Silvia's Faith Journey- Part 9

Hi everyone! Today I will be sharing part of my story that involves some change and baby steps to regaining my life. It was during that time that I would come across part of someone’s faith journey, and it would greatly impact me. I believe this is one of the many reasons I love faith journeys, and why God has called me to create Draw Near to Me. Enjoy!

I admit it, I like certain consistencies in my life.  I dread moving because making new friends can be difficult and honestly, I just like to know where the non-sketchy grocery store is located. Flashback to graduate school when I walked to the local grocery store in my happy bubble only to find that everyone there was quite grumpy and there was a cop car circling the parking lot.  I smiled and said hello to the cashier during check out and got an angry grunt and an apathetic stare in return.  Uh oh.  Wait, why was there a cop car patrolling the parking lot again?  When I walked out of the place, I saw the sign plastered on the sliding glass door proclaiming it to be the friendliest store in town and I thought, “If this is the friendliest place, I am in trouble.”

Moving to a different state again was a big change in my life, but a welcome one.  Thankfully my friend John, who I was going to work for, directed me to where the safer areas to live were located, so no scary grocery stores!  However, moving was not without its challenges.  I had not anticipated the shock of being in one area of science where I felt confident and on top of my game, to feeling like I knew nothing in this new field of research.  What compounded that discomfort was even more difficult.  The waves of grief began to hit me now that I was in a place where I could truly begin to process things.   I was drawn to walking along the beach each morning because it felt soothing to hear the waves as I tried to process everything that had happened over the years. Now, before you get this visual of someone strolling casually down the shore having this tranquil moment of reflection let me burst your bubble, it involved some ugly crying most of the time. It was not cute. 

Over the months, I slid into my habit of making science the center of everything.  I worked long hours because I wanted to avoid having time to think about the things that hurt.  It was easier to lose myself in my work than face my life.  Then one Saturday I was working in the lab, and I suddenly began to wonder where my life had gone.  I recalled that when I was in my early teens, I had this whole image of what my life would be like when I was twenty-one (apparently that was “old” when I was a teenager).  I had imagined that I would have a career, a boyfriend, a dog, my own car, and would own a house.  When I turned twenty-one, I was still in college, had no boyfriend, no dog, no car, and I rented a house with four other girls.  Clearly, I had missed all the goals I had created when I was a teenager. 

Fast forward many, many years later and I realized that although I did have a car, I still had no job (technically I was still in a training phase), I was renting an apartment, had no boyfriend, and no dog. There I was assessing my life while sitting in lab and working on a Saturday and the prognosis was not good.  In that moment, I was struck by that feeling that my life was slipping away from me, and I had nothing to show for it.  That afternoon, I impulsively decided to put down what I was doing in lab and go “look” at this dog, named Fender, that I had been checking out on petfinder.com over several weeks.  I laugh when I say “look” because I had to drive an hour to get to the shelter she was held at, so clearly this was more of a mission to bring her home.

At the shelter the volunteer tried to steer me away from Fender and pointed me to this chunky, sedentary, little beagle, but my heart was set on Fender.  Even though she was cute, I think the reason no one adopted her was because she was very skittish due to her history of possible physical abuse followed by being abandoned and left on the streets.  I did not care that she was too nervous to come near me because I loved her already.  Her story resonated with me.  We were both coming from challenging situations but there was something better for both of us. 

I adopted her and changed her name to Anza after a desert called Anza-Borrego. This desert is known for the burst of flowers that covers the desert floor in the spring.  It felt like an analogy to life where something could appear dry and stagnant but there was something beautiful that was about to bloom if you would give it time.  Anza also became my running buddy, and this would dictate the time of day at which I would run.  A small detail, but it would be something that led me to meet my future husband, and I believe that God is in all the details.  Ultimately, adopting my sweet baby girl was really a step toward taking my life back. 

Something else that began to shift when I moved was my interest in God.  I began to seek Him out in very small ways.  At first, I would just watch Joel Osteen on TV because he seemed like a positive guy.  I know people have their opinions about him, but at that time, I needed that optimism.  At the end of his service, he would ask if you wanted to surrender your life to Christ and I often thought, “No. Not today, Joel. I wish I could, but I just cannot.”  

Then I went a step further and would occasionally go to church in person.  The church I went to was very big, so it was easy to slip into the back unnoticed as the band finished singing all their worship songs and the lights were still dimmed.  At that point my attitude was, “Why would I want to listen to those songs? That kills 15-20 minutes of my Sunday. If I come in late, I can skip all of that.”  Besides, people would put their hands in the air while singing and I thought it was just plain weird. What was wrong with them? I did not realize that I would later become that very same hand waving, singing at the top of my lungs, and swaying with the music while worshipping God kind of person.

