Good And Angry At God

God has a big ol' lightning bolt with your name on it, you naughty, naughty thing, you.

Parents always embarrass their kids by talking about them, and since I don’t have a kid of my own, I’ve decided to embarrass my niece. She’s the closest thing I have to a daughter, which makes her the perfect candidate.

She’s pissed off at God for a variety of reasons I won’t share. (I’m not THAT bad.) At 17, she has experienced more hardship in life than some senior citizens. We have a lot in common, though teenagers won’t ever admit to being anything like an old person. The trouble with teenagers is that you try to impart life lessons but always wonder if what you say will be overshadowed by a rap song, whose lyrics will undoubtedly be quoted on Facebook.

My niece is a lot like I was at her age – a troubled young girl trying to make sense of the pain in her life while trying to figure out where and if God fits into the big picture. Unless you are raised steeped in Christianity, it’s easy to think that God sits on a cloud somewhere in the sky chucking lightning bolts at people who cross Him – even if those people have accepted Christ as Savior.

I have to say my view of God was perhaps considerably worse when I was a teenager. God was the head administrator of the universe, seated at a desk piled high with paperwork. Every now and then, an angel would wander in and hand Him a paper. “This girl is being molested,” he’d say, or “This boy’s father ignores him. Which pile do you want it on?” And God would point to the appropriate stack without even looking up and save the crisis for another day, if at all. He should have been on that heavenly cloud, chucking lightning bolts at evil people, but He was too caught up in red tape to do that. And when he did venture out with bolts in hand, He only shot them at the believers who screwed up and sinned against Him.

I suspect this is my niece’s view of God at this very moment. She wants Him to answer the age-old question of “Why?” but her queries seem to be met with silence.

Reverse Theology
Apart from the death and resurrection of Christ itself, all of Christianity is based on the premise that our identity, value, and worth can be found within the pages of the Bible. When facing hardships in life, the Bible is full of promises designed to give us hope and keep us focused on the reality that earth sucks, but it’s not our eternal home. In Psalms, God promises that that He will bless the righteous and show him favor (5:12); that He will be a refuge to the hurting (9:9); that He will give His people strength and peace (29:11), and that’s just to name a few. Throughout the Bible, God promises us healing, full forgiveness of sins, and freedom.

It was always hard for me to understand a book full of promises when I lived in a world full of painful uncertainty. Obviously, I’m not alone in that. Everyone has questioned why there is pain and suffering in the world. It is a part of human nature. For a young war-torn believer, it’s hard to reconcile what seem to be blatant contradictions. 

The human brain weighs about three pounds. Did you know that? I actually learned that from a Chris Rice song years ago, but I promise I looked it up to make sure. I’ve purchased smaller bags of ground beef at the grocery store. Now compare that to the vast knowledge of God and suddenly it makes a little more sense how… none of this makes much sense. Only in the past couple of years have I realized that I’ve been trying stuff all of the wisdom of God into three pounds of gray goo. I’d have better luck trying to back my car into my laptop bag.  Can you imagine how frustrating that would be? I get irritated when I can’t get the cover on my grill. No wonder we get angry at God. 

Part of the problem, of course, is that we expect things out of God that He specifically told us not to expect. We have a sense of entitlement. We get too caught up in being human beings and believing that since we live here, we should have it all. My husband has a relative who lived in a house rent-free and when it was time to leave, he believed that meant he owned everything in the place. 

Not so!

I got a grip on my anger at God through reverse theology. You’re less likely to hear this preached from the pulpit because instead of focusing on God’s promises, I focus on the things He didn’t promise, but it gave me great perspective.

A lot of people “get saved” believing that life will be wonderful now because we have Jesus in our lives. We don’t realize that the peace and joy of God comes from what we learn from circumstances, and not the circumstances themselves. We see “good” people getting what they “don’t deserve” and it infuriates us. I watched one of my cousins slowly die of ALS over the course of five years. He was a good man who loved the Lord, had a beautiful wife, and four amazing daughters. He was a musician with a brilliant mind who once designed and published a game that was promoted by MENSA. 

According to my three pounds of brain mass, if anyone deserved to live a good, long life, it was him. But he became completely disabled and finally died in 2009. I don’t get it; I never fully will.

