After attending an event at church recently, my friend and I stopped in the ladies’ room. While I was waiting, my friend called out, “I don’t want to alarm you, but your name is on the back of the stall door.” Visions of high school flooded my memory, which prompted my response, “Does it say to call me for a good time?” Not that that ever happened, but kids did mean things in high school. Finding my name on the bathroom stall was one of my fears back then. Who knew it would eventually happen in a church? God does have a sense of humor.
It did not suggest calling me for a good time, and I’m not sure those who responded to the invite to the Women’s Christmas Gathering it was promoting would say I provided a “fun” evening. Public speaking is not my forte, but it doesn’t have to be when sharing your testimony. God doesn’t expect us to entertain. He simply asks us to share our stories because through them He is glorified. Richard Rohr explains:
“Finally, all we have to give away is our own journey. Our own story. Then we become living witnesses. The only authority we have in other people’s lives is what we ourselves have walked and what we know to be true. Then we have earned the right to speak…We must believe in such a way that we give hope and meaning to the next generation…That’s what our lives are for: to hand on the mystery to those who are coming after us, which means that we have to appropriate the mystery ourselves.
Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs
Back in high school I can’t say God was directing my steps. He was speaking to me, I’m sure, but I had other things on my mind. Finding my name on a bathroom stall was the least of my worries. In fact, by the end of high school I was think of writing my number on the bathroom stall myself just so someone would call me! Being transplanted from Brooklyn to suburbia did not go well for me. I spent my tenure there just waiting for the opportunity to return ‘home,’ which I promptly did on my 18th birthday.
My wait to return ‘home’ to God would be much longer. It took decades before I found my way back into His arms. It was a circuitous route fraught with wrong turns and racing down one-way streets the wrong way. However, whatever bizarre direction I took (and there were some crazy ones), He wove them into a pattern for good, leading me right where I belong – with Him.
The story I shared at that Women’s Gathering describes the culmination of that journey and how God finally reached my heart. It is too long for a blog post, but if you’d like to listen to it, feel free:
If you prefer to read it, click below for a transcript.