However, back then, coming in late and leaving early allowed me to feel like I could just come and go as I pleased without being noticed.  It was a very low-pressure way for me to be able to listen to the sermon but be noncommittal.   I would often feel better after hearing a sermon, so I continued to “dabble” in church and went sporadically throughout the years.  

But just as in Luke 15 where the father in the parable of the lost son was watching for his son to return, God continued to wait patiently and watch for my return. 

I had been wandering and when I attended church the purpose was not necessarily to be near God, I was simply seeking a way to “try to feel better somehow” while I tried to figure out whether God could be trusted. I was still holding a grudge against Him.  Then one morning I heard something that would begin to change everything. 

That day I walked into church late and hid in the back per usual.  I did not anticipate that anything of great significance would happen.  In fact, I had arrived and sat down just when the worship songs had ended and I essentially thought to myself, “Sweet, I avoided that waste of my time.” 

In the dim lighting you could still see the three big screens in the front of the church that were located on the left side, center, and right side of the stage.  I fixed my eyes on the one on the left as the light began to hit the screens and the image of a man appeared.  He began to tell his testimony, and it was one I would never forget. 

Ike was a local police officer, and his story was about his twenty-one-year-old son’s killer.  The entirety of the story was not revealed, but the shortened version was that his son had gone to a friend’s house to hang out.  While he was there a drug dealer came by, there was an altercation, and the drug dealer shot and killed Ike’s son and one or two other young men.  One can only imagine the depths of sorrow and grief that must have been experienced by those families.  

As he continued sharing his story, Ike spoke of something that happened that shocked him.  The time had finally come for the trial, and it would be the first time he would see his son’s murderer face to face.  He expected to feel hatred when he walked into the courtroom and laid eyes on his son’s killer in person for the first time, but what he felt instead shook him deeply.  He felt love.  How could it be that he would feel love instead of hate for the man that had killed his son? 

Ike’s next words hit me like a brick.  When explaining how love stood in the place of hate, he said something to the effect of how he knew in that moment that “God had protected my heart from hatred.”  That was it. A simple but powerful statement.

In a story that seemed to have no redemption, God was working.  Though the man was sentenced to life, the rest of the story was amazing.  Ike would eventually write and send a kind letter to his son’s murderer.  One day, Ike received a response.  The man wrote back and said that while in prison he had encountered God, and he had told God that he would believe in Him and that He was real if the father of one of the men he killed would reach out to him.  He had challenged God with what seemed like the impossible.  When he received Ike’s letter, he was taken aback.  He did not know what to do.  God had responded.  

What God did in that circumstance was beyond what any of us would normally be able to fathom. It was something that I am sure would have brought Ike’s son’s murderer to tears. Ike felt led by the Lord to make an astounding proposal.  He told his son’s killer that while he would never be able to replace his son, he was welcome to be part of his family. Ike had offered to receive him as an adopted son.  The man accepted and went from being known as a murderer to being known as a son.  

For me, something changed when I heard that testimony.  God broke my hardened heart.  As soon as I heard Ike utter the words, “God had protected my heart from hatred,” I knew immediately that God had done the same for me. All those years when I felt no hatred for the drunk driver who killed Jared, I had assumed that maybe I was just a lot nicer than I thought (ahem… apparently not so humble).  I would shrug my shoulders mentally and not wrestle too hard with the mystery of why I did not hate him because I could not come up with a conclusion. 

But now I was confronted with the reality of what had happened over all that time.  I could no longer deny how God had protected and shielded my heart from hatred for Jared’s killer even when I was kicking and screaming for God to stay away from me.  God had stood in the gap when I accused Him of abandoning me.  The weight of that thought brought me to tears in the church.  

Ike’s testimony was a catalyst to opening my heart to the possibility that God was for me all this time.  I will always be grateful that Ike was able to have the courage to share something so close to his heart for the sake of helping others. 

Although I would like to say that I was able to see God clearly from that point and immediately surrendered to Christ in that moment, I did not.  It was absolutely a critical step forward, but something was still holding me back.  There was an unrecognized obstacle that God had to eliminate before I got to that point of accepting Christ, and it would involve some crushing. 

……………

And now for a completely unsolicited picture of Anza! She may have had a rough start, but she is basically a princess now. Case in point, the picture below is her waiting for me to finish washing the covers for ALL her beds that are stacked up in that picture… and no, we do NOT have a large house…we just have one that is full of an excessive number of dog beds for our ONE dog, little Miss Anza Panza.