I Will Remember to Behold You

The Son of God and the Hope of Glory in Us

For the next five weeks, I will be taking a break from sharing my book, Love Embraced. From next Monday (16 December) I will be taking a break from posting, as my family and I visit our family and friends in New Zealand. I plan to be back here on Monday, January 12th 2026. May God bless you and your loved ones richly this Christmas, and into the New Year, with an intimate knowing of Christ and a deepening love for Him, overflowing in the fruit of repentance.

But before I go, I will be slowing today to reflect on the past year and how the Lord has been ministering to me through the Words He gave me to center my year upon: Hope & Behold a Son of God. My prayer in doing so is that the Lord will breathe hope into you too, through the Scriptures and memories I share, to lift up your eyes to behold Him in yourself and in those He sets before you.

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This past year, the Lord invited me to hope in Him and behold Him in myself and in those He has set before me- both physically and spiritually, through prayer. As I now look back on this year, I find it beautiful how the year began with my own confirmation in the Catholic Church in January. Originally, I had asked to be confirmed on my birthday in February, but the Lord had other plans, with my priest asking me to do it a month earlier because the other person who was to be confirmed together with me, was terminally ill and did not want to wait any longer.

I prayed about it, unsure if it was wrong to hasten toward this earlier date. However, in praying, I found the Lord showing me that He was in this change and in fact speaking hope through it too- for the day He chose for me is a (cradle non-practicing Catholic) very dear loved one’s of mine birthday. Then, a week later, after my confirmation, as the icing on the cake, another precious loved one of mine began singing her school song in the car with us.

Turns out she had attended a school named after my patron saint. I had chosen Saint Therese de Lisieux as my patron saint, without knowing this sweet detail of my (cradle non-practicing Catholic) in-law’s childhood. I felt like crying, as I heard Jesus in my loved one, singing His song of redemption over our family. It felt like another wink from above, especially after a few years ago discovering that the mother of this loved one had been a devout and fervently praying woman, called- get this - Anna.

And that wasn’t where the sweetness ended either. Days before my confirmation, my priest called a woman I barely knew (from having been a part of the Adoration chain she had begun, a month earlier) if she and her husband would be willing to be my godparents. They graciously agreed and days after my confirmation I sat in their living room to get to know them better and to receive the gift they had bought for me. They had purchased this gift before they knew who I had chosen as my patron saint. What was that gift? A book. in Dutch, about my patron saint:

Then, when February began to unfold I understood even better why that change was truly God’s sweet provision. A very dear (non-practising, cradle Catholic) friend of ours was suddenly killed in a car crash, leaving behind his wife and two children (also very dear friends of ours). I cannot tell you how precious it was to draw near to God through the mass and partaking of the Eucharist through that time. If I hadn’t yet been confirmed, I would have missed out on that sweet gift.

As those heavy days unfolded, I was also given the incredible gift of beholding Jesus, the Son of God, in our dear departed loved one through the Promises of God’s Word to us that were recorded on my bedside calendar. Just look at the Lord’s sweet timing:

• the day our dear friend was killed: a paraphrase of Ecclesiastes 3:14 was recorded, reading: “Whatever God does, it shall be forever.”

• the day my dear friend finally heard the news about her husband, who had been traveling on a road in an African country, when suddenly all communication stopped, and my friend couldn’t get a hold of him anymore, the verse recorded was from Revelation 23:4: “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying.”

• the day before, when my friend was trying to find out what happened: Philippians 1:6 “He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Christ Jesus.”

• the day my dear friend flew to Africa to recover her husband’s body it was 1 John 3:20: “God is greater than our heart, and knows all things.”

Not long before our dear friend’s death, mere weeks before my confirmation, I had had in depth conversations with him about my faith and my personal relationship with Jesus, as he suddenly invited me to respond to various questions he had about faith. The timing of this surely had God’s hand written all over it, also. We had been friends for 22 years, but I had only ever had conversations about faith with his wife, never with him. I remember how the Holy Spirit prompted me to avoid the theological debate he was inviting me into, and to instead center on my intimate and personal knowing of Jesus, through the suffering I had walked through.

The next day, however, I found myself personally shaken by the questions he had asked me, as I considered the horrors he had honed in on and the question of where God was in all of that. At the time, I had responded with conviction that I knew God in deep suffering, but as his question lingered, things began to shake within me. Yes, where was God in all of this horror?

