My Testimony

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you..."

(Jeremiah 1:5 a)

Like all of God's children, God knew me and began to pursue my heart before I knew he existed. As I retrace the evidence of his presence through my life, this is what I remember:

I am six years old and my mother and I just moved into the house of my future step-father. I am in the yard staring up at the stars pouring my heart out to a God I don't yet have a name for. My heart is aching, bleeding out into his hands, pleading to this God to bring my family back together. Somehow, though my prayers remain unanswered, I am comforted.

Fast forward eight years: I'm fourteen. I'm away at military boarding school, which is a relief in so many ways. My family back home is riddled with anger and mood-swings and fear. I'm so glad to be away from the emotional battle. I'm sitting by the blue-gray lake watching the waves sweep the shoreline with a sense of hope. I feel his presence. I've heard his name now, but I've also heard that he is holy. I am not holy. I am defiled and sinful. I was raped when I was seven. I get angry and lash out. I get scared and lie. I lie to make myself seem normal. I lie all the time. I know that liars go to hell. I am so confused because God seems so near, but I just can't invite him in... I don't want to change and I don't know how to be good. I push away from God's presence and go inside.

Fast forward to college: I am back in Colorado. The Flatiron mountains in Boulder feel like a guardian as I watch as the sun comes up and floods them with a strong orange light. The beauty of Colorado hints at God's presence again. I feel so free here! No rules, no curfews, no sign-in sheet at breakfast. No need to go to class, no direction in my life, no purpose... A fresh start. I do what I want and live to please myself.

December 1999: I get my grades. I got an A in partying. Three D's and an F in my classes. I have failed my first semester. I am a failure.

May 2000: Somehow I convinced them to keep me in school and I've done better this semester. My friends say I'm charmed and are jealous of my "luck". In my pride and purposelessness, I keep going forward even though I don't know where I'm going. I just know I don't want to have to move home and admit defeat. I keep doing just enough to stay in school. I go home for the summer and drink with old grade school friends. I get high. My heart calls out for God, but I know I cannot come near him. I am evil. If God created evil, can he be good? I blame him for creating me to be evil.

At home I paint. I have a very vivid dream of what God feels like and I paint it. I can't capture the essence. I try again. After ten attempts I give up and wish I could feel His presence again. I draw my siblings. I draw nature; up close. I love that I can distort my reality through art. I decide to major in art.

September 2000: I get a boyfriend. I am living in sin. I am constantly anxious and terrified of losing him. I always feel like throwing up, and I barely eat anything. I will do anything to please him and keep him. I love him. I lose him ten months later.

I keep painting. I feel God near to my broken heart. I feel him in my painting. I change him into a god that is okay with my sin. I fail Art History class. Twice. I hate memorizing things just for the sake of memorizing things. I almost fail out of college again, and this time I want to be done, besides the fear of going home. There's one last chance; I take a "Maymester" class called US Problems and Social Change. It's a sociology class. I go in and it's challenging and interactive and mentally stimulating. I love it! I change my major to Sociology.

March 2001: I meet a girl, Lorraine, outside of the library. It's a beautiful day and I'm relaxing in the sun reading a text book and finishing some homework. She walks up to me and tells me she's a Christian and would I like to go to church with her? I say yes out of the blue. She seems nice. That Sunday I go to coffee with her before we go to church. We connect. She's great. We go to her church and it's weird. People raise their hands in worship and sing loudly to their God. They say Amen to the guy who gives the sermon, during the sermon. I'm uncomfortable. A few weeks later, Lorraine and the wife of the pastor invite me over to share a "diagram" with me. I go. They're nice. They start talking about hell and I tell them I have to go now.

September 2001: 9-11 happens. Two days later I go to a party that turns into an orgy. People are acting out their grief by doing body shots and entertaining each other with crude displays. I'm disgusted by the debauchery in myself and sad that this is how we choose to commemorate our fellow Americans. Two weeks later, I go to another, smaller party. Two of my friends come. Christine, who lived in my dorm my freshman year, and Tiffini, a girl my drawing class the previous year whose portrait I drew. I didn't know they knew each other! I ask them how they know each other and they tell me they go to the same church. Christine drives me home. It's been interesting to watch her life. She goes to parties and doesn't drink, and yet she still has a great time. I enjoy being with her. She is so funny, and it puts me at ease. I also feel that I can be myself around her. While she's driving me home, I ask her about her church. I tell her that I've been "flirting" with a church (Lorraine's), but I feel weird there. I tell her the name of the church and Christine exclaims that it is a well-known cult! These words change my life. I invite myself to her "small group."

