The Rebirth of My Faith

For most of my life I felt different. I didn’t have much, my parents were young, we were dysfunctional… I felt like everyone else had it together and knew we didn’t. When I became a Christian, all these things were still true. The only difference was that I was a Christian, and God was the only thing I had in common with these other people. For the most part I felt like others either looked down on me, or pitied me. However, some people along the way genuinely loved me and wanted to help me. I was given much and was told to remember it, because one day, I would be expected to give it back. That rang loud and true in my life. So working at the adoption agency was going to be the beginning of giving back… I thought my life would be an encouragement to them, that I could help them change their lives. That through my life they would see there was hope for their future, for their lives, through Christ. Little did I know, it was one of them, one of their lives, that would change my life forever.

I will go ahead and tell you this is very difficult for me to write. It is hard. It is a rough story, so if you are faint at heart, it will at the very least make you sad. So, here we go. I need to explain to you the nature of my old job. I was a crisis pregnancy counselor to young girls who were preparing to place their unborn child for adoption. I counseled them before hand, went through the paperwork they would sign, I worked with the attorney to prepare them, the doctors, the adoptive parents, any one involved… and the birthfather. I was involved in just about every aspect of the adoption, from beginning to end. It was incredible. God was ever present. Every detail of my day was laid out by Him. I saw and participated in some of the most incredible experiences you could imagine. Adoption is a beautiful physical picture of what God did for us as his heirs. That is a whole other blog. Really if you want to talk to me for hours, let’s talk about adoption.

On January 1, 1999 I walked in the door at my new job to about thirty active client cases. The first two I was involved with were the most difficult two in my entire career there. Because of the confidentiality of the profession I can not go into the details on this blog. There are so many sad sick facts that I learned. I will just say that I immediately learned to hate a stranger. It was a text book case of incest. The birthmother was a sweet preteen girl who was due in Feb. No one intervened until she became pregnant. Oh, I was just devastated hearing it. She delivered a healthy baby, and placed the child in the care of the agency. In the meantime, because I was the worker on the case I had to visit her father in prison get him to sign his paperwork relinquishing his rights as the parent to the baby/ grandbaby. It is so sad to type that… I drove the three hours to the prison. I pulled over once and had some sort of nausea-type anxiety attack… I was terrified. The notary was provided by the prison, so I was all alone preparing to meet this man, this child molester.

As many relatives as I had in one, I had never actually gone to visit a state penitentiary… I want to describe the scenery for those of you who have never had the pleasure of visiting one of our fine Alabama correctional institutions. So much of this was visual for me… It was your typical cinder-block grey lifeless building with guards posted at the front gate, which had barbed wire topping it. You had to practically get finger printed just to enter. So a guard escorted me and my very scared self to a locked “conference” room. It was NYPD Blue style, wired windows, cage in the corner. The furniture looked like stuff that old downtown offices would donate to the thrift store after they sold all their decent “going out of business” stuff at an auction. So I sat there alone for fifteen minutes. But it wasn’t quiet. Every time, a door opened somewhere an old school bell went off. It was not helping me settle down. Then the door started to open. In the front was a HUGE African American guard, who had “my prisoner” as he referred to him, by the arm. He was an average looking man with graying clean cut hair. He was wearing an orange prisoner’s jumper, nothing at all memorable. By his appearance he was not creepy, not noticeable, nothing that out in the real world would ever seem to indicate he was a child molester. He was shuffling back and forth towards the grey seat the had ready for him. He was chained at the feet, and couldn’t walk without noticeable constriction. His hands were chained together in front of him. The other guard went about the business of chaining him to the chair in front of me. The large guard reminded me of the big guy in the movie the Green Mile. The whole place reminds me of that movie. It felt like that movie. He said, “He is ready Mam, we will be right here if you need us”. It never occurred to me that they would stay. I felt like I was on stage. I was so nervous, disgusted, I really didn’t know what to say. I had to go over the contracts and the paperwork. He agreed to sign them, but stopped me first. He noticed the part that stated that the birth father was due counseling as well as the birthmother before placement. He said, he wanted to take advantage of his services. Stunned, I let him just talk.

