My Centering

       As a child I attended church with my parents regularly, but seemed to know nothing about making a choice to believe in God or in Jesus as my Savior. At age 9 I can remember asking God, with a child’s heart, “Are you real?” As I sat that morning in church I had no understanding that the impression I immediately received of the awesomeness of all the stars in the universe was an answer from the Creator. As a matter of fact, with eleven years of perfect attendance pins from Sunday school, (missing the twelfth year because we were late to church too many times), I didn’t have a clue about any decision I should make or what to believe, other than just attending church each Sunday as my parents had always done before me.

       I endeavored to be good in whatever I tried to do, but was motivated by a fear which caused a high level of anxiety. I must have thought that if I were “good” (which meant meeting someone else’s expectations), I would receive approval, and that must mean, “I am loved”. As you can see, fear of failure is what actually motivated me through my early years and into my 20’s. I believe that deep inside us all is the desire to be loved, to belong, and to be accepted for who we are. I spent many years trying to fill those needs, but missing the only One who could truly fulfill my life. My reality of knowing “unconditional love” was stunted, because my understanding had to connect to earning it somehow. Expectations, such as, belonging to an organization that one of my parents had always wanted to belong to, or perhaps achieving recognition in awards for my talents that was someone else’s dream, were all I knew. By the time I was a teenager, I had developed many anxieties, particularly various nervous “tics” (noises, or shaking my head, etc.). I could never be “good” enough. I just wanted to be myself, to be loved, with no strings attached.

       While in college, I was invited by a friend to a church’s “Game Night”. This sounded non-threatening to me so I decided to go. It was to be a turning point in my life, but not because someone spoke to me about God. I simply watched a people of all generations interacting with each other in a godly love that I had never seen or experienced before. It was because of this that I decided to visit the Sunday service the next day. As I attended throughout the weeks, I began to understand that I was responsible for my own choices concerning spiritual beliefs. I hadn’t realized what sin meant, or that I could even be a sinner (since so much of my energy was spent trying to be “good”). After facing the real me and all my fears, and asking for God’s forgiveness, the time came when I made the decision to invite Jesus into my heart, making the most important choice of my life. The “Centering” of my life in God was the beginning of a walk that brought me peace with God and a relationship of unconditional love that was for eternity. But this is only the beginning; there is much more I was about to learn.