I've been going over this whole "story" in my head, trying to figure out how I was to write it, because this speaks to so much more than paganism, but..honestly, there's no other way to write it other than exactly how it happened.
Every Friday, I meet with a group of 2 or 3 people and we go to Waffle House to hang out, talk about Jesus and what's going on and we do a type of "undercover" ministry where we just love people "right where they're at." This past Friday morning was a little different. There's a waitress that we see every week when we come in, but she isn't our regular waitress (who no longer works at WH…sad day). I believe she has waited on us 2 or 3 times before.
Well I was the last one to get up to go pay today and I hadn't really talked to the waitress that much, but I asked her how long she had been working at the WH and I saw on her name tag that it had been since 1996 and that her name was "Reverend Livingwood." So I said "So do I call you Reverend?" And she replies with "Well, I used to be an ordained minister (hence the name, Reverend) but now I'm a pagan, you can call me Mary or Barry, but I prefer the first." And I said "Oh." I was actually a little taken a back at how open she was. But, keep in mind that when she went to fill our coffee up, we were praying to JESUS for our food asking him to bless it. I asked her, "So since you were an ordained minister, did you ever believe in Christianity?" And she says "Not really." She goes on to explain a story about her daughter was going through stuff and was about to move out and left some books on paganism and witchcraft (that kind of stuff I can't remember the word she used) and she told me that her husband of 20 years had left her. She said she started looking in those books and she realized that that was what she had been looking for the whole time (that was what had been missing).
And what she told me next broke my heart. She said,
Honestly, paganism saved my life.
My first response was to just say "oh" again. And then I said "okay" and then I told her to have a good day. But the minute I sat down in my car, I burst into tears. I had never heard anybody say that something other than Jesus saved their life. All I could think about was Jesus. Jesus and how he suffered so much for her. Jesus and how he gave up his life for her and for ALL of us. And it just broke my heart into shreds. I'm still a little distraught about it.
One of my top sayings is that I believe God is a "God of restoration." I believe He restores those who are lost, those who don't know what to believe, and those who just don't care. And I believe He's going to restore Mary.
Luke 4:18–
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed…"