We can trace death and destruction back to the fall of man in the garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve decided to get uppity and directly disobeyed God by eating the forbidden fruit. God cursed man and said that from that point on, we would experience the things that hold us back now – shame, trouble, hardship. 

Ah, that’s the part we missed. We missed the section at the front of the book where God said life would be hard. We miss John 16:33 where Jesus says that in the world we will have trouble. We just want the good stuff. We feel like we are owed it. 

The first part of my life was inexplicably hard. I spent nearly the next half being angry about it because I felt like I didn’t deserve it. Whether you blame Adam and Eve or not, however, none of us deserve anything good, if only because we expect God to deliver our goods with no hassle, like a child demanding money from a parent. 

It would be one thing if God honestly promised an easy, problem-free life and then all around us, the world was crumbling, our bills weren’t getting paid, and people were taking advantage of us, but that’s not really the case.  In reality, we do stupid things on a daily basis, and it’s astounding just how cruel humans can be to one another. Maybe you never killed anyone. Good for you. Me neither. But have you ever thought something nasty about someone? Flipped someone the bird in traffic? Yelled at an authority figure? If you answered no, you’re still a sinner because you’re lying.

For me, it was much easier to stop being angry at God once I realized I wasn’t being duped.

Choices, Choices
Go to any church or Bible study and you will hear about how life is all about choosing to accept the good things God has for us, including those promises. I say you also have to choose to accept the things God never said, or the things He said that you didn’t like.

You can’t really accept Jesus as Savior until you’ve figured out that you need Him. It’s about more than not wanting to go to Hell. You have to understand that you do ungodly things on a regular basis and that Jesus died on the cross to pay for what you’ve done. In a huge, supernatural way, it’s like paying for an item somebody shoplifted to keep the guilty party out of jail. A good parent will love their child unconditionally; this is what God does for us.

It’s also about understanding that God cannot stand to be around unholiness – hence, Satan got kicked out of Heaven. When Adam and Eve screwed up, God got angry and gave mankind consequences. But like a good parent, He also wanted to see His kids restored, so He sent Jesus to die for us.

So we face a choice, and often make the wrong one. We have the option of loving God and thanking Him for His unconditional love and desire to make us whole again, or staying mad at Him because sometimes our actions have consequences, and the actions of others sometimes affect us. We have to decide what is more important to us – our earthly circumstances, or what God is capable of doing in our spirit.

We react out of hurt, and we hurt others. Think about it. A drug addict becomes a drug addict because they were neglected, abused, or unloved. That drug addict then turns around and steals from law-abiding citizens to fund his habit, and destroys the people who love him the most. The drug addict can blame God for his painful history without ever realizing how he is hurting others. There are no truly innocent people in this world, even if we don’t harm others deliberately.

We can’t go to God for a new life until we realize the life we’ve been living has at some point harmed others, the least of which is God himself.

Keepin’ It Real
For years I was unable to have a fruitful spiritual life because of my anger with God. I tried to out-think it and I believed in the Bible’s promises, but anger was like a little cobweb that got stuck in my brain and even when it wasn’t a dominant emotion, it was always in the background. I have two dear friends in my life who have served as mentors to me for years, and they constantly encouraged me to discuss my feelings with God, but I rejected the idea. It seemed like a terrible sin to feel anger, let alone talk about it. 

In retrospect, it was out of character for me not to discuss how I felt. I am not obnoxious, but I am the type of person to always voice my opinion and speak up when I think it matters. If I have an issue with my husband or a friend, I confront it and try to discuss it to clear it up. God was different, though. I didn’t want Him to chuck a lightning bolt at me.

Through a support group and godly counsel, I began to realize that being honest with God was not only important, but also encouraged and modeled in scripture. I recently started the “Search for Significance” Bible study by Robert S. McGhee. The very first chapter of the book provides verses that demonstrate how David – whom the Bible describes as “a man after God’s own heart” – was very blunt with God throughout his life.

In Psalm 42:9, David questions his own pain a

nd God’s motives.
“I say to God my Rock, 
   “Why have you forgotten me? 
Why must I go about mourning, 
   oppressed by the enemy?”

