Cherished

Cherished

"So, will you forever be Heather the Adulteress, resigned to hang your head in shame and regret? Is that who you are?"

Heather sat cross-legged on the sofa, bare feet poking out, hair falling forward as she double-checked the verse in her lap. She didn't know this was in there. She was named among a whole host of what she could call "bad actors"—from idolaters and adulterers to thieves and drunkards. She leaned into the page to read again what it said about them. About her. And such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God.

"And such were some of you…"

Heather looked up at Cyd. "No." Her voice was bare. "That's not who I am. I've been washed…."

She didn't want to, but she broke down, crying through the pain of what she'd been and the joy of what Jesus had given her—the gift of a new identity.

Kelli draped an arm around her, and Cyd came over from the armchair to sit on Heather's other side.

"Sweetie." Cyd handed her some tissues. "I'm so glad you're seeing who you are in Christ, the 'new you' as you like to say."

Heather wasn't looking at her, but she could tell Cyd had a smile in her voice.

"Let's look at your papers and see what you ended up with. You two made quite a list."

Heather dabbed her eyes and took her paper from the coffee table. Cyd had told them to write I am at the top of a page, then jot down anything they could spot during the study that made up their new identity. She called it their "new who."

Heather and Kelli had made a contest out of it. She leaned over now to look at Kelli's paper.

"Nope." Kelli hid it. "First let's see who has the most, then we can swap and add the ones the other has."

Heather smiled. "Okay, here's my list. 'I am…forgiven, loved, redeemed, blessed, a child of God, saved, a witness, an ambassador, protected, accepted, adopted, more than a conqueror, salt and light, free, delivered, a bond-servant, an alien and a stranger'"—she glanced pointedly at Kelli—"'and a new creation'—woo!"

"Woo-hoo!" Kelli and Cyd sent cheers up.

Kelli was looking at her paper. "You had a few that I didn't catch. I'll just tell the ones I didn't hear you say. 'I am…a believer, born again—'"

"I can't believe I didn't have those!" Heather wrote them down.

Kelli kept going. "'—a slave to righteousness, a citizen of heaven, set apart, a living stone, and His workmanship.'"

Heather shook her head. "This is mind-boggling. Just one of those 'new who's is enough to get excited about. To know that I'm all of those things?"

"And more. Those are just the verses we had time to cover."

Excerpt from CHERISHED by Kim Cash Tate. Copyright © 2011 by Kimberly Cash Tate. Published in Nashville, Tennessee by Thomas Nelson. Used with Permission.  All Rights Reserved.