Perk and God

 After my 3am wake up call from God, I kept wondering how He was going to show me the way. Not knowing exactly what He meant, I didn’t realize He’d actually be leading, and taking my hand, and showing me The Way.  I had never read the Bible. I hadn’t been going to church to hear sermons. I thought maybe I could find “the Way” myself. I had enough common sense to know that there were things I needed to go away from [like living with my boyfriend] but I really did not know where I would be going, or how to get there, or when it would happen, etc. There was no one around saying, “Read your Bible.”  “Trust in the  Lord.”  “In His timing.”…You know, all those pat phrases that we use when we are trying to convince ourselves or others how to live each day in Christ. I did consider going to church, but remembering the vacant feeling I had at churches kept me from immediately gravitating toward them.

So, in August of 1980, I quit my job, left my boyfriend and moved back home to Columbus. I decided that was a good start. Then, I thought I needed a vacation from all the stress and depression I had been dealing with, so I went to France with my sister Julie. She was going over there to study, and I was going over there to…I don’t know, collect myself? Maybe God was in Europe.

Anyway, we got to France, Julie and I found a place to live, and things were going well. We both felt like God was calling us to attend church every Sunday, so we’d go to the closest church, depending on what area of France we were in. But it seemed they were always Catholic. That would not have been a problem if the service were in French, ‘cause we both spoke French. But the mass was in Latin. We hadn’t a clue what was going on, and we’d leave, each Sunday, thinking, “Well, that was a waste.” So we quit going to church.

But while we were there, God did two remarkable things. First, He brought me into a beautiful relationship with my sister.  She and I bared our souls to each other. We shared stuff about our lives that no one else knew. We laughed, we sang silly songs, we walked everywhere we went, arm and arm, pooled our money and slept in some mornings till 11am ‘cause it was too cold to get out of bed. One day we even took an inordinately long bus ride to the animal shelter and got Julie a kitten. She named her Caixllous (which is French for Pebbles). We had never been close growing up ‘cause she was six years younger than I. But here we were, bonding, eating French bread, exploring France before school started for her, and loving every minute of it. I had not expected that when we first took off.

Second, God began talking to me -but not in my head like at 3am. Not using words. He gave me “knowings”. Like, one day, I said to Julie, “We must call home. Mom is worried about us.”

“How do you know?” she said.

“I don’t know. I just know she’s worried, and if we don’t call her, she’ll think we died.” So Julie found a post office in the late afternoon (that’s where you made overseas phone calls back then), and she navigated the French operator’s questions and prompts. Mom answered, and Julie said, “Hello mom. It’s me and Patty. We’re OK.” And mom proceeds to cry, “Oh, thank God. I was so worried about you. I hadn’t heard from you, and I thought that you two might have been kidnapped or something awful.”

Now even though I wasn’t fully seeking Him, He was seeking me. God was showing me His way. He was starting me out on a journey toward Him. He was taking me out of the old and into the new.

You know, sometimes we don’t know when God is doing something until we look back and we see where we have been. It wasn’t until about eight years after I got back from France, that I came across these words in Jeremiah.

The word of the Lord came to me, saying, “ Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.

Now, while I’m not a “prophet to the nations,” I knew when I read this that God formed me, made me who I am, and set me apart to tell His stories. I knew that I was already on my way.

3am wake up call

I didn’t come to know the Lord until 1987, but He was talking to me before I became a believer. As a child, on Sundays our family went to First Congregational Church, but usually it was because we didn’t have something else planned. My sister and I loved singing in the choir. By the time I was in the 6^th grade, we had stopped going to church. I found myself, however, really wanting to go to church. I didn’t know why. I just felt like a great big magnet was pulling me awake every Sunday (even before anyone else got up), and toward churches close by. So, I started going to churches by myself which were within a 30 minute walk from my house. I went to a Presbyterian Church for a few times. But I felt lonely there. I went to a Catholic church several times, and liked the standing, sitting, and kneeling activities. I liked the repetition, and responding back to the Priest. But I still felt empty. I tried a Methodist Church, a Church of the Nazarene, and a community church. Each time, I’d walk away feeling vacant and lost. Since I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, I started attending First Community Church. Not because it met my spiritual needs, but because the fellas who went there were really cute. I thought that maybe if I attended a church more than just a few times it would grow on me. I didn’t realize Jesus was knocking on my door.

I saw Jesus on the cross at all these churches. I knew He was God’s son. I’d heard the story about Easter- that He died for us and rose again on the third day. I learned about the miracles He’d done. At FCC, I learned we were all supposed to be kind and loving to everyone, like Jesus was. We learned the New Testament stories, but there was no personal relationship between Jesus and me. Actually, there was no personal relationship between me and anyone at FCC. Yes, the guys were cute, but I didn’t know how to talk to them. The girls didn’t even include me in their conversations, but I kept going because I felt like eventually I’d fit in.

I quit going to FCC in the 9^th grade when a counselor at summer camp accused me of doing drugs. I remember telling him that he had to be a hypocrite to point his finger at me without getting the facts first. “Jesus wouldn’t have done that!” (I suffered from migraines, and I was taking medication for them. The counselor thought the pills were illegal, I guess.) Anyway, I became angry because I looked at all the kids at camp and thought, “They’re not Christian ‘cause they make fun of me. The counselors aren’t Christian because they are judgmental.” That ended my search for a long while. I quit going to any church. That was 1965.

Now fast forward 12 years. I have a masters in nursing and taught for two years at a university a few hours from Columbus, Ohio, where I grew up. I even met a guy while I was teaching there, and in August of 1977, we moved to Cleveland to live together and work at a hospital there. He had a dog, I had a dog. He loved his job, I loved my job. He and I loved each other, and all was bliss.

Soon, though, we weren’t getting along very well, and I suspected that he was going out with another girl. He denied it, but daily he grew more distant. November 11^th, my dog got killed by a bus. This event added greatly to a depression I was already in. I felt very unloved, and I couldn’t figure out what to do. I’d go to bed before he got home, crying myself to sleep. I’d wake up and barely have the energy to get dressed or put on make up. This went on for several months.

One night, while I was sleeping, I heard a voice in my head say “Come. Take my hand and I’ll show you the way.” It wasn’t a dream, there were no pictures. And when I dream, I usually don’t hear people talking. I sat straight up in bed! I looked around. No one was in the room. My boyfriend was sound asleep. But the air in the room smelled like rose petals, and it was as soft as velvet. I had a euphoric feeling, and a calmness that was awesome. And I knew. I sat straight up in bed and thought, “That’s God. That’s God talking to me.”

I got out of bed very slowly and carefully. I stood up. I thought that each movement I made would blow God away or something. But no, He was still in my bedroom. And I was grinning! I tiptoed into the kitchen, and the velvet air followed me. I sat down, and the peace I felt was still there. I never said a word. I just kept thinking, “Wow, God is in this place. He wants me to take His hand. He wants to show me the way.” I sat there for ten minutes and just marveled at the way the air felt. I realized I was no longer depressed. I fixed myself a cup of warm milk, and sat in that kitchen for about an hour, not wanting the feeling to end. But as I grew tired, I headed back to bed, knowing that God was somehow gonna take my hand, and show me the way.