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I stayed in bed most of Good Friday. I wasn’t feeling well. A feeling of sorrow and sickness seemed to hover over my home, body and emotions. Maybe like an unconscious weeping. My spirit grieved in a way that my conscious mind couldn’t comprehend. Can you even fathom the pain that Christ endured on the cross? I can’t bare the thought of it. I can’t watch movies that show His suffering in the final hours of His life. I have yet to see “The Passion” and I won’t. I can’t handle it. I love watching and learning about His life, but when it comes to His death, I have to turn off the television. I love Him so much. I’m eternally grateful for what He did but I can’t watch the suffering He went through for mankind… for me .
Well… I can’t watch suffering of anyone really. That’s the very reason that I chose not to follow my mother’s footsteps into the nursing field. I cry over road killed animals. I almost lost my sanity when I saw my stepfather lying lifeless in a hospital bed. So if you’re able to witness Christ’s last hours on Earth, don’t think that I’m saying you just don’t love Him as much as I do, cause the truth is, I’m a wuss when it comes to blood and guts. Though, I especially can’t watch Christ’s sufferings because I know He is getting what I deserved, He died so that we could live. It touches so deep … It’s a cry from the heart of my heart and it hurts too much.
I don't know how I survived
In this cold and empty world
For all this time
I only know that I'm alive
Because you love me
In 1995, Tommy and I married. On July 2,1998 I cheated on my husband with his co-worker. I wasn’t a believer at this time. I wasn’t an unbeliever either. I was more agnostic, I suppose. I knew there was a God of some kind, I was also certain that THAT God wasn’t doing a thing for me. Tommy and I had a precious love. We had attended school together for most of our childhood and later became high school sweethearts. We moved in with each other at the age of 16, married at 18. Tommy came from a poor family. I came from a middle class family. Tommy was neglected. I was given too much. When he hooked up with me, the benefit of material wealth came with me. At 16 years old, I drove a new car. I wore name brand clothes. I had cash on me at all times. I was a spoiled little brat. He had worked for everything he had, still didn’t have much, for his mother would take his money claiming it had to pay the home bills. Everything I had, had been given to me. I had no appreciation for the dollar. My mother gave my brother and I anything and everything she could in hopes of making up for our abusive and emotionally unavailable father. My mother was is naïve, trusting, and unworldly passive. She describes herself even, as an Ostrich with his head buried in the sand. My mother and father are complete opposites. One of my first poems written at the age of 8 compared their differences to day and night. Back when I was in rehab and my father traveled from Ft Worth to visit me, He laughed and joked, saying he knew I wouldn’t get to far… “Just look at the conflicting genes you were given”; in essence comparing them to God and Satan. Though I don’t believe evil dwells in my blood, because I choose life. I do think he had a point.
When I recall what I've been through
There's some things
That I wish I didn't do
but NOW I do the things I do
Because you love me
My brother is atheist. The last time we spoke of spiritual matters, his exact words, “I don’t want to hear about some saved silliness.” When I was a child, I believed there was something, as I stated early, and I remember having debates at a very young age with my brother. He spoke of how selfish this God is to want everyone to bow down to Him. I don’t know if I was fighting for my beliefs or if I was just fighting for the sake of arguing with my brother, but it never failed, Each time big brother outwitted me. I left feeling angry and thinking maybe brother was right. Maybe there is no God. He would say, “Give me ONE good reason to believe in THIS God.” All I could say was “You have to believe in something.” I knew nothing about Christ. I wasn’t forced to attend church and didn’t most of my childhood. I didn’t know why Jesus hung on the cross until I was 22 years old. I would ask my mother about God; she would hurriedly tell me that He created the world, as she rushed off to clock in for a twelve-hour shift at the hospital. Somewhere I heard that God is like a Father. I don’t remember who told me that for the first time but I do remember thinking… If God is anything like my Father, I want nothing at all to do with him. That was that… if God is like my dad… then I’d just assume he not be an active part of my life. My childlike faith was destroyed and I didn’t think about God again for many years to come.
And now that you're in my life
I'm so glad I'm alive
'Cause you showed me the way
And I know now how good it can be
Because You love me
My ex husband spoke some about his faith in the beginning. I remember just rolling my eyes. There was a Christian song that he liked and wanted me to hear. This was when we were just dating. I listened to the song and then tore him to shreds for believing in such make believe . I don’t remember my exact words but to this day I remember the look on his face. It was a look of shock and hurt. He never brought God up again to me. We later married and began our lifestyle of drink and drug. Instead of starting out building, we actually started out tearing down. I was a mixed up, headstrong kid that hooked up with a mixed up, neglected most of his life, kid. My Uncle Bud gave me my first bible as a wedding gift. It stayed in the bookcase for the first three years of our marriage, never opened, not once.
