My Story (Part 3)

Five of us filled one of the corner booths at Denny's. It was 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning, easy. This bunch of friends, hungry after a night of role playing, were regulars for the graveyard shift enjoying grand slam breakfasts or club sandwiches with ranch dressing.

"It's real," I said. "Jesus is God. Look at my hands. They've been shaking like this for three days now."

I held them up displaying the slight Parkinson's like shake which revealed the inward transformation that was beyond remarkable to me.

"Really?" Norm's face was a mix of wonder and excitement. His eyes were big, and he had a subtle knowing smile under his sparse late teen mustache. "That's the Holy Spirit man! He's come to live inside you!"

"Wow!" I thought.

Mike slurped his runny eggs, dabbing at them with wheat toast and silently shaking his head. Mike practiced Wicca, but there was something in the sincerity of my story that he couldn't refute. Norm was the resident charismatic. He beamed, and instructed me in the ways of the Spirit - telling us all stories from Acts about Pentecost and the Apostle Paul. To my knowledge at the time Mark and Tom were unaffiliated. They stayed pretty quiet for the most part - revealing some nominal Catholic background which I took to be similar to my own.

Years later I was walking through a park in Maracay, Venezuela getting ready for some street evangelism - telling my story in somewhat broken Spanish to some believers from a sister church down there. They misconstrued the shaking to be a full out knocked down convulsions for three days. They thought it akin to Paul's Damascus road blindness. I laughed and set them straight. "Solomente los manos." It was subtle, but still a cherished indication of God's presence with me.

Nothing quite compares to the zeal of the newly converted. I wanted everyone to know the truth I had discovered. I told my mom. My sister. My friends from high school. Everyone either welcomed me to the family, or looked at me with wide eyed disbelief. But that is only one side of the story. My inner life was going through plate tectonic like shifts, and aftershocks continued to rattle my understanding of everything.

I had built my world around being an architect because every other center I tried to find for my world was lacking. My family was broken - divorce, alcohol, dysfunction. Looking back, work was our family's false hope of choice. "Why pretend?" I thought to myself. "Find your purpose in your work. Don't even waste any effort on the rest of life."

I was intensely prideful and self assured... and empty. But now, I knew what was supposed to be the center of my life. My world no longer revolved around me. God had taken his rightful place at the center. This shift of center was just as radical to my way of living as the Copernican heliocentric discovery was to science. I quickly developed the conviction that as I allowed God to be central in my life, everything else would find it's proper order, orbit and significance. Looking back, it is interesting to see how this truth continues to work itself out. I am repeatedly uncovering and relocating the things that my heart places before my God.

I decided to read Shelly's Bible from the beginning. Starting a book in the middle didn't make much sense. I had ZERO knowledge of the structure of Scripture. I made it to the second or third genealogy in Genesis before I decided to take Shelly's suggestion to heart, and began reading the Gospels. Over and over I encountered her copious margin notes and mark ups. They called out key verses, and sometimes the events that rendered them special. I could see the handwriting evolve, and the concerns deepen. Some written as early as Junior High. This book was clearly important to her. How remarkable that she would so willingly hand it over to me. How vulnerable of her to let me into this sacred world of her encounter with God through His word!

After finals that December I went to St. Andrew's Catholic Church with my dad and step mom. The service that had been so dead and lifeless to me every time before now SCREAMED with new life, and tears flowed uncontrollably down my face. Where I used to look around and wonder who else was here unwillingly and found the whole thing pointless, that Sunday I looked around and marveled at the multitude, many of whom surely new this truth that had made me new! Unconfirmed, I went forward and shared in communion for the first time. Physical symbols of the sacrificial giving of one for the sake of all. Broken body, shed blood. "Gloria in excelsis Deo" resounded with trumpeters in the balcony and incense coming down the aisle. The shape of the sanctuary a veritable chimney of praise - with a large central skylight, supported by concave curved heavy timber rafters - like a standing rack of lamb. Every prayer, every reading from scripture was flush with new life. Together we recited the creed and I feI was overwhelmed. I worship with tears to this day just at the memory. I had found home. I had found the center and purpose of life. I had found my Lord and Savior, my redeemer and father, my Abba.

A forever prodigal had found his way home.

Dave would come back to our apartment to find me reading the Bible. With a sigh he would retire to the bedroom. Norm and I would have long discussions about faith and God and Scripture. Will pulled me aside and wanted to compere the NIV I was reading with his KJV... Verse by verse he took me though their differences. To me it seemed they were saying the same thing, I didn't understand the significance. Shelly and I would meet for lunch and discuss the people she was praying for.

Turns out my conversion was a collateral answer to her prayer for another man's salvation. Shelly had been talking to our mutual friend Alex about faith in Christ for nearly three years by that point. He wasn't having any of it. One night Shelley was home - discouraged - praying that God would show her what she was doing wrong. She so desperately wanted to have some indication that she was witnessing the right way - that God was moving around and through her. She was yearning for her efforts to bear fruit. The next day I shared my essay around that cafeteria table. The day after that I was a new creation because Shelly asked God for some fruit. Within the year Alex joined the family too. He was a groomsman in my wedding, and our families spend time together to this day.

Months later after reading the whole new testament and most of the old in Shelly's Bible I gave it back to her. She was so grateful - acknowledging that it was hard for her to find anything in her new Bible. I bought one for myself just like hers.

I was baptised catholic just in case - converted by the writings of an Anglican - instructed by charismatic - discipled as a baptist. I cherish the diversity of the bride of Christ. We are one in Him. He is manifold in us.

That is the story of my conversion - The End of the beginning. :)