My Story

(shared at high school camp, summer 2016)

Some of what I’m going to say might sound kind of crazy to you. Okay. Since I’ve been given the chance, I will tell you my story—as different or as weird as it may sound to you. I have to be a faithful witness of what Jesus has done and been in my life, however silly or vulnerable I feel right now, and whatever you may think.

So, here’s my story. It’s the inside of my life, mostly. My inward journey that later burst into the real world, and turned it upside down in the best, most beautiful way.

So many questions that need answers.

I have always been curious—about everything. Always asking questions. One of my favorite’s as a kid was, “Daddy, is he (or she) going to heaven? Will they be in heaven someday?” I didn’t want anyone to be lost, left behind, forgotten.

Those questions in high school—that awakening to the beauty and darkness and complexity of the world. So many more questions that I wasn’t even close to having answers for.

I’ve always lived a very wholesome, sheltered life. I’m grateful for it. Because each time I got a dose of “reality,” of “real life,” it sent me spinning… “What if? What if?” “What if?”

I doubted everything—my salvation, what I was here for, what was the point, why can’t I stop getting angry, why can’t I stop being afraid, why, why, why, why…

I was afraid to say most of my questions out loud. Some I tried to hide even from myself—they were too scary! Too big! There were so many more layers and levels to everything! Where was my place? What could I hold on to and know it was true or real?

Spinning, spinning, spinning…

Stuck in a vortex I could not escape. G.K. Chesterton says that a madman lives in a tiny world, because he can’t stop the little hamster wheel of his thoughts. He needs to wake up.

Well, I needed to wake up. I knew this. I could feel it, from my head to my toes.

Everywhere I turned was a dead end. I was never interested in drugs, sex, or alcohol, but I can tell you that I still felt drugged, numb, hard. Like there was armor around me and no one could get in, and I couldn’t get out.

Stuck. That’s what I felt like.

 I tried to pray—all the time, there was probably some point in almost every day that I cried out to God. “Save me. Do something! Help me.” But He never said anything. I never heard one peep, just the chaos in my own heart.

Just more stuck again, because even as I cried out to God to save me, I didn’t really want to be saved. I didn’t want to change. It wasn’t worth it.

How could I give up everything—for what? I didn’t even know. I knew wonderful Christian people (including my parents); I read the Bible; I could write you entire papers full of things about God. But I didn’t know Him, and I certainly didn’t trust Him.

Why should I? What reason did I have to trust Him?

It was kind of like living parallel lives—one in person, with my body, where life was mostly wonderful (except where I messed it up with my anger, stubbornness and selfishness), and one in another place, in my head, in my mind, that somehow seemed to matter so much more, where I tried to solve all the problems of the world, and the problems in my own life, and I always came up empty, a little short, just off the mark. The pieces didn’t line up.

The two lives were connected certainly, but the moments when they crossed were far and few between, and didn’t last long.

If you’d met me then, you would have never known what was going on inside.

It was really only my family that watched me struggle to make sense of what was going on every day, and I think they, more often than not, didn’t know quite what to do with me.

I took a gap year after high school, and then went to college, and that sent the questions spinning, spinning, spinning, perhaps even more violently than before.

I don’t think I can quite describe what began to happen.

Two things, I think, which are maybe after all the same thing: I was drawn closer to God, and He drew near to me.

Again, I can’t really tell you why it happened. I only know that it did.

There were tiny moments when that impenetrable armor slipped, and something huge, warm, thrilling and terrifying swept over me.