In Psalm 58:6-9, David tells God how angry he is with others.
 “Break the teeth in their mouths, O God; 
   LORD, tear out the fangs of those lions! 
Let them vanish like water that flows away; 
   when they draw the bow, let their arrows fall short. 
May they be like a slug that melts away as it moves along, 
   like a stillborn child that never sees the sun.
 Before your pots can feel the heat of the thorns— 
   whether they be green or dry—the wicked will be swept away.”

More than once, David got frustrated with God and His timing, such as in Psalm 13:1-2.
 How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever? 
   How long will you hide your face from me? 
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts 
   and day after day have sorrow in my heart? 
   How long will my enemy triumph over me?

And in case you’re quick to believe that God only listened to David’s emotional prayers because he was an all-around good guy, take into account the fact that David committed a number of serious offenses, including an affair with Bathsheba that got her pregnant, which David later tried to cover up. God did not listen to David because he had all of life figured out. In fact, the life of David would have made a good Lifetime Original movie.
God’s love is unconditional, which means He always has an ear for us. Anyone willing to talk to God in an honest way shows an open heart that is willing to be changed by Him. That’s really all He asks of us.

I stopped covering up my anger towards God for a number of reasons. One, it is very exhausting and damaging to carry around anger for a long time without making an attempt to resolve it. What I found was that you really can’t cover up anger. You can pile all the crap you want on top of it, but it’s going to dig its way through again.
Two, my anger was greatly alleviated once I realized that God never promised me an easy life and understood that I didn’t deserve one anymore than the next person.

Three, I took a look at my personal relationships and realized that a relationship wasn’t a deep one unless there was honesty. I don’t like shallow friendships. I want to get to know the people in my life on a deeper level, and a few of those people I hold extremely close to me. Our friendship is close and intimate because I allow myself to be totally forthcoming with those people. If we want to stop seeing God as an administrator or some sort of tattle tale, we need to form the same kind of intimacy with him, which includes confronting the things that need to be confronted.

We have to choose to believe that the God who created the universe, who loved us enough to restore us, is big enough and capable enough of handling even the very worst of us. If David could tell God off and still be a “man after his own heart,” why can’t we? 

I think we submit our prayers to God a lot like we put quarters in a soda machine. In goes the money, out comes the prize. That’s how we think God should work. But prayer is a conversation, right? For years I couldn’t understand the purpose of prayer. It seemed pointless to me to ask God for things without ever really knowing if you’re going to get them. You pray for safe travels for a bus full of youth group kids, and then it goes over a cliff. I’m sure you’ve heard that God always answers prayer, but not always the way you want Him to. I don’t know if I buy into that. Sometimes God doesn’t answer prayer because it’s not His will, plain and simple. Does that mean you shouldn’t ask for things like protection or favor, or the healing of a terminally ill relative? 

The character and promises of God don’t change, but that doesn’t mind God can’t or doesn’t change His mind. In Jonah 3:1-10, Jonah goes into the city of Nineveh with a message from God to change their evil ways, or else. Nineveh heeds the warning and because of their repentance, God “relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.” (vs. 10) 

We also have to keep in mind that our actions have consequences, and our actions affect each other. A friend of ours had a nasty porn habit that broke his wife’s heart and kept the atmosphere in their home tense. After many second chances and years of counseling, his wife found out he had never addressed the issue in therapy and discovered more pornography that crossed the line into child porn. He may have prayed at that point for God to fix his marriage, but his wife had had enough, and rightly so. They separated and are now planning to divorce.

Our response to God, our willingness or unwillingness to honor Him with our lives, and the actions of others directly impact God’s answers to our prayers. God is unchanging. He will not break His promises, He will not contradict Himself, and above all He will always love His people unconditionally. We may not know how or if a prayer will be answered, but we should always remind ourselves and that God is good…all the time.

When you really stop and think about it, telling God how angry you are isn’t just confronting an issue so you can hopefully get past it. We are asking God for something – we are asking God to be the person He promised to be, even though we can’t acknowledge it at the time.  If you’re angry at God, I think it should be a comfort to you, because that means you believe in Him, and that’s the first step in the right direction. 

One of my favorite authors, Donald Miller, talks about an encounter he had with God in his book, Believing in God Knows What. What started as an angry confrontation with his Creator turned into a moment of reflection and, for us readers, humor. He told God He didn’t believe in Him anymore, only to realize that, unless you’re schizophrenic or on drugs, you don’t tell off someone who isn’t there. 