I worked at a gas station full time and I was attending cosmetology school part time. Tommy worked as a machinist at a place where the boss man would pass the joint from machinist to machinist as they worked. All his co-workers and their wives would come to our home on the weekend and party. We lived in what we named the “the cabin”. It was a beautiful three-bedroom home made to resemble that of a cabin, even though it sat in the heart of the city. There was a tire swing in the front yard and our dog, Jake. I had just turned 21 years old, Tommy was six months older than I was, so his days of being my ‘guardian’ were over, so he would joke and say. There were four couples that would come to our home every weekend to drink and get high and one single guy, we nicknamed him… Quinby.
Quinby was on probation for a DWI and so my husband would go and pick him up for a weekend partying. Tommy would drink so hard and fast most weekends that he would be passed out before midnight. The couples would make their way home, leaving Quinby and I alone with our liquor drenched minds. It was July 2, 1998 when Quinby helped bring me to my knees for the first time in my life.
I believe in things unseen
I believe in the message of a dream
And I believe in what you are
Because you love me
I didn’t tell anyone what had happened for the first year. I lived alone with my misery and I was so guilt ridden. Finally I dusted off that bible that Uncle Bud had given me and I looked for scriptures about adultery. I wasn’t a Christian. The Holy Spirit was not in me, so every time I read a scripture I felt condemned. I read somewhere about how the adulterous woman will surely burn in hell. I slammed the book shut and wept. I had no reason to live, but no reason to kill myself for IF there was a God; I was going to burn in this fiery hell for eternity. I had no reason to live and no reason to die. I knew nothing about forgiveness. I spent the next year of my life running scared from everything. I would not believe in God for the idea that if I did believe he existed, then I would have to believe that I was going to hell, for I knew nothing about Jesus Christ. All I knew was that God is like a Father… if that be the case, then God was way disgusted with me. I fell headfirst into addiction. It was the most miserable time of my life. I remember hiding my nakedness from my husband because I felt he would see Quinby all over me. I pushed Tommy away for I knew when the truth came out, he was going to leave and never come back. I stopped caring about everything… Tommy, our marriage… and myself…
This was the worst time of my life up to that point and this is exactly the time that God started tugging at my heart. I wrestled with God, though I knew not that it was He I was wrestling with. I would slam His Word shut, curse him like the devil would, only to be drawn back to His Word again and again. Not long after I learned of why Jesus hung on the cross. I’m not sure when exactly it happened. I do remember flipping through the TV stations as I smoked a joint one early morning and Joyce Meyers caught my eye. She was speaking about salvation and the love of Christ. I watched her show as I smoked myself high. I remember thinking she sounded like a man but she looked like a woman. She no doubt caught my attention with the words she was speaking but it was almost a year after learning who Jesus was, watching her on television and wrestling with God through His Word, when I finally got down on my knees and prayed the sinners prayer.
****************************
"Heavenly Father, have mercy on me, a sinner. I believe in you and that your word is true. I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of the living God and that he died on the cross so that I may now have forgiveness for my sins and eternal life. I know that without you in my heart my life is meaningless.
I believe in my heart that you, Lord God, raised Him from the dead. Jesus forgive me, for every sin I have ever committed or done in my heart, Lord Jesus forgive me and come into my heart as my personal Lord and Savior today. I need you to be my Father and my friend.
I give you my life and ask you to take full control from this moment on; I pray this in the name of Jesus Christ."
Amen.
***************************
That day my name was written in the book of life, by Christ’s own hand. Did my life miraculously get better? No. In fact, I got A LOT worse. But little by little, faith to faith, glory to glory, from that day to this one… the seed of Christ has grown. Salvation is free but Victory takes action. I didn’t get that in the beginning and I spent quite a bit of time walking around in the wilderness even as a born again believer. I did eventually confess to my husband about what I had done. After a brief split up, he decided to try forgiveness. We were together for another year but our marriage ultimately failed. Though, I do not speak lightly about the pain I inflicted on my husband through my adulterous actions. I do believe God used what Satan intended for harm… and he made it good. Of course, I can’t speak from my ex-husbands point of view… but chances are had that not happened, I would have never found Christ.
With all my heart and all my soul
I'm loving you and I never will let go
And every day I'll let it show
Because you love me
Because you love me
Because YOU love little ol’ me ~ Jo Dee Messina
Jesus paid the price for me. Jesus died an agonizing death so I don’t have too. Jesus faced that fiery pit of Hell here on Earth so that all that come to him can have everlasting life.
But Hold up… Jesus isn’t dead…
He has RISEN… He is ALIVE!
So…Why call it Good Friday? Because if he hadn’t died for us, then we could not truly live.
We are confessing the Christian hope that NO tragedy can overwhelm God’s love and grace.
We love him, because he first loved us. ~ 1 John 4:19
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