Dozens of faces and a monotone room. I count. One dozen, two dozen, three dozen, four... over 100 faces. Over 100 of God's children. Hurt. Broken. All looking to be redeemed.
The shirt staring me in the face says "Out of the darkness He has redeemed us." Those are the words of one survivor who has begun healing and found the promised love that only the Father provides. And that is the very love that embraced a room of stiff college students who stared anxiously about as they wondered who would be the first to stand up and share their story.
One breaks the ice. And a floodgate opens. As each individual walks cautiously to the mic, the Lord plays heavily on my already tender heart. Words. Emotions. Connection.
They each walk to the microphone as if there is a red flag on their back. Their burdens going up are like a newborn infant, desperate for care and nurturing, and in need of gentle hands. Burdens of guilt and shame, hurt and rejection. Some to the extreme. One girl who gave up her childhood at five. And carries the secret to this day. "I know her heart and her past. And when I see her at my feet, I will embrace her for her passion to live." One boy who let his best friend go alone, trusting another man. He later learned his best friend was nearly raped. "He isn't to blame, and his guilt is the reason I took up the cross." The teenager whose parents rejected her claim that her cousin had been raping her. She had an abortion at thirteen. "My child, who I believe. Her brokenness in Me is made whole. And that child is in My arms."
I know their pain because I have been there. I know the lowest of the low. But I also know that same redeeming love of a Father that one survivor claimed on a piece of cloth hanging behind the podium. It is the love that takes us from the lowest of the low to the highest of the high.
I, myself, stood before those faces, microphone inches from my lips, and hands clasped at my waist. Not fear, but rather the utmost desire for them to see the love of Jesus and the redeeming power of a Father who takes us from the pits of hell, no matter how far we've dug, "Six years of a lost childhood, and almost two years of a numb recovery. When I went away to college, the one person who shed a tear was my stepfather. And I just wanted to be angry for all that he stole. But I can honestly say that I come home to visit now, and I love the man my stepfather is. I can say thank you and truly walk in forgiveness. Because he broke the little girl that I once was. But my Father put the woman that I am back together."
Sitting unsettled back in my seat, I felt the Spirit drop around me. Freedom that allowed numerous others with no intentions of sharing a story that they had withheld until that moment, to literally jump from their seats and approach the microphone. Tears were shed and many reclaimed what was truly theirs. Testimonies of drugs, alcohol, eating disorders, and self harm... all left at the foot of the stage. As they stepped away, burdens put down, I saw the altar, and all of the symbolic pieces of our brokenness laid before the Lord's feet. White sheets covered it all. Dead as the past, He welcomes us to come alive anew.
All I could feel was that God wanted to move in that room. His love was abounding, and the community that He had fostered there was one that no human could break. As many reclaimed what was theirs, I laid what I reclaimed back at the foot of the cross. Because it was not by my own strength that I put myself back together. And it was not truly my story to be telling, but His to be glorified because He is present in the darkness as much as He is in the light. And when girls hugged me outside afterwards, I could only look at the clear black sky and thank Jesus for His blood and His sacrifice. Because my pain is nowhere near the pain He endured for me.
The message was hope. To hope in a Father who is ALWAYS present, and who had hope put in you, that you would live to fulfill His image. He's there in the best friend who calls to pray with you late at night. He's in the timely text message. He's in the child's face that you pass in the mall when you feel like sin has overcome your innocence and purity. He is every I love you.
Because if there is one thing I learned the other night it is that you don't have to be a Christian to see Him. The love, grace, mercy, and hands of God are always present, you just have to seek Him.
