Four Years and One Saving Grace Group Later . . .

Four years ago, my world crumbled.  Every dream I had was shattered, and everything familiar became tainted.  I was devastated, blindsided, shocked, and angry.  I began a journey I never wanted to take.  These steps felt like miles of walking with no end in sight.  I was forced to make choices that no one should have to make, and I made feeble attempts at explaining to a 3-year-old child why her world was shaken and couldn’t be fixed.

I began to search, desperately, for a home.  I needed a place to go where I didn’t feel judged or outcast, a place to start over.  I decided to turn to the place where I’d attended the concert so many months prior; the place where I’d sought counseling alone, because I didn’t know what else to do.

This church had a Wednesday night Bible study for single parents.  Oh gosh!  That’s what I was now, doomed by the choice of someone else.  I felt as though Satan and every one of his demons laughed at what a mockery I’d become – pastor’s kid, granddaughter, niece, born and raised on church staff; virgin who saved herself, even her first kiss for marriage; woman whose ultimate dream was to stay home, raising her children and supporting her husband.  THIS was the life I knew and wanted, and for a time, had.  Suddenly, life had no meaning.  It was in tumultuous uproar, day in and day out.  I could not think about all the things that had to be done and decisions that had to be made.  But I knew one thing – I needed to go to church, or at least try.

Although for months, I existed only in a physical body as if I were detached from myself, I went.  I attended the services, Bible studies, activities.  And even when I fought to be cut off from the world and life and people because the pain was TOO DARN MUCH, they surrounded me: relentless in their pursuit driven by love, determined to reach out even when I pushed them away.

This was it – the kind of camaraderie I had heard and read about and seen in Christian-based movies – but had never truly experienced before now.  This was a place where I experienced Grace embodied in physical beings, a powerful supernatural experience.  This group and congregation welcomed me and my daughter with open arms, divorce and all.  They picked up our wounded bodies, carrying us from battlefield to battlefield, amidst grueling bloodshed and deafening screams.

And then, one day, we began to walk on our own.  I was able to stand, to take my daughter by the hand, to make another difficult decision and literal journey to a new “home.” 

The past four years have been more horribly devastating and hellish than I could’ve imagined; a reality as disgusting as any producer could concoct.  These years have also been some of the most fulfilling, rewarding days of my life, as I have become a better Christian, woman, and mom than I ever would’ve been without them.

This is to thank those at CRBC who loved and supported Mikaela and me through the last few years and to remind them that we will never be the same.

“Time passes like a moment.

Moments fleet away.

Scars left by time creep up as a shadow,

As dark as ever they were.

Hope shimmers in the distance,

But closer than before.” - LS