Setting the Stage (Part II)

Anguish threw my sister on the couch and swept my brother into the refuge of my mother's arms. I remember my grandmother opened her arm to console me, and as she wrapped it around my waist, my heart sternly protested, “What are you doing? Don’t touch me. I don’t need you.” Anguish compelled me to promptly construct a stronghold inside of which I would imprison my heart for years to come.

Within this bastion, my heart grew cold and isolated. More than anyone, including my dad, I was angry at God. As I said, I knew facets about God, but true understanding was blinded by circumstance. I began to ask, “He is the one who claims to be all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful, right? Then why me? Why anyone?”  My anger towards God was frequently displayed in colorless language, hole-filled walls, contemplations of suicide, and broken relationships.


Remember how I said I knew about God’s attributes? Well, to my conscience’s dismay, I also knew about Christ and His death on the cross. The interesting thing about it was that no matter how angry with God the Father I was, I could never be mad at Christ Himself. This image of Him on the cross, giving His own perfect life for the sin of the world, laid stake in my mind. A residency that He would not relinquish. And my conscience suffered for it because looking back now, every instance in which I tried to cast Him out has been followed with, “Why are you doing this? I desire so much more for you. I died for you to truly love and be loved.”

I lived my junior high and high school years in trenches of anger and depression, plowed by genuine despair. Sure, I was the guy who wore a smile, and wore it well, but I was dying inside. I was caught in a desolate search for true love, intimacy, hope, joy, and all other aspects of life that make it worth living. With each new pursuit, however, I continued only to find myself more and more void of all these things.

I grew immensely hungry and increasingly thirsty for Life. And not the ‘life’ that is portrayed by our second-rate media either - money, popularity, glamour, sex; I tried those - I’m talking about True Life. But the food I ate and the water I drank left me hopeless and empty. I ate bread that could never fulfill and drank water that could never satisfy. You see, my longings went far beyond what can be touched with our hands and seen with our eyes. They reached to the very depths of what can only be held in our hearts and cherished in our souls.

For years, I wasn't ready to give in. I wasn't ready to trust. My feet were swift to run into arms that betrayed me time and time again. Part of me somewhat expected these arms to lose their grip, because I knew they could never hold me securely. But what if I trusted in the everlasting Arms and they let me down? To whom was I to run then?

So my feet continued on, searching for water in a barren land. My strength to persevere was diminishing and my hope was fading with the sun into an even more cold and lonely night.

Then, the summer before my junior year of high school, my friend Matt asked me to go with him on a men’s retreat to the Sierra Mountains with his dad’s church. “Fishing, food, and flatulence. Why not?” I thought. “Time with the guys would be nice.”

We hiked. We fished. We ate fish... lots of fish. Then we sat around the fire to share our stories. Tom shared first. He was a tall man who could flawlessly destroy any of us if he dared. Lucky for us, he had not a violent bone in him. Not that I ever saw anyway. Plus, I slept well, confident that he frightened even the bears away. In the midst of his story, Tom spoke of how Jesus is the Bread of Life and Living Water. I thought not much of it, until I began to share myself.

Somehow in the midst of my story, unexpectedly, and so graciously, spoken by Tom and ushered by the Holy Spirit, I heard these words on that mountain, "I am The Bread of Life and the Living Water. Whoever eats of Me will never hunger again. Whoever drinks of Me will never thirst again."

This was the Truth I longed to hear. This was the reality I longed to behold. This was the Love worth living for. So, in my brokenness, as the glow of the campfire illuminated my tears, all I could say was, "I'm so hungry. I'm just so hungry." I realized that my anger towards God was unfounded, for He and Christ are One. The very One I could never be mad at - the One who gave His life for us - was the very God I resented all those years. And if He would reach as far as to take the form of a man and die on a cross for all who would come to have true, repentance-proven faith in Him, is not His reach long enough to save me too? Is not His desire for me evidently good? And if it is good, then both my dad’s death and my fruitless efforts were not His desired will.

You may think this is were I give witness to the transforming power of the Holy Spirit and how He miraculously turned my life around that day to live a life free from fear, free from sin, and free from self; where I raise my hands and shout ‘Hallelujah!’ while dancing naked and handling snakes. This, however, would be untrue. Actually, the last part will always be untrue, at least as it pertains to this blog and the public eye.