It’s then, I felt a prompting to open my Hallow App and listen to one of the Advent devotionals. It was about the father of the one telling the story, how he had performed multiple abortions, until through deep convictions of the Holy Spirit, he was led to repentance. It’s then he began a ministry to assist those wanting to keep their child and to offer counseling and support to mothers healing after having had an abortion. As I listened, the tears streamed down my face, as I kept meditating on the truth that God is goodness Himself and that He takes what is evil and deeply painful and turns it into something so beautiful, pure, true, comforting and hopeful.

As I meditated upon that truth of God’s goodness being present in every circumstance, I found deep and gutteral prayers rising up for my friend in his doubts and anguish. I had seen the love of God in this man, again and again and my heart ached for him to acknowledge and embrace that beauty of Christ in himself too. Now, I was no longer praying for him from a distance, but joined to him in compassion, through the shaking the Lord had permitted me to walk through.

Later, I would hear that, all along, all those years, he had been actively seeking the Lord through His Word. Surely, the Lord kept His promise to our loved one in his repeated seeking (Matthew 7:7-10, NRSVCE):

⁷ “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. ⁸ For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. ⁹ Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? ¹⁰ Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? ¹¹ If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!

As the year continued to unfold, my heart continued to ache, as a loved one of mine walked through bullying at school and various other challenges. Like I had done with another loved one of mine, three years earlier in similar circumstances, my heart turned toward God’s Word and prayer. I clung to Jesus. It’s then, not long later, as we were traveling on our summer vacation, a message came through from the one who had bullied my other loved one relentlessly at school, spreading false rumors about her, three years earlier.

She sent a genuine and heartfelt apology, admitting her wrong doing and the pain she had caused my loved one. We were gobsmacked. I remember how as soon as we got home from that vacation, I pulled out my Bible to find the verses I had underlined and prayed over this girl, over my loved one and over others in the class, to show to my loved one. Hope does not disappoint us, for God’s Word truly never returns void- it produces the fruit for which it is sent. It may take three years . . . or so much longer, but God’s Word does not fail.

During that vacation, I had the most beautiful experience of God’s love through the Blessed Mother. I wrote about that here I Will Remember there is Life. But what I didn’t tell you is that as soon as I experienced that precious moment, I was also hit with a shaking, a shaking that left me, like it did almost exactly a year ago, questioning: everything. Yet, here too, God permitted the shaking to humble me and root me deeper in His love.

I had learnt, through all the past shakings, that in doubt and fear, the best weapon is to draw even closer to the Lord. And so that’s what I did. I kept seeking Him in the new ways He was inviting me to do so. That led me into being given the incredibly generous gift of contributing a chapter to the book Crowned with Grace. At the time, I told God that He couldn’t ask me to do that, because I had nothing to give. After all, I argued, I barely knew Mary.

He begged to differ. And He also reminded me that having nothing to give is the best position to be in- because it’s then He can give us everything. It’s then, right after that conversation with the Lord, I woke up in the middle of the night, with the apparition of Our Lady of Las Lajas (Our Lady of the Rocks) on my heart, that I had only just read about, and a scene from the story of Helen Keller that I had read as a little girl that had deeply touched my heart. I suddenly saw how they were intimately connected, and how all along the Lord had been preparing my heart to receive Him, in the healing graces of the rosary, through His Mother, the Mother of His Church.

If you’re interested in hearing the rest of the story, and the stories of 31 other Catholic authors and their experiences of God’s grace through Mary, I’d encourage you to pick up a copy of Crowned with Grace here:

https://store.faithandfamilypublications.com?ref=anna_smit

In so doing, you will also be supporting the tireless work of my dear friend Charlene Unterkofler for the poor, through the ministry Saint Vincent de Paul. The royalty I earn (10%) will go toward her work for this ministry.

But back to the unfolding of HOPE in this year. As I then began writing and editing this chapter, I faced one spiritual attack after another. As I leaned toward feeling sorry for myself, my confessor invited me to instead humble myself to rejoice in my sufferings. He showed me that the anxious thoughts asssailing me were given to me as a gift to join Christ in His sufferings for the many suffering and hungry for love souls He had gathered around me.

He encouraged me to not only cast my own cares on the Lord, but also the cares of those around me and to see the privilege I was being given, through my faith, to stand in faith, hope and love, not just for my own deliverance and salvation, but also for the deliverance and salvation of the suffering souls around me. It felt like Jesus saying to me: “yes, Anna. Stop looking at yourself. Look up and behold Me, the Son of God, the hope of glory living inside of you.” And so I began, with ups and downs, to do so.

But, when the final shaking came, right before the publication of the book, I began to once again, look down at myself and see no way through. That is, until God sent His precious messenger to me at church. One of the mothers I pray with every other week, for our families, happened to attend that same mass I was at (we have three Sunday masses). She knew of the very painful cross I was walking through, as I had asked her to pray. So, when she saw me, she pulled me aside and began to speak encouragement into my soul, hugging me tightly as the tears poured down my face, and leaving me with one, crystal clear instruction: to find a physical Cross and place everything, absolutely everything at the foot of that Cross.

