Yet this longing doesn't seem so funny when I realize that it also seems to represent the overall struggle I had with God—how He said He longed for me to know life in all its abundance, but I seemed to be denied the abundant part.

    I was a straight-A student in school who lived in mortal fear of doing anything wrong. I remember one time in the third grade when I lied to my teacher about where I'd hung my coat in the cloakroom. I went home, mortified, and wrote God a letter begging Him to forgive me and not to send me to hell for telling this first deliberate lie of my life.

    God was scary. God did not want anyone to enjoy anything. God did not like The Wizard of Oz. If one wanted to watch incredible, thrilling musicals, one would just have to wait for a time when maybe God's back was turned. Or when a blizzard hit uncharacteristically in the middle of summer so everyone would be forced to stay home and see the Emerald City and glittery slippers!

    I also figured that God must not like music. Well, maybe He liked Bach or musical events that happened by accident outside of church—but probably not. I loved music, craved it. On my bed in my room, I'd listen to musical theater albums, Rachmaninoff, Barbra Streisand, Steppenwolf. Was I wicked? Was I nuts?

    By the time I'd accepted that Oz just wasn't my future, I began to believe that I would have to pursue the arts in spite of God's wrath and fury and timetables for proper Sunday night activities.

    Quietly, secretly, I immersed myself in music, studying the harmony of Three Dog Night, The Fifth Dimension, and Sondheim musicals, never aware that the Second Chapter of Acts was waiting at my local Christian bookstore. I hoped God wouldn't be on duty when I did the musical revues and plays that so filled my soul with life and fulfillment. Why did He give me these gifts? How was I supposed to find a place for myself?

    Now, all denominations and religious institutions have their own special idiosyncrasies. And it never ceases to amaze me to what lengths we humans will go to try to rewrite or make more complicated the simple story of the gospel. We add little rules and regulations, most of which are self-imposed, well-meant but legalistic in nature. The church of my youth was no exception.

    One of the top ten "no-no's" in my church was using instrumental music in the actual church service. I was taught that any use of instrumentation or choral singing or, worse yet, solo singing would send one straight to Hades. We were taught that the verse in Ephesians that read, "Sing and make melody in your hearts to the Lord," meant we could only make a melody if we all made it together—no organ, no piano, no choir, just an a cappella gang hymn-singing thing.

    Growing up as a person God had gifted to sing and play piano and write and act and, yes, even dance, what was I to do? Ever since I'd been born in September of 1955, my mom had been convinced that God in His infinite wisdom had dropped a child prodigy into her southern, white, middleclass suburban world. At age three, I sealed my fate by hearing a melody of some sort on television and playing it back by ear on my little almost-piano. That was all it took for mom. "For unto her a star was born," she seemed to claim.

    For the next 13 years mom dragged me to auditions, had me playing the piano for the milkman and mailman—bringing them into the house to hear me play whether they wanted to or not—for the relatives, for anyone she could find. The precious part is how she encouraged me, drove me countless miles, and paid hundreds of dollars in order to cultivate in me what she interpreted as pure talent. She believed in me and gave me courage when I didn't have any of my own. And I began down a path that she had always dreamed of for herself but was never given the opportunity to follow. Having a mom who believed in every breath I took gave me a sense of abandon and a willingness to do the ridiculous. It also sometimes made it overwhelmingly hard for me to live up to the expectations I felt. But I was just loony enough to do things like give myself the name Julie Rose because I didn't like my own name anymore. By age eight, I—or rather Julie Rose—was writing songs. When I started my own publishing company as an adult, I named it Julie Rose Music in honor of this imaginary other me.

    Sweet daddy, quiet and gracious, allowed mom to leave him out of our artistic excursions. Silence and humility were not new to him. As a young man in the Army during the Korean War, he had been one in a very select group of men chosen to study the effects of the atomic bomb. This was top secret, and the FBI interviewed everyone from his kindergarten teacher on up to check him out. My daddy was a brilliant man, yet I never heard him speak of this part of his life until after I was first married, and even then he didn't say much about it until I squealed, "Dad, this is incredible! Why didn't you tell me about this before?" To which he grinned and shyly shrugged his shoulders.

    As mom and I expanded my experiences with performance and music and acting and theater outside of the church arena, I remained unable to express myself artistically where it truly mattered—in my faith.

    Over time, my feelings about churchgoing turned a corner. Now I understood why what I'd heard preached did not line up with my inside feelings and prayers. I discovered that Jesus, the Son of God, and the expression of who He was could never be boring! And I realized that God's love for me was not based wholly on my performance.

    Performance. This became a word that integrated my faith with my gifting. I'd tried to keep the performances right on every front, and I knew that from time to time I would fall very short of what was expected. But the fear began to dissipate.

    "Couldn't we miss just one service?" I'd ask when The Wizard of Oz was once again airing on Sunday night. "Couldn't I watch Dorothy's journey and learn lessons along the way about courage, wisdom, growing a heart, and rescuing Toto, too?"

    "Of course not," they would say. "It's church night."

    But God didn't leave me in the lurch.

    In the early '80s, I received a call from my next-door neighbor, who managed a young recording artist named Amy. "Would you like to sing backup vocals on a short tour with a new girl we have, Amy Grant?"

    "Sure!" I answered, thrilled to have work. I'd never been to a single Christian concert, and my first one was to be onstage, singing with a group of background vocalists behind Amy Grant, with DeGarmo and Key as her band. I remember crying with such release and joy at the discovery of how real this was. In fact, one of the managers asked me to hold it together a little more during the concert, as I was distracting with the Kleenex and all. I was amazed at how faith could be written and sung about in this way.

    The beauty and magic of writing, singing, performing, and communicating about my passion, my Christ, and the wonder of this God who cannot be limited to nights of the week or a magician behind a curtain survived and grew in me over the years.

    And here I have to admit something to you. As soon as I was able to, I went out and bought my very own Golden Edition, MGM Special Video copy of The Wizard of Oz. And yes, I have pulled it out for an occasional Sunday-night viewing.

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Excerpted from Blessed are the Desperate for they will Find Hope by BONNIE KEEN. Copyright © 2000 by Bonnie Keen. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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