WARNING : This story contains personal information about me that, frankly, most of you probably don't (or at least shouldn't) want to know. (If you are one of my parents, please don't read this) I would give this about a PG-13 rating...
That being said, I'll bet everyone of you reads it anyways, right?
yup.
I'm not 100% sure that I should be telling this story. Some people might feel hurt reading it. That is not my intent. Rather, I want to tell a story of God's grace in action, I want to testify that He intervenes in our lives, and I want people to know that He sometimes does this in crazy and seemingly irrational ways...
For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.
1 Corinthians 1:25
All my life, it seems like there was one value drilled into my head with more significance than any other except loving the Lord : Sexual Abstinence. It was drilled into my head with such a force that, almost 28 years after my birth, I still have never had sex. I've heard countless "horror" stories from my dad of high school friends of his who did. People he sometimes would stop being friends with because that became all they wanted to do. These stories would easily rank at the top of his list of stories from life growing up in the gang filled ghettos of New Jersey. Fifty years ago, I don't think being a virgin would have been a big deal, but in today's world it seems almost unheard of. I can only name one girl around my own age with certainty whom I know is a virgin, and only a handful of guys. Being one of those guys is hard to stand up and admit sometimes. I can not tell you (because the times are too numerous to recall) how many times I have silenced a table at a bar with that (
in those moments)
fun proclamation. Of course, it's never really that much fun. I get a kick out of the shock on every single face. But, it's also something which makes me the "weird" one. It promotes me to being the
outcast in any conversation about sex. I guess being a virgin does mean I have no experience, but it also means I have a unique perspective relatively. Since all bar conversations end up with something between 20-90% of the content being about sex, it's a little tough. And, there's the added bonus of seeing the looks of pleasure on each and every face as they recall their own experiences. I won't even tell you how many women have offered to "educate" me on this subject... (some women get a kick out of the idea that they might be such an educator to men like myself...)
About three years ago, I began hanging out with a woman I had known since we were both little children. Since the second grade, in fact. I used to like her a
whole lot. Pretty much all through elementary school and middle school. So, she comes back into my life, and I found myself liking her a lot all over again. It took a single kiss for me to understand that there was a degree of mutual consideration there. I knew she had a past and a present, but I thought I could ignore it and change her ways. The next few weeks are like a blur in my mind. I was drinking a lot back then, and we would hang out, drinking and watching movies, every night.
From the very beginning, I should of known better. She offered herself to me. Just like so many other want-to-be "educators". On multiple occasions, sober and not sober.
I have witnesses of this. It wasn't a big deal to her. Her past included stripping and sleeping with guys for room and board. I resisted, but I had a problem : All those feelings from the years when we were kids were being fondly remembered between us both. The fact that she is very pretty didn't help me any either. Maybe I thought I could be different from everyone else. I wasn't though except that, in the end, I didn't have sex with her. She did spend the night at my apartment though. In my room. In my bed. We were fully clothed, which is good. But, I don't want to leave these details out because I want you to understand how much I was falling. This rapidly was building up to being the time I think of as the single worst time in my life.
We had in common a close friend. She considered him her best friend. I knew she had liked him before, but I also
knew that he had always rebutted her. What I didn't know until she admitted it to me (at about the same time that I learned of the room and board thing, I think) was that she was "doing things" for him, too. He was apparently not rebutting her as much as I remembered. I don't want to admit that I was jealous. I was though. I shouldn't of been. I should of walked away. She wasn't going to stop. I don't know why I was even still
interested in this girl except maybe that I was feeling exceedingly desperate. You know how it can be with hope? You can see only what you want to see, and think only the things you want to think. I was beginning to really hurt from the jealousy, and following Christ was the farthest thing from my mind. The offer was still out there...
I gave in. At least, I decided to. Making that decision was the stupidest and lowest moment I think I have
ever had. (and, if you've read
my drunk driving wreck story, you know I've got some stupid ones) It's remarkable how
God intervenes when we don't deserve it. I had made my choice, and
I was fully intending to follow it through. Finally, late one night, things were starting to head my way. I was making it clear, if not through word than through action, what I was thinking. She was reciprocating, too. Then suddenly, as we are somewhere on the floor, she just stops and says, "Take me home." I'm glad there are no pictures of my face at that moment. I would say I was, at the least, confused. A little shocked and hurt probably, too. How does someone propose such an act many many times over several weeks and then suddenly retreat like that? Especially when all indications up to that exact moment were "go!"
On the drive back to Plano, where she lived, I worked up the courage to ask her, "wtf?" Her answer surprised me. She said that she had been as willing as I had been. Right up to the point she heard a voice whisper in her ear, "No. Go home." Things went downhill very fast after that, and it was only a handful of days later that we would stop speaking to each other altogether. By altogether, I mean we have never spoken since. Until then, we had known and been in touch with each other off and on for almost 20 years. Her and the friend whom I had previously thought of as one of my closest are now married. My story doesn't end there though.
