The question:
“Suppose you discovered that God hadn’t turned his back on you and you could still go to heaven. What would that mean for you/the rest of your life? Do you see that fixing problems or creating them, or both?”
My answer:
“I’ve had to think about your question and how I should answer. This is something which has and continues to weigh upon me with each passing day.
There isn’t one simple answer to this, as much as I wish there were. You see, I think it depends on this… Am I accepted by Him as I am? A flawed, broken woman who resides in this flesh or in spite of this? I understand saved by grace and I’m not speaking of that, but of knowing if everything I have thought, said, and done over the past several years was part of the path He set me on or my own misguided wanderings in the dark? Have I followed His will or my own?The thought of having wasted what time He has allowed me following my own misguided pride is crushing…
I can accept how He might have given me these burdens so His will could be shown, but to think I squandered everything? I don’t know.
If an angel suddenly appeared and told me the Father loved me as I am, broken, dirty, and not worth His notice… That He loved the woman I am… then it would be the weight of the world lifted from my shoulders. And if he told me God loved me despite being a silly, misguided, deceived man who had lost his way….
Better to cast me into the fires of hell…
You see, this is my one true fear and has been from the beginning…
Funny, I just thought about something. I can remember standing in front of the mirror, just a tan towel draped over my head and wishing it was hair instead. Of standing there dressed in my mothers clothes and knowing… knowing, beyond all doubt this is who I am… Not just what, but who. from the top of my head to the tip of my toes.
Can you imagine what it would mean if I could cast my thoughts back to that confused little girl and tell her everything is going to be ok? To tell her God is with her and will never let her walk alone? That she is right, no matter what the world tells her. To be able to go forward held in His embrace…
But what if I stand there on judgment day to be told, “Fool, if not for grace…”
I have made many, many mistakes in this life, I cannot deny it. I know in the end my salvation lies not with myself but with Him, yet to be told I had wasted the gifts I had been given following a Will-O-Wisp of deception and pride. To know I could have done better than I did… could have been more than I was… could have been a greater witness for Him… and squandered it all on a lie…
You see, I look at this flesh and it tells me one thing. I look to my heart and it tells me another. I have wondered, hoped, cried, prayed, and screamed for understanding. I have asked for wisdom, patience, and forgiveness. Yet at every turn, who I truly am, heart and soul, has reared it’s head telling me I have lived a lie my whole life. Instead of putting my faith in Him and following the Holy Spirit where He wanted me to be… I caved in to worldly pressures, struggling in vain to be what those around me insisted I had to be even though I knew… I knew, I knew, I knew, it was wrong.
Now here I am today, unsure of where I stand. Not because of anything He has done, but because of what I did not do. He never failed me, I failed Him and because of it, I cannot say I would be in the least surprised to find myself on the “Down” elevator instead of the “UP.”
Not every seed planted grows and thrives… some land on rocky, infertile soil and live only a short time before withering away…
So I wonder, which am I?
To know He was still with me. To know I hadn’t walked away from Him… To know the path I am on is the one He has chosen? Could simple words ever express what such a thing would mean to me?”