How'd I get HERE??!?

I grew up in church. So, God and Jesus and salvation and the whole deal isn't exactly new to me. What is new is the concept that, well, any of that matters in my life.

I used to go to church with my parents and my brothers every Sunday, dressed up in my good clothes, with an ever-increasing indifference to the reason we were spending a quarter of the weekend at this building. I would play with my friends, sing a few songs, learn about a whale or a (now vacant) garden and then chuck the information into the back of my mind until we would rinse and repeat the following week. They were nice stories, but I just wanted to see my friends - especially as I became a teenager. I mean, we had all grown up together in that church and I wanted to get back to them to find out what had happened in their lives during the six days we had been separated. I actually gave my life to God at one point when I was younger, but the act was discredited by so many adults around me, that I soon believed that it was insignificant and returned to doing what I wanted to do. I gave God 5 hours of my Sunday every week, broken up by social exercises for my socio-emotional development. Then I tucked Him away with my teen study bible for a week.

Then I tucked Him away for a few years.

My trips to church became less frequent as I got older, as my friends moved on or away and as I began to make choices that "church folk" frown upon. I wasn't one to deal with the anticipated judgment, so I kept my pregnant belly and unwed self at home....where it was safe from the disapproving stares of those who I had come to know as my extended family. I was 19 and pregnant 6 weeks into my freshman year of university and acutely unaware of the challenges that would visit me as I continued through life trying to do things all by myself. I wish I had known then what I know now; I could have saved myself years of stress and trouble.

Fast forward through: ending the relationship with my son's father, multiple emotionally abusive relationships, an eating disorder, depression, anxiety, copious amounts of self-destructive behaviour, and countless bad decisions to a time of a complete and utter loss of control.  I was doing whatever - really, whatever -  I wanted to make myself feel better and nothing was working. I couldn't drink away the hurt. I couldn't find happiness in the guys I was with. I needed more. The only thing I was doing well was being a mother and I was running out of energy and drive to do that.

I needed to be filled up because I was running on Empty.

I never forgot about God. I just never asked Him to do what I was trying to do myself. Something inside me would always flash to Him in time of trouble, but I had no faith that trusting Him would be better than what I was doing. That is, until I recognized Him as the only possible answer to my hundred thousand questions.

One day, I met a man that had a past like mine - full of bad decisions and stress.  We were performing in a show together and got to talking. He told me that he had come into a relationship with Christ while serving time in jail.  During the conversation, I couldn't help but take notice of the calm and contentment that he had and it was exactly what I was seeking. I wanted what he had and when he told me what it was - a new life in Christ....I realized that it wasn't enough to just know about God; I had to start trusting Him.

My life was different from that day. I stopped looking within the world for the solutions to my broken-ness and called, unabashedly, on Christ to do what He came to do - take all that mess on his shoulders so I don't have to feel its weight. I got a fresh start!!

God's still working on me. I'm still working on letting go of the thought that I know better. I'm a work in progress, but I see (and feel) the difference of having God directing my life everyday.  So, now I'm just trying to figure out how to multiply that feeling, keep it, get deeper into it. Letting Him in was the easy part - I just had to say what I already knew:

I'm messing up. I'm sorry. I'm ready to do something different.

The hardest part has been trying to cut out the stuff I've come to rely on, but it's a process. I hope that by writing about my journey, it will help me to do better, to be better. But I never imagined it could even be this good....

Video: Imagine by Yomi - www.myspace.com/theofficialyomi

~gg~