It is my Ongoing Story

I sat in the back of the car, feeling cold and empty. I could see my mom's silhouette in the headlights of oncoming traffic. She and my sister were talking about seeing my cousin dancing in their dreams. She's definitely in a better place, happy, with the Lord. But I felt no assurance or peace. I didn't know where she went. She was just gone. Heaven? I didn't know if it was real or just a way of consoling oneself in the face of tragedy. And it was a tragedy.  She and I had been the same age. At eighteen, life was supposed to be beginning, not ending. It left me cold and empty, confused and sad.

Her death was a jolt, a repercussive blast to the eardrums that leaves permanent change. If anyone was supposed to die, it should be me. I had a lot less to offer than she.  I returned to my second week of college heavy with these thoughts.  It was the first time that loss had infiltrated my world on a grand scale.  I didn't know what to do.

Was I mad at God? I don't know. I was angry at the unfairness of her death, but has no one to pin it on. I didn't know if God existed. It seemed like if he was there, he was helpless to effect change in the world.

For a while I continued to float through my freshman year. I went to parties and tried the drunken lifestyle, randomly made out with a boy. But I couldn't shed the cold emptiness.  This "party" stage was pretty pathetic actually. I was really bad at "wildin' out", and within two months I had given it up.  It just couldn't satisfy the gnawing vacancy I carried with me.

"Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also." John 14:1-3. 

These verses were read at the funeral. I had never heard them before. I didn't know where to find them in the Bible. But I wanted to understand them.  I came home late from a party and found the underused book. The last time I had opened it was for AP English, reading Job as historical literature.  I don't even know why I had it at college with me.

I laid in bed, flashlight in hand, and flipped through the book until I found John 14. The words were supposed to be comfort and I felt none. But I kept reading. Something in me couldn't resist it. Night after night, I would covertly open that Bible in the dark and read by flashlight. I underlined words, put question-marks in the margins.  It seemed to be written in a different language, but I was desperate to understand it.

At the same time, a community of Christians has materialized around me. My Christian RA had first told me the news of my cousin's passing. She would sit in the lobby and talk to me, comfort me, explain the book to me.  A friend invited me to a Young Life leader training.  "Training" appeared to be a group of students praying aloud and singing worship songs with a guitar. I was uncomfortable but kept going. There were cute boys involved, but beyond that, the group had a pull I couldn't explain.

I had so many questions about God's existence, the Bible's veracity, the religions of the world, why good people suffered. I wrote my dad a letter. He had been an atheist but converted to Christianity in his twenties. I wanted to know why. The letter was questions front and back. He took it very seriously, and a year later gave me his reply: 31 pages, single-spaced, addressing each question with deep, thorough care. It is one of the most beautiful gifts I have ever received.

And while waiting for that response, I enrolled in introductory religion classes, continued to go to YL training, and read the book. My soul hunger was crazily insatiable.

At home, one sister asked why I was reading that book so much. "I just have to know" was the only fitting answer. Another sister told me I had changed (and this was a good thing. I had never treated her well). I knew she was right. I felt different, less angry, less vindictive. I didn't operate with the same mean streak and didn't want to. My heart was changing.

I can't give a day of the week, a specific prayerful moment when God came to me. I can't tell you the first day I believed and accepted Christ as the way, the truth and the life.  One day, towards the end of that freshman year, I realized that I had been believing for a while. It's as if I had started walking in a direction without really thinking about it, and suddenly turned to see that I had been journeying with God.

I didn't know then that God wanted to be in a relationship with me, that he loves me. I didn't understand the death and resurrection that made it possible for me to be close to him.  But God has super-imposed his good news on my life. I was a dead thing made alive, a dark thing becoming light, bitterness becoming sweeter, a wound being healed, a stone heart turned to flesh. I was helpless to change, hopeless and empty. He changed me, gave me a hope, filled me up.

Wrapped up in my story is an assurance for anyone.  If you really want to know the truth, if you give him a chance and seek to understand him, he won't leave you empty-handed. He always shows up. He loves us so much.

He has loved me with an everlasting love. I am convinced that nothing in this world can separate me from it. He gives meaning to all suffering.  He forgives and transforms. He makes all things new. He makes me lovable and able to love. With him, death is not forever.  He is transforming me still. It is my ongoing story.