Here is what he said… He talked about how alone he felt and isolated. He expressed that he was a God –fearing man, a believer. How he knew it was wrong and wished that he could have stopped. He minimized how much it hurt his daughter. Said it would all be over when the baby was gone. He marginalized his choice and said it was just as much his wife’s fault because she never stopped him. He was mad at his family for cutting him off. He said he was just a sinner and they should forgive him. He had a sickness and he needed help, not to be punished. He was totally rationalizing his sin. This most horrible sin. He was a victim. He really believed if he just “got right” he would be healed and he could minister to others and get his family back. Did you feel disgusted by that? I was horrified. He filled out his paperwork, and I got out of there.

But… Were you paying attention to my last blog? If you read it this all seemed familiar to you. Last time I wrote, “I let go of my faith and took back everything I had given to God. I justified my sin, minimized and marginalized it. I kept my secrets close. No one seemed to notice. I ached for God, for forgiveness, but I continued to bathe myself in sin.” Everything that came out of his mouth had been nearly verbatim what I would say to myself about my own sin. I had given myself over to sin and denied God, just as he.

I was in the parking lot outside of this prison when it hit me. I was him. I was no different than him. No! No! you say, you didn’t DO that. Well, I didn’t, but my heart was in the same condition as his. I was a victim of nothing more than my own flesh. I was beginning to be humbled. I realized that I wasn’t the least of all Christian’s, I was the Chief of all sinners. I was just the same as a child molester. Now, there is much theology behind that statement. I am not an articulate theologian and I shrivel in comparison to some of my good friends and their ability to recite the Shorter Catechisms, join FB groups dedicated to Spurgeon, or translate Greek and Hebrew. But you don’t have to understand anything more than this to understand what I have said. Sin is the common denominator among man, not good. We have all “sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God”. When I realized the depths of my sin, the comparable place I had in line next to the child molestor, I began to realize, that not only was I a hopeless sinner, I did not deserve the gift of my salvation… or to be rescued, or to be a child of the King. I was covered in filth. I was disgusted with this man, and sickened by his perversion, and then I realized that I was just like him. I was walking around in the world hiding my sin, hiding how bad I was, and in the darkness I let sin take over me. No one could tell. I looked just fine. “Oh what a wretched man I am!” I started the car, and the ‘journey’ on my three hours to home. As I drove, I was being transformed. My life was making sense. All of this hard stuff, it wasn’t less, it was more. I had been give MORE than I “could ever ask or imagine”. I had been blessed to a degree through these challenges that suddenly made my soul feel like it was bursting into a million pieces of gratitude. I was starting to really love the Lord, really understand my place as his child. He took me! He died for ME! I didn’t deserve it! He took my gross, dirty filthy rags to the cross with him. He was changing me, I did love him before, but I didn’t understand this. I did not understand grace. Grace is being given what you don’t deserve, and mercy is not being given what you do deserve. I did not understand how undeserving I was. I had been mad that life was not better or easier after I became a Christian.

I was not good enough for God. I was not good enough, and I didn’t have to be. Freedom in Christ, it was something I didn’t get. It made sense now. My love for God, my gratitude for his grace towards me began anew that day. I began to see others as God saw them. I developed a deeper compassion toward all people, especially my clients, than I could have ever mustered on a “good day”. I began to see through the holes of my condemning spirit. I was in no place to hold someone over the fire anymore, I was only able to now hold their hand and lead them to the forgiving, sacrificing God who truly loves them. Out of me poured His love. Gratitude became my motivator for service. Love for Him, truly became the foundation for peace in my life. This transformation was the beginning of a grace-centered faith.

I still wrestle with sin. I am still drawn to the darkness, but I don’t ever feel like I am hopeless or that life is hopeless. I know that next to me in the car that day the Holy Spirit talked me through every corner of my heart and reshaped my viewpoint on just about everything. It was miraculous.