The next Tuesday Christine picks me up and we go to "Mugsy's" apartment. "Mugsy" is short for Megan, I find out. The apartment is homey and comfortable. People trickle in. One girl, Alyssa, is wearing sweatpants and needs to cut them off at the knee when she gets there to make them even. This strikes me as strange. She is strange to me, but also outgoing and welcoming. As people come into the apartment, I feel more and more at home. The people who come seem real, sincere, "without wax", somehow more themselves than other people I know. Their sense of humor is not sarcastic or condescending. Their silliness is somehow pure and untainted by flirting and sexual innuendo. I feel flooded by a sense of peace with them. We talk about real life. We talk about God, and I feel free to talk about my own opposing ideas. We talk about freedom in Jesus Christ. I hear again that he came to die on a cross for my sins. I'm still skeptical. I feel like he's the bad guy. He made me evil and there is no healing something that is inherently evil. He condemned Satan, and he will condemn me as well and I need to be okay without him. If he is so unyielding, how can he ever love me?

Three weeks later and I have gone to small group every week, and I feel like a starving person entering the apartment to be fed in a way I can't name or conceive. I like to debate. I like to try to stretch their understanding of God to match my own. I like to quietly feel God's Spirit fill the room with love the way I've never felt it before, and pretend that there is no hell.

Alyssa comes to small group, and as we are sharing verses and "thoughts from the word" she begins to sob. She cries openly before us all and tells us that she has not heard from or felt God for three days. I'm shocked and deeply impressed by her freedom. She is truly herself in this moment and she is emotionally naked before us all. I have never felt the type of freedom she has. I fear people's judgment and condemnation too much.

Later in the evening there is an announcement that there will be a "Rock Retreat" the weekend of October 26-28th. It is scheduled for the weekend right after my birthday (October 21st). The retreat will take place in Winterpark, CO. I love to ski; I love the mountains; I want to go. But I don't have the money. I tell them this, and Tiffini tells me that they have decided to pay my way and that they would really like me to go with them. Sure, I say, Why not?

At the retreat, there is worship and Christine stands near me, raising her hands in praise to God, singing loudly. I still feel awkward, but not offended or uncomfortable. I feel curious that people are so willing to look like idiots for Jesus. I want to forget how dumb I look too and feel near to God. I feel him calling strongly to my heart, but I can't let him in because if I do I'm admitting that I'm evil and that he's right and I am wrong. I don't want to give in. I'm afraid. I am afraid he will strip me naked before everyone. I need to hide, but I can't. There's a song that they play: "I Surrender." I change the words and sing, "I want to surrender."

Troy Nesbit, a pastor from the movement of churches that the Rock derived from, gets up to speak. He speaks of his wife's rape and her journey to forgive the man who raped her. He speaks of his own sin and tells a story of a time when he found a Victoria Secret ad out on his lawn and masturbated to that image, and how God convicted him and how he had to repent and apologize to his wife for his adulterous thoughts. I am astounded! I think, this man is FREE. The shame of my sin has me chained up in the basement of myself. I am a prisoner to it, but this man on the stage is completely free and is able to tell two hundred people a story that would destroyed me to tell even one person. I want to be free.

At 12:08am, October 28th, 2001, I put my trust in the name of Jesus Christ. I write this information in the Bible I stole from Barnes & Noble. I am evil, but he can remake me. I trust in the truth of the Bible as the actual Word of God. I trust it because I see that it is alive in the people God introduced me to. I trust it because the stars spoke his comfort to my most injured heart when I was six. The waves of the lake spoke his peace to me, a living hope in Jesus Christ. The Flatirons in Boulder drew me into his arms and invited me into his protection, though I was evil. And the visible freedom of his people to live the truth, scorning its shame and rising above it, wooed my heart to his glorious salvation, and that day my name was written in the Book of Life.

And now I look back and see how God has moved and shaped me with his love. Being near him in his holiness continues to burn away my sin and woo my heart to be like him. I cling to his Word and his presence daily. I am committed to his people, the church. I am a new creation. I am free from the prison of sin's shame. My soul is clean and always will be.

"I led them with cords of human kindness,
       with ties of love;
I lifted the yoke from their neck
       and bent down to feed them." (Hosea 11:4)