My TrueFaced Testimony

I just returned from a fantastic trip to Phoneix where I spent three days basking in an environment of grace put together by the guys who wrote TrueFaced. It was wonderful being with others who are desperate for grace. When I returned, I decided to do two things (well actually more than two). First, I'm going to start blogging again. I've been doing quite a bit of private writing the past eight months and I think I am now ready to start sharing more about what is happening in my life. Second, I rewrote the story of my journey to incorporate some of the language that I believe more accurately describes what is happening in my heart. Often times words are not enough to describe the inner life, but I also know how much I benefit from hearing other people's stories towards grace. Here's mine:


I was THAT girl. You know . . . the one that your parents compared you to. The one whose name you learned to hate: “Why can’t you be like HER?” You see, when I was a teenager, I was completely sold out to God and everyone knew it. I carried my Bible to school, preached the good news to my friends (and anyone else who would listen), arranged prayer meetings, led Bible study groups, fought the school board when they tried to fire a teacher for teaching creationism as an alternative theory to evolution, went on mission trips, and had devotions every day. My nickname in the youth group was “Missionary Miss”. Everyone knew that I would turn out great, because I had such a heart for pleasing the Lord. I even skipped my senior prom because I was convinced that such things were an abomination to the Lord.

I went off to Bible school, got married, and headed for the mission field. I spent two the best years of my life living among the Kazakhs in Central Asia. It didn’t matter to me that we didn’t have heat all winter or that I had to wash my clothes in the bathtub with a plunger. I was glad to try the unusual foods presented to me, which included sheep’s head and horse sausage. And while I didn’t enjoy the fermented horse’s milk or the intestines that were part of the local cuisine, I was glad to try them for the sake of Jesus. I was willing to do anything to please my Lord.

But God had something else planned for me. If anyone had told me in high school that there would come a day when I no longer believed in God, I would have been shocked. I was very much like Peter before he denied Jesus. I was confident in who I was and that I would never be brought to a place of disbelief.

Things happened in my life that I was not prepared for. Serious relationship struggles, my son’s cancer, a cloud of depression and anxiety that would not go away. No one told me that life would be like this. My life was filled with shame over the way I had failed. And worst of all was God’s silence. I was very angry with God, but of course I could not tell a soul because the truth about my failure of a life might damage the gospel message. And so I went on doing my Christian things, hoping that if I tried hard enough, God would be pleased with me again. But instead I got worse. Until finally I found myself asking a trusted friend how on earth that he could believe that God was real. At last the floodgates opened and my angry heart found a voice. And it was a loud one. Read Job, read over half of the Psalms and you’ll find my words to and about God. Except I don't think the English translators put in the swear words.

I stopped striving and for a time, I stopped believing. Everything about my faith seemed toxic to me. I spent at least five years in a fog between belief and disbelief. They were very painful years.

But God never stopped loving me. Never. He was there, in the background – through friends who didn’t judge me, but didn’t stop praying either. And God gently wooed me back to himself as he showed me a different way to live. Not the room of good intentions where everything was Fine. But rather the room of grace where instead of living out of a desire to please the Lord, I live out of trusting him.

The difference is subtle, at least to some people. I still read my Bible, I still pray, and I still serve others. Mostly the difference is in the honesty that I have with God and others. When things aren’t Fine, lots of people know about it. My prayers sound very different. When I deal with sin in my life (and oh, yeah, I still sin) it is me and God working on my sin together – he stands with me, with his arm around me as we face those things.

Some times, okay lots of times, it is difficult to live in the room of grace. To be honest, I’m a bit more comfortable in the room of good intentions, because there I feel a measure of control. However, the problem with the room of good intentions is that as a human being, I was not created to handle my own sin. I don’t have anything in me to manage it. I’ve learned that I cannot resolve my sin by trying harder, going back to the basics, or by getting rid of all my stuff. I might change my behavior for a time, but sin is still there . . . it is just hidden.

My journey in the room of Grace is not done alone, nor is it meant to. We need each other, fellow travelers on this road to help us live this way. I frequently need reminders from others that it sounds like I’m trying to please God.

And so now, even on my worst day (and I still have them) I can imagine God looking down at me and saying to a nearby angel, “Hey did you see that girl down there, Melissa, my righteous one? I sure do love her. I love it when she talks to me, even when she uses those angry words. Did you see that crazy thing she did the other day? And did you see her bravery? She’s talking about it! She is learning to trust me!