I was successful according to the world’s standards too. I
had a Master’s degree; a great job that I loved; a house in Southern
California; a happy marriage to a guy a friend of mine once called the most
decent man she knew. Friends. Wealth. Health.
But something was wrong. Wrong with me. Deep down I was
desperate and dissatisfied. Desperately dissatisfied. My heart was restless. Somewhere
along the line, I had stopped being happy and started pretending.
And then one morning in October of 2011, I literally woke up
and decided that the jig was up. I was done. Done pretending to love a God I
wasn’t even sure existed. Done pretending that my marriage was okay. Done
pretending that I was some saint when all I really wanted was to pursue pleasure,
all the thrills I felt I’d missed out on being a Christian for so many years
and marrying young.
So I stopped pretending.
I left my husband, my church, and my God. I got an apartment
and sunk myself in a world of pleasure. For four months, I had sex, drank,
partied, and played. The world beckoned to me with all its golden hands, and I
threw myself into its arms.
But God…
rich in mercy, overflowing in grace, abounding in kindness,
loved me so much that he lifted me out
off the slimy pit of my sin, out of the mud and mire {Pslam 40:2}. On
February 26, 2012, he brought me to the end of myself. I was broken-down,
wretched, wasted, with nothing left to give, but that is exactly when God chose
to reveal his GRACE. He rescued me when I was spiritually bankrupt, when I had
no moral currency left to buy his favor.
I was dirty. An adulterer. An abandoner. A fake. A slut.
I was someone I never imagined I would be. Sin had taken me
farther than I ever wanted to go, kept me longer than I thought I’d stay, and
exacted a higher price than I’d hoped to pay.
But God…
plays it fast and loose with GRACE. He’s lavish. He’s an
out-of-control spender.
He showed me that the reason I was unhappy for all those
years and why, ultimately, I did what I did was because he had stopped being my
first love. I had exchanged a real relationship with Him for a counterfeit
religion.
All sin involves the splitting of the personality. It
creates two selves—one public and one hidden. That is why I felt like my life was
a sham, like I was constantly pretending. Eventually, the burden of my
duplicity became too much to bear. Small sins became grand indulgences. Over
time, the mask I wore {even to myself} slipped. And when I saw the real me, the
me without God, the me in the mirror with no make-up on, I looked away in
horror and disgust and cried out in genuine repentance. I needed a Savior.
Repentance brings the split personality together and thus restores
integrity to the life. The real
self is made public. When the proud person is
humbled, the elevated self is united with the true self.
//a praying life//
So here I am.
Broken. Humbled. Repentant. A sinner saved by GRACE.
I’ve lost it all: my church, my friends, my reputation, my
home, and my husband. But I’ve gained everything because now the real me is
getting to know the real God. Only this alarm-clock encounter with the loudest
kind of sin and the loudest kind of GRACE could have woken me from my spiritual
sleep.
Awake, my soul!
I will praise you, Lord;
For great is your love, reaching to the heavens;
Your faithfulness reaches to the skies.
//Psalm 57//
Well, I’m up...
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