Originally posted on September 25, 2012
I was registering for some classes at junior college-I think it was the summer after my first year in college-and I heard someone say something publicly about religion–I can’t remember if he was for or against it–but it made me consciously consider, at that moment, the immaculate conception story and, because I really had no biblical knowledge to put that story in any sort of historical or spiritual perspective–because I had been raised as an Episcopalian and they do not ever crack open a bible that I have ever seen–I just could not make my young scientific self about to commence on quest for knowledge in the form of university and doctoral studies believe that God had impregnated Mary with a mini-God. So it was just a downward spiral from there to atheism. I don’t have any recollection of specific events that led to believing there is no God at all. I think just as time passed, I was exposed to people and the world and sort of adhered to a ‘scientific’ explanation to explain things good enough for my fuzzy mind, as well as feeling like, at 19 and newly in love, that I could do anything on my own. Actually, I was blessed from conception through childhood and adulthood by God and everything that came to me was by His Grace, but of course, like many young Americans I thought I was making it all happen because I was that good.
I made choices about a decade into my relationship with my husband that were lustfully derived and driven. This, I now know, started the beginning of the end of “us.” That bible verse in James that speaks about desire giving birth to sin giving birth to death illustrates it exactly. My desire literally gave birth to the death of my marriage.
At the same time my marriage was nearing its final throes, I met someone to whom I was severely attracted who mentioned the Lord’s name to me in passing. It startled me. But it planted a seed in my mind and heart for God. As my life spiraled along on its path of evil inevitability, this seed for God grew in my mind and heart, until it finally sprouted about the same time my personal and emotional life hit a horrible nadir of despair. I had come to acknowledge that God was really what I had for the last many years been calling The Universe (with its inherent energy and omniscience). God was a difficult thing to accept because my mind had so clung to a false salvation dichotomy of self and science, with some new-age notion of the universe thrown in for good measure. But God in his mercy for my mental upheaval, began revealing himself to me in beautiful and consequential ways, which reinforced my tender shoot of burgeoning faith as He beckoned me upward into his warmth and light.
About a year into my conversion to believing in God, opening to his word, and living a more Godly life, I accepted Christ back into my heart with the help of a dear friend. He helped me to see that Christ was just God coming to earth to reveal himself to us on our terms. Because I know that God can do anything, I can now believe the story of Yeshua, that he was persecuted because of our sins, died for man, and that he ascended into heaven to be with God. I am thankful for his sacrifice and for bringing the word of God to life again. And I am ever thankful, on an hourly basis, that God is present in my life, and loving me and guiding me on my perilous journey through this world.
Thank you so much, Lord, for your divine presence in my life; and for awakening mine heart unto you. May you be in my life for evermore. ❤
~Song of Mary~ 