Being angry at God was a miserable feeling for me. It took many years before I finally broke down and told Him what I really thought of the things He allowed to happen in my life. But it made me realize that even though I was good and pissed, I still believed…a little bit. In Luke 17:15, the apostles ask Jesus to increase their faith. In Matthew 17:20, Jesus said that even faith as small as a mustard seed could move mountains. Even the original 12 got it. I was not alone. And Jesus reassured them that even a little goes a long way.

I’m hoping my niece can go from seeing God as a cloud-dwelling lightning bolt-chucker to a confidant who can take whatever she dishes out. He seems to think we’re worth the hassle. That’s enough to grow your faith right there.

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Column Clarification, T-Shirt Design, and the 2 Friends Tour Comes to Town

I'm a Christian. Seriously.

After being sick for what seemed like an eternity I finally began feeling like a living, breathing human being at the end of last week. I had been working on a big article for the May issue of  Fine Living Lancaster and I was so stinkin' proud of myself because I jumped right in and got a lot of stuff done right off the bat, but then I kept hitting road blocks, and then I got sick. I was incredibly frustrated but I got it done and that's all that matters.

The February issue of FLL came out last week and I was eager to see my column which was about politics. It's funny how this column started out as a humor column and has sort of turned into an anything column. Anyway, I was in a McDonald's reading my column when I came across this line and almost had a stroke:

Don't ascribe to any theology or political system that believes only one side can be right because once you start believing that, you have become the butt of the joke.      

 It was the first time in my writing career that I ever thought, "Oh no!" It sounds like I'm saying you shouldn't believe Jesus is the only way to Heaven, but that wasn't what I was saying. I was TRYING to say that Christians shouldn't believe that Conservatives OR Democrats own Christianity, because nobody really knows exactly how Jesus would have voted. People think they do, but the fact that we fight over it shows that it's open to interpretation.

For the record, I believe John 3:16:

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

I believe that Jesus is the ONLY way to Heaven. The column wasn't about that... but in case anyone out there read my column and scratched their head in confusion, I want you to know exactly where I stand.

Sunday is coming. Act casual!

Onto other news!
I am hoping this week goes by quickly because I can't wait to get to next Sunday. Amy Grant & Michael W. Smith are coming to town on their 2 Friends tour. I have tickets and backstage passes, and my husband and I are having dinner with Amy, Smitty, and the band before the show. I can't tell you how many times I've filled out those goofy surveys that included the question "who would you love to have dinner with and why?" I've always answered Amy Grant, and now I'm going to get to live out my little daydream. I got to spend a Saturday afternoon with her when I was 17 which was wonderful, but unfortunately I was so scared that I didn't say anything intelligible. I'm hoping things go better this time... and that I don't wind up wearing dinner on my shirt - you know, like I usually do.

I'm also really excited about getting to talk to MWS. I've met him a few times before, but only for about 30 seconds at a time. His 1993 "Change Your World" tour was my first real concert when I was 13. I also had a mad crush on him. MAD crush. I once bought a slice of pizza from his wife at a Christian school fundraiser when I was in college and thought I had arrived.

"Um, Mrs. Smith? Will you sign my pizza?"

I've also been asked by Michael W. Smith's marketing people to design a shirt for him, as well. Actually, I'm discussing this with them tomorrow. (I'm guessing they are going to want less flowers.) This is another huge dream come true for me. 

I keep trying to picture this dinner in my head. I'm sure everyone is very nice, but I keep thinking they will all be sitting around talking to each other about stuff I know nothing about while I pick at my food. That's almost as scary as me dumping a beverage on my lap. Or tripping over something. In middle school chorus, I tripped over a power chord and unplugged everything. It comes to mind whenever I do anything that requires me to seem especially intelligent.

I want to take pictures at this dinner... but I don't. I don't want to be the weird starstruck chick with the camera who keeps asking everyone to put down their chicken and pose with me. But I wanna take pictures at this dinner. I'm a little torn.

To sum all of this up... someone please pinch me.

