Sleepless

I'm supposed to be resting, but once again my brain has demonstrated that it can't allow this until it has been unpacked; ergo, here I am.

The last few days I've come to the conclusion that essentially, mine has been quite a backwards conversion experience.

When I "accepted Christ," I was young, about 10 years old. There was no struggle, no guilt, no wrestling to understand; the decision was expected, in a sense, given my familial background, but it was also sincerely meant. It was simple, and entirely unemotional. To be sure, the full significance of what I had done could not have been truly felt, given my youth, but as much as any 10-year-old could have been, I was aware of what I was doing.

I remember thinking, for most of my childhood and adolescence, that I no testimony. I had always heard the extreme dark-to-light type testimonies, and thought that since mine was so much simpler and non-life-changing (*at that point), I really didn't have that much to work out or talk about. After all, I came from a Christian background, was a good kid, and my "official" (i.e., verbal) placement of trust in Christ really hadn't changed much of the way I lived, because there really was no "darkness" for me to come out of, so to speak.

Fortunately for me, that did not remain to be true. I think God has propelled my life in such a way that over the course of time, I eventually came into my own kind of darkness that I needed to allow myself to be saved from. High school brought some heady issues to the forefront of my life which were to be the backdrop for a lot of my searching later on, although I was still yet to really face anything truly difficult (or so hindsight revealed). With my entrance into college came a lot of questioning, which I welcomed as necessary; I've been very glad to actually be formulating my own opinions and beliefs rather than accepting, without challenge, everything I've been taught. Not to say I've rejected what I've been taught (although that has happened on occasion), but I've been coming into an understanding of why I believe what I believe. I imagine most thinking young adults go through this.

Coupled with this questioning mindset, my extremely introspective nature has drawn me into many realizations about myself over the past few years...realizations that have produced a lot of self-doubt, a lot of guilt, and a drop in my confidence in who I am. Warrented or not, those are still things I struggle with now; in fact, a lot of it has really surfaced this semester and come to a defining point, as I find myself fighting more than ever to see myself as God sees me.

I've never been in a place where I've doubted my salvation; the cognitive reality of God's gift of grace is something I've never had cause to question. But it's as if over a decade later, that decision I made to accept grace is just now coming to fruition, as I work out the idea of it all with fear and trembling, and as I struggle to take hold of it for myself and believe in its total redemption...It's strange, too, to know the ultimate ending of the story, and yet still be living in the midst of the irresolution of it.

It has been an intriguing, painful, humbling, and beautiful process. It continues to be so still...