psalm 7: 99 - 06

i celebrate today, with heaven and with jesus who cannot love me more now than he did then, but who i think i love more now, in that rusted, sometimes tired, sometimes christmas-morning-excitable way, sometimes in yawns and sometimes in new words found, sometimes like i can't think straight, sometimes in a -oh, you're still there- way, sometimes in a -oh, you were there....what happened?- kind of way..

today i celebrate seven whole years passing since i gave my life to the lord. many of my fair readers were present that weekend, two of you were there at the very minute. what a strange old time it was..i was hesitant....reluctant...even scoffing of the idea, right up until the second it happened. mrs p and dr knox had pinned me to the floor a couple of hours before, and forced me to voice my oppositions to becoming a christian. there were many, and they dealt with which ones so ever they were able. it was not enough for me. i resolved to go outside and smoke. smoke i did, several, i imagine, and upon my return into the building, i was adamant that i was not going to do it today, but when i was 26. i had decided some weeks before that being a christian might be good, helpful even, for the unstable, emotionally wraught na that attended a CU houseparty under duress and without a bible. but that night as i went back in after smoking, it was clear to me that i needed to go away, study the bible and i'd get back to them when i'd had a few more years of enjoying myself (which i actually wasn't, you understand, not at all...). as i went into the room where they all were....mrs p, andy, cate and caroline....i was so sure...and then i sat, and it all went away and i knew right then that the tired and emotionally screwed up me, the scared and small part of me that felt so, so awful, most of the time those days, would only know peace, or win any kind of contentment, or even just get through the night, with jesus in charge and winning it for me. it was so sudden that i think i almost gasped. it struck me. and i fell for him.
they prayed me towards him and i went, i made my choice, for him and all that that has meant and still will mean.
my praise goes to him but some of my thanks goes to those four people. and to trev who the next day told me i could be in his cell if i wanted. i had no idea what a cell was, or why i would want to be in one with him, but he grinned at me and we buth knew i'd go. there, i met penny and rachel, and andy p, and ollie, and eddie. the next week or two weeks later i met the first ever 24-7 prayer room outside of chichester. the first prayer room i had ever seen. and i didn't want to go home. god was scarily, overwhelmingly present in that room, and all i wanted was to be with him and others in there finding that being scared by god and not of god was the only way forward.
the months that followed were largely horrible, and the overcoming was slow and painstaking.
but others met my path with theirs and life got fuller and fuller.
for me, the idea of singing, unrestrained, abandoned and with tears, was all i'd ever wanted from church. st peter's catholic church and school in gloucester offered me a great many great things, but that was not one of them. all my life i had known that god wanted to hear more of me, like l.m.montgomery says of her readers, they always -wanted more of anne-. and like anne of green gables later puts it on one occassion, -it was as if she had set lighted candles in all the windows of her house of life-
i think that was true of me that evening and the days that followed, as i could sing and sing to god, having always known that's how i wanted to love him, and how i would best find him, and where i would want to stay with him. so i sang. alot.
thanks and love to you and to jesus, the ever-lovely.