Going home

You know how you can say you've been a Christian all your life? Like your parents were as Christian as Christians get. You could count the number of Sundays in your life where you'd missed church on one hand. The dress code was and still is "if you can't wear it to church, you can't wear it at all". You kept as much of a distance as necessary from all things worldly because it's "flee all appearances of evil" right? You heard it over and over again-no sex before marriage. It was a no-brainer and yes you got it. After all, the bible did say thou shall not commit fornication. Hmm wait did it? 

Anyway, you knew Jesus as your Lord and saviour, because often enough they'd say you know your parents' salvation doesn't make you saved; salvation is a personal decision. So you understood these things, understood the ways of the church, the rituals of service, and the shame that came from answering in the negative to whether you had your quiet time. These things made sense.

But at some point things changed. Not drastically. You didn't go full on 'prodigal son', leaving home and forgetting all about home. You just moved enough to have some freedom. University might have been the perfect move. And still your parents kept an eye on you, encouraging you to good works, being supportive and all. And you still were a Christian. Still reading the bible, still being active in a local church, still being the model child in church whom everyone praised. But then school happened; the work got intense, church family became church family and not the kind of support you wanted. And then loneliness crept in. And the worst part wasn't that you were alone, it was that there were people around, but no one to really be intimate with. There was no one to share random moments with, to talk to about hard days and moments of doubt. God seemed too abstract to get it. He is the God after all. If He'd somehow appear and sit on my bed, let me rest my head on His shoulder and have a shirt thick enough to absorb all my tears, maybe he'd feel a little more real. But that didn't happen, did it?

And so you reached out to one of the many people around you. Some were responsive, but just not the right kind of responsive. Some were great, but often acted as though you were a burden. And then there was one, one who just got it. One 13.3 inch IPS LED-backlit screen that knew just what you needed. From ads that you didn't block to movies that made you crave things you'd never known; it always delivered. One could have also been the perfect friend, such a gentleman, such a lady, that you knew it had to be surreal. But it turned out to be real, your values on loving Jesus and keeping away from the active worship till marriage. 

But fornication to you had always been 'the real sex', PVI to be exact. So you guys played marriage. He was amazing, listened to all those rants you'd had locked up. Was sweet and even made you breakfast in bed- a bed that you should never even have been. Cuddled all through the negative Celsius weathers, gave you a reason to wear your hair down to cover the hard kissing and sucking of last night. Sometimes you felt guilty. This can't be pleasing to God you thought. But God why would you put such cravings in me if I'm just supposed to just hold off till marriage? You'd Google "horny Christian male" to see what others ahead of you had done to fix this issue while still pleasing God...somehow. These Christian rules were really getting to you. And no, running did not help; more exercise, and more church involvement didn’t either. And no you weren't going to buy a gadget that 'did the job' as they’d prescribed on Yahoo answers.

Finally you hit rock bottom. Nope, not loosing the V-card. That was still there, although you didn't quite feel you had it. Rock bottom was, for you, knowing there was knowing you'd sunk so low and you had to get back up. This time it wasn't rules, not how to not focus on relationships, not how to this or how not to that. Just Jesus. Jesus just became enough, no strike that. You decided to make Jesus enough. Because you came to understand that it didn't just happen. Abandoning it all and its allure wasn't natural. It was and is deliberate. So every day you've sought to be more like Him. In so doing, everything else is blurring out in the presence of the boundless heights of love and mercy. Just enjoying Jesus and no longer having him as that distant being you've known about all your life. Personalizing this relationship. No longer just worshipping, but communing, loving, enjoying each other's company. So much so that a day is simply incomplete without a conversation. That's when change came. That's when change started happening. A little more change everyday, till I become transformed to be just like Him.