He is Alive
I don’t remember the first time my mom took me to a Buddhist temple. I only remember that I resented it, all of it. I resented my mom for dragging me, month after month. I resented the fact that, while other kids were causing merry mayhem at my neighborhood playground, I was burning incense and rolling “Buddhist dice” (fortune sticks). I resented having to reintroduce myself to the Buddhist Gods during each visit, before each prayer; if they were gods, shouldn’t they already know who I am, why I’m here? But, most of all, I resented being forced to bow and pray to a god who was apparently on an extended vacation. Why was it that, despite my mom’s fervent devotion and repeated visits, not one of her prayers was answered?
Every month, it was the same exercise. I already knew what my mom would pray for. I was also given an inventory of prayer points and, although I followed my mom’s instructions to the letter, I always managed to slip in one more teeny-tiny request. (Hey, as a kid standing to face-to-face amongst a buffet of gods, I was not about to walk away without a full plate of prayer requests.)
“Dear Buddha. Please protect my mom. Please stop my dad from beating her. Please.”
To tell you the truth, all that other stuff – missing out on kid frolicking time, even the 12-step prayer program I had to follow during every visit – didn’t really bother me. What I really resented– was how impersonal, how unresponsive all these Buddhist gods seemed towards my mom. I didn’t care that these Buddhas didn’t answer all my other prayers. I didn’t even care if my dad stopped beating me. By the time I was eight, I had already mastered the art of mentally and emotionally shutting down, morphing into a machine whenever the fists and the sticks would come out to play. Sticks and stones may break someone else’s bones but, they sure as hell wouldn’t break mine or my spirit. But,what about my mom? My mom had sacrificed her youth, her freedom, and her dignity in a failed attempt to create the semblance of a family. She had ample opportunity to leave or divorce him, but she refused to abandon us. There had to be some unofficial Rule Book in the Game of Life that guaranteed peace from all this pain after a certain quota of suffering had been met. Didn’t my mom’s loyalty, her devoutness, count for something?
Hello?!? Was anybody up there?!? Anybody?!?
It just didn’t make any sense to me. If “God” really existed, there was no way he or she or it could be so completely cruel. How could “God” watch as my mother, my brother, and I were physically and verbally abused on an almost daily basis and just kick back? How could “God” hear my mother’s prayers and tune out? How could “God” hear a child’s prayers and despise them? How could “God” idly stand by and allow an eight-year old girl to forfeit her own childhood by “playing mom” to her own mother? Why did “God” give me such a sh!tty life and a sh!tty family?!? I concluded that, if nobody was picking up my calls, there simply must not be anybody on the other end of the line. Ergo, there was no such being as “God.”
The thing is, despite my very vocal declarations that God did not exist, I actually did believe there was a God. Of course, if you had asked me back then, I would have taken you for a spin on my “diatribe ride” all the way down “You’re A Dumb-@$$ Lane.” But, the reason why I would have spewed verbal venom at you is precisely because something inside of me recognized there was a “God” – whoever and whatever that meant – out there. I recognized it but, I was hurt, disappointed, and pissed to high hell at this “God” for being MIA. So, I served the ultimate revenge on “God” by writing him off.
By the time I was twelve, I decided that my life would be an “Ode to the World” in the key of “F U.” I had two constant companions: Anger and Noise. My single ambition was to run as far away from California as possible. I hated everything here: the architectural structure that was supposed to pass as my “home,” the sympathetic stares and nods from neighbors who could obviously hear our daily screaming matches and who had tried to help my mother run away. I hated my father with every fiber of my being. I hated my family for not being a family. So, when I managed to get accepted into an Ivy League school 3,000 miles away, I seized it as my one-way ticket out of this hellhole.
In college, I fully expected a fresh start so I was genuinely perplexed when old habits and new emotions started to surface. It hadn’t occurred to me that, no matter how far I ran, I couldn’t run away from myself. I began to experiment with the usual suspects –fully immersing myself in Greek life and academically sponsored extracurricular activities, as well as several other unendorsed extracurricular activities: alcohol, parties, boys, sex, drugs. I started to become the very thing I despised: Dependent. Weak. I became increasingly aware that I needed to be busy (“focused”), I needed to be distracted, I needed the “Noise” in my life, I needed attention from boys, I needed a boyfriend, I needed to party every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night, I needed a cigarette, I needed to get buzzed, I needed to get high. I didn’t understand how, when, I had even arrived at this foreign destination. What had happened to the fiercely strong and independent woman who was in complete control of her life, her will, her emotions?
