Tasting Resurrection: how I went through a "Well, duh!" moment on Mars Hill

I have tasted resurrection. Oh, I know that, being "in Christ," I am raised with him, I have passed from death to life (John 5:24). But what I'm talking about here is experiencing something of what God says, what it means to feel alive.

If you read my story about the "missing picture" (below), you may wonder, what's the point of going back to my six-year-old little boy. After all, we as adults are now responsible for how we live, right? And we, as Christians, are responsible to accept God's evaluation of us as his children and live in light of that, right? Absolutely right! Well, then?

Well, this: I discovered recently, in the course of attending a writer's workshop in Seattle, that I no longer have to justify my existence. I am my dad's child.

In reflecting on the story I wrote, I realized that there may have been a bit of ambiguity about whose child I understood myself to be. While I have been a Christian since 1971, I've really only come to understand my heavenly Father's delight in me as his child in the past few years. I not only understand the "doctrine," but now I know it in my soul. I am alive with him, I am "in the picture" with him.

What happened at the workshop was that the truth of my adoption in Christ so caught hold of my soul that I realized the lie I had bought into as a child was totally invalid, not true.

The workshop lasted for four days at Mars Hill Graduate School in August. In preparation for going, I was asked to write down five significant, tragic or traumatic events from my childhood...for the simple reason that it is these sorts of events that are formative in our lives. Then I was asked to write on one of them. I decided to write a story about my father dying when I was thirteen, and the non-relationship that we had.

The first evening I was there, I was faced with the question of why I thought my dad favored my older brother over me, and how I felt about that. The counselor who read my original story wrote on it: "You write of abandonment, loneliness, bullying, neglect, and fear. Yet you write of these traumas from 50,000 feet away." Right after my comment about my dad favoring my brother, she wrote: "What did you feel? What did you dream it would be like with your father?" By the time I read that, it was after 11 p.m., and I was already exhausted. Her query kept me from going to sleep for a long while. I could not think of an answer. When I awoke early the next morning, my mind felt like a rock...heavy...nothing moving inside! I reread her question, and something hit me that I had ignored in writing that first story: I remembered the drawer full of pictures, and I remembered my growing realization that there was no picture of just me and my dad. That was, I realized, my dream: to be with my dad, to be close to him like my brother had been when sitting on his lap, having those obviously adoring eyes of my dad delighting in me and whatever I was doing.

Before leaving for the workshop that morning, I wrote a page or two on my laptop about that drawer. As I was writing, details of that experience kept coming back: the look and feel of the pictures, a growing sense of desperation looking for a "missing picture." What I wrote was pretty rough. But at least my mind (an amazing machine, even at my age) had much to work with.

During the workshop that day, we met in a group of six. We presented our stories, and talked and asked each other about what was going on in our hearts and feelings during the incidents we described. I read my original story, still in shock from the counselor's comments on it. The group reaffirmed her judgment--I was uninvolved in my story at a gut level. I then began to relate what I had been writing earlier that morning, and one of the young ladies asked: "What did you want from your dad?" At that moment I knew the answer, and I said it almost crying: "I wanted to know that I mattered to him!" That was the unanswered question in my life that began to eat into my being when I was six (or seven or eight) and was left unanswered when he died.

Thinking about what happened at that innocent age was important for me precisely because that's where I bought into a lie from the Enemy of our souls. The lie: I didn't matter. While my original longing had been to matter to my dad, I eventually lost track of that and generalized it into the question of whether or not I mattered at all. Even when I became a Christian, while I believed that God loves me, in my heart I didn't trust him that I actually meant anything to him or mattered at all.

As we continued to talk in the group, and later, as I began rethinking and rewriting what I had done that morning, I was looking back at the little boy. It was almost like he was someone else. And it hit me: "Well, duh! Of course he matters!" And then: "Well, duh! Of course I matter!" At the point where my false thinking should have been nipped in the bud, it wasn't. That lie just about eliminated my capacity to dream. But now...

Something changed a few years back when I began to understand that, because of what it means that I am adopted by my Father and I am privileged to call him "Abba," he really does delight in me as his child. One of the things that happened to me last month in Seattle was that I understood that that little boy needed the same message, and now he has received it--over and over again. I have begun the struggle aginst the lie of the Enemy.

I know that God gives life--it is his perogative, after all. He has shown me a bit more of what it means that I am redeemed, and that I am fully alive to him, and that I matter to him. That is a taste of resurrection. And it is sweet.

To my comment-ators

If you are trying to leave a comment, you may be puzzled by the "select profile" drop-down. If you have a google (or gmail) account, just put in your regular user name and password. Otherwise, look to the far right, under "Followers." You will see a link that says, "Already a member? Sign in." Click on the "sign in" link. There you will see a place to create a Google account--which you can use to access the comment portion." In the meantime, I will check to see if we can't get something a bit more user friendly. Thanks for your patience!!