January 21, 2013

Christmas break is almost over. In less than a week, I will be back at school, in the dorms, in the cafeteria, in class, and studying. Although I know I will enjoy it, I am (not surprisingly) still in denial. I don’t like to think about it. Sometimes I become very frightened about how emotionally, spiritually, and socially fragile I really am. It is excruciatingly painful to admit that I have really no idea how to deal and respond to hardship. I become angry, or sullen, or frustrated about the most minute problems. This is, of course, because I rely on my own strength far too often. The more I think about it, the more I realize how often I am so distant from You, Lord. How often I ignore You, how often I am indifferent. It is horrible, but true. I want to draw near to You, and yet I am afraid. Afraid of what You will ask me to do, afraid of what people will think, afraid of what I might lose, afraid of what might happen. When I give myself, I am alone. It is saying, “Whatever You take away, whatever You ask of me, whatever happens—I will be faithful; I will obey.” To remain faithful even in the face of death, or torture. To remain faithful when the world is falling apart around me, when hope seems lost, when I am alone, and there is none but You to hold me. I think of these things and shudder. How can I stand, how can I be strong when such things happen? I am so weak, so dependent and pathetic. It frightens me, Lord…for I hardly know You. I cannot see You, cannot feel You. I tremble to rely on You. I know this is unbelief. This is sin. I want to have a true, strong, steadfast faith, God. And sometimes, I think I do. But then, the next moment I am lost again, lost in my selfishness and foolishness.

I know that with Your death You conquered all. But still, my desires seem unquenchable. My spirit torn, my soul divided.

When a crossroad stands before me, and two paths, two choices—how often does the fear and pride win! I so often choose the wrong path. I know I do. I know I have. I know this is rebellion. I know rebellion leads to misery, hardship, pain. Why do I do it? Why is it so hard for me to give up, to say, “I am dead. Do what you will with me”?

I see now. Being a Christian means being a slave. To willingly become a slave. To give up my right to everything and anything. To say, “I am Your pawn. Your tool, Your creation. I am nothing, You are everything. Use me. I am Yours.”

They are not glib little sayings. Slavery is slavery and death is death. To sugarcoat it is to miss the truth entirely.

No wonder C.S. Lewis said becoming a Christian was the most horrible and terrifying experience of his entire life. It should be. It should be nothing else! You are committing yourself to war, to a death-sentence. At least to the body, to the flesh. To everything we think makes us human. Our freedom to do what we want to do.

“I did not see, because I did not wish to see.”

I want to be Yours, Lord. Take me. Please help me. I know I cannot see the good now, Lord, but please help me to begin to see. Never forsake me, Lord. Pursue me, discipline me, guide me, Lord, please. Help me to see that You truly have conquered all. Please, Lord, never let me forget. I have so little faith and determination. All I have You have given me.

Notice my language: I knew God then only in terms of dying, slavery, and discomfort. 

Not long after, a professor challenged those of us in one of my classes to take Jesus seriously.  He challenged us, “Jesus really meant, ‘Lose your life and you will find it.’ And if He meant it, what are you going to do about it? Don’t settle for less than God wants to give.”

A few months later, there was a moment in a graveyard that so disturbed me about the reality of death that I was scared silly.

A few weeks later, there was another moment in a modern art museum. I remember one…shelf with ten screens, each with different footage of the same couple fighting and screaming at one another. I could not bear all of the death, depression and meaninglessness I saw there, supposed to reflect the world I lived in.

I cried out to God again. But this time, I had no plans, no agenda, nowhere to rush off to or be busy with. Nothing to distract me. It was just me and Him (if He was even there). 

All I had was a broken and bewildered heart, and I cried out to God, “called out for insight, raised my voice for understanding.”

And God answered. He answered.

Essentially, He told me, “All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” And when He showed me that, and I knew He was right, I cried like a baby. After that, I cried all the time, at the drop of a hat I’d cry. The world—the very dirt on the ground—seemed golden to me after that. The beauty I saw, in a cobweb, a blade of grass, a friend’s face, clouds in a thunderstorm. It was like a completely different world—like paradise. It was all so good and marvelous, all I could do was cry, and laugh, and tell everyone who would listen, and cry some more.

Over the course of a few weeks after that, whatever I asked of God, He answered, in His mysterious wondrous way, so much more like seeing than understanding. I have never felt so free, so alive, so strong and unfettered by anything that would give me pain, or discouragement, or fear.

He gave me boldness and courage, eyes to see wonders—in the Bible, in the world around me, in the love of my family, in the small-talk of a perfect stranger. Just joy, joy, and more joy.

