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I don’t know what I was expecting when I bowed my head with Grandma Lucy. I still can’t believe I did it, followed a prayer by some woman who’s preaching at her own end-of-life ceremony. First, she prayed with anyone who wanted to become a Christian for the first time. It’s all the stuff I remember from Sandy’s church. You know, I admit I’m a sinner, please forgive me, come into my heart, I make you Lord of my life. And I remember enough from her husband’s preaching to figure I’m set because I prayed that one a long time ago, and everyone there told me you’ve only got to do it once. But I do it again, just to be sure. It can’t hurt, right?
Next, Grandma Lucy looks straight at the camera and I swear she’s watching me with some third eye or something. She says, “Now, I know there are some of you who have been Christians for years. You know that Jesus died to take the punishment for your sins, you believe he was raised back to life through the power of the Holy Spirit, and you’ve asked him to forgive your sins and prepare a place for you in heaven. But deep in your heart, you realize something is still missing, only you can’t figure out how to find it.”
I’m bending down over my phone so that my face is as close as I can get to the screen without making Grandma Lucy’s image blurry. I’m not trembling anymore, at least not outwardly. All those physical symptoms, they’re now confined to one spot in the center of my chest. I’m no longer nervous. I wouldn’t even say I’m afraid. It’s more like dread, this emotion I’m feeling. But when you call it an emotion, that makes it sound like it’s coming from somewhere within me, except it’s not. It’s this Presence. This conviction. This certainty that I know I didn’t conjure up on my own. And I’m terrified. I don’t think there’s a word strong enough to express this sort of fear.
I’m no longer afraid that God’s mad at me. I’m afraid that whatever it is Grandma Lucy’s going to ask me to do to get right with him is going to be too hard. I’ll be too stubborn. I won’t have the strength to follow through, even though something in me knows — just like I knew that Jake and I wouldn’t be able to make it together for the long haul — something in me knows that if I don’t respond to this tugging at my spirit, I may never get another chance like this for as long as I live.
Now you can understand when I say there’s not a single expression in human language that can describe this level of terror.
Help me, God. I’m not sure what I’m asking him to do. I just know that without his strength, I’m going to be too weak to take this step of faith, whatever it is. I’m so exhausted by this bleak, dismal existence I’ve been leading. If you were to take all the moments in the past twelve months where I’ve been truly happy, I don’t think it would even total half an hour. Not a single hour out of the entire year. I know enough about Christianity to realize that it’s not all about me being happy, but I also know enough about myself to understand that if something doesn’t change, if I don’t find some sort of higher purpose, some outside source of joy that’s not tied to my emotions or my circumstances, I might not be here in another twelve months when next Christmas rolls around.
That’s why I’m bending so attentively over my phone. That’s why when Grandma Lucy begins what she calls her prayer of repentance and renewal, I’m soaking in every single word like I’m a sponge that’s been sitting out in the desert heat for months. I take each phrase, each individual word, and make it my own. I wrap it up as a prayer that I toss up to heaven, hoping against all my uncertainties and fears that, as weak and sinful as I am, it will still be enough.
I beg God to free me from guilt and shame. I invite him to fill me with the Holy Spirit until I’m overflowing. I ask him to give me victory over sin and doubt. And I surrender my future, uncertain as it is, and I surrender my daughter’s future to the God who has promised that those who put their hope in him will never be put to shame.
Right after Grandma Lucy says amen, my phone pauses to hunt for more bandwidth. There’s a soft tapping on my door. I glance up like a third-grader who’s been caught cheating off her neighbor’s test.
“Hey,” Jake says. His voice is so soft, I can hardly hear it over the pounding of my own pulse. I hardly feel human at the moment. What just happened to me? What did I just do?
He steps into the room tentatively. Glances at our daughter in her crib, his look full of compassion and pain.
“Sorry to bother you.” He doesn’t meet my eyes. Or maybe it’s me that’s keeping my gaze so low.
He pulls up the doctor’s swivel chair. “Do you have a minute? I came by to talk to you about something.”