I sought The Lord, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears. Look to him, and be radiant; so your faces shall never be ashamed. This poor man cried, and The Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of The Lord encamps around those who fear Him, and delivers them.
-David, Psalm 34
Christmas came and went, and I refused to speak to my mother, or visit for the holiday. Every evening ended the same: me, face down in my pillow, praying through the tears that often came when I stopped to think about my situation. These couple of months in my life are perhaps the months that created the most radical change in who I am.
I remember, in hindsight, that I had been dedicated to God even before my birth, and what that really means, I'm still not totally certain, but I can say that were I had been, my faith and my devotion were not being nurtured. The hostility of the environment was hardening my heart. The pain of feeling forsaken and the need to adapt in my new situation would strip all that away, and begin a new work within me.
In the first days of matriculation, I learned quickly that my arrogance and pride must be diminished if I was going to make any friends. The new kid in school wasn't going to make any friends because he was competitive, and while my confidence, competitive spirit, and my particular style of sarcasm will always be part of my personality, it was then that I first knew that coming in and attempting to immediately assume my old roles as lead percussionist and chief thinker wasn't going to work out all that well. A new approach was needed.
It wasn't long after I figured this out that a classmate and distant cousin of mine, Tiffany, invited me to play drums for the praise band at the Free Methodist Church. It seemed provincial, for them, and later for me - their previous drummer had just moved away, and I replaced him without them missing a week. This new church, this new group of friends, were passionately in love with God. Playing with a praise band was a new musical challenge, and because I was at church so often to rehearse and play, I was participating in the study and discussion about faith that I had previously not had much exposure to.
Before the semester was over, I was deeply committed in all venues religious and musical, and the same distant cousin handed to my care the before-school prayer group, Students High on Christ. Not feeling up to the task by myself, I, like Moses, found others to help me, a boy named Devin from the FM church, and a pastor's son from a Baptist Church, named Tim, who himself is now a pastor.
By the end of the year, I was reading the Bible daily, preparing talks to give to others at the prayer meeting, playing drums for the FM praise band, competing alongside my peers in a Bible knowledge competition at the Lutheran church where I had been Christened, singing in a youth choir over at the United Methodist church, playing in a Christian Punk Rock band with two guys from the praise band, organizing the See You at the Pole rally, and attending a Wednesday night Bible study when I wasn't playing at the FM church. My mother and I reconciled. I forgave her. My step-father and I reconciled. I forgave him.
Behind my back, the kids that snuck off at lunch to smoke dubbed me "God-boy," and behind my back, my brother defended me. A less-popular girl once told me she thought I was nicest person she knew. Somehow, without noticing, I'd become passionately kind. I'd learned to be more humble, less sarcastic. Where I had been emptied and broken, by God's mercy I was now mended and full, and headed off to Greenville College, a small free methodist school not far away, to pursue a degree in Christian music.
At Greenville, my faith would be radically challenged, and would radically grow in ways that I had never previously anticipated.
Again, there's more yet to come...
I'm hooked...:-)
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