Being Remade

I’m going to try to summarize 42 years in this first entry, so I apologize ahead of time if it’s overlong. I’d like to start at the beginning.

I grew up in church. My mom took me & my sister twice on Sundays, Wednesday nights and other nights as well, if there was revival. I helped with VBS as a teenager. Most of my friends were from my youth group. I was a church kid. I don’t remember getting saved. From as far back as I can recall, I was a Christian.

My life changed after high school. I moved out, got married, pregnant & divorced within a couple of years. I had put God away as a childhood thing.

Skipping over the ugly details, the next 20 years of my life consisted of a lot of mistakes, halfhearted parenting and looking for happiness in everything except God. During that time, my parents lives also fell apart. My mom left my dad & went from Sunday school teacher to a woman determined to live a life she thought she’d missed out on.

That’s the lie the devil has been telling since the beginning of time. That being obedient to God, living for God, causes us to miss out on things we deserve to have. So we allow our lives to become dirty pits of hopelessness, in pursuit of a lie. We end up desperately searching for  happiness, acceptance, love when that’s exactly what we turned our backs on to begin with.

So, that’s who I was a year ago. A tired woman with a lifetime of regrets. I had an adult child who struggled because I didn’t give her a good foundation. A mother I didn’t know how to help. And a deep longing in my heart for a clean life. The joy and love I remembered from my childhood church. The peace & goodness I saw in the eyes of Christian family members.

A few months before, a shoulder surgery had taken me off work. I believe God pulled me out of my routine, put me where I’d have a lot of time to see the truth. And I did. I got saved at home, by myself. Just me and God. He remade me. The joy I had! That feeling of a weight lifting off my shoulders. Being able to go to sleep at night in peace because I gave my fears to God. Neither my past or my problems disappeared, but God gave me new eyes to see. He gave me hope.

Time after time during my medical leave, God blessed me & took care of me financially. We had what we needed & the bills got paid. I read My Bible & Joyce Meyer’s “Battlefield of the Mind.”  I drove my Christian friends a little crazy with questions. Because even though I’d grown up in church, adulting as a Christian is a whole other thing.

I found a church where the teaching was good, because I wanted God’s word & I wanted to know how to apply it. I spent an hour every morning reading & learning. That year was great. I was a well tended little Christian. Very proud of the changes in myself. Then I was released back to work.

Cue ominous music. You see, my work buddies loved the old me. The dirty joke telling, cursing, gossiping, drinking me. Sure, they’d probably noticed that my Facebook posts had turned to mostly Bible verses, but I don’t think they really expected me to be different. A few of them go to church on Sundays. They get it.

Except, they don’t. I’ve stopped eating lunch in the kitchen because of the constant pressure to participate in conversations that would make a sailor blush. There have been countless awkward moments as they keep trying to stuff me back into the shape they recognize. And I’m not going to sit here & pretend I’ve come through it all white & shiny. Daily I fight with the temptation to gossip & be unkind. I’ve failed over & over to reflect the love of God. As a matter of fact, sometimes I’ve been cold and unapproachable just so they will back off.

What I haven’t done is proclaim to them that I’ve been saved. I want them to infer it. To look at the clues of my changed life & figure it out. I’m not ashamed. I think I’m mostly afraid they’ll ask me questions I can’t answer.

Sometimes I feel paralyzed by the war inside my head. Scripture & teachings twirling around like puzzle pieces I can’t fit together. “Be set apart” “Love each other” “Don’t judge” “Sow seeds” “keep yourself holy” “be humble” “don’t speak in anger” “What would Jesus do?”

I’ve gone back to my home church because I need spirit filled preaching. I need to be led & taught. To be with people who are so obviously striving to walk this life as Christians, and not conform to the world.

So, that’s where I am. A Christian trying to find the path God would have me walk. New beginnings are scary and sometimes confusing but, as my pastor would say, I aim to get to Heaven in the end & I’m not giving up.