The more I tried to control the situation, the faster everything seemed to spiral out of control. I felt as if I had hit a dead end. My mind was tired. My heart was tired. I was sick and tired of all of it. In my desperation, I turned to another friend – my best friend. Ironically, my high school best friend was Christian. (I know, right? How we ended up as best friends is one of life’s great mysteries.) On one particular evening, after months of walking and talking myself in circles, finally succumbing to my tears, my best friend suggested I try something downright insane: “Why don’t you try praying?” I literally laughed in her face. “Ha ha ha! You’re funny!” Only, she wasn’t joking.
“Why don’t you just try it?”
“Umm,…hello?! I don’t believe in ‘God.’”
“That’s okay.”
“Well, then, what the hell am I talking to? Thin air?”
“He’s listening.”
[Pause.]
“What have you got to lose anyway? Nobody is here. I’ll even leave the room.”
[Pause.] “How do I do it?”
“Just talk to Him, like you’re talking to me.”
So she left the room and left me to my own devices and a bunch of thin air. I sat on my living room couch for a few minutes, wiping the tears from my face, struggling against my pride and my intellect. “This is dumb. This is retarded. There is no such thing as ‘God.’” If only I could just stop the damn crying and pull myself together, I could put an end to this nonsense and forget that my best friend had ever suggested such an asinine idea. Instead, the tears just came faster, harder. In my aggravation – more over the fact that I was actually considering my friend’s proposal rather than the fact that the world was pwning me – I closed my eyes and muttered, “Sh!t. Fine. [Pause.] Umm,….’God,’ if there is even a ‘God,’ if you’re actually up there and you’re actually listening, you know I don’t believe in you. But, if you actually exist, please do something. Anything. I’m desperate. [Pause.] Please help me.”
Then something amazing happened. It was already quiet in the muggy stillness of a California heat wave. But, in an instant, everything went still. I don’t know how to explain it. Suddenly, there was no more “noise” inside of me. No more rushing, racing thoughts. No more knots in my stomach. No more tightness in my chest. No more shortness of breath. No more tears. And then, something crazy happened. There weren’t any windows open, nobody else was in the room, but what seemed like a gentle breeze blew by me and brushed my hair against my cheek. I kid you not. And, because I know you’re thinking it, “No, I was not high.” Immediately I opened my eyes and whispered, “Oh my God. I think there is a God. And I think,…He was just here.”
After that “encounter,” I noticed really weird things happening in me. I lost all desire to get high. I didn’t want to party as hard any more. I stopped cursing. But, the weirder thing was, nobody told me to cease and desist anything. I just stopped because I felt like I had already achieved what I had been trying desperately to attain all my life through those other mechanisms: Peace. For the very first time in my life, I wasn’t afraid of the quiet. I wasn’t terrified that my thoughts would catch up to me if I sat still. All the years I had spent being academically ambitious, all the accolades I had received from school, all the anger I had channeled towards “productive” endeavors and trying create a “better” me by cutting off my emotions as if they were bad limbs, all the attention I had received from men and from hanging around the “right” people, all the nights I spent partying hard and harder, all the times I spent getting high and higher – none of that, not even the highest high or the hottest guy or the best sex or the greatest praise, ever got me even one iota close to having peace and being free. Something – or, rather, Someone – met me that day. Someone touched me in such a way that the course of my life was forever altered. Someone found me. Someone heard me. Someone answered me.
Now, I ain’t gonna lie and say that I have all the answers now. I can’t tell you why some things happen, why some things don’t. I probably can’t give you an adequate reason for why there is still poverty, injustice, suffering, hunger in the world. I have no idea why it seems like God didn’t answer you that time you called out. I can’t tell you how you will find God; there isn’t some magical incantation or repeatable formula. But, I do know this: God is real. He is real. He is so real. It’s been ten years since that encounter and, let me assure you, He is still very real. He can be found. He desires to be found. He can be felt. His love can be felt. Yes – you can feel His love. You can even hear His voice. He is good -really good. Not like the “eat-your-dang-broccoli-and-brussels-sprouts-because-it’s-good-for-you-kid” or the “tough-love-I-only-say-and-do-hurtful-things-because-I-love-you” type of good, but, the “His-love-makes-me-wanna- laugh-cry-jump-shout-sing- because-it’s-everything-I-ever-desired-and-hoped-for-but-never-dared- dream-of” good. He is faithful, faithful until the end. He is true. He pursues. He is worth the pursuit – I promise. He responds. He calls. He answers. He restores. He reconciles. He heals. He healed my relationship with my father (I love my daddy!!!); He’s healing my relationship with my family. He healed my heart. He rescues. He saves. He saved me from myself. He probably saved my life. He loves me. He loves you. So, so, so, so, so much. More than you may ever know. And His love was made manifest when He sent His one and only Son, Jesus Christ, to walk with us, talk with us, eat with us, take death upon Himself for us. He came and He conquered death so that you and I would have life, life to the fullest. He came and He conquered death so that you and I could live, so that you and I could be alive.
He is alive.
- darkyetlovely
