~Part 1 - My Story

My Glass Wall – SHATTERED!

Part 1 – My Story

Hello - I’m not sure what to call this or who my intended reader is. I simply sat down to write a friend and many pages later found myself sharing from the depths of my heart. It is out of that overflow and a rising passion that I have burned the midnight oil, refining and editing to share with you, whoever you may be. Raw, vulnerable, and deeply passionate, there is a chance my words will come across as if directed at certain ones of you. That is not my intent. But at the same time, it is impossible to write without those of you in mind who have impacted me in some way or another during particular seasons of my life. I only wish to share my heart and hope you will hear it. I am grateful for all the parts and persons that have caused this profound impact.

Not so long ago, I began rethinking my thinking and gave myself permission to ask the difficult questions about things I had always believed. I came to some realizations. To say this writing is the culmination of all that would be foolish. I have only barely scratched the surface. Still, I do have drastic clarity of mind on things I once thought were beyond understanding, clichéd as “mystery” and “not for us to know.” This is what I desire to convey, though articulating into coherency will be complicated and nearly impossible. Even in all my tangled thoughts, however, I am bursting at the seams to share. I will admit this is lengthy, but I hope you will bear with me.

To help you understand why I am bubbling over and why, in my brother’s words, “my pants are on fire,” let me give you some of my background. I was raised in an incredibly fun and loving family and learned at an early age that, among many things, obedience was best. I excelled at compliance and conforming to the wishes of my parents and teachers. I thrived on following the rules at home and school and delighted myself on being a child who was nearly always in the favor of the adults in my life. Excellence drove me. I was motivated by the approval of those I respected to do what I thought would dutifully preserve my reputation. I realize that none of these are necessarily wrong, and I am grateful for my upbringing. Nevertheless, together these created a strong understructure for legalism, and I was excelling at it. Despite all my performing for the respect of others, God was at work in my young heart, giving me a longing to know Him.

My encounters with God began in my early childhood, as early as I can remember. Even with my compliant nature though, I was fully aware that I had a heart full of sin, could do nothing on my own about it, and needed a Savior. It was around the age of eleven that I understood enough to begin surrendering my life to the loving, merciful, and forgiving arms of God. Our relationship has had ups and downs, but I have always been convinced that there is nowhere else to turn besides God. Without Him I have no hope. God and I have been nearly 3 decades on this journey now, but even so, I have always felt that something was missing; never feeling fully contented - only a shallow relationship of possible infinite depths. Oh, He met my spiritual void, but I had a ravenous hunger to know Him. I wanted more of Him than anything else. I tried everything to have more friendship with God. I longed for His love, His pleasure, His favor, and really, I had it. I just did not know it. I felt so empty, so distant from Him much of the time. I knew I had the Truth and yet my hunger and thirst for Him was insatiable. I had felt for a long time that I'd hit a wall with God – a glass wall – as I could see there was so much more out there; that the depth of who He is would take an eternity to unearth. Yet my relationship with Him was hindered – I was stuck. I knew there was much more of Him on the other side of my wall and I envied the depth of relationship that others had with Him. I knew it was possible, but how? I read books, joyfully participated in dozens of Bible studies, energetically awoke before dawn to study the Scriptures, took notes, made lists, reviewed my lists, read more books, asked more questions, and then did all I could concerning what I had learned. Don’t get me wrong. I have thoroughly enjoyed my study and I consider none of it waste.

BUT, all my striving for obedience was never enough. God was my hope and yet I was still starving for Him. This had nothing to do with trying to earn my salvation, and everything to do with intimacy. God was the innermost desire of my heart, and yet I saw an extraordinary closeness to God in people, present and down through history, that was suspiciously missing from my own life. From this side of my wall, I was desperate to do whatever was required. I worked hard to convince myself that nothing was wrong, that pretending all my anxiety away was actually the step of real faith. I had always loved Him, as best that I could, and now I was diligently attempting to conform myself to Him in hopes that He would grant me that close friendship.

