Old Letters Do Not Lie Like Memories

If anyone has a copy of your “fingerpaintings for God” it would be me, and I am positive I overlooked it in the pile of letters and printed blogs I just sorted through. It is a shame that I can not locate it because it proved, beautifully, if I remember it correctly, a point that was made in Sunday school today. Although I was disappointed by the loss of that illustration I was also a little disappointed in the words I encountered during the search, words written long ago to and from a good many people during my search for God.

Lately I have been asked to retell that story, and I have told it more or less vaguely because that has been the right thing to do. But I was miffed by my assignment to write a testimony being reminded that I always wanted a more definate story than the one I got. When I told my friend that I wished mine had been more tragic and therefore more black and white he scoffed me, which made a point: that God wrote His own story and who am I to despise it? So I told it, as clearly as I could, with what thematic details I could remember. And it worked.

I did not save a soul, but my audience loved what took place in my life. They saw what I saw, that God had pursued me all my life. He also waited until I was in a safe place to bear the gospel before He gave me the opportunity to know Him. It is a good testimony for me, fast becoming a reformed Christian, and with a very sensual sense of the supernatural.

Embracing my story for the first time, I eagerly wrote the outline for a book, and the following day unearthed reminders of that difficult journey. It was a spiritual war too huge for our imagination, one friend wrote, and it was probably well for everyone that we could not comprehend its vastness. It amazes me to think it was so much bigger than anyone of us witnessed; there were nights, feeling suffocated by a vortex, I thought I would never wake up. Those days I did not much care if I did. As a result of this, however, I developed a sense of God’s love that perhaps I would have missed if I had murdered someone or been left for dead after a rape or over-dosing on drugs--the types of things that too many people can relate to.

Like my the story surrounding my physical birth, my spiritual birth is a story that once I wrapped my head around it, convinced me how special I am to God. It also convinced me that I was never in control of my choice to receive him, though I proved to be as difficult a child for Him as I was a good child to my human parents. I know that I was also difficult for my friends. (As my Sunday School group debates over the definition of a community of grace I want to stand up and tell them about you, for you all were the model of God's grace. I do not do this because I do not know how to recreate such a community, which is the point of our discussions at church.) The letters I carefully preserved from that time are as a smell: I am transported back to those horrible, dark, lost days. My letters demonstrate my confusion, and yours show how delicately you handled that fact. I am pleased to see that the problems that once seemed unsurmountable have grown small. Some people hardly recognize me.

Thank you again to those who bore with me, for trials produce patience and God will complete that good work which He began in you. You will be hearing more about this shortly.