I have a very specific goal for this week and that is to have plenty of stuff to think about until Sunday gets here. I'm sure I'll have quite the blog for you on March 7. Pin It

Perfect Christian Women

I don't know if you've noticed this or not, but a lot of female Christian authors are blond, thin, and pretty.
Every now and then, life throws you a curve ball and you see a brunette wearing a size 12. Let's face it, though... blond and perky is the norm.

I took note of this many years ago, so when my book was published in 2005, I dyed my hair blond and went on a diet. I also decided my hair wasn't stylish enough by simply being blond, so I got it cut super short. I was trying to be retro, but I ended up with what my friends now jokingly refer to as "the lesbian haircut."

I also decided that female Christian writers - well, Christian women in general - should never use sarcasm or quick wit. After all, we know from watching "Jesus of Nazareth" that Jesus was never jovial. Also, he never blinked.

I also found that many of the "church ladies" I knew said things like "thank you, Jesus" and "oh, my heavens" on a regular basis, so I tried to incorporate this into my own vernacular. I never got the timing quite right. My inability to be somber 24 hours a day really messed with this concept. I'd be driving down the highway and some wonderful gentleman who was created in the image of God would cut me off, and I'd find myself saying stuff like, "THANKS A LOT, JERK! I mean, um... oh, my heavens! Perhaps you should drive more carefully, sir. Amen! Praise Jesus!" I tried not to blink but I ended up spending a lot on eye drops, so I gave that up.

There were a few things I could not remedy, no matter how hard I tried. I didn't have 2 kids, a house with a white picket fence, or a dog. We could have adopted a baby from China, but what if the book failed? Adoption agencies don't have return policies and you can't put kids on layaway.

Fearing that I wasn't good enough to hold the title of Christian Author, I concluded that writing my book in my own voice would not suffice. Instead of writing like Julie Fidler, I tried to write like Beth Moore, Shaunti Feldhahn (my mentor of 8 years, no less), and a combination of several other authors I liked better than myself. It all backfired like a '75 Chevy on cinder blocks in front of a beat-up trailer.

Five years have past since that book came out and I've been struggling to write another one ever since. All of my experiences with the first one only showed me that I couldn't play in the big leagues. Until recently, that is.

As it turns out, I've not been comparing myself only with other authors, but with other Christian women in general. I have spent many Sundays sitting in a pew at my church, watching the other women around me, convincing myself that they have it all together and I don't. Worse yet, I thought they could see right through me and just KNOW that I was 'messed up.' If imperfection could be worn like a tattoo, mine would be scrawled on my forehead.

Maybe it's age, maybe it's life experience, maybe it's just growth in the Lord, but...I have decided this is craziness and I'm not going to allow it to creep into my life any longer. I say let's see each other for what we really are - messed up people who need God's grace every day so we don't have to be messed up anymore. I have a tattoo and so do you - "SINNER SAVED BY GRACE." I used to think I was the only woman in the world who felt this way, but as I shared my own struggles and doubts, I found out that a lot of us, if not most of us, either struggle with it now or have struggled with it in the past.

All this to say, we're so busy studying our cuts and scrapes, we forget to look at the holes in the hands of the One who can wash all of that away.

If our idea of perfection is the woman sitting two rows down from us on Sunday morning, we are going to be so totally disappointed. We'll never reach the mark, and if we did, it wouldn't be a mark worth reaching. If I try to write a book like one of the 'perfect' authors I've admired for so many years, I would be overlooking the very real truth that those books were written based on difficult life lessons that the authors learned, walls they climbed, and demons they conquered.

I'd rather compare myself to the man on the cross up at the altar. My imperfections will be made perfect. My sin has already been washed away. If we crawl deep into the hearts, minds, and lives of the people we look up to, we will always find sin and corruption, but not if we crawl deep into who Jesus is. There is the mark. Let me reach that one.

To steal a line from a great Switchfoot song, "We are crooked souls trying to stay up straight."
So I vote we cling to the only One who really holds us up. Anything less is gonna drag us down. Pin It

Suicide and Addiction

This winter seemed to be a particularly harsh one for a lot of people. February and early March (knock on wood) saw the suicides of three celebrities: first it was fashion designer Alexander McQueen, followed by "Growing Pains" star Andrew Koenig (RIP, "Boner"), followed by Marie Osmond's son, Michael Blosil/Bryan (if one could call him a "celebrity).