I knew God was here – closer than my beating heart. I also knew that – well, with Him being God – He wasn’t the problem, I was. So, I began to look inward. “What am I doing wrong? What more should I be doing? What do I need to stop doing? For sure I’m not praying enough. Maybe my heart isn’t right. How else do I set my heart right? Do I not have enough faith? How do I acquire more faith? What do I need to DO to please my God so I can have that deeper friendship that I am so desperate for?” My mind set on my own flesh was a never ending torment. Do for God so He will give more of Himself to me – manipulation at its worst. Although I was in the Bible daily, I was so discontented with the shallowness of my relationship with Him. Not knowing what else to do, I tried hopelessly to trade my measly gifts for His affections. I wanted MORE of Him and all my doing and prayerful begging wasn’t working.

Doubt began to lurk around my edges. I never questioned the existence of God or that He pointed us to His truths in the Bible. Proof of his presence and creative power were everywhere and I saw His beautiful fingerprints in everything. The doubt had to do with me – was I genuine? Was this relationship with my Jesus real? Or was I just a product of my upbringing and my culture, steeped in the black and white of rules that made my life straightforward and drama-free? Was my truly belonging to God all just a desperate figment of my imagination?

The greatest assault on my faith was my failure to share the good news about Jesus. I always dreaded being asked: “So, who have you shared Jesus with recently?” I knew I should share my faith, but never having the words, even right in the moment, I was always speechless. Shame crept in and slowly wrapped its ugly tentacles around me. It spoke death to my heart: “Maybe you aren’t even saved. How can you profess to be a Christian and yet slink away from telling people about the God you believe in? If the Spirit of God who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, why aren’t you bold to testify about Him? You are just a religion loving phony!” I believed the lies, for the proof was that I had nothing to say to my friends. I was utterly void of words. I was forever grateful that Jesus took my place on the cross and that I wouldn’t spend eternity in hell. And, I was thankful for the structure that religion (never would have called it that) provided for my happy life. But, beyond that, sharing the good news had subconsciously been boiled down to, “Where will you go if you die?” and that made me cringe.

I look back wondering why I struggled with this compared to those who shared their faith easily and comfortably. In my early ignorance of how truly wonderful God was, I realize that what really drove me to Jesus was a fear of hell and knowing that I couldn’t save myself. I see now, that since I didn’t have a clear grasp of the love of God, that I somehow considered the threat of hell the bottom line of sharing one’s faith. I didn’t desire to threaten, but my misunderstanding of God’s message was severely limited to “God sent Jesus to take my punishment so that I wouldn’t end up in hell.” Is that it? Jesus takes atrocious punishment doled out by God on my behalf and I’m supposed to love and trust this God? That’s the good news?! Nevertheless, if this was the truth, I still felt shamefully selfish keeping it to myself, and I continued to shirk my responsibility.

I have come to realize that threatening people with hell, however unintentional, will not engage them in the relationship that God has always desired with them. Rather, it will just push them away. Relationships born out of threat are based on fear and not love and will always fail to thrive. And anyway, isn’t responding to God out of fear still only serving one’s own self-interest? – The get-outa-hell-free card. When faced with a choice to love God or go to hell, and you believe in those realities, most will undoubtedly choose to save their own skin. Scaring people out of hell and into Heaven manipulates them into an anxiety and fear riddled relationship with their Creator. Is this really the way it is? But this was my limited understanding and my heart opposed this dark way of talking about God. My problematic bottom line was that God’s love was incomprehensible to me – I had no idea just how much you and I were really loved. Additionally, in my young law-abiding life, I really didn’t have much proof for how God was changing me. And so, without a grasp of God’s love, and without sharable life-change, I shamefully avoided those conversations that screamed to me of eternal consequence. With those two critical elements missing, I was left with the only way I knew to share my faith – manipulation by the threat of hell with the one question I detested - “Where will you go if you die?” - the one question I quickly abandoned, always knowing in my heart that there must be a better way.

