"The important thing that I learned is that for a Christian nothing is wasted in this life: no bad decision, no vocational change, no personal failure." - Keith Miller, Habitation of Dragons
I can't ask others to share their stories if I don't share mine. It's not an easy story. There was a lot of pain, but what counts is the end result.
I was baptized and grew up in a Christian home and in the church. My parents sent me to Christian schools. There was never any doubt that God existed or that he had created the universe. (I think our first memory verse in 1st grade was Genesis 1:1 - "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.") It was an objective fact.We learned Bible stories alongside math, English, and history. It was objective truth: creation, fall, flood, Abraham's journeys, Joseph in Egypt, Moses vs. Pharaoh, the judges and kings of Israel, the birth and life and resurrection of Jesus, the stories of the early church.
The big thing was that God had handed down 10 Big Laws that we were supposed to live by. At the same time, the law declared us all sinners. As I understood it, your safest bet was to follow the rules as closely as possible in hopes of pleasing God, pretend that you followed them perfectly in hopes of not being judged by others, and hope that in the end you had more good points than bad ones so you'd get into heaven. That's what I thought as a child, and that's how I lived most of my life.
Jesus died for our sins, because otherwise God would have to send us all to hell for breaking just one rule. We called it grace, but it seemed to be about following rules, sucking up to God, and avoiding condemnation by others - especially church people. As my mother repeated like a mantra, "What will others think?" You had to look good. Your wins had to outnumber your loses. You had to score more points than the other team. Such is the thinking of a child.
Excited About God
It was the summer of 1974 that I first noticed people who were passionate for God. It blew me away. I attended a denomination-wide youth conference, and there was something different about some of the people. They were enthusiastic, excited even. I knew that I wanted it, although I didn't know how to get it.
That fall I made public profession of faith, not because I had that kind of faith, but because I wanted to. I knew my catechism and passed my examination by the elders. I became a "full member" of the church at 16, which was very unusual in our church at that time. (It was generally done en masse by high school seniors as a kind of graduation exercise. Parents got very worried about the eternal destiny of their children if they didn't make profession of faith by 20.)
I grew in my faith. I shared a bit of how God had become more real in my life. I was more enthusiastic about God and faith and religious things. And when I went to Trinity Christian College in the fall of 1976, I gravitated to those who were enthusiastic for God - which meant that most of them were not from the same background. They were Baptist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Catholic, Reformed, Seventh Day Adventist, Bible Church, etc. We shared life together, often spending time with each other in the dining hall for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and times in between.
My family moved "back home" to Grand Rapids (MI) in 1978, and I transferred to Calvin College. I attended Fellowship Chapel and Calvin Christian Fellowship in my search for meaningful faith. I rejoined my old church for a time, spent a year or so attending another one, and finally joined a different one looking for authentic worship. For many years I was part of that congregation's worship committee, working to take old liturgical forms and adapt them to a contemporary setting.
Over the years, I learned to lift my hands in worship - not part of my background. I learned to pray in public, even though I was spiritually dry most of the time. I knew how to be religious, I knew how to follow my convictions, I knew enough that I thought I did know enough. I got involved with the charismatic renewal, which strengthened my faith and helped me feel still closer to God, but through it all I always felt closest through song.
I understood the Bible and theology. I knew our Dutch Reformed tradition. I was passionate about church and faith. I knew that I belonged to God.
The End
I didn't have a clue how far I really was from God - or how far my wife felt from me. I saw inklings that something was wrong in the summer of 2003, and she let me have it in October: She had reached the point where she no longer loved me, no longer cared to be with me, and considered our marriage dead. Not damaged, not in need of repair, but dead.
I hadn't seen that coming, and I was devastated and alone. She had never taken the time to share her concerns with me, although thanks to Internet chat rooms she had shared her feelings, her fears, and her frustrations with her online friends. She had built a support system that, as she later told me, would support her whatever her decision and across the board recommended that she not take the path of divorce.