Was there something in the water? I don't mean to make a joke of suicide, but I have to ask because I just came out of a very deep depression, as did several of my friends. I know seasonal affective disorder is a very real thing, but I swear the government secretly implanted crazy electrodes in our brains to make us miserable this year or something.

In all seriousness, it was beyond hard. The thing about having depression is (especially when people are committing suicide left and right) is that you always feel the need to hide it. At least I do. There are a few people I am very honest with, but for the most part I don't let on as to how bad it really is. You just don't want to worry everyone. As a teenager, I attempted suicide (didn't get very far, fortunately) so I don't want everyone automatically assuming I'm sitting on the other end of the phone line with a gun to my head.

You hear people say a lot of different things when someone commits suicide. For as much sympathy as you hear, you also hear a lot of anger. For every "that poor man" you hear "that was so selfish." And I guess if you're not suicidal, it does look terribly selfish. You're gone and everyone else is left to suffer. You will be mourned. Questions will be asked. That's the reality. But to someone suffering from severe clinical depression, the picture doesn't look like that at all. To someone with severe depression, all is lost, nothing matters, and the world is better off without them. Severe depression, in a sense, sometimes removes a person's ability to see beyond their own pain to how the rest of the world will react. You see that person as loved and valued; however, they see themselves as colossal failures who ca do nothing right and don't deserve anything good in their lives.

I don't know the story behind Alexander McQueen's suicide, but from everything I have read, Andrew Koenig and Michael Blosil felt exactly that - worthless, hopeless, miserable. If you don't think you have a friend in the world, then in your mind there isn't anyone to leave behind in despair.

Then there's Corey Haim. When I was growing up, Corey Haim was a teen heartthrob. I was never particularly "into" him but I certainly knew who he was. He died this past week at the age of 38 - the same age as my husband. Too young. He battled drug addiction and had a number of health problems that I'm sure the drug use exacerbated. He reportedly died from heart congestion. Though the toxicology results won't be known for several weeks, however, from all accounts he was addicted to prescription drugs... Vicodin, Valium, Soma, maybe others. A few months ago, troubled actress Brittany Murphy died from pneumonia and drug intoxication. She filled a prescription for Vicodin 11 days before her death on Dec. 20, 2009 and it is believed she took 109 of the pills in those 11 days.

These are the stories that break my heart. A teenage relative my husband and I are very close to recently got out of drug rehab. She told me she tried everything but heroine, but her drugs of choice were prescriptions. Maybe celebrities can get oodles of pills from crazy, money-hungry doctors in Hollywood, but Joe Simpletons like my relative buy them on the street from other kids - God only knows where they get them. They think that because a doctor prescribes it, it must be "safe." My relative has told me stories about being "careful" not to overdue the Xanax. But nobody knows what their body's breaking point is.

I'm convinced I'm not a drug addict today because my parents made it very clear that if I did illegal drugs, I was dead meat. I would have to find other living arrangements. I was terrified of my mother - in this case, it did me some good. But even I, as a teenager, tried this and that. Ritalin was the biggie when I was in high school; I gave that a shot. We used to chug Nyquil. We sucked on the whipped cream hose at Friendly's for a high. One time, in college, when I was particularly naive and in the worst depression of my life, I unknowingly huffed CD cleaner.

We tried it for a quick high, a little fun. Isn't that why most kids light up a joint or smoke a bowl? But my relative got so hooked on alcohol and prescription drugs that she couldn't even wake up for school until she was higher than a kite and she took the stuff all day long to keep going.

These kids think it makes them hardcore. They think it makes them cool.
Meanwhile, the rest of us sit back and see sad, broken little children who can't handle reality. Oh, and you can be a broken little child at any age.

My husband and I watch "Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew" pretty faithfully. OK, I'll admit it - at first we started watching it because we were amused at the idea of washed-up, B-rated celebs trying to get off crack. But with every episode, we got more and more sucked in, and for legit reasons. I started to identify with some of the patients and my husband saw his brother (a recovering drug addict) in a lot of them. We started to cheer them on. It made us realize that underneath it all, people are just people. It really doesn't matter how much money you have, how many albums you've put out, or how many movies you've made. We're just people with our own history of pain and every one of us faces a decision - "Am I going to deal with this or not?" Are we going to to face reality like the intelligent, grown-ups capable of healing that God made us, or are we going to hide like the sad little broken children, pushing away reality with a needle to the arm, a puff of smoke through a bong, or a line of powder snorted up our noses?

