all grown up | Previous Challenge Entry

how it works

TITLE: all grown up | Previous Challenge Entry
By Lisa Hendricks
02/02/06
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all grown up

I was the Lord’s for approximately fifteen minutes when He decided I should go to college. Ok, so it was not fifteen minutes, but it was a rather short time. I remember coming back to work from a lunch break and typing ‘Christian college’ in a search engine. God directed every step; I sent off an email, they responded; I enrolled. I remember God deciding my major-Christian Ministry. I did not even know what that was.
After the counselor at the school and I shook hands, I went to celebrate at the local bar. It was the way I celebrated all special occasions; this one was no different. I had lived my life this way for twenty years. I was having an affair on my fiancé, so it was a toss-up who to call first to tell the good news.
My first class was an absolute nightmare. We went around the room telling our testimonies. I had no clue what a testimony was, or if I had one. Thankfully, I was toward the end of the horseshoe-shaped classroom or I might have run out right then and there. I remember scanning one of my church bulletins to find out what denomination I attended. By the time they got to me, I was tearful and my palms were drenched with sweat.
“I’ll be honest. I do not have a clue why I am here. The Lord told me to go to school, and here’s where He led me.” I could not tell them I was married, because I wasn’t yet. I could not tell them I was sober, because I wasn’t yet. I could not tell them when I was saved, because I did not yet know the correct terminology. I could not tell them what denomination my church was, because it was non-denominational.

“My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driver to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not ‘mine,’ but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back on that.” Galatians 2.20-21 The Message

One painful step at a time, He changed my life. Some steps were agonizing; some were a relief. I let go, He held on. I could come up with a million clichés all saying the same thing.
As I grew up in Him, there was a while that my story, my testimony became very sanitized. It was as if the new life He gave me had whitewashed the old one. I had a license to recreate the past. His truth made me realize that my thinking was incorrect. He had given me the past so that I could shine in the future. I no longer wanted control; I knew what I did with that. I wanted to tell people where I had been so they could see where they could go. Releasing the chains that bound me made it possible to lose the very control I had been seeking the whole time.

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