THE LIGHT (Come Join With Us Part IV)

[This is part IV of the Come Join With Us Series that starts here]

The light started to come in September with the advice of a sweet Aunt who told me I was trying to do God’s job for Him and I needed to figure out what was His job and what was mine.  She suggested I start being still, and simply notice God’s little gifts from day to day and write them down.  She called it “making a little lane change” in how I was thinking about things.  It sounded trite and simplistic, but as I had already thrown in the towel and come to terms with a much lower glory on earth and in heaven, what could it hurt?

In just a few short weeks of this practice, naming the gifts, I started to see Him more and more, and then everywhere.  When I talked to my visiting teacher about this, she recommended a book called 1,000 Gifts (a dare to live fully right where you are), where this practice of naming God’s gifts actively led the author to a deep and personal relationship with Christ.  As I practiced this little hunting game of naming gifts, my experiences began to mirror the author’s. As I looked, I began to see. 

Over the weeks I started to feel something I can only call Joy. I can honestly say I had never felt that feeling before. Fleeting happiness yes, but not Joy.  I felt like I was seeing things that I had never seen before, even though they had always been there, I could see that life was good, and that to some extent I had wasted so much of my life in darkness and despair, focusing only on all of the places that I and the world were falling short, focusing on the real and painful darkness, but not allowing myself to see the transcendent Joy that was all around me and just there for the seeing.

Yes, there is darkness, and the darkness is not pushed out or beaten by light, it is simply transfigured into light.  I started to see how even my own dark experiences in life have in many cases already been transfigured by Christ into light.

This effort all culminated one day in the kitchen when I was making dinner and listening to the Tab.  The song "I believe in Christ" came on, and I walked over to turn it down, because that particular version is very bombastic and a little annoying, but as I went to do so, I was stopped in my tracks as with a hard stomach punch, and became overwhelmed by an enormously powerful physical experience where I felt completely filled by this feeling of Christ's love for me—and the whole universe—and the love was so huge that I couldn't bear it and physically had to lean on the counter to stay standing.  I could hardly breathe.

I always wondered how I could build a relationship with Christ since we always prayed to the Father, but somehow in this moment there came this enormous connection to Christ directly—just an instant awareness and connection to Him and what He did for me—it was an all-encompassing comfort.

I felt this distinct impression to notice that this experience did not happen in the temple or the chapel or on the mountaintop, or even in my anxious striving and seeking (in fact I had been going to the temple daily most of the past summer just to make it through the day), but in my kitchen as I was wrist-deep in flour just listening to music--in my day to day, mundane life, He was showing me he could save me in my daily walk, even while my children walked quickly through the kitchen, giving me odd looks as I cried like a baby—awash in His love. 

A Yale theologian and favorite writer of mine, Marjorie J. Thompson, said, “Christ provides realistic hope for a realistic life.”  (I highly recommend her book Soul Feast)

I felt literally saved in this moment. I felt so loved, so at peace with where I was on my journey, that I was in God’s hands, and He  had me, I did not be need to be afraid anymore.  

I tried to recover myself and get back to dinner, but then the song, "I am Called By His Name," came on and I felt this intense burning in my heart—a sense of being literally branded by Christ, made His, becoming called by His Name as the song played.  It was searing joy.

Dinner was late. 

But it’s okay, because now I knew how God felt about me—I can understand those who say they are saved, because this love saved me from being lost.  I was found.  He knew where and who I was, and it wasn’t just ideas or symbols or words, it was inside me.  The song Amazing Grace meant something entirely new.

I was so peaceful and happy and grateful for quite a long time, I joked to my husband that I might have a brain tumor or something—perhaps you’re thinking the same thing, or maybe that I’m bi-polar with all this happy/sad.  Nope--just a boring depressed person saved by Jesus.

All of the fear went away, even the fear about all those close to me leaving the church, all my religious anxiety, wondering what eternity looks like—I just trusted.  If God loves me like that, I just need to keep feeling and reflecting that love and everything would be okay.  In fact, like my friend’s bishop always tells her, “Everything is already okay.”  Did we think Christ wasn’t serious when he said not to fear?  Did he mean don’t fear unless something really scary comes up?  Don’t fear unless a loved one wanders?  No, he says, look at me and don’t fear.  When Moses fears, he looks into the mouth of hell.  Fear breeds fear.

The result of this experience was the loss of fear, because I knew in whom I had trusted.

I no longer felt like my own weakness or mistakes now or in the future could derail my great cosmic plan somewhere.  Christ was what He said He was.  He did not leave us comfortless.  I can look to Him, and He is big enough to save me, and all of us, and He loves me, and all of us, enough to actually do it, whether we see it, or believe it, or not.  He has done the work, and it is finished.  Our work is to look and live.

NEXT: PART V: THE WIND & THE WAVES

Post by Valerie Wise Christensen.

PART I
PART II: THE MISSING FACTOR
PART III: THE DARKNESS
PART IV: THE LIGHT
PART VI: CAPAX DEI

One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are

Soul Feast: An Invitation to the Christian Spiritual Life