Author and YouTube video producer Kim Tate shares her story of finding an intimate relationship with her Abba Father in heaven.

It’s one of my most vivid memories as a girl: sitting on the edge of my bed, face angled toward the window, eyes peeled for my daddy. My heart would race as a new set of headlights approached—maybe that’s him—before sinking as the car passed into the distance. Still, I’d hold on to hope. From the time my parents divorced—I was four—I looked forward to these planned outings with my dad.

Where is he? Did he forget about me? Daddy was always out and about. All I could do was wait, even as daylight turned to dusk and dusk to night. Tears would gather as I realized he wasn’t coming. Again. More than once I thought, I must not really matter. He must not really love me. I was longing for a relationship with my father.

Kim lost her virginity before she turned 16. This brought feelings of shame, because her mother had always preached abstinence until marriage. After that summer, she decided to abstain, but without God she was a slave to sin. So, during college and law school she gave in to living life on her own terms.

During her second year at law school, she fell in love with a fellow student named Bill. After graduating, they moved to Madison to start their careers. But Kim was miserable, so she had a strange idea, “I could pray and maybe God would miraculously intervene to get us out of Madison.”

As I prayed, I started thinking, If I want God to do something for me, I should probably do something for him. Like go to church. Before long I felt convicted about our “living in sin.” So, Bill and I decided to have a private wedding ceremony on Valentine’s Day.

About one year later, Bill couldn’t wait to tell me he’d visited a new church that morning. The following Sunday, we visited together. By the end of service, I was in tears. For the first time, I heard the true gospel preached, and it rocked me. Finally, I understood why Jesus died on that cross. Finally, I saw myself as God saw me—a sinner in need of redemption. I asked God to forgive me, and I received Jesus as my Lord and Savior. For all my prayers that God would save me from Madison, his plan, all along, had been to save me in Madison.

Looking back now, from a distance of 25 years, I remember how studying the Book of Deuteronomy was a pivotal part of my early Christian walk. One word, in particular, jumped off the page. Deuteronomy 10:20 and 13:4 mention “holding fast”—or clinging, as some translations have it—to God. It meant relationship—close relationship. Yet it was hard to fathom. The God of the universe would let me cling to him?

What an unsurpassable gift for that little girl staring out of the window, waiting for her dad, and wondering if she really mattered. My Abba Father was letting me know that I could enjoy an intimate relationship with him forever.