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i can understand some people having much more trouble grasping the experience of having a working relationship with God. we are all different and faith and God are not easy concepts at times. i do NOT think that faith has anything to do with personal merit. personally i think that faith is a "dance" between God and people. the only experience i can go by is my own. it is surprising to me that i have faith because my background was not one that made faith easily available to me. our homelife was the exact opposite of all that i think of now as "holy".
my grandfather and some other relatives were satanists who abused me in the "practice of their faith". they came close to killing me, breaking my heart and damaging my mind along the way. my first pastor in a church my brother's and i went to without my parents, molested me and frightened me. the rest of my childhood years were negative and had much abuse and no nurture except for what i read in books and pretended to have. at 18 i graduated high school and by october was planning my suicide. tried the college counseling office and told them i was suicidal and needed help. they did diagnostic tests and told me i needed to be more involved with people. they recommended i become a tutor. the end of their help. i called a crisis line not long after i practiced for my suicide by mixing my mom's medicine with my dad's booze. dexedrine plus vodka before classes one day and all that happened was i felt rather relaxed and energetic at the same time. the person on the crisis line put me in touch with a teen group run by a faith-based organization of the christian persuasion. in a few weeks, after i observed these kids for a week or two, i went to a meeting and had an experience with God that "ignited, initiated" my faith.
as i experienced it, God reached out to me and it was like He gently stopped me right where i was and interacted with me. it was not a subtle, cool experience. i was in this group time with about 15 other teens and adults and i raised my hand and said. "i don't know what it is you people have, but i want it" - direct and uncool quote.
those "people" helped me talk to God, my first prayer. it "felt" awkward and strange. they had me acknowledge to God that i need him, that i knew i had done wrong at times in my life and that i was asking Him to rescue me. i knew basics about christian ideas or theology but it had always been meaningless to me. in 1971 there was a upswing in spiritual hunger and encounters with the Christian God - some people called it "The Jesus Movement" and called us "Jesus Freaks" - that was no big deal, i'd definitely been called much worse. the next day i remember looking in the mirror and saying with amazement, "i am a Christian".
i began to interact with God on a daily basis and it was a dialogue, not just a monologue. i began to read the Bible and it suddenly had meaning and was compulsively readable and it never was before then - just the opposite - it was dry and dull before. i heard God in my thoughts, not audibly.
my choices, character and personality began to change - they changed so much that my mom (the arch skeptic) became a Christian believer a month after me. our homelife became so much better, it was mind-blowing (my mom was one of my top two abusers and did me a lot of harm).
{these changes were not due to studying and practicing rules or religious exercises - they just seemed to happen as i interacted with God and other people around me - both those who believed in God and those who didn't, it was a dynamic period in my life that drew me out of a grave and back into life} i understand the structure and practice of the Christian faith, but i am lousy at religion!!!!!!!
this post is very long but it is the genuine love story in my life. i've had a tough time in life, over 12 abusers and all kinds of abuse, dx of ptsd, depression, anxiety, mpd/did and many stress-related illnesses and chronic pain. in spite of or maybe because of all this my relationship with God has continued for 37 years and no matter what i've gone through including addiction, self-injury, 3 miscarriages and a difficult time being a wife and mom due to past abuse in my dysfunctional being as i reacted to all the awful things i went through, yet, i am still passionately thrilled to be in a relationship with God. i have experienced all kinds of emotional responses to God as well as intellectual experiences - anger, sadness, pain, agony, jealousy, boredom, ecstasy, curiosity, frustration, resentment, insanity,grief, fear misunderstanding, anxiety......whatever.
this complex dance between God and me is expressed well in a short poem i love called:
"The Weaver"
My life is but a weaving between my Lord and me,
I cannot choose the colors, He weaveth steadily,
Oft times He weaveth sorrow and I in foolish pride,
Forget He sees the upper and I the under side.
Not til the loom is silent and the shuttles cease to fly,
Will God unroll the canvas and explain the reasons why
The dark threads are as needful in the Weaver's skillful hand, As the threads of gold and silver, in the pattern He has planned. (author's name unknown to me)
i believe that there is no one excluded from the possibility of faith and relationship with God. i understand the feeling of not being able to encounter it and grasp it and the wonder if somehow i am the only different one who can't have what others have and do what others do. but i do not think this is true. it is available. just the fact of a person's asking means that something of faith is already going on in someone's life.
leslie/susana mariah
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  HEALING HAPPENS
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