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April 14, 2006

It is Good

"The path to the cross tells us exactly how far God will go to call us back." - Max Lucado

Because I was raised in a church-going household there has never been a time in my life when I didn't know who Jesus was or know what He did or that it was done for me. I may not have understood it intellectually but I knew it in the same way I knew my mom loved me and my dog's name was Sugar and my brother would always be able to outrun me. I went to Vacation Bible School and learned how to sign "Jesus Loves Me," and played the part of an angel or a lamb in our church's Christmas pageant. I loved God and I loved His stories and my favorite Biblical heroine was Esther. I listened to drama tapes that told the stories of Daniel and Jonah and Meshack, Shadrach and Abednego via song.

But it wasn't until a very dark night when I was 12 years old that I prayed for God to save me. My world had fallen apart and I laid in my bed huddled under the flower sheets (so much more grown-up than butterflies), and cried out to Him and I knew that was it. I consider that the moment I became a Christian because in that moment it wasn't my mom's teachings or my Sunday School songs that told me who God was, it was God showing Himself to a broken little girl whose daddy had left her, whose heart was broken and I clung to Him. I committed my life to him. Because this was 1988 or so there were Michael W. Smith tapes to buy and Bibles written just for students (the Bible I still use, actually), and I flung myself headfirst into Christian culture. I went to youth group every Wednesday and to weekend retreats with other high school students. I went to Christian music nights at Astroworld and learned how to repel down the side of Enchanted Rock and saw it as lesson about leaning on faith. I was a member of Bearkats for Christ and attended Meet Me at the Pole prayer gatherings. I was a baby Christian and I probably clung to the culture and early '90s mass marketing a little too much. Those things aren't bad, per se, but my lessons about Jesus' true nature were, in retrospect, a little far between. But I loved Him and when I look back at the notes in my Bible that are dated '92 or '93, I see the truth in that.

And then I walked away. I rebelled in the most typical ways and I spent the next decade or so running back and forth and sideways and upside down. I wanted to be someone I wasn't; I wanted to have some kid of life that I thought I deserved because I was white and blonde and pretty. I'd spent my high school years longing for a boyfriend and popularity (when why?), and since I didn't find it in the Christian community, I ventured out to find it on my own. I wanted to go to parties and kiss boys and be That Girl, the one with all the friends and the shiny hair and the fraternity t-shirt. So I became her. I was that girl for a long time, but not for real, not really. I was playing a part and like a patient parent, He waited. I would have briefs periods of recommitment where I would attend Campus Crusade worship sessions or Friday morning prayer meetings in one of Miami's small chapels. But those never stood up in the glare of date parties and $4 Mind Probes and packs of Marlboro Lights.

I graduated from college and the story is much of the same, back and forth, back and forth, whatever fit my life at the time. My path was rarely narrow and I sat on the fence for a long time. Like all rebels, like all fools, I knew exactly what I was doing and I did it willfully. I am, if nothing else, a strong-willed person. I wanted to plan my own life with my own rules and my own desires. But the beast of it is, I was never going to get what I really wanted trying to do things my own way. And even though I knew that, I knew that down to my soul, I thought maybe, just maybe, I would be able to do it. Like maybe if you repeatedly hit yourself with a 2x4 eventually it won't hurt anymore.

So I dated the wrong kinds of guys and had the wrong kinds of relationships and I flew my rebel flag and called it happiness. Even when I concentrate, I'm unable to pinpoint the moment when I stopped doing that, when I gave up trying to do things my own way. I'm sad it took me almost 10 years, but at least I was given the opportunity to finally get it. I'm an imperfect person who continues to make incredibly glaring mistakes but I am forgiven. I am saved. More importantly, I am healed. I don't know what kind of life God has in store for me, but I'm fairly certain now that it doesn't contain the big house and the successful husband and the three kids before 35 that I was planning on for so long. That was the ill-fitting piece I was trying for so long to jam into the puzzle of my life. I try not to think that the years I laid out my own road as years wasted, because I know that they're not. I know that I had to venture onto my own path in order to get to this one. It was my detour, the road He had paved for me all along.

So on this Good Friday, for the first time in a long time, I have a home church to attend. I have Christian friends who will sit beside me as we take Communion, as we remember His body, His blood. As we cry out in anguished worship for the awesome, painful sacrifice our savior made to see that we are free, that we are saved. That we are healed.

Posted by hannah at 11:29 AM