So, with that, I led a quiet, submissive life, pouring myself into academic studies, avoiding spiritual confrontation at every intersection, and all the while attempting to bury my secret uncertainties of truly belonging to God. If voiced, at worst my questions and uncertainties would have been met with criticism, and at best with, “just trust more, pray more, obey more” – all the things that I was already striving to do. But, even in my turmoil, I sought God because I knew He was real, never once doubting His existence – His love? – Sadly, yes. Thus, began my stroll with that most unwelcome companion – doubt.

In my growing up years, “God is love” was a cliché that I did not realize I completely misunderstood. Feelings are powerful and because of my misunderstanding, by early adulthood, I had fallen into a daily daisy-petal-picking game: “I’ve delighted Him, I’ve disappointed Him.” I constantly wondered where I landed on the divine favorometer. With an earnest attempt to always keep my mind’s eye on the face of God, I tried carefully to stay in His favor. My circumstances and my choices were the factors that drove how I thought God felt about me in any given moment. Thus, I never knew exactly what His feelings were towards me – swinging “between periods of self-pity and self-righteousness,” feeling good about His love when I was good and shamefully avoiding Him when I was bad. (Again, this was not about salvation but about wanting God to like me.)

Before children, rarely did self-pity turn to self-loathing, because in comparison to others, I believed myself to be a good Christian – oh, Pharisee that I was! I didn’t realize I had feathers to ruffle until God ushered these precious children into my life, using them to bring to the surface subterranean junk that I seriously assumed didn’t exist within me – predominantly selfishness, anger, and a prideful humility. Most days I graded myself with “a big fat F,” believing God was doing the same. Thus, in the crucible of parenting, and in the midst of my daily failures, I turned on myself in utter contempt, believing fully that my Heavenly Father must be perpetually disappointed with me. I was ready to give up, to cease living. Surely someone - anyone - could do a better job than the one I was doing. (Lies!)

Well, half a dozen years and a couple kids into my marriage, audio discs were given to me with genuine loving intention – Steve Lawson and the 5 Points of Calvinism. I pushed them off for several months fearfully knowing they would send me farther into my tunnel of doubt. (Calvinism essentially teaches that God’s divine will is always carried out, that humans cannot reject Him, that there can be no free will, and that He alone chooses to save some people, allowing the rest to pass into a death of eternal torment.) There came a last straw where I decided to listen and discover what had caused the belief sway in 30⁺ year views of God in those close to me. Focused listening, copious notetaking, and much research - those were some of my darkest weeks, turned months. With a preciously treasured newborn in my arms, analogies abounded of parent-child relationships, taking this confusing and unheard-of-to-me view of God and picturing it played out in humanity. (After all, humans are created in the image of God.) Even in man’s depraved state, and my severely limited understanding of God – in every analogy – earthly fathers, came out appearing far more loving than the god put forth by the Calvinist. To me, this was scandalous and nowhere resembled the God I had grown up with, come to love, and who I knew through Jesus. Listening to those discs brought stomach turning alarm, apprehension, crushing disappointment, horror, and shock about the God I had always known as the one who “so loved the WORLD that He gave His only begotten Son that WHOSOEVER BELIEVETH in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” I was appalled and yet confused as this was coming from those most influential in my life. The Scriptural proof texts appeared to be there, but I did not believe it; could not believe it. How, after having read through my whole Bible multiple times over 2+ decades, did I never once get the impression that God only saves those He chooses and allows/sends the rest to hell; that He only loves a few; that He only died for a few; that - for lack of better wording - the rest of us are screwed! Really?! Not my God! My God, in His very nature is love, to His very core, in His very DNA. My God takes “no pleasure in the death of the wicked” and “is not willing that ANY should perish” but that “they turn from their ways and live.” My God “shows no partiality” but “came to seek and to save the lost.” He is in the business of rescuing humans – creatures He fiercely, deeply, passionately, and stubbornly loves. That includes me, and you, and everyone before, after, and in between.