But can you believe it? The best was yet to come. One night—or morning, rather—three weeks later, God almost literally called out to me, as He once did to Samuel.

I remember—I was at a friend’s house with my sister, and we’d all just watched the Prince of Egypt. The line that jumped out at me was when Moses was in the mud pit, and he told his sister and brother, “I did not see, because I did not wish to see.” If you remember, it was something I’d prayed about months before.

After I went to bed that night, I couldn’t sleep. So I got up, and crept into the living room and sat on the couch, my Bible in my lap. I opened it to the psalms. I still have evidence from that night written in my Bible. I was reading psalms 103 and 104.

I was reading and praying, filled with so much love and gratitude and wonder that I prayed, “God, why can’t I just die? I’d get to be with you forever, always, never-ending.”

And then He floored me, shattered me with his response. He asked, “Do you want to? If you want to, I’ll let you.”

He asked me that. He asked me, me! A nobody, a normal person…nothing special. It couldn’t be true, but it was. That was the thing—it was true. It was real, was really happening. God was asking me to choose whether I wanted to live or die.

My mouth dropped open. I remember; I couldn’t close it for several minutes.

I was free to choose. I know I have never been more free than in that moment.

My thoughts went crazy. What if? What if I did die? What if it meant I could be with Him forever, in joy, in peace, in rest? 

But then I thought of my sister. I thought of my parents, my friends. What would they think? How would they feel?

I had to stay. I couldn’t leave them. They had to know; I wanted them to know God like this, to experience this freedom, this love, this joy, too.

I wanted everyone to know. How could I keep such a thing to myself?

So I told God, “I think I’d like to stay.”

And I’ll bet God laughed then. I’ll bet He let out a joyous, triumphant shout.  “She’s got it! She sees.” 

And I did. I saw two things more clearly than I’ve ever seen anything else before.

The first is, God only ever wants one thing from us—from you, from me. The Bible, other people, this beautiful creation around us is all God’s way of calling to us, crying to us, “Come to me! And I will lead you to streams of living water, where you will never be thirsty again. I love you! Come to me.”

The other thing I realized was the truth of Jesus’ words, and His life:  “No greater love has any man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”

That night—as I saw it then, and as I have remembered it often since—I chose to “die.” To stay with Him would have been so much better. But you all see that I actually chose to live. “Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”

Life is death. We cannot live unless we die, and if we die, we live. Lose your life, and you will find it.

Death is the life God calls all of us to live. Dying to self; dying to what I want, what I feel, what I wonder, and question, and doubt, and living unto Him. Walking as He walked, loving as He loved. Trusting that He knows, even when I don’t.

I honestly can’t believe this story I’m telling you is mine, because I never could have dreamed something so crazy and insane and, yes, unbelievable could happen to me.

Sometimes I have doubted whether it really did happen. There are times when I’ve wondered if I made it all up, just imagined it all, because I wanted to see it. Deep down, I wanted God to be that good, kind, gentle.

But those are passing moments. When I’m most awake, most sane, I know the God I encountered that night is real. What I experienced was real, and it really happened. You want to know how I know this?

Because it was too good.

It was too good to be a lie. God is always better, kinder, more powerful, gentle, strong and good than we think He is. Jesus came to show us that. We just have to be willing to believe Him. The extent to which God reveals Himself to us is directly proportional to how much we are willing to give up to Him. I am just one of a great cloud of witnesses telling you, “God is good.” You can trust Him with your life, with your questions, doubts, and fears.

He wants us to have abundant life in Him. He wants us to fear nothing when we are walking by His side, holding his hand, looking into His face. He wants us to rest our weary hearts and heads, full of doubts, questions, confusion, and pain, like children, so He can hold us and carry us.

He wants to give us all things—in His timing. He wants to bless you and give you joy. He wants you to stand strong, even when you can’t see Him and say, “I am of the light, and not of the darkness!”

So, all of this happened three years ago, a week from tomorrow.

There’s definitely a reason the theme of our camp is “transition: a journey to aliveness.”

