A Little Bit of Light

During those years in the dark I saw. I saw far more then most. I saw the darkness that surrounded me. I saw the shadows of the fallen demonic world we all live in. I get that my life experience is outside the normative. I realize that society by and large doesn't see the swirling reality of the spirit world around us all. But for me it is part of my world.

And that darkness was all encompassing. It was, as real as, my circumstances. It was, as real as, my invisible wall. It was, as real as, the breath in my lungs. This world for me was a dark and dangerous place devoid of any true love. My reality was so dark that I did not even have a conception of true love.

One day, in the summer of my fifteenth year, like a cruel joke, someone was kind to me. Her name was Zanya and she was sixteen. I met her in such an unlikely way. She was friends with the son of my mothers' drug dealer. That night she introduced me to church. Neither I nor she had planned on ending up at the church that evening, but that is where we found ourselves.

I had only once before set foot in a church ten years prier, and had made the very conscious decision not to follow this anemic powerless Jesus those people told me about. Any God who would allow himself to be contained in a little white box was not very useful to me. Because I knew full well the power of the forces of evil. And I knew the God those people were talking and singing about was far to limited to be of any help.

The meeting that night was simple enough, the first thirty minutes where reserved for memorizing a Bible verse, while the second half was reserved for the man of God to make a speech about God. I do not recall anything this man of God spoke about, but that night's verse had been James 4:2-3 (King James) Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.

I had never even hear of the Bible before that day, but I memorized the verse just as all the other teens did. The words were set in my mind, but I did not understand what they meant. As the meeting came to a close I was asked to “receive salvation”.

My life was full of darkness, full of ever-present shadowed figures who taunted me always. But for that moment all the world around me was silent. I didn't even hear the breaths of the forty some people who shared the room with me.

I found myself walking to the front of the church without any understanding as to why I was doing so. There was no moment of awareness on my part. And yet, I knelled down at the alter unsure of my actions. I was compelled by a desire that was irresistible. The compulsion to go forward was greater then any intellectual desire I could have had. I was simply compelled to do so.

The pastors' wife told me, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth upon him shall not parish but have everlasting life.” I remember thinking who in their right mind would want to have everlasting life. This life sucks, why would I want it to last forever, but no words came to my lips as I sat listening to her words.

She went on to tell me that, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” “The wages of sin is death in hell.” I listened patiently to her words, but without any real understanding.

I then repeated words like a parrot for a cracker. I was told if I prayed a sinners prayer, and confessed my sins to God I would be saved. So I repeated her words and was told that I was now a child of God. I was loved by God.

God loved me in that moment. His grace was reaching out to me before I opened my eyes that morning. There is no other explanation as to how God could reach me in a family filled with those who turned away from His love, from a family filled with people who could not demonstrate basic human love.

I spent the next fourteen years trying to earn a love that I knew I did not deserve. I know that at some point I was told it was not by works that we are saved, and yet my heart could not believe such a thing. God loved me even if I could not fully accept that love at that moment in time.

So I went to church every time the doors opened. I prayed every day, and read the words in my King James Bible. I accumulated the knowledge of God's love for humanity. I accumulated the knowledge of God's love for me. I filled my mind with the education of Christianity. I set to my memory to hundreds of Bible verses. I memorized at least 300 hymns and spiritual songs. Still the wall I built and fortified was strong and thick and higher then those words.

Some light, just a little came shining into my darkness, but I did not fully comprehend it.