"My Journey"

by

Crystal

My Journey

It can happen overnight; it did to me. Actually, in the space of only a few hours, I went from being 25 years married to separated; the father of a loving son, to the chief embarrassment of a son who hates me; the President / Founder of a successful humanitarian / relief agency to unemployed; the possessor of home, friends, and a community, to broke, outcast, and direction-less.

All of this was a bitter pill for a 45 year old to swallow, and as I flew away from my home in Athens, Greece a week later, I felt alone, disoriented, and totally grieved over the loss of almost everything significant which I had acquired in life. The pain was greater than I had ever imagined, and would stay acute for the next four months. If my friends in Belgium hadn't opened their home to me I have no clue what I would have done nor where I would have gone.

I learned that when total change is afoot, one desperately clings to icons of the past, frequently embellishing them beyond truth, viewing people, relationships, and the like, through an ideallic lens. The dysfunctional and un-satisfying aspects of my history were somehow swabbed fault-clear, and I found myself pining away for altered memories which never really existed at all. These insidious self-lies, at the point of despair, served only to exacerbate the confusion and further entrap me into an awesome and overwhelming sense of hopelessness.

As a practicing Christian and faithful career minister / pastor / missionary, I was certain that when all else failed, my personal religiosity would hold. It didn't. To my dismay, the foundational experiences and beliefs upon which I had hung my hope and steered my life, crumbled, leaving me comfortless and afraid. The irony of it all was that I didn't know if God had abandoned me, or if I had abandoned Him.

I could find no way back: neither to my home and previous life, nor to God. I spent months searching for a way to return, but all roads were blocked, and, miserably, paralyzed by perplexity, I was afraid to move on. It was the uncontested worst period of my life.

I knew from contemplation and experience that there are many avenues to confidence in God. He had hooked me at age 19 with an awesome, supernatural inner experience so utterly real that I could never doubt it, nor it's Source whom I understood intrinsically to be the one named in Scripture, Jesus Christ. Over the subsequent years I met other Believers who, though oriented a bit differently, were equally committed as I. One Christian would have as his primary understanding the service aspects of Christianity, another would be mesmerized by glimpses of the Master in nature, and another, persuaded by wisdom and logic. Each soul appeared to me like a string upon a great harp, different from the others and yet a part of the same grand instrument, gloriously manipulated by the Lord.

In my considerable distress, the supernatural Presence, which had been the bedrock of my belief, vanished. In torment, I would lie on my bed, sobbing hot, unstoppable tears, crying out to God for an answer to my sudden destruction. But, the heavens were silent and my heart was cold and dark. Doubt wormed through my confidence, bringing decay and ruin to the very core of my soul. I felt myself to be a fool. Now, humiliated, living by the kind mercy of loving friends, I had no where to go, no way back, and no God to comfort me. From my perspective, I could not have been a greater loser.

It was like waking up into a nightmare, where familiar securities are gone, and the unfamiliar landscape, menacing. Today, I'm still there, but the sun does occasionally shine, and I'm learning to navigate more certainly the terrain. But, O.. those first few months...!

I found myself with only one thing left in my hands from the past: a relic, outdated and broken, a memory of something which I had once thought significant. Upon discovering that it alone had survived, I picked it up, as I had done so very often before, only to discover that though it's shell remained, it, my faith, had lost substance. Over the months, I would try many times daily to make it work, but the words of my confessions sounded hollow and lifeless.

Only in retrospect, and that, after almost half a year, did evidence begin to appear that the Gentle Shepherd had stood faithfully by His wandering little lamb all along. Although He didn't touch me, as I had become accustomed when in His Presence, He used my circumstances to effect a deeper work, allowing me to seriously consider abdicating my place of faith.

I could not. The reality of Him, in my life, was no fabrication. It was no more possible to deny His existence than it was to deny any other thing which I had until now experienced. Thus, knowing that He was there, somewhere, I worried greatly that He had chosen to exist without me.

I determined to continue in prayer, advising Him apologetically that "until you inform me personally that I'm no longer yours, I'm going to go on behaving as though I still am." In my ignorance, I had embarked upon a new expression of belief in God, one more suited to the arduous journey ahead.

Eventually, I saw that it was indeed He who had lead me to sanctuary with my altruistic friends in Belgium; He who had provided a comfortable and secluded place in which to endure the long night of the soul; He who had blessed me with less of a job than I wanted, one which enabled me to meet my bills yet walk away when I finally knew where I had to go; and He who brought an unanticipated old friend into my pathway, and with whom I live today in anticipation of transition.

"Worries?" Sure, you bet, more than I care to count. This little one is learning, however, that for some of us, the winding course of life requires the occasional adaptation, even an adjustment in our approach to the spirituals. What had initially appeared as unparalleled loss, has in fact, turned into an expansion of my soul, and I am thankful.

I offer the above humbly, to other intrepid sojourners, unexpectedly wrenched from a life familiar. Hold on to faith with both hands. Even if it changes form and expression and you don't recognize the new turf, keep holding on. As Isaiah said "they that wait upon the Lord, will renew their strength.." As for me, the marvelous Presence, after eight months, has returned, is here now, and I just wanted to write and tell you about it.