Not long later, I clutched the cross around my neck, remembering her plea and said to Jesus: “I see absolutely no way through in this, but I lay it all at the foot of the Cross. It is all Yours. Do what You want to do.” Moments later, everything exploded, but in that explosion, in the breaking apart of everything, suddenly all began to fall into place: into the order and wholeness God had desired for me and my loved ones. He exposed what was not of Him to reveal what is.

It left me stunned, deeply humbling me also. You see, that little group of praying mothers was something I had almost chosen to let go of, right after I started. Why? Because the way these Catholic mothers pray is so different to the (Protestant) way I grew up praying. And I struggled to behold Jesus in what felt to me as distant, rigid and lacking in intimacy praying.

Yet, in my perserverance, through God’s astounding grace for me, my eyes began to open to behold Him there in my midst. Ironically, then these mothers began to teach me to draw near to Jesus in new ways, to let go of my own rigidity and boxing in of God, and to grow in intimacy with the Lord. God worked and is still working through them to humble me and to reveal ever more tiny green shoots of hope sprouting up, where I least expect them to. These sweet messengers of God are inviting me to behold the Son of God, together with them, where I wouldn’t have thought to look for Him or expected to find Him.

But for that hope of glory - Christ in me - to grow in me this year, that wasn’t the only humbling I needed. One of the biggest obstacles to hope I have experienced in my life, has been in my own thought life. As my therapist reminded me ten years ago now, when you have been living out lies for more than twenty years, it takes time for you to settle into the truth and let go of the lies you have lived by.

When she said that to me at the time, I remember thinking: “oh yeah, sure, but I am healed now, so everything is fine.” Do you see my root sin again? Pride. I had experienced incredible and deep healing, through God’s grace. But I now know that this grace was given to me, not to stay where I am, pretending that I am “all fine now”, but to grow through perserverance, to keep learning and growing up in the love and truth and grace of God.

Since my confirmation, I have found God doing a major overhaul of my thought life. He has been slowing me to notice my thoughts, to take them captive and make them obedient to Him. Ironically, when He first started giving me a powerful tool to do so, I pridefully rejected it as rigid and legalistic. But, after all the humbling from the past months, I was again reminded of that tool Saint Therese had lovingly introduced me to, through her writings, through the book given to me as a confirmation gift.

And so, I ironically decided to take that “rigid and legalistic” tool and put into practice. Ironically, it began as an idea to help my daughter turn her mind toward Christ, coming to me after I had prayed for guidance in how best to help her. But as I began sharing that idea with her, I found the Holy Spirit gently prompting me to consider joining my daughter in the practice. You can read about that practice here:

As I have begun to count my offerings to the Lord at the end of the day, turning thoughts that were not of Him into thoughts rooted in His love and truth and grace, I have found fresh new hope growing in me. I am continually being humbled and blessed by the thought that hope begins in the small - in every small thought I take captive and make obedient to Jesus and His Word to me.

Isaiah 55: 7 - 13 NRSVCE

let the wicked forsake their way,
and the unrighteous their thoughts;
let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them,
and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
and do not return there until they have watered the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

For you shall go out in joy,
and be led back in peace;
the mountains and the hills before you
shall burst into song,
and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress;
instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle;
and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial,
for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.

Right there, as I put to death the works of the flesh, to arise in Christ- that small green shoot of hope - Christ in me, my hope of glory - is budding, as the Lord is restoring to me the joy of my salvation! Last Saturday, I walked out of Adoration, with that joy bubbling up in me, as this old sung my mother loved to sing, began rising up within me:

And when I looked it up to find this version, I remembered how much I had loved dancing, as a little girl, with the little Israeli dance group a mother started at the church my parents planted in Germany, so many years ago. Every seed sown, no matter how tiny, reaps the fruit for which God has sent it . . . in His beautiful and perfect timing!

And then, today, on the day we commemorated the Immaculate Conception at my local parish, we sung this hymn of hope at the closing of the mass:

And as I joined the many voices, tears poured down my face, as I recalled the stories of my prodigal loved ones and the horrific abuses they experienced as little children in the Church. I was crying, not in despair, but with such fresh hope and in the deeply humbling realization that God sent me here, to this far away place, to become His love to His children. Redemption is unfolding. In His gentle, beautiful, perfect timing. I might not get to see all the details, but I can see enough to know our God is here in this place, here with us, His beloved, never-forsaken children.