Redeemed

Thanksgiving is technically over, but I got a little preoccupied with playing StarCraft. Haha. However, I will still blog about Thanksgiving!

Normally, I try to be rather witty with my Thanksgiving-related blogs; but this time, I think I've got something to be real thankful for.

Last year, around this time, I had a visit to someone's house. It was a really fun visit; we talked about all-things church related, and even had dinner. After dinner, it was getting late and it was about time for me to head back to school. The drive to his house took me a little over half an hour, so it was a bit of a trek. About five minutes into my drive after leaving his house, I noticed a red light that was turned on when I looked at my dashboard. It looked like some kind of battery light, but I didn't think much of it because I had never seen such a thing before. It was exactly that, having never seen such a thing before, that probably changed the rest of my school year. A few minutes later, at a stop light, the light turns green, and as I pressed on the gas, my car didn't want to go. I was confused, so I pushed a little more, resulting in a loud revving noise from the engine. I was almost in a state of shock, at this point, seeing that my car didn't want to go.

And it finally hit me, that the light that had come on must've meant something. The remaining half hour of the drive became one of the worst nightmares in my life that had become real. As I kept driving, the car felt weaker and weaker by the minute. With still about five minutes left in the commute, it had gotten to a point where all my lights were gone, dashboard frozen, and I was literally driving in the dark. I flipped my hazards on, praying that my car can make it uphill back to school. By the grace of God, I managed to pull into the school parking lot. And as I turned off the car, I rested my head on the steering wheel for about five minutes, thinking about what could have just happened if my car didn't make it.

Before I stepped out of the car, I tried to start the car again. And to my expectation, the car didn't start - it couldn't, there was no turnover. Having never experienced this before, I walked back to my room as angry as I had been in years. On one hand, I was so grateful that I got back to school; but on the other hand, I couldn't understand why my car had to go through that. Eventually, after some time, all the issues were resolved, and my car was able to drive again.

Little did I know, that that little spurt of anger was what began to be the biggest collapse in my spiritual faith that I had ever experienced. Almost every aspect in my life began to free fall, falling out of favor in almost every regard. Within a month, I was on the brink of walking away from God, from Christianity. The only thing that kept me tied down was the fact that I was at a Bible college - ironic, isn't it?

By the time Christmas rolled around, I cannot even come close to expressing the amount of relief I had as I drove past the "Welcome to Edmonton" sign as I began my Christmas holiday. At that point, I was so far away from God that I would purposefully find reasons to attack his integrity and sovereignty. For example, the relief to me was the feeling of liberation from the hellhole that God had put me in which was Calgary, only to be cynical about what sort of terrible things would happen to me over the break.

All I really did was keep living. Eventually, a broken heart was mended, and wounds healed. Scars remain, and my self-confidence is still shaky; but I am standing on my feet once again.

This October, I am thankful, not for having gone through such a time in my life where it made me stronger, but the fact that God refused to give up on me even when I intentionally attacked his character, bashfully criticized his goodness, insulting his love, and was about to return the gift that he had freely given me when I did not even deserve it in the first place. I look back at the year now, and I am quite embarrassed for the way I had acted. It took weeks of solitude, where I had removed myself from anything that would remind me of the evils that had knocked me down, in order for me to give this thing another try. I'm thankful to all the friends that were willing to watch me rip everything apart, tear it all down, and help me pick up all the pieces scattered everywhere and rebuild them with me.

And lastly, I am thankful that when I'm blinded from the ways that are pure and righteous, there God stands to carry me through the darkness until I am able to see again.

Happy Thanksgiving! (=