- Nov 8, 2015
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The very first time I reached out to God, on my own, by my own choice, I was 9 years old. I had just learned that a very dear friend who was like a brother to me, was very, very sick and not expected to make it through the night. Unable to help by human ability alone I sat in my bed all night and I prayed and I cried. I begged God to spare him, that if someone had to face the illness that threatened to take him from us it should be me. I didn't want to die, but I was willing to take that risk if possible for my friend's sake. I loved him in a deep and self-sacrificial way, I cared more about him, about his well being and happiness than I did my own mortal life. I continued to pray all night long until finally I must have passed out.
When I woke up the next morning I found that the will of God had been otherwise. My friend was gone, taken to Paradise at just seven years old. Something in me broke at learning that. I was a child, and one who hadn't had much up to that point in the way of church or Sunday School. I thought that God had ignored my prayers. I thought that He had abandoned us. To quote the Lord's words from the cross: "My God, My God, Why have You forsaken me?"
I became angry and depressed. I wanted nothing to do with God, I didn't believe that a loving being could have done that. I still believed in the Existence of God, but I had no faith left that He cared about me or anyone I loved. So I turned my back on Him and as time passed, on almost everyone else. I was so afraid that everyone I cared about would be taken from me or betray me that I didn't dare trust or let anyone in. I suffered under the weight of that grief, and loneliness, and pain for five long years. Over time my anger turned into the sense that it had been too long, that I had fallen too far and that I had made my bed and would have to lay in it.
Finally when I was 14, I didn't know it but I had hit my breaking point. I heard a worship song from a movie I'd grown up with start playing in my room. It was on my Ipod, but I hadn't pushed play. The song was "Better Than I" from "Joseph King of Dreams". The lyrics "...so I put up a fight and told You how to help me, now just when I have given up the truth is coming clear..." effected me in a way nothing else has before or since. I was overcome with the inclination that now was the time to beg forgiveness. So I knelt beside me bed and prayed in repentance for what I had done, how I had lived those five years, and asked God to take me back. He answered in a way that I cannot fully explain. I heard a voice, not just any voice, but the voice of my friend who had died five years before. I know not if God sent him to me as an angel or simply used his voice knowing it would comfort me and bring down what was left of my emotional walls; but regardless he/He told me that he was alright, that he was in heaven and that God wasn't mad at me and hadn't abandoned us that night. That if I allowed God back into my life and accepted the offer of atonement that I had in front of me we would see each other again one day. So I did, and it was like taking a shower after being completely caked in hardened mud, it was like the ice melted off my heart and allowed me to love again. It was such a release... I accepted that day, that God's ways are not our ways and sometimes He will do things that by our own ways seem harsh and make no sense but that He knows better than we do and we don't always have to know why.
A few years after I accepted that, when I was trying to pin down what I actually believed and which church would be my spiritual home that I actually got an answer to the "why" in my own particular case. I had recently picked up a Catholic Bible which had the Apocrypha in it and I was reading Wisdom of Solomon when I came upon this passage:
"But though a righteous man may die before his time
he shall be at rest
for old age is not honored for its length of existence
nor measured by the number of years
but discernment is gray hair for mankind
and a spotless life is the maturity of old age
he was pleasing to God and loved by him
and while living among sinners he was taken up
he was caught up lest evil change his understanding
or deceive deceive his soul
for envy arising from lack of judgement obscures what is good
and a whirl of desire undermines an innocent heart
he was made perfect
for in a short time he fulfilled long years
for his soul was pleasing to the Lord
Therefore, He took him early out of the midst of evil
Yet when the people saw this they did not understand
nor take such a thing to heart
that the Lord's Grace and Mercy are with His elect
and that He watches over His holy ones." - Wisdom of Solomon 4:7-15
After studying more of scripture and church history I was finally Baptized and Christmated into the Eastern Orthodox Church in 2011. I still miss my dear friend every day and wonder about the man he would have become, but I know now, more clearly than ever before, that like him, I will go home... I will see God my Father and I will see my friend and all my other loved ones again... as hopefully we all will.
When I woke up the next morning I found that the will of God had been otherwise. My friend was gone, taken to Paradise at just seven years old. Something in me broke at learning that. I was a child, and one who hadn't had much up to that point in the way of church or Sunday School. I thought that God had ignored my prayers. I thought that He had abandoned us. To quote the Lord's words from the cross: "My God, My God, Why have You forsaken me?"
I became angry and depressed. I wanted nothing to do with God, I didn't believe that a loving being could have done that. I still believed in the Existence of God, but I had no faith left that He cared about me or anyone I loved. So I turned my back on Him and as time passed, on almost everyone else. I was so afraid that everyone I cared about would be taken from me or betray me that I didn't dare trust or let anyone in. I suffered under the weight of that grief, and loneliness, and pain for five long years. Over time my anger turned into the sense that it had been too long, that I had fallen too far and that I had made my bed and would have to lay in it.
Finally when I was 14, I didn't know it but I had hit my breaking point. I heard a worship song from a movie I'd grown up with start playing in my room. It was on my Ipod, but I hadn't pushed play. The song was "Better Than I" from "Joseph King of Dreams". The lyrics "...so I put up a fight and told You how to help me, now just when I have given up the truth is coming clear..." effected me in a way nothing else has before or since. I was overcome with the inclination that now was the time to beg forgiveness. So I knelt beside me bed and prayed in repentance for what I had done, how I had lived those five years, and asked God to take me back. He answered in a way that I cannot fully explain. I heard a voice, not just any voice, but the voice of my friend who had died five years before. I know not if God sent him to me as an angel or simply used his voice knowing it would comfort me and bring down what was left of my emotional walls; but regardless he/He told me that he was alright, that he was in heaven and that God wasn't mad at me and hadn't abandoned us that night. That if I allowed God back into my life and accepted the offer of atonement that I had in front of me we would see each other again one day. So I did, and it was like taking a shower after being completely caked in hardened mud, it was like the ice melted off my heart and allowed me to love again. It was such a release... I accepted that day, that God's ways are not our ways and sometimes He will do things that by our own ways seem harsh and make no sense but that He knows better than we do and we don't always have to know why.
A few years after I accepted that, when I was trying to pin down what I actually believed and which church would be my spiritual home that I actually got an answer to the "why" in my own particular case. I had recently picked up a Catholic Bible which had the Apocrypha in it and I was reading Wisdom of Solomon when I came upon this passage:
"But though a righteous man may die before his time
he shall be at rest
for old age is not honored for its length of existence
nor measured by the number of years
but discernment is gray hair for mankind
and a spotless life is the maturity of old age
he was pleasing to God and loved by him
and while living among sinners he was taken up
he was caught up lest evil change his understanding
or deceive deceive his soul
for envy arising from lack of judgement obscures what is good
and a whirl of desire undermines an innocent heart
he was made perfect
for in a short time he fulfilled long years
for his soul was pleasing to the Lord
Therefore, He took him early out of the midst of evil
Yet when the people saw this they did not understand
nor take such a thing to heart
that the Lord's Grace and Mercy are with His elect
and that He watches over His holy ones." - Wisdom of Solomon 4:7-15
After studying more of scripture and church history I was finally Baptized and Christmated into the Eastern Orthodox Church in 2011. I still miss my dear friend every day and wonder about the man he would have become, but I know now, more clearly than ever before, that like him, I will go home... I will see God my Father and I will see my friend and all my other loved ones again... as hopefully we all will.
