It Felt Like Coming Home.

It was exceptionally warm, the sound of the kickball game going on provided a nice roar to cover my silence. Enough beating around the bush. I dug my toe into the dirt, squinting in the sunlight streaming down in all directions. A boy now more part man than all child and growing faster every day rounded third, sprinting for the plate as the ball hurtled back into the infield.

"I really, really messed up," I told her as the towheaded boy, awkwardly running in his newly acquired height, crossed the plate at full speed. Safe.

I told her everything, actually. I closed my eyes and unfolded all of the edges as she took in the entirety of a really ugly mess that resides in what seems my all too recent memory. I told her how it happened. How I chose. How it hurt. How I cried. How it ended. How it still comes in waves, like last night when I felt like I was drowning even though it's been almost two years and shouldn't I be past this by now? But thanks for holding my hand, there are some times when I'm not sure if I'll be able to come up for air again at all.

Deep breath, I tore my gaze finally away from the game across the field, bracing myself for the look that always comes when anyone hears part of this story of mine. The eyes filled with pity and disgust, judging every single layer I had tried to peel apart. Dropping the trust I had so gingerly placed in their care. No wonder it's been broken so many times.

But she wasn't looking at me like that. She actually was looking at me the exact same way she had before I even tried to dive into this mess. She shrugged, smiled.

You're not broken. You're still worth it. We all do things, it doesn't make you any less of a person. I love you the same as always.

I thought my heart might just implode. I didn't realize how deeply painful the drought had been until I finally felt the rain. How thirsty I was for just a bit of unconditional love, a bit of acceptance. The kickball game wrapped up and we headed toward the field to join the circle of hands that connected a large number of the people who mean the most to me in the world. I don't know if she knew how drastically my world had been changed in that moment... that the glass castle I had built around myself had just been shattered. I could feel the sunshine, and it felt like coming home.

~

It's important you know some of the back story here. It's not everything, because the everythings are better shared in coffee shops, hands wrapped around warm mugs, or in left field of a community park in a small town in West Virginia that has all kinds of a hold on your heart. Call me up sometime, we'll share in the everythings.

I'd been on this trip for years. This year was my sixth, actually. Long enough to watch 4-year-olds become middle-schoolers with hearts the size of Texas and to have plenty of "remember that one time?!" stories. Long enough to feel like I was coming home rather than leaving it when I put Arnoldsburg, West Virginia into my GPS. Except, this year, I didn't really want to go.

It really boils down to the fact that I had a lot of pain I was holding on to. A sea of heartache I didn't think I could wade through or figure out so I sat on the shore ignoring it. A lot of distance I had tried to place between me and a God I was fairly certain didn't even exist, and if He did, then sure as hell didn't want anything to do with someone like me. So, as much as I wanted to see some of my favorite people in the world, spending a week telling them about something I didn't believe in myself didn't exactly sound like a good time. My desire to stay home was only strengthened when 2 of the co-teachers in my class dropped out of the trip a week before we left. And I was flying in from a family vacation the night before I needed to leave (to drive by myself, because everyone else would already be there). But in the end, desire to see everyone won out and I went anyway.

We run a VBS at a small church in this town of Arnoldsburg. It's a system now of how we go visiting to let people know we're here, and how we pick the kids up and bring them home Monday through Friday so that they can come learn about Jesus with us. The good thing was that, even though I may not necessarily have believed it, I had grown up in church, so I knew all the right words to say when it came to teaching about Jesus and the gospel. I'd had 20 years of experience in hearing it said to me, and teaching isn't much of a struggle for me, so Monday came along and we began our lessons in our VBS theme of 'Colossal Coaster World' where our message was Facing Fear and Trusting God. We were learning about Paul and every day we would add a piece of his story.

(What we learned of Paul's story, as summarized by me:
Paul was not a good guy at the beginning of the story. He was named Saul, and he was famous for arresting Christians and having them brutally beaten and murdered. He thought that God was a joke and he refused to have anything to do with Him, except for when it came to arresting His people. But then God came along and stopped him. Literally stopped him in his tracks on the road to Damascus and said 'Saul, why are you persecuting me?' and Saul went blind and was completely shocked. Enter Ananias, God's faithful servant, who then followed God's voice and went to Saul, telling him about God and, with God in him, healed Saul of his blindness, allowing him to become Paul. Paul was completely ecstatic about this God that he now knew to be entirely real and who had changed everything about him. He went around praising God and preaching about Him, but the people of God didn't trust him because of what he had done. They didn't see how someone who had done such terrible things could be loved and changed by God so instantly, and they didn't trust his transformation. They didn't trust him so much so that they wanted him to be taken out of the city, and they were prepared to hurt him. Enter Barnabas, a man of God who believed what Paul said and helped him to flee the city safely. Later, in Philippi, Paul and his friend Silas were preaching the word of God when they happened upon a slave girl possessed with a demon who allowed her to tell fortunes. They cast out the demon, making the girl's owners very mad, and they persuaded the leaders of the city to arrest the two men. While in jail, they were praising God and praying without ceasing, which is the exact opposite of what you would expect from someone who was just put in jail. That night there was an earthquake and all of the prisoner's chains were broken and the doors were opened. The jailer woke up and freaked out because he thought that all of the prisoners had escaped, so he was about t kill himself before the officials would kill him when Paul yelled to him and told him that no one had gone. The jailer ran into the cell and asked how to be saved, and Paul told him that he just had to believe in Jesus. The jailer took them home and his whole family was saved.)