Reeling! . . . . . . that is where I was left – with warring ideas in my head, scrambling to find truth about my God. If this was true, then based on all my internal and external struggles, I found myself quick in the shoes of those “not chosen.” Without a solid assurance of my own salvation, if God doesn’t love everyone, how could I ever be certain that He loved me? Dark shadows loomed over me; over the very lives of the cherished children that I was raising. Why on earth would I dare have children if I believed there was a chance that the Creator would choose to save one and allow/send the other to hell?! No way! (I even imagined how this logic could lead those who also believe in the “age of accountability,” to kill their babies in order to manipulate God into saving them.) In my simple, still-skewed understanding of God’s love, this was impossible to fathom and accept. It would have been best had none of us been born. I denied this view and yet continued to struggle with it due to the great many well-respected Christians who believe this way.

Over the course of several years, and with much heartache, I did a substantial amount of research on Calvinism. Shame and doubt tightened their grip on my life – as if all this proved their point, that I really was just a fake – a religious person with zero Relationship and therefore, zero Hope. The barrage came again and again: “Then maybe God doesn’t even love you. Maybe He didn’t die for you; hasn’t chosen you; you are hopeless.” I was distressed, boxed in, not knowing who else to turn to except to God. My husband and I began praying for truth. “Lord, if this view is really who you are, show us.” We wanted the truth no matter how difficult it was to swallow. We did not want a comfortable illusion of God. We honestly wanted to know Him even if this was who He really was. Every day, we prayed that prayer for truth. We still do. And, He did show us – slowly, over time – with snippets from the radio, the Bible, a sermon, an article, a conversation, a text, a song. They all spoke of His unfathomable love for the ENTIRE world, for a broken me, and for broken people all around me.

Despite God’s loving whispers, dark shadows of doubt continued to hover. I still felt I had little to share about transformation in my own life and “God loves you” wouldn’t get me far in any conversation, as I wasn’t even sure I believed it for myself. I also did not understand God’s wrath. It was sort of an invisible obstacle in my life that when better understood, would cause so many other puzzle pieces to fall into place. Reconciling the God, who IS in His very nature LOVE, with Him taking His “righteous anger” out on His Son because of our sin, just didn’t make sense to me. I saw a side of God that was easy to love and another side that I wasn’t really sure about.

Well, about the same time I received the Calvinism discs, my mentor gave me a book that she had never read and now doesn't even remember giving me. (The hindsight of that little fact and the timing – audio discs and book – even now whispers God’s love into my heart. I can hear Him saying, with a smile and a wink, “I knew you would need this later.”) He Loves Me, by Wayne Jacobsen, is a book about the Father’s love, but at the time, my consuming priority was raising kids and reading parenting books. With a “thank you,” it went into a box, moved 4 times to 4 states and then sat on my bookshelf in the basement, just patiently waiting. Little did I know that it would open a whole new understanding about God’s love. I had no idea the treasure He Loves Me held and yet I recognize now, that at the time I received the book, I was completely ignorant to the doctrines of Calvinism. I am now joyfully convinced that were it not for all I had studied in those darkish years after first listening to those CDs, and then my resulting twisted misbeliefs about God, that this little book would not have brought me the mind jolt that it did. My traipse with doubt, intensified by the disturbing teaching of Calvinism, was the very key in why I have been so amazingly derailed this year.

