I grew up in the church.  We were very involved and I knew every familiar story with easy rote.  I was baptized at seven during a week long ‘revival.’

There is a song called No Longer Slaves by Bethel that I am listening to even now.  And the day I ran to Jesus is quite accurately described in this song.

I ‘joined the church’ because it is what kids did.  I didn’t feel His Presence, nor hear His voice.  I walked an aisle and I said what the people needed to hear and I started receiving envelopes with my name on them.  My life and my heart remained unchanged.

Then life got tricky.

To be honest, family life wasn’t easy.  I know as I write this that some of that family will read it. This is my life and my story and the great miracle of God’s work in me.  And it is an incredibly beautiful picture of grace and forgiveness and purpose.

Siblings went off to college, parents went the ways of work and their own difficulties and struggles. And still I sat in an emptying house, needing the arms to wrap me up in security and direction.

I spent most of my tween and teen years in a depressed stupor staring blindly at the brightly optimistic walls of what had been my sister’s room.  I didn’t know it then, but see it so clearly now, I was clinically depressed and each day I sank further into myself and the dark places of lostness of soul.

I went to camp the summer of my thirteenth year.  Christian camp, as all church going teens do.

God was looking for the moment when I was away from the familiarity of my own darkness to bring me the Light.  It didn’t matter what the sermon was about, the man could have been telling us Jesus loved broccoli.  I heard Jesus loved me.

I came home from camp.  That was then, this is now, right. That feeling of purpose was there, but this, this darkness and sadness is my home here.  It was all I knew or knew how to get for myself.  And so I went to my normal spot in the center of the bed in the center of the room so bright and cheerful.  And I began to stare, drifting again.

But this time was different.

Go listen to the song.

I am surrounded by the arms of the Father.  I’ve been liberated.

They were real.  I felt the arms of the Father and they were real and solid and physical.  I was surrounded.  And He spoke purpose to my soul, “We’re not going to do this any more.”

And I never have.

I move in supernatural ways, to near and far places.  I cry for entirely different reasons now.  I rely on the Body, still knowing I am not enough to meet the needs of this life.  I’m liberated.  I FEEL that freedom.  Those days of purposelessness are long gone.  Every minute I make available to Him, He uses for the astounding, the blessed, and the purposeful.

The latter glory of this house will be greater than the former; and in this house I will give peace.                                                                                                                                                   Haggai 2:9

For every great yesterday and for every painful yesteryear, what’s coming is always greater with Jesus.