The Last One To Know.

I have always been an Old Testament-kind-of-girl.  I guess when you are raised in chaos and neglect you can either choose to believe that God doesn't exist or you can believe that God is hiding behind every corner, just waiting to squash you like a bug. I chose the latter.

My dad took me to church.  He prayed with me in the mornings before school and he told me that Jesus loves me.  But any tiny bit of faith I had,  any moment of obedience or confession was drawn from a place of duty.  I feared God.  He created the world and could destroy mine.  I pleaded with Him desperately to forgive me and to save me.  I lived in terror that I would be found an unprofitable servant.  Once someone told me that my faith was probably a mental illness, like anxiety or schizophrenia.

As an OT girl, I love Lent.  Bring on the punishments I deserve! This past Lent was delightfully excruciating.  Just  as Tulsa Catholic Worker was beginning to see some formation and community, I was becoming disgusted with its failure. Well, my failure.  My fellow CW's would agree, I am sure, that I was, indeed, pretty schizophrenic.  Every day I was quitting or cancelling or  restarting. 

Then God came.

I was standing in line for confession (never reconciliation, cuz I am Old Testament :). Off topic, that is a weird line, isn't it?  Standing, waiting with everyone else to confess the deepest and the darkest.  Just an awkward thing to be standing in line for.

But there  I was in line, mentally having a bit of a stand-off with the Almighty.  It sounded a little bit like, "What do you want from me?  I have tried everything.  I have done this..and that..and remember that other thing that I did?  There must be some unconfessed sin that I can't see.  Something horrible that I have done or not done and should have wanted to do that I didn't.  What do I need to do for You?"  My soul was so sad and so heavy.   Poor me. 

I don't remember anything that the priest said to me that evening in confession because God was using that time, when I finally had to shut my mouth, to change my life.  I'll never be able to put it into words, because there aren't any, but this is as close as I can get.

I was a crying, blubbering mess, guilty of my sins and feeling the weight of my horrible-ness. All of a sudden and quite unexpectedly, over my entire self settled a warm, blanket of grace and into my  soul came a word-less message from Heaven of His eternal, everlasting and all encompassing love.  Something like, "Don't you see that I love you?  Pray to me, read your bible, spend time with Me, because I love you.  You ask me what I want?  I. Want. You."  

Then it got a little weird for anyone around me because I started laughing uncontrollably as I finally allowed my mind to wrap around this concept.  God loves me.  HE loves ME.  Isn't that strange and incredible?  And wonderful??!?!?!!

He loves me.  And He loves you.  And He loves all of us.  Thank God.