There's more to the story, of course, and I think you should read it when you have time. It's incredible the works that God did through Paul's life.

It wasn't an accident that this was the story of the week. Because, friends, this story sunk right down into the very core of who I was.

Wednesday came, the day we share the ABC's of salvation, which is the Gospel message that Jesus came to earth to die and rise again for our sins so that we could have communion with God in heaven one day. I'd heard the story a million times, and spouted off all of the right things to say without really thinking too terribly much about it. After Wednesday came Thursday, the day of invitation. We have a group-wide invitation where we invite people to ask Jesus into their lives if they haven't before. It's an incredible time where people get to choose to accept what they have been listening to all week, or to walk away from it. Every class sent a teacher to the front at the altar to talk to and pray with the kids that might come up from the respective classes. Our class sent me. After a while and a few wonderful re-dedications, one girl in my class named Kirsta came up to the front. She was so incredibly excited, she wanted to ask Jesus into her heart! And, Miss Sarah, that means that I get to be with God forever and that I get to talk to Him and that He will help me through hard times and oh, Miss Sarah, I am so excited because I get JESUS!

It rocked the foundation of my little world, that girl in that moment. I had 'accepted Jesus' some years ago as a kid, a decision I had made because it was what everyone I knew had done, and one of my friends had just walked to the front so I might as well. Also, I get to have communion if I do it so that sounds pretty cool. But it was never excitement. It was never I get JESUS!... It was just what I was supposed to do, if I believed it or not. God was an obligation, something I accepted as being real just as I had accepted that the sky was blue. It was what the people I trusted had said, but not something I had really delved into to see if it was something I believed. It definitely wasn't something I had acted on at all.

And so we prayed, and we were excited, and she wanted to be baptized, and we wrote her name down and she went and sat back down with our class. I was overwhelmed... all these people and all these moments this week... ones I didn't even write about because, let's face it, this blog post would be about 12 years long if I told you all the details... all of the sudden, it just made sense. Because no matter how much I read, and no matter which religions I had looked at trying desperately to find something to tell me I wasn't as broken as I felt, nothing else made as much sense as Jesus. As a God who sealed me with his fingerprint, who knew that I would mess up, who sent His one and only child to live this amazingly perfect life, but still have to die so that my bad stuff wouldn't keep me away. Who let me grow and live and make decisions all because He knew that true and total love requires you to choose it. To choose love above all other things, and to let love win. That is the only way to experience all the joy that comes with loving and being loved. All this time I'd been running as far as I could, but I turn around and He's still right here. He really never left.

And so I ran. Right straight smack into the middle of the ocean of grace that I hadn't let myself believe was truly there. And in that moment, on that pew in the front of a church full of hearts that have a grip on mine, I chose. I understood that this is truth, this God that sees the mess, the brokenness, the terrible things... He still wants me. He still says, 'Hey, I pick you. Every single moment, I pick you. You're on my team.' He's real. He's not just something you read a story about, or something that you do because you're expected to on Sunday mornings when you're at home. He's real. And it sounds so elementary for someone who has grown up in a church but it blew my mind, and for the first time in a long time I didn't feel so broken. I prayed for quite some time, asking Him to move in me like he did for Paul. I finally felt myself beginning to release all of that pain I had been holding on to for so very long. Because if He can forgive Paul, and if He can forgive me, maybe it's finally time that I try and do the same for myself. Not to say it will be easy, but in the same way I didn't realize I needed rain in the drought, I didn't realize how heavy all that pain was until I felt it slide off my shoulders and I put it at the foot of the cross and walked away.

I made the decision to be baptized the following day, Friday. I wanted to follow through with telling everyone that I had made a decision to give my life to Christ, and that I want to live for Him in all that I do. That this is real to me, and not just a faith I claim on Sunday mornings, but a faith that is rooted deep into everything I am. What an incredible experience as well. I got to be baptized by a man who has become like a second father to me throughout the years of going on this trip, as well as my friend, the one who saw my mess and loved me in spite of it all. So many of the people who have come to hold an immensely special place in my heart were there also. It is amazing to know that I have this incredible support system to help me through this new journey.

~

And that brings us back to the kickball game. My heart was in a new place, and I wasn't sure how to navigate it yet. So I released pieces of my story that had been poking into my insides, keeping me from breathing. I showed them and, in return, I received love. Love from a God who pours out oceans upon oceans of grace and welcomes me in, a child splashing in true and complete joy as her Daddy watches and smiles... I know He must have smiled. I also received love from a friend. A real person who saw past my messiness and loved me anyway. What an example of Jesus in this world. We circled up around the infield, our group expanding and taking up almost its entire perimeter. As I looked around, my heart suddenly felt so full it might burst. This is love. And hope. And joy. And grace. And peace. And acceptance. And as we clasped hands and bowed our heads, I smiled. I really could feel the sunshine. And it felt like coming home.

All My Love,

-S.