In one of those cosmic quirks, my passion for Linda had been reignited in May. I loved her, was committed to her, and was in love with her. I tried to rekindle the romance, but nothing worked. She had spent years building her business away from home, living much of her life away from the family, and she'd already decided on some level to shut me out. I was frustrated by my inability to reach her, but we didn't believe in divorce, so there was time to get past it.
Wrong. As I was trying to grow closer - and perhaps because I was - she was shutting me out. That October day when she dropped the bombshell shattered my entire world. I had loved her and allowed her to be the most important person in my life. Our marriage was the relationship that defined me. And she said it no longer existed.
I have never known such emotional pain, such confusion, such frustration, such a sense of loss, such isolation in my life. I responded very poorly, because I was afraid, angry, and lost.
To top it off, she left on a two-week trip to attend a conference and then visit online friends. She dropped this on me and left me to deal with it alone for two weeks. After 22 years of marriage, she ran away. I remember going to church on Sunday with all of this swirling around inside me.
When we pulled into the parking lot, I lost it. We had gone to church together since our college days, and going without her brought everything to a head. I broke down in tears, shaking, and finally managed to ask the boys to find Margie Moore, the minister of congregational life. She came, helped me out of the van, and walked me into the building. We spent the next hour or so together in the church library while the congregation worshiped. I was broken, but Margie's presence let me know that I was not alone.
Purpose
On October 12, 2003 we began working through The Purpose Driven Life at church. It could not have come at a better time. After the week I'd been through alone, it was the lifeline I needed.
Chapter 2, "You Are Not an Accident", reached deep down inside my broken heart. Here are a few underlined sections from my copy of the book, which I try to reread every year:
- Your parents may not have planned you, but God did.
- You are alive because God wanted to create you.
- God left no detail to chance.
- God's purpose took into account human error, and even sin.
- You were created as a special object of God's love! God made you so he could love you.
As I came to summarize it: God planned me, made me, knows everything about me, and still loves me. No failure would change that. I was loved by someone who would never stop loving me. I was not alone.
For the first time in my life, I began to understand that reality. God didn't just exist and give us rules and provide an escape from sin - God loved me, warts and all.
Not to say that I didn't lose perspective now and again as I tried to pick up the pieces of a shattered life, do therapy, and try to rebuild what Linda said was dead. She was right - the marriage was dead. Although I loved her, she had grown cold and no longer cared about me. It took months for that to sink in, and I remember very clearly telling her that I was willing to do anything to make our marriage work - but if she wouldn't invest in it, I couldn't continue working toward an impossible goal.
She took some time to think about that and finally acknowledged that she was not willing to do that. The relationship that had defined my life was finished. We worked out the terms of our divorce, filed, and brought that phase of life to a clear end.
I had some pity parties along the way, mourning my loss, temporarily forgetting the new love I had found from the God who planned me, made me, knew me, and still loved me. That was the new reality on which I built my life.
New Lives for Old
In gratitude to God and as an expression of my newfound faith, I was baptized by immersion in May 2005. God has washed away the old, and I was born into a new life. I shared my testimony with the church:
I lived my life fearing that I would be judged a failure and rejected. I dealt with that by excelling in my work, following the rules, and keeping others at a distance.
If I never let them close, they couldn't hurt me much.
That included God. I followed him according to my own understanding. That meant obeying God's rules like a legalist - I didn't want to give him a reason to reject me.
I've had very few close relationships. When my marriage ended, I discovered that I was so defined by it that I no longer knew who I was.
I felt lost, alone, hopeless.
When I hit rock bottom, I found that I had never been alone - God was with me. Jesus understood my rejection. The Father held me in his arms. The Spirit breathed new life into me.
The truth that God will never abandon me was the lifeline I could cling to against despair.
I had been lost. God found me and told me he that knew me, accepted me, loved me. God's love has humbled me, healed me, remade me.
My baptism today is a testament to God's faithfulness.
Since learning that God made me to love me, not to judge me, nothing has been the same. I have been blessed with new friends, new relationships, a new wife, new passions, and new ministries. I was rescued from my fears and a new life was built on the rubble of the old one.
I have been redeemed and remade.
Thanks be to God!
