This blog post has been inspired by a phone call a few weeks back. In the midst of stirring her spaghetti bol sauce, one of my closest friends was compelled to pick up the phone and ask, quite urgently, “So, do you think you found God?”
Hmm. Along with ‘born-again’, ‘finding God’ is another phrase I get jittery over. I always think, “Well, yes, He was just behind the sofa” or some other equally droll internal witticism.
This friend has been in my life for almost 15 years. She event-managed our wedding and went onto become a celebrant; a sweet irony as she played a significant role during a rocky patch in getting Tony and I on the path to matrimony.
So the question surprised me, because I thought she’d seen that I’d always had a connection with spirit/universe/God, given she had taken an interest in my new age paths and would often turn over angel cards and runes with me, whilst polishing off a few glasses of something bubbly!
But, then again, I’d always stopped short of using the word ‘God’ and had certainly never been comfortable with ‘Jesus Christ’ until I had busted my religious hangover.
So my answer to her, after a day of reflection, was whilst I’d never ‘lost’ God, I could never see Him clearly. It was a foggy relationship that had become clouded through new age terms of universe and spirit. Muddied up in my ‘thought creates‘ approach that made me the mistress of my universe. Alongside my childhood ‘religion’ stereotypes, God just seemed too far away.
Yet, after His insistent conversations with me at 3am, during my earliest emails with the SAP, I did decide: “Spiritually what I’ve been doing to date hasn’t been working that well for me. So what if there is something in God AND Jesus together?”
Whilst I slowly unpacked my Christianity baggage, I gave myself a small, quiet test. Rather than talk to ‘spirit’ and ‘the universe’, and just ‘God’, I began to talk to both God AND Jesus.
This was a massive internal shift — and certainly not due to me reaching a true sense of belief at that stage! I have to be thankful that God humoured me with my ‘test’. Because, bugger me, it worked! Even while my head was playing catch up on gospels, miracles and resurrection, He was kind enough to answer my quirky prayers in such a way that I had to accept viewing God was far, far easier with Jesus as the lens.
So, my answer to my friend: I didn’t find God. I found Jesus (by the dashboard light, perhaps?) And yes, that line makes me jittery too. The language is so not me!
But regardless of how the PR pro in me shudders at the associated stereotypes with such messaging, Jesus’ humanity gave me something I could identify with. I had to make friends with him (thank you Doctor and The Medics) because otherwise God – that ‘spirit in the sky’ – was too remote to grasp.
One Week In August 