So now, 7 years after that book found an inconspicuous place in my basement, suddenly, it kept coming to mind and I had this constant nudging to read it. I did. I awoke at 4:30am, began the first chapter and wept through it. I don't even remember the content of those first pages, but it hit me hard. I immediately started probing around for information about the author, as I do for most authors I read. While I was investigating, I found his podcast series that flushed out and expounded upon his book. I concurrently read the book and listened to the podcasts. To say I was riveted is an overwhelming understatement. I was eating, sleeping, running errands, raising kids, washing dishes, and folding laundry with Wayne Jacobsen in one ear. I binge listened to his podcasts – pausing, rewinding, praying, asking questions of my God - “Is this true? Is this really who You are?” – in bed at night, lying awake for hours at a time, deliberating with God about His true nature and character. My skin sprang with chills. My stomach turned flips. My heart burned with passion. My mind exploded. This amazing, beautiful perspective of who God was and what He, the Son, and the Spirit conspired to do on the cross TOGETHER to deal with my sin disease and my shame problem – WOW – My glass wall shattered! The veil of my misunderstanding had been torn. I was waking up daily in a new world. I was truly consumed, addicted, every moment pondering the possibility that this was an accurate descriptive of my God. Many of my mounting questions, concerns, and dilemmas formerly suspended before me like a special effect, now zoomed into view fitting themselves perfectly into a rational portrait of my wonderful God and the Jesus who gave Himself as the perfect vessel in which my sin and shame could be dealt with. I had been hard-up against my wall for so long and this reframing of the cross was the blast that blew it all apart. I was completely overcome with wonder and worship. Not an angry God who needed a human sacrifice to be reconciled to me, but a God who took the necessary steps, who was the sacrifice I needed to be reconciled to Him; to destroy the powerful hold sin had on me in Himself and to remove my shame which kept me hiding from Him, at times in rebellion, and the rest of the time in my religious endeavors. I grew up in the church but WHY had I never heard this angle before?! This perspective kept me off the couch, kicked me out of bed at 4:30 most mornings, and kept me up late into the night – listening, searching the Scriptures, taking notes, digging, talking to this God who strongly desires a relationship with me incredibly more than any “wanting” I have ever felt for Him. (Knowing full well that I could easily be misguided, I persisted in prayer for discernment, with increased determination for truth.) Mentally regurgitating things I had heard and read, I could not stop thinking about Him; could not stop talking to Him or about Him - hashing it out with others; trying to untangle this thing going on in my heart and mind. I was falling for Him fast and there was no end in sight. I was a terrible mess, in a good way. I still am.

This author had offered me a completely unfamiliar perspective on the cross, and despite never having heard this view, it thoroughly resonated within my heart, with whom the overarching story of the Bible declares God to be, and it meshed perfectly with my intrinsic, pre-Calvinistic concept of God. Calvinism felt like death in my soul - divisive, completely exclusive, hopeless, unbearable - an abysmal grief about God. Radically contrary to those dark feelings, this unique of God and the cross brought relief, wonder, delight, beauty, joy, peace, and more life and love for God than I could have imagined. Rather than contradict, it harmonized decades of studying the Bible and continues to settle many puzzling elements of my faith. Previously confusing Scripture passages are beginning to make sense. This new mindset has given me a fresh perspective on the Bible, so much that I can’t ingest it fast enough. At times, I feel like I’m reading it for the first time. I have a restored vision for God, for the Scripture, and a growing love for the people He puts in my path. My husband and I have shared with others, bursting at the seams to talk about our God and what He came to do for the world. We bubble forth, trying to put coherent words to a tangle of wonderful truths swarming around in our hearts. We’ve given dozens of these books away, and the response mimics our own mind-blowing experiences as God does His work in our Western Christian hearts. This continues to astonish me. Like a spreading wildfire, even among believers, this is what the good news should do. For like Saint Peter and John, “we cannot help speak about what we have seen and heard.” The gospel truth should make hearts yearn for God, not sputter and stall with anxious fear because we have been put on the spot about where we will spend eternity. In my experience, that is a conversation killer. Yes, we need to have a talk about the consequences of our choices, but can we not start with God’s ridiculously breathtaking LOVE? I couldn’t. I didn’t understand it, couldn’t describe it, and my view of Him had become extremely skewed.