My Story... (Part 1)

There is something that I love listening to: people's stories about themselves.  My Grandpa Bob loves telling stories about things that happened in his past and I will sit there in rapture visualizing the various scenes that he shares.  We all have stories.  I have a story too!  I thought that this week I'd share a part of my story (if I were to share the whole thing, we'd be here for quite a while... 😁).

I grew up with a single mother and one brother.  We lived in a one bedroom house and my mom had to sleep in the living room to give us all the space we need.  We went to church--often for both services Sunday morning.  My brother and I did many things there.  We were acolytes--cute young kids who lit the candles during the service; we went to Sunday school, Vacation Bible School, and other events held at the church; we were at church during meetings that our mom went to; and for a while we just hung out when my mom did some janitorial work.  I was baptized there and sung in the choir for kids.  They held many concerts there too, which were a mix of fun and boring ones.  It was at this church that I learned about going to church as part of religion.  Something that we do without thinking much about what it means in our lives. 

I had made surface relationships with people throughout the church but never learned that what we learned should really be applied to our personal lives.  I knew God, but nothing about the Trinity.  There was no real exploration of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as the persons of God.  I learned here how to best seem like I was a "good boy."  It seemed that everyone thought that I was a good boy and treated me that way.  I seemed to like that best.  I could "know" people without really knowing them.

This was something that I learned to lean on as I grew up: I knew how to act like a good person but then could do whatever I wanted to on my own.  I wasn't a bad person, but I definitely made some bad choices that ended up hitting me later in life.  I'd lost my virginity and became addicted to pornography by the time I ended my freshman year at high school.  I'd given up my religion and spent time studying Wicca through the beginning of my sophomore year.

Things changed for me in later high school as well: I met Jesus Christ and gave my life to him during my sophomore year.  I'd been dumped by a girlfriend because she said she was looking for a Christian to be with and that made me question what it meant to someone to give up a great relationship (humble of me, right?) because of their beliefs in Christ.  That led me to some of my friends and their youth group.  Ultimately that led me to confess my belief in the fact that I was a sinner and needed the grace that Jesus provides to us through his crucifixion and the everlasting life provided through his resurrection.

My life opened up for me at this point.  I had taken all the mess and uncomfortableness my life had become filled with at this point and gave it over to Jesus.  I no longer needed to worry about being a "good boy" on the outside.  I no longer needed to worry about the consequences of my actions.  I had Jesus' forgiveness on my side.  I had a new view on my life and what it could possibly become.  I had started to find out more about the Trinity and what that might mean to me.  I had received relief and help in my life.  I knew that I had a God on my side that could and would help me to grow and change.  It felt supremely freeing to me.  I had begun to grow.

However, what I'd learned earlier in my life about looking like a "good boy" would still persist and come to make things look good in my life while I was still secretly dying too.  But more on that next time!  What I'd received here was a realization that there is a God in the world who loves us so much that he sacrificed his own life for us.

Difficult Endings: Death. How do I follow God through this?

My Grandma and Grandpa, years ago... :-)

Do you have anyone close to you?  Do you have anyone close to you that is also close to leaving this world?  Dying?  I do.  My grandmother.  Mom's mom.  Grandma.  She has been struggling with cancer for the last several years but has now reached the point where medicine cannot help her anymore.

I visited her yesterday and shared some very precious time with her.  She had been told a few days before by her oncologist that there was nothing left.  That news was so crushing to her.  Crushing for me too.  My Grandma is only a little while from the eternal.  I have been having a hard time normalizing that in my mind.

This woman is almost like a mother to me in my realm of people that I care about.  She's been there when times had been tough for me.  She's been a cheerleader for my best the whole way through.  She constantly asks me questions about what I am doing and what I am planning on doing.  Questions about how I think about this news story or that person in government.  Questions about my favorite sports teams.  She has promised me that if I ever needed physical help or finances that she and Grandpa would be there for me.  I have been able to trust her to be a safe person to listen to me.  And this wonderful woman is leaving now...

I have been thinking about my own needs coming up, and the needs of my family at home and my larger family.  I have been thinking about my Grandpa and how he might react.  The entire time I have been mulling over the future in my mind I have also been praying.  My wife has been awesome too because she knows how important Grandma is to me and she has blessed me.  But I have relied upon the strength that God gives me to make it through.  Heavily.  I cannot point to a scripture and say that "this Bible passage" helps me.  I do think about what I read in II Corinthians 4:16 which says, "So we do not give up.  Our physical body is becoming older and weaker, but our spirit inside us is made new every day." (NCV)  Paul writes about how all of us wear down over time.  Although I don't like that fact, I can trust it's true.  But our minds are made new by Christ's graceful gift to us.

So what have I been doing?  Something of everything to be honest.  I feel the desire to hide, to share, to pray, to cry, to shout in anger, to expect the worst, and to tremblingly hope.  She is still here and she still is my Grandma.  All I can do otherwise is trust and have faith that God knows what He is doing and will bring her home before too long.  Please pray for her and for those around her.

Sensational Easter Sunday!

He is risen!  He is risen indeed!

Wow!  I love Easter Sunday!  Especially this last service that we had at my church.  The pastors had worked really hard in preparing us these last several days.  It started with a very experiential Good Friday service where we looked at and felt several parts of communion and Jesus's "last days."  We left that night with no "promise" of an awesome Sunday.  As far as we were left, Jesus was dead.  Gone.  Buried.  Ended.  I was able to leave that service feeling a little bit of what the disciples felt: a loss of a great teacher, mentor,
and friend.  I was able to think of what that must have been like for them, which is not something I had been able to really accomplish before.

Then we came in on Sunday morning and that service picked up where the Good Friday service ended.  With a dead Jesus.  But we continued the story through how those nearest to Jesus were able to pick up hope person by person.  It was absolutely amazing to notice how Jesus went and visited with people personally and talked with them until they realized that Jesus was really
alive and was talking to them.  Not a big event, but lots of little ones that individually would have been absolutely spectacular!

That hit me right where I tend to hide.  When I hide, I do my best to isolate myself, put up a shield of "no one passes," and wait until I come out and hope everything has gone away.  I have been wrestling mightily with that character defect for a long time.  I have to intentionally release myself from that so that I can function as a more healthy individual.  So when I thought about the fact that Jesus came for all of us,  I realized I was adding the fact that he came for
me personally and individually as well.  Same thing for you too!

So, the next time that I think that I can hide from other people and God I have something to connect with and think about. I was not created to be alone.  Jesus died so that I wouldn't be alone.  He gives me grace so that myself wouldn't be alone.  He gives me his Love so that others wouldn't be alone either.  What a sensational Sunday!

14 “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert,[b] the Son of Man must also be lifted up. 15 So that everyone who believes can have eternal life in him.
16 “God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son so that whoever believes in him may not be lost, but have eternal life. 17 God did not send his Son into the world to judge the world guilty, but to save the world through him. 18 People who believe in God’s Son are not judged guilty. Those who do not believe have already been judged guilty, because they have not believed in God’s one and only Son. (John 3:14-18 NCV)

18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All power in heaven and on earth is given to me. 19 So go and make followers of all people in the world. Baptize them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. 20 Teach them to obey everything that I have taught you, and I will be with you always, even until the end of this age. (Matthew 28:18-20 NCV)

 3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In God’s great mercy he has caused us to be born again into a living hope, because Jesus Christ rose from the dead.  (1 Peter 1:3)

 Amen!