My journey with God has been, well, just that, a journey. One where I run and retreat, stand firm and stumble, conquer and am conquered. There are mountains God helps me overcome, and ones I ascend only to plummet back down again. But this endeavor takes perseverance, and loads of it.

There is much I have learned, much I am learning, and even more I have yet to learn. I am an unfinished work. If I were not, I would be a shoddy final product. Nevertheless, I am “confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in [us] will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6).

In fact, I think some of the most significant realizations in my life took place just last summer in 2009 when...

(...join me next Monday for another chapter...)

Setting the Stage (Part I)

Hi friends! Thank you for taking the time to read my blog. It is my hope that you will not relinquish your time in vain, as the pages that consume this blog will be filled with the depths of my heart in its truest forms. This life is short. Let us hold nothing back.

I thought it fitting to start this blog by giving you a little background about myself. Hopefully, setting for you the stage of my life will more clearly reveal how my plot unfolds upon it.

As a child, I had a decent knowledge of God. I knew that He is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-sovereign - you know, that He has ‘everything under control.’ But herein lied the problem, I knew just enough to be dangerous to myself and to anyone caught in the aftermath of my childhood. I knew only enough to see as if in a mirror dimly with wounded eyes nearly closed.

For the majority of people, the most significant life changes occur in high school or college, when hormones rage like atom bombs and hunting... I mean, dating season is utterly in session. For most, it’s a era of discovering new truths about the world and how we fit into it. For me, however, the most drastic amendment in my life was written on May 6th, in the fourth grade, on a day I will never forget.

The phone called out to my teacher with a low, sinister quality; taunting her with each ring. She answered and, after agonizingly hanging up, slowly approached me. After reaching my desk, she held a heavy pause. Then apprehensively said, “You’ve been summoned to the principle's office.”


“The principle’s office?” I thought. “Could I have done something so improper as to demand principle punishment? Don’t they know little boys show interest in little girls by way of juvenile buffoonery and ridicule?"

"Maybe it's not bad at all. Maybe he wants to celebrate my nine and 1/8 birthday with me! Maybe he finally realizes what a substantial student I am and wants to present me with a handsome reward for my scholastic contributions.” I was hoping for the latter, but my teacher’s expression led me to believe otherwise.

It was a warm San Diego day without a cloud in the sky. But the rain was about to come. As we marched to the office, the breeze felt oddly frigid - as if the sun’s heart had stopped beating altogether, leaving only a lifeless shell. Each step was frozen. Reluctant to advance. But there was no escaping it. The pages had already been written. The story began to unfold.

Upon entering the principle’s quarters, there stood my grandmother with heavy eyes and a heavier heart. “Why is she here? Did they call in reinforcements?” I considered. But her countenance carried not a hint of vehemence, only a burden. One that relentlessly weighed on her. The principle, hesitantly but firmly - as if he was forcing himself to give a command he never wished to relay - relieved me from my scholarly duties immediately.

Discharged. And before lunch? Any fourth grader would be ecstatic! I, however, felt no sense of such jubilee; for this freedom would enslave me to an imprisonment far worse than school.

My siblings soon marched in after me. “Why are they here? We aren’t that unruly of a crew so as to all be in trouble at the same time... Are we?”

The ride home was strangely silent. The air had become stiff with sorrow. The conventionally brief journey seemed to take hours. It was as if the road itself was extending its reach, desperate to hold us back and safeguard us from our sentence. But its grasp was too weak. It could not contend with fate.

We entered my grandmother’s driveway, and as I opened my door, there stood the tall pecan tree out front that, for years, had served as our own youthful fortress. But this time, she cried out to us with the whimpering breeze, pleading for us to find refuge in her branches. The sea of ivy that surrounded her reached out to us, attempting to pull us into its tide, desperately trying to drown us in safety. They too knew our days of innocence were over. They knew we would never again play as we once did. They knew that our childish ignorance had been stolen.

As we walked around the side of the house, my mother’s grief swiftly drown out all other sounds of sorrow. Her lament was such that I had never seen nor heard before, and have not since. Agony consumed her voice. She could scarcely fight it back as she spoke to us saying, “Kids... I have something to tell you...”

And yet she need not say another word.

It was written in her eyes and on her cheeks. Her tears spelled it plainly. I knew before she said another word that my father had died.

(...Thank you for reading. To be continued next Monday... Until then, may the LORD bless and keep you. The LORD make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The LORD turn His face toward you and give you peace. For the glory of His name. - Numbers 6:24-26)