My story as a whole is complicated, painful, and a constant struggle. It is also beautiful, full of forgiveness, and constantly redeemed.
One of my defining moments is when I was a child and God proved to me that I was his.
My mom always told me a story of how when she first found out she was pregant with me, my dad just lost his job. I was the 8th child in the family and with my dad being the solo provider for the house, my mom was scared. She asked God why now? He answered with a simple statement “This child is mine”. Now I’m sure lots of parents have had a moment like this, where God’s hand is moving somehow in their child’s life. It’s a powerful thing when it does happen.
I would have thought that this was the same as that if not for what happened years later.
After being sexually abused for years and no one knowing, my lifes direction was intervened.
I honestly couldnt geuss where I might have been now if not for what happened that day but I don’t really want to think about it.
I was on the couch and it came time to follow the family friend down the hallway as he would wave at me from a hidden corner of the hall. For the first time I remember not wanting to go, I felt something tell me not to go.
That’s when I saw him, a man outlined in gold light sitting next to me. The confusion and conflict inside my small 10 year old body left me. I felt so at peace, like the whole world had stopped. As I looked at this strange man, he spoke, he’s mouth never moving. He’s voice carried in my head, strong and unwaving. No question or doubt when he spoke. ” you don’t have to go anymore.” “It’s done”.
God saved me that day from a life I don’t think even now I really could understand.
As I grew up i questioned whether it even happened, why would he come to me?, what did he want from me?
Fast forward to one month before I found out about the race September 2017. I had everything everyone told me I needed to be happy and fulfilled. I had a car I owned, my own apartment, a great group of friends, a good job, and was going to school. At the age of 20 I felt my life was well put together.
It was never enough, I felt empty, I always had to be doing something with someone. Always filling my time up. I never could be alone or allowed to slow down.
A week before I found the world race on Facebook, God kept pulling my memory of the day he showed up in my life in a physical way. The day he changed my world as I knew it.
I went through the motions and questions of the memory being brought back up again: why did you save me? , aren’t there more hurting people out there than me?
Still no answer came. Frustrated as ever, I found the world race soon after. For 3 days I couldn’t think of anything else. So I applied and the rest is history.
While sitting on my bed in our Georgian hostel God gave me a clarity moment.
He called me his when my mom found out she was going to have me. while I was still a child God protected me from a darker path that would have taken me far from him and the plans he had for me. Then I left my life to do the world race.
Putting the pieces together, I felt God in that moment tell me, you were headed down another dark path away from me by pursuing the worlds comforts and successes. I protected you when you were a child because you still had to learn who I really was and how to follow me.
When you became older you started to fall away from me and into what the world could give you. I gave you free will and it was your turn to choose to follow me or the world around you.
When I heard all of that it made so much more sense why I had the memory of that man sitting next to me as a child come back to me, why I felt so empty but had so much, but also why the words “greater are things I have for you”, always coming to mind.
He called me to be more than I was calling for myself to be, but this time I had free will to choose it for myself.
God has taught me so much just in the last few days about how he works. Specifically in how he gives and how he takes away. When he gives he gives in ways we don’t understand or sometimes hard to receive but same in the way he takes. Letting go of what wasn’t really meant to stay. It is so much more than I could ever sit and figure out.
I am thankful for the pieces he does let me understand.
While sitting on top of the hillside today in the tiny village we are visiting surrounded by mountains I truly felt the magnitude of how big he really is but also how much equal to that he truly cares and pours out to us. In my case, me never even knowing how much he truly was doing, and then with only ignorance, getting angry at God for not talking to me in the way that I want when I want it.
A lesson in humility. Also a lesson in what It looks like to be pursued by Papa to the ends of the earth.
