GOD, JESUS, & ME

Like the marriage topic before this I have hesitated to write about God for so many reasons. Partly, because my relationship with God is really, really new. And partly because the word God, and all it conjures up, can be a really, really, polarizing topic. And because I am a people pleaser I want to avoid polarizing topics at all costs. But as time passes here and my relationship with God becomes more important I feel like I need to come out of the closet. (Funny I should use those words, I know, but they are accurate. I feel like I have been hiding my faith for fear of what others who knew me before would reject me or ridicule me somehow.)

I have long had  an indifferent relationship with God. I grew up in the Catholic church, but fell away from that during my teen years. I found the Catholic church hard to come to Christ in with all of its rituals and formalities. (There are others that I know who are truly devout Christians who find comfort in those same rituals, so its not a knock against that faith it just was not for me.) During the rest of high school and college I would have considered myself a lost soul in terms of any sort of relationship with God. I went to a community church youth group off and on during that time and I could feel the presence of God in the sanctuary where some of my best friends and I would sit in the balcony of the sanctuary during retreats and just talk. And I also felt God in the presence of nature. Always I have felt Him there.  Aside from those places though God was found in too few places in my life in those passing years. When I became a mother I thought about introducing my children to faith, but I wasn't sure where to turn. I knew that I did not want to attend the Catholic church and I also had seen the devastation that belonging to the "wrong" church can do as the family of a best friend of mine was torn apart by the dark side of religion. So, I would attend a service here or there. A lot of the time I would go to a Catholic church because it was what I knew and even though I could not really feel God's presence in those services I took comfort in the fact that I was "going to church". This went on this way for years and years. Always searching, but never finding anything.

And then Sarah got sick. God became my enemy. I swore I would fight Him until the day I died for doing this to Sarah. I swore that I would never believe in Him, would never follow Him, and would never allow his Son into my heart because he had hurt me in the worst way - he had hurt my child. He had turned my world upside and irrevocably changed not only my future, but my husband's, sons', and daughters' futures as well.

As Sarah's vision succumbed to this disease my anger subsided (although it was & is partially still there) and it was replaced by an unspeakable sorrow. It is a sorrow that can only be felt by those parents whose children's lives have been changed forever by illness or injury. It is deep and black and seemingly endless. It was in those times that I began to think about calling out to God for help. (Of course, I didn't at that time because my pride got in the way, but it was the first time since her diagnosis that I thought of God as something other than my enemy.)

When we moved to New Mexico I partially surprised by the amount of people who practice and live their faith. I knew that the population was largely Latino and that many of them are practicing Catholics, but I was surprised by the amount of faith that was shared by so many people outside of the Latino community. Jesus is rampant down here.

One of the first few times I climbed up A Mountain I sat at the top looking at the mountains before me and whispered to myself, "God, I want to feel you.". On cue, the wind blew. Gentle, but sure of itself. I closed my eyes and let the breeze blow for a minute or so and then it died down and did not return. I knew in that moment that our family's purpose for being down here was so that I could feel the presence of God in my everyday life.

I began going to different churches and settled on a large community church in town. The pastor is amazing and delivers sermons that touch my heart deeply. There has not been a service where I did not cry at some point because the message that is being delivered is so true to my life or what I need at that time that I feel as if the whole sermon was written just for me. It is powerful.

But I have always hesitated in letting Jesus into my heart because I didn't want to become an ugly Christian spewing hate to those who believed differently than myself. I didn't want to fall into the wrong faith and start alienating all of those around me because they are sinners. But you know what? I don't have to do those things because I am a sinner too. I have no fingers to point or judgement to pass because I am fallible too. Once I realized that not all Christians are these judgmental people - that that wasn't Jesus' point when he asked us to follow him and his Father - it dawned on me that maybe there was a place in my heart for Christ.

I went one afternoon, all by myself, to Soledad Canyon. I got down on my knees by a secret waterfall in the back of the trail and I asked God to allow Jesus to come into my heart. I asked Him to show me how to lead the kind of life that He would have me lead. I gave the control of my life(or am trying to) over to Him. I waited for some momentous feeling to wash over me. Nothing happened. I got up disappointed, feeling like I didn't do something quite right because I did not feel any different. Aren't you supposed to feel different when you ask Jesus to come into your life? There were no fireworks. No band. No angels in the heavens trumpeting their praise.  Nothing, but crickets.

As I was walking back down the mountain to the car I stopped for a moment and looked at the beautiful scenery around me. As I was taking it all in it was then that God spoke to me. Quietly, he whispered, "I was with you all this time." In an instant all of those times and moments and memories that I have of being in nature and being awed into silence flashed before my eyes. All of those times growing up feeling reverence for the world around me as I walked through the trees, or sat by a lake, or climbed a stream, or sat on the sandy shores of a bay, or hiked a mountain - God was with me. Nature has always been the one constant in my life. It was/is the one place where I have always found peace and tranquility. It is the one place where I have always found myself unguarded and open. God knew that I would not be open to Him in any other medium and so he decided to meet me at my level and show Himself to me through nature. How amazing is that?! It was then that I had my "come to Jesus moment". In that one moment I became a follower of Christ. It was by far one of the most powerful moments of my life. I will never, ever forget it.

So, what does that mean? What it means, to me, is that I want to try and live my life like Jesus did. Jesus did not condemn the weak, or the poor, or the prostitutes, or the outcasts. He befriended them. He lived his life humbly, purely, kindly. He walked lightly. He was an example to all on how to live a life of love.  And that is what I want to do. In today's world, I try to think about who Jesus would befriend if he came down to Earth today. I think that he would still befriend the poor, lame, weak, but I think he would also befriend homosexuals, prostitutes, drug addicts, and other people that the mainstream Christian population (and non Christian) deems unworthy. Does this mean that I think that Jesus would have condoned those behaviors? No, I don't think he would have and that is really, really hard for me to say because I did not always think that way. But he would have gathered around those people and befriended them much more quickly than someone who sits on their personal throne saying, "Well, at least I don't commit that sin." Because you know what? I don't know a lot about Jesus yet, but what I do know is that the self righteous, the haughty, and the finger pointers are some of the types of people that Jesus liked least.

Since coming to Christ I have found that the devil is working overtime to try to sway me to come back to the dark side. I have experienced feelings of self doubt, disorder, loneliness, unworthiness, etc...I know that these feelings are coming from one who is trying to shake my new faith. Being a Christian hasn't made my life any easier in terms of trials and tribulations, if anything it has made it harder. The difference is that I now know I am not alone. I have God on my side - as corny as that sounds.

My goal is to become as much like Jesus as I can. That is what a Christian looks like to me. An imperfect person in an imperfect world trying to live a life as close to Christ as possible. Amen.