dunked.

I’ve been dunked.

Leading up to it, I was so nervous I could hardly breathe. My hands shook, and my voice cracked as I read my testimony to a crowd of people along the water. I stood, water lapping along my knees and said it: said that I love Jesus. said that I am a sinner. said that I mess up. A lot.

It’s really hard to admit that you’re weak when you’re standing in front of a hundred people. Even harder when some of those people know you really well and some have never seen you cry before.

“Your story doesn’t sound like you, doesn’t fit you,” my friend said afterwards, “but crying made it seem more real.” I find this funny. There was only one other person he knew being baptized, “I would expect that to be her story. I didn’t expect yours.”

I wonder what this means, that I’m not transparent? That I’ve spent so much time hiding? That I’m still ashamed and afraid to bring it all to the light?

Regardless, I’ve been dunked. I resurfaced, glasses down my face, water down my throat, and a soggy piece of paper in-hand, and I tromped through the water to shore. The sun was behind the buildings now, and the shade and breeze were especially cool after the sudden plunge.

When the testimonies were over, I finally came to. I felt like what a newborn must feel, literally, no cliché intended. I was finally hungry instead of nervous, and the whir of people around me, loving me, was totally overwhelming. I kept taking quick gasps because I couldn’t formulate a deep breath.

I have nothing to panic about. I survived. Everyone still loves me, despite knowing my secrets and my sadness and my sin. And God  loves me the same.

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. –Romans 6.3-4

here is my testimony. please take from it only that God has done amazing work in my life, and i am grateful.

testimony

I grew up going to church. I was baptized as a kid and brought up on the main Bible stories. And they were just that—stories. I did not believe them and left the church in middle school. I didn’t want their god.

Without even realizing it, I let my sin take full control. My worldview extended no farther than myself, allowing self-destructive thoughts and actions to rule my day-to-day. I felt like I had no control and could only rely on physical things, could only put my trust in what I could see and feel. I cut myself and often thought of suicide; I felt a deep failure at not being able to control my own death.

Late in high school, I started trying to believe in god again. I became a fan of Jesus the man while still not knowing Jesus, Son of the living God. I mostly shrugged off God because I had come to terms to believe that he existed, so I thought I didn’t need anything else. I thought that this in itself was what it meant to be a Christian.

In the midst of it, my cousin Derek was battling Duchenne’s Muscular Dystrophy. and it was progressing quickly. I was insistent that he would get better. My life circulated around him. My sister tried to talk to both of us about Jesus, but we laughed it off. A week later, on August 27^th, 2011, he died at age 22. He was my best friend. I held his hand at the hospital until they turned off the machines.

That last year of college, right after Derek died, was the most challenging in many ways. I spent the first semester half-commuting, half sleeping on people’s couches/living with two professors who graciously opened their doors. The family that I stayed with lived out Christianity in a way I had never seen before. This was the first hint of a need for faith in my life—faith in humanity, faith in something bigger than me, faith in God.

I was a point where I didn’t really want to keep living because I had so focused my life on Derek. I thought I had nothing left. I asked the cemetery to reserve the plot next to his. I would surely die or kill myself before the semester was over. But here I am, and in the past few months, God has used this experience to remind me that everything in this world is temporary.

I moved to Seattle a year ago. I never imagined I would live in a city but soon began to love it. I felt called to Seattle, and soon, I felt like I was being called to go to this church. I was reluctant at first; it took many invites before I finally showed up, but once I started going, I began to feel like part of the family.

I kept going back-and-forth from being “so close to getting Jesus” to wanting to totally give up and not come back. I couldn’t let up the anchor on my emotions.

One Sunday, it finally changed. The song “All my Tears” reminded me that everything is temporary but God. The dots connected—what is the sense in living only for this life? I need Jesus; he is the only Way to God. I prayed to Jesus; I prayed for forgiveness of my sins; I prayed for faith, and I prayed to trust Jesus in this new stage of the journey.

hebrews6.17-20 So when GOD desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for  God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where JESUS has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek

I still struggle with emotions, with control, with self-destructive thoughts, with relying on myself more than God, but now, even in the thick of my junk-clogged thoughts, I can lean on JESUS. The anchor rests in the hope of God’s promise, not in my emotions. Jesus came on my behalf; died on my behalf; sits on the throne of God on. my. behalf. so that I can call God “Father”, so that I can spend eternity with him. Because there is so much more than this life.

“The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever.” –isaiah 40.8