God had a plan in all this. The worst moment in my life was for the benefit of His purpose. I have another
actually good friend, whom I have known for more than a decade, who I have a habit of speaking to when I am in times of stress or trouble. Her name is Cate, and her blog is linked on the side of this page. After all of this went down, I prayed earnestly (My relationship with Christ, already not so good from years of not going to church, had been dwindling really badly during those few weeks. Funny, how we tend to ignore the Lord when we are intent upon sin) to God that He might allow me to speak to her (Cate). See, the problem was that she had gone back to Germany just before this happened. She didn't have internet much over there back then, and I didn't know if the old number I had for her would still work. (Plus, not speaking Deutsche, I was a little afraid of getting someone who wouldn't understand me anyways) So, my prayer was simply this : that I might receive an email or an instant message. Some form of communication that would give me the opportunity to discuss with her the recent events which had me at this most depressing moment.
The next day, on my way home from work, she
called me. She had
no way of knowing that I needed to speak to her. It gets better though. She wasn't in Germany as planned. She was here. She was here, in the U.S., and wanting me to drive her to what I would later come to know as "63". I don't believe in coincidences. Especially ones like
that. On a side note, I had told God in prayer months earlier that, if he showed me a church to go to, I would start going again. I knew immediately that God was answering prayer when she called. I knew doubly so when she said she was
here. And, I knew instantly when I walked into 63 that He was answering that other distant prayer about showing me a church to go to. He turned the lowest moment in my life into a complete and utter victory for His purposes. I don't think I've missed a Tues. night at 63 since then except for vacation or illness.
Someone asked me if my rant from a couple of nights ago was aimed at confessing my unholiness apart from Christ (well, that's sort of what I was asked...). No. It was not. Tonight's is. I can think of a lot of things I've done. I've stolen things before. I've lied. I've hated maliciously. I've endangered my life and others. I've hung out with and called close friends at least two people whom, shortly after I stopped hanging out with them, committed a couple of very brutal murders over drug deals gone awry. I've hung out with such dealers. There's the cigarette smoking, and the handful of times I've smoked weed, too. (I never really did smoke much of the marijuana, and I never got interested at all in the heavier stuff although I've hung out with plenty of coke-heads, etc. in my nights of binge drinking at the bar) I've been a bit of an alcoholic (I would honestly say more of a "drunk" because I was never really addicted to the alcohol so much, but more so to the bar scene. When I left that, my drinking became pretty sporadic.) I've definately lusted. The story tonight is a really really good example of lust. I'm glad God forgives because I don't think I could forgive myself for all the things I've done. In fact, even knowing His forgiveness, I sometimes think that I don't forgive and even can't forgive myself. It's tough knowing that God is so much better at loving me than I am.
And in that is the beauty of all of it. God's grace. We screw up, and He catches us in His grace. I realize that I am unusually fortunate for being caught in the manner by which I was. However, if this event had gone ahead without His intervention, I can't tell you where I would be today. Maybe I would of kept walking down an increasingly darker path until I ended up living on the streets, doing H, and eventually killing myself. I'm not saying that's what would of happened, but I don't know. Only God knows. Obviously, He felt the need to act. I like that. I am grateful for that. Even if He had not acted though, His grace would of been amazingly sufficient to cover all of these sinful deeds even as His grace is amazingly sufficient to cover me (and
you, too) now.
But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
2 Corinthians 12:9-10
* Note : This took me a couple of days to write. It was not easy because it requires becoming vulnerable to criticism about very personal things. We are to love like Christ though and, as C.S. Lewis says : "Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable. "
"Christianity seems at first to be all about morality, all about duties and rules and guilt and virtue, yet it leads you on, out of all that, into something beyond. One has a glimpse of a country where they do not talk of those things, except perhaps as a joke. Every one there is filled full with what we should call goodness as a mirror is filled with light. But they do not call it goodness. They do not call it anything. They are not thinking of it. They are too busy looking at the source from which it comes."
- C. S. Lewis (Mere Christianity. Macmillan Publishing. 1978. pgs. 130,131)
In the first place our warped natures, the devils who tempt us, and all the contemporary propaganda for lust, combine to make us feel that the desires we are resisting are so 'natural', so 'healthy', and so reasonable, that it is almost perverse and abnormal to resist them. Poster after poster, film after film, novel after novel, associate the idea of sexual indulgence with the ideas of health, normality, youth, frankness, and good humor. Now this association is a lie. Like all powerful lies, it is based on a truth - the truth, acknowledged above, that sex in itself (apart from the excesses and obsessions that have grown round it) is 'normal' and 'healthy'
- C.S. Lewis
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