He Knew Me

What I am going to say will probably be an eye-opener to some people and unbelievable to others. But do you know that God has a place of visitation? He is capable of doing all things well. Unlike us, who begin when things are visible, He begins with the invisible. This is so that, when it becomes visible and we see it, we know that it was only God who did it! He reserves that right only for Himself. The word before, according to The Oxford English Dictionary, means “even earlier than the time in question.” God is privy to some things not given to the study of the thing, because He already knew before the thing existed! Therefore, we can never surprise God or impress God with our many inventions or great successes.
The womb is a place of containment, a place where life is nurtured. When God says to Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1:5), “Before I [the singular God, my words] formed you in the womb I knew you,” it speaks of foreknowledge. Before is not the now, not at the time of conception but before that. It is a predetermined period of incubation. God knew before.
Notice the form was before you and I came forth from the womb. This has the meaning “to interrupt or suspend; not yet” (Strong’s Concordance). He interrupted or suspended the forming so that He would be intimately acquainted with Jeremiah. So if He knows before, He gets to us before we can be polluted by the world and its systems.
The verse in its entirety reads this way: “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet to the nations.” In other words, He imparted special gifts into our formation. God had a visitation with you in that place before you were formed (i.e., shaped, put together). God is saying, “I did something to shape you, and I gave you something to set you apart to know that you are My creation.” You were not made with just any materials but with the best substance!
We do not seem to understand that concept when we come into the world. God revealed this to Jeremiah when he was a youth. Why are our intimacy with God and His plans for our lives unknown to us? There seems to be a paradox when we consider what David says in Psalm 51:5 (NKJV): “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.” The King James Version uses the words “shapen in iniquity”; yet God has visited us in the womb.
There must be a time when something else takes place so that we begin to discover these wonderful things God has done before. The new birth takes care of that. This is when what Jesus said to Nicodemus is made manifest. Jesus said in John 3:6–7 (NKJV), “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’”
My time “in the womb” entails the incubation period, the nine months of life in the natural parent, but it also means “already clothed and endowed with creative gifts from my Creator.”
It began with the child years.
I am a 1950s baby. I was born on November 27, 1950. My research of the ’50s is very interesting to me. Here are a few statistics: A gallon of gas cost eighteen cents in 1950 (twenty-five cents in 1959). A loaf of bread was fourteen cents. A new house was $8,450. The average income was $3,210. A new car cost $1,510. Of the US population, 25 percent lived in poverty (defined as an annual income under $3,000 for a family of four).
Mr. Potato Head was a popular toy in the 1950s. The Baby Boom was in full swing. In 1954, schools were integrated.
In 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus in Montgomery, Alabama.
In 1956, Charlton Heston was the star of The Ten Commandments.
In 1959, Alaska and Hawaii became states in the United States of America.
One thing that interested me as well was the fact that out-of-wedlock pregnancy was taboo. People called this “in the family way.” If you were found pregnant and unmarried, you were sent to stay with other relatives. It was a time when children were seen but not heard. Even so, it was my chosen time.
I was formed in Lorene Kelly’s womb as her first child. I can only imagine the hardship of a young mother around twenty-one years of age being pregnant. What thoughts must have filled her days and nights! “How did you handle not being married? How did this happen to you, and how did you have the strength to go on?” These are the questions I longed to ask, but I never got the opportunity. For three and a half years, I lived with the joy of having a mother who, I was told by many, had great love for me! I was also told that she was pretty and worked very hard.
I was told she nicknamed me Red Fox because, apparently, when I was born, I had a light complexion. There are many things people told me she did to make me smile. The one I will hold on to most fiercely is her love for me. That will always be my most memorable.
Three years after she gave birth to me, she became pregnant again. And shortly after giving birth to a son, Carl, she passed away. According to her death certificate, she was twenty-four years old. I don’t believe anyone but God can truly understand or comfort those who lose loved ones this way. As a child, I couldn’t understand who had placed my mom in a casket and why she didn’t answer me when I called. During those days in the ’50s, the wake was held in the home. I can’t be absolutely sure whether the body remained in the house overnight, but that is possibly the case.
My only memories of the funeral are my wearing a white dress and playing outside. I can’t imagine how I was able to get outside when everyone else was gathering inside. Even now, tears fill my eyes as I think about her time on earth. In spite of these things, He knew me, and He knew Lorene Kelly. When I looked up the definition of Phyllis, which means “flourishing,” and Dianne, which means “divine with attention to ministry,” I knew God had formed me and insisted on these names for me to grow and minister His Word!
So now I was a three-and-a-half-year-old child full of curiosity and part of a growing family of uncles, aunts, grandma, and granddad. But He knew me, He kept me, and He loved me.
Here is where I want to introduce a key word: calculated. God figured into my account that which is necessary to live. I would like for you, the person who is reading this book, to know that. I was facing a traumatic period in my life at three years of age. I simply blocked it out. God figured something into my account when I had the opportunity to work in a day-care setting with three-year-olds. I was intrigued by how inquisitive they are. And because of my observations of their constant asking, I probably asked many times, “Where is Momma?” Also, it seemed no one, as I grew older, could help me remember.
As I grew older, I felt robbed of an opportunity to know her. There is no substitute for a mother’s love. I did not realize until much later how I longed for her. Thus, I was in my grandparents’ family while trying to survive this heartache. But He knew me.
He had already somehow calculated this into my existence and would use it for His glory. God cares about the motherless. Listen to these words of comfort to those who are motherless.
Yet You are He who took me out of the womb; You made me hope and trust when I was on my mother’s breasts. I was cast upon You from my very birth; from my mother’s womb You have been my God. (Psalm 22:9–10 AB)