Growing up, I wasn’t raised in the church, and I didn’t know anything about Jesus. I spent the first 18 years of my life learning manmade cultural traditions and common sense, while trying to make sense of the trauma I had endured. Having survived my childhood, I was now a fledgling adult, barely 18 and looking for something, driven by a void inside me that I didn’t understand. I was trying to “write-over” my past as if it had never happened.
Despite succeeding in school, excelling in gymnastics, winning over plenty of friends and putting on a happy, fun-loving façade, the pain inside always returned, and I could not escape this gnawing inside for something more, both of which grew greater with every passing day.
And right then, God placed His message for me into the hands of an unlikely person. I was transfixed. I thought that no one could see my past and my pain because I had stuffed it so deep, never sharing it with anyone. I thought I blended in with everyone else, and maybe I almost did – but God saw me.
“You have searched me, LORD, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you, LORD, know it completely.” Psalm 139:1-4
