How many houses/moves did Holli make by the time she was 13 years old? ……Thirteen! – come on now – you could have guessed that, right?
Yes, I moved around a lot when I was young, and it wasn’t due to my father being in the military. The short of it was my mother and father divorced when I was young and he was almost non-existent in our lives from that time forward; my mother died by the time I was 9 and it took a few more moves before I would find my way into my guardians’ home at the age of 10. As I have alluded to in a previous post, this house was not your “Mayberry” experience – yet I was warm, full and well educated.
See, my aunt was the “Jesus freak” in my family…and while I loved her dearly, I thought she was part of a cult! I didn’t have much upbringing in the church until I moved in with P&B (the guardians – who strangely enough now live just across the bay from me in Concord, CA!) who were Episcopalian. So when I moved in with my aunt who informed me she was happy to have me – but that I was required to go to church if I lived there – I was a little freaked out to go to church where people were clapping, raising hands and saying things I had only seen in movies. Yet, in God’s great sense of humor I heard the pastor preach that first Sunday about John 3 where Nicodemous is talking to Jesus and Jesus tells him that he has to be “born again” in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. So, the term “born again” wasn’t a cultish term? It was straight out of the bible? I guess, then, maybe I had to rethink this whole thing of her being in a cult.
By the time I got to the next part, though, I knew something big was happening at that very moment in my life. My heart picked up a little, maybe even started to skip a beat here and there. I can remember this moment in my life so clearly – so vividly. I was sitting up in the loft of our house…reading the story of how God loves me so much, yet that He is so holy He couldn’t be around us humans that were so unholy; nonetheless, because of God’s great love for me He could never leave me in the state that I was in – and that is WHY He sent Jesus to the earth – to bridge the GAP for me between my yucky state of sin, of selfishness and pride – and God and His holiness. And all I had to do was acknowledge that Jesus did this for me, invite Him into my heart and the rest would be HIStory so to speak.
What I didn’t know as I read this part of the letter is that my subconscious, my heart had already made the decision my brain was just catching up to making. I cannot even begin to describe what happened next…and you can only know if it has happened to you. The very presence of God did not just step into my very body – He RUSHED in at full force. It was not scary or weird or anything you are probably thinking…but peaceful and real and honest – and everything I had ever wanted. In that one instant, I felt more love and more joy than I had ever known in my 18 years of life. I knew beyond any shadow of doubt that the voice I had heard over the years when I was crying in the depths of despair …the voice I thought was my own encouraging me to keep my chin up and to know that better days were ahead…was actually the voice of the Creator of the ends of the Earth, of the heavens and the Earth below – of the entire universe. This same Creator was speaking to me – to lil’ ol” me!?!?!?
Not knowing what else to do…what do you think I did? That’s right – I grabbed my journal and started to write. (A journal I can’t seem to find in my last move, please pray that it will turn up!) I didn’t journal in the first person as I normally did…no, I journaled about this lost and lonely little girl who had lost her mother, and her family and now about to lose her father…but that I heard this voice on the other side of the door telling me He “saw” me, He knew my pain and my joy and the love that I held in my heart for life and for people…and He encouraged me to the door, beckoned me ever so sweetly. As this girl drew closer to the door, she had this overwhelming peace (mentioned above 🙂 come over her and heard his voice as she reached out for the handle telling her, “All will be okay if you open the door,” or something along those lines…
Well, HIStory didn’t end there. Another month went by before I said anything to anyone, even though I knew something had dramatically shifted in my soul. I don’t know why I remained quiet, but I did. It was my birthday before my aunt got it out of me…driving on the way to church. I had taken communion the previous Sunday – which my aunt had rightly told me not to take unless I had Jesus as my savior and Lord. So, the next Sunday she nonchalantly asked me about this act and what it meant to me. I can still remember feeling like such a little child when I quietly admitted that I had accepted, “Jesus as my savior and Lord.” She was so excited that I thought she was going to drive us right into a ditch along Loop 1604! Maybe the timing wasn’t the best for either of us…but the cat was out of the bag.
Later that afternoon I felt led to share my journal entry with her…at which point she started crying. I was a little baffled and shocked at her reaction cause I thought it was a happy piece! What she was crying about though, was that unbeknownst to me…a child of God but yet not of the Bible …a young woman who had no training in God’s Word had written a story resembling a verse that is found in the last book of the bible. Oh how sweet that revelation was for both of us…for it made the work of the Holy Spirit that much more real. For how else could I have written something so similar to what John the apostle had written almost 2000 years before me?