Since my relative has been out of rehab, I've heard a lot about "higher powers." In 12-step recovery, anything can be your higher power - God, Jesus, a toilet seat, your recovery book, your roommate, your cat... you get the idea. You pick something and say "this is stronger than I am" and then you rely on it to keep you from getting hooked back on whatever you were hooked on in the first place.

From where I sit, I look at all the broken little children - and I was one, but I never got sucked into drugs - and I want to hold them all and give them the love they missed out on and tell them... the only reliable higher power is Jesus Christ. Period. You want to kill yourself? You were bought with a price by the blood of Jesus. Your life is no longer your own. Go ahead - jump off that bridge. Your body will be in a thousand tiny bits, but what about your soul? You think you're damaged goods and the best you can do is drugs? You are created in God's image. He made you beautiful. HE CAN HEAL YOU. Not some book, not a statue of Buddha, not your Golden Retriever. Jesus can heal you. If you let Him.

It's a choice. You chose drugs. Will you choose the Savior of the world?

My favorite band is Casting Crowns and they say it better than I ever could:
"I'll take a shack on a rock over a castle in the sand."

Sad, broken little children like me... make your choice. And if you screw up, make it again.

But never, ever give up. Pin It

My Testimony - "Religious Nuts"

By the sixth grade, I was a deeply depressed, God-hungry Amy Grant fan. The sexual abuse of my childhood had just ended and I was flunking school. I wasn't sure if I believed in God, but an old fifth-grade teacher prompted me to take a leap of faith.

She was a pretty young teacher, about the age that I am now, with a gentle disposition and the patience of a saint. As a fifth-grader, I clung to her like glue. I had maybe two friends, who were also school nerds that got picked on every day, and I either huddled in a corner with them at recess, pretending to be homeless (what a fun game!) or I sat alone, making snot balls out of rubber cement slathered on my hand. I was the only girl in a bra at the time, and I was a little butterball. That teacher, however, always saw the good in me and I loved her.

In the sixth grade, I went back to elementary school to visit her all the time, and during one such visit she announced that she was pregnant with her first child. For the first time, I decided to ask for a little divine intervention for someone other than me and my own demise and I started asking God to take care of her and her baby, and make sure that they were both healthy, happy and OK. When her son was born later that year, it was like a faith shot in the arm. I was still young enough to have some childlike faith, and I gave God the credit for everything working out nicely.

The summer after sixth grade, new neighbors moved in next-door. They were a couple in their mid-thirties with three kids. The oldest was a bit older than me, but the two youngest were still small. Hoping to land myself a babysitting gig, I quickly introduced myself and it wasn't long before I was swimming in their pool and - as planned - watching the two youngest. I loved them dearly; I was always welcome in their home. They never turned me away. Over time, I opened up to them about my struggles and their house became my home-away-from-home. When my family was in turmoil, I ran across the yard to join theirs, and I knew the door was always open.

Eh.. Just one little problem.
They were... religious.
Every time I saw them, they invited me to church with them, and sometimes they talked about God as if He lived there in their house, eating their Fritos and sharing the toilet and such. I wasn't sure what to make of that. I wanted to be with them constantly, and yet I felt the need to run home to pull the blinds and lock the doors and huddle on the staircase until they went away, or at least until they stopped talking about God. Mama done warned me about them religious nuts, did she not?!?

That God fella was hot on my trail, apparently, because that same summer, my parents agreed to send me out to San Jose, California to visit my aunt and cousins for two weeks. As it turns out, I was related to some religious nuts, too. My cousin, Jay and his wife, TJ had two young daughters at the time and they were so much fun to be with. Jay had a crazy sense of humor and his wife was cool and gorgeous and I loved playing with their kids. I tagged along with TJ and the girls one day to Vacation Bible School and found that I wanted to cry the entire time... in a good way. The more I listened to stories about Jesus, the more fascinated I became. I asked them to take me with them again, and I accompanied them several times during my stay, and made friends with the children's pastor, who was a very kind man who made me feel comfortable and welcome.