I wish I could tell you that God still answers my prayers and questions like He did that summer. But there was no magic wand that made everything perfect. Far from it.

The past couple of years have been some of my hardest and most painful. But they’ve also been the most beautiful and good.

After that crazy night, life went on. I went back to school; I wrote papers and did homework; though God freed me in a powerful way, I still get angry, still want my own way, still try to save my life at times by holding on to it, instead of giving it over to Jesus.

I am learning that the reality of living a life as God’s child is that it is a journey—or rather, an adventure.

But think of most of your favorite stories. How much of the time do characters get the “easy life”? Never! If they did, there’d be no story to tell.

By God’s grace, I continue to live out the story God is writing for me. It’s hard, and sometimes I fail so miserably I honestly want to give up. 

But then God gives more grace.

I still question, and doubt, and get paralyzed by fear, but now I know the one in whom are “hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” He reveals in His timing, and He always knows best. But never stop asking. Jesus said, “Seek, and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you.” Either we believe Him, or we don’t. It’s that simple. Trust that He cares enough for you to know when you need to know, whatever your troubles may be.

Questions and doubts can lead us to Jesus, if we are willing to find the answers. If we are willing to lose our life, that He might save it.

Circumstances change, people change—but God never does. Whenever I humble myself, let go and die to what I want and cling to Him instead, I see that—I see Him. Like Aslan (if you guys are familiar with Narnia), bigger, better, and more beautiful than before. And that’s not because He’s changed; it’s because I have. He will never stop loving you and dying for you.

As John says, “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know Him. Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is.”

I’m a nobody. God doesn’t need me, but He loves me, in His glorious, mysterious, wondrous way. As He loves you.

Maybe you don’t know what “trusting God” or “dying to self” even means. That’s okay. I didn’t either.

Maybe my story freaks you out, or makes you feel guilty, or frustrated, or angry. I would have been right with you. Remember that your story is not my story. Your journey is not mine, and probably won’t look anything like mine. And that’s good. And if you’re not ready to give yourself to Him right now, that’s okay. He’s patient. He’s waiting for you. There’s nothing you can do that will keep Him from loving you, pursuing you, desiring to be with you. Even if He feels a hundred miles away, know that God our Father will take care of you—He is taking care of you right now. He’s giving you breath, counting your heartbeat, knows your every thought and desire.

I have to stop at some point. I wish I could keep talking to you about Him. There’s so much more to say. So much more to discover, so much to thank Him for, through all the transitions and seasons of life.

I have a psalm for you, psalm 27, because David always seem to know best how to say it. Try to replace in your head the stuff about enemies with whatever frustrates you, makes you afraid, or is hurting you.

The LORD is my light and my salvation;

whom shall I fear?

The LORD is the stronghold of my life;

of whom shall I be afraid?

When evildoers assail me

to eat up my flesh,

my adversaries and foes,

it is they who stumble and fall.

Though an army encamp against me,

my heart shall not fear;

though war arise against me,

yet I will be confident.

One thing I have asked of the LORD,

that I will seek after:

that I may dwell in the house of the LORD

all the days of my life,

to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD

and to inquire in his temple.

For he will hide me in his shelter

in the day of trouble;

he will conceal me under the cover of his tent:

he will lift me high upon a rock.

And now my head shall be lifted up

above my enemies all around me,

and I will offer in his tent

sacrifices with shouts of joy;

I will sing and make melody to the LORD.

Hear, O LORD, when I cry aloud;

be gracious to me and answer me!

You have said, "Seek my face."

My heart says to you,

"Your face, LORD, do I seek."

Hide not your face from me. 

Turn not your servant away in anger,

O you who have been my help.

Cast me not off; forsake me not,

O God of my salvation!

For my mother and father

have forsaken me,

but the LORD will take me in.

Teach me your way, O LORD,

and lead me on a level path

because of my enemies.

Give me not up to the will of my adversaries;

for false witnesses have risen

against me,

and they breathe out violence.

I believe that I shall look upon the

goodness of the LORD

in the land of the living!

Wait for the LORD;

be strong, and let your heart take courage;

wait for the LORD!