A New Beginning

I was raised in a Christian household. We went to church every Sunday, I sang my little heart out during worship, I went to Bible School, Vacation Bible School, Awanas. There were a couple main events that led to my walking away from Church and in essence, God, but they are too complicated to address, at the moment.

I blithely believed that because I had been raised a Christian, been baptized, and was attending a Christian university, that everything was fine. I'm coming to find out that I could not have been more wrong.

It took my brother, a newly back to church man himself, and my parents a while to finally convince me to go with them. The church, Crossroads Christian Church, blew me away. I began going every Sunday. Soon after, I began to suspect that the church had spies on me, because every Sunday, without fail, Pastor Chuck found a way to speak on a topic that I had just been struggling with and managed every time to open my eyes and allow me to see the answer clear as day.

Eventually, I started going to the young adult group on Wednesday nights, and Pastor Tony blew me away more. Especially two Wednesday's ago, when he spoke on a topic that hit home more than any other. The topic of self worth and how we perceive ourselves compared to how God perceives us. It through me for a loop.

Tony talked about how God is a clay maker and we are his vases. He looks at us and sees a beautiful creation. But we look at ourselves and think, I have a crack there, or the paint smeared here, or I wanted to be a blue vase not a red one. We constantly tear ourselves down and are unable to love ourselves because we only see what we think are flaws. I am SO guilty of this, my friends. Guilty of looking at things I've done in my past and thinking, what a horrible crack! And I beat myself to death with that thought until I can hardly stand myself. And I realized it's because of this that I find it hard to believe that God, or anyone else could ever love me. How can they, look at my cracks! Look at my smeared paint....just look!

Except God is looking, has been looking, and all he sees is a beautiful vase that he loves and that he wishes could love itself and love others, and see what he sees. I am amazed every day by God and I am so thankful to my brother and parents for bringing me back. I had not realized how much I was missed and how much I missed. It's not easy to see passed my flaws, but they make me who I am and I no longer cringe at the sight of them and I know that one day, through grace and mercy, I won't even notice them anymore.