While in California, I went out and purchased Amy's "Heart In Motion" album on cassette. If you're a teenager and you don't know what I mean, look up "cassette tapes." They were horrible creatures that forced you to "fast-forward" and "reverse" - you couldn't just select a track and play it. And if you left them in your car in the sun, they'd melt. Those were the bad old days. In any case, I bought the album on tape and nearly wore it out listening to it. Poor Jay and TJ - I asked them to play it in their car every time we went somewhere, and they kindly did.

Jay was very forward about his faith, but not in a way that would have offended a non-believer. I recall a conversation in which we were sitting on the floor in his living room playing Super Mario Bros. on his Nintendo system (again, kids, look it up) and I asked him a series of questions about his life. I wanted to know if he and TJ were going to have more kids, if he was going to go back into music (he was in a popular Bay Area rock band in the 80s), all of which he answered with, "If it's God's plan for my life." Both of them talked to me about Jesus in detail, but that's the conversation that really sticks out in my mind, nearly 20 years later.

God help my parents - I came home from that trip talking up a storm about God. My parents didn't have a problem with me believing in God, because THEY believed in God in their own way. They just found it odd that a kid who never went to church was suddenly rambling on about God and asking for her own Bible. They said my cousins' beliefs were "weird" and that religion was a deeply private thing you didn't talk about with others.

As a burgeoning Amy Grant fanatic, I started listening to her older music after I became such a huge fan of "Heart In Motion", which led me to listen to other Christian music. I found the local CCM station - WJTL - and began falling in love with the music of Michael W. Smith, Petra, Newsboys and others. The more I listened, the softer my heart seemed to become. I still didn't know if or what I believed, but I wanted the stuff they were singing about. The idea of unconditional love, there for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, along with unending forgiveness was incredibly appealing to me. Who WOULDN'T want that? The question is, are you willing to believe in those things in the form of an omnipotent God you can't see?

Listening to Christian radio also introduced me to Dawson McAllister Live, a call-in show for people (at the time) 18 years of age and younger. Kids were calling in with all kinds of problems, many of them like mine - kids with family problems, sexual abuse survivors, teenagers with depression, etc. I started tuning in every Sunday night. On the show, they always mentioned their toll-free hotline for kids who needed someone to talk to, known as the "Hopeline," and I jotted down the number for future reference, though I never really intended to call it.

The people on the radio kept talking about becoming a Christian and "accepting Jesus" into your life. I had no idea what they meant, but I wanted to do that... whatever it was. I asked my parents what they thought that meant - my mother called her girlfriend, who told her I was on the cusp of joining a cult. Hmm, no help there!

Now, I feel like a goof going on about Amy Grant because I'm a grown woman and I know I sound like I'm sitting here with electrical tape holding my glasses together with Amy Grant posters all over the walls of my efficiency apartment. In other words: I sound like a dork. But this is how God worked in my life, so I have to tell the story exactly the way it unfolded.

There is a song on Amy's 1988 album, "Lead Me On" called "Saved By Love." I'm not going to post the lyrics here because I know Amy's manager and I don't want to break some kooky copyright law by doing so. (Eh hem.) The title is pretty self-explanatory. I don't know what it was about that song exactly, but one day, when I was 12 years old, it absolutely broke my heart for the Lord and I found myself on my knees in front of my bed, weeping and asking God to save me. I didn't know if I was asking the right thing or if I was asking it the right way... I just told God I wanted what my neighbors and my cousins and Amy Grant had.

When I stood up, I felt different... but I was still a little paranoid that I hadn't done something right when I prayed.

So I pulled out Dawson McAllister's Hopeline number, dialed it, and got a sweet-sounding lady named Ginny on the other line. She asked me if I was a Christian, and I said yes. She asked me how I knew I was a Christian, and I said I knew it because I had never killed anybody and I was born in America. ::::sigh:::: Long-story-made-short... she finally explained to me what being a Christian and "accepting Jesus" meant. And it had nothing to do with an American or being murder-free. She asked me if I wanted to ask Jesus into my heart (in the official capacity, I suppose?) and without hesitation, I said yes. In fact, I yelled it. She asked me if I was sure, and I yelled it even louder.

I asked Jesus into my heart.
It was May 4, 1992... the day before my 13th birthday.

In the next segment, we'll discuss my journey AWAY from God... Pin It