Raise Your Hand (October 3rd, 2013)
It was cold outside and even colder in my heart. Over Christmas break, what should have been a time of celebration and relaxation, my family and all its swept-under-the-rug issues had promptly surfaced. Silence and indignation filled my house like a putrid stench. It didn’t go away no matter how hard I tried to cover it up or pretend like it wasn’t there. Voices were raised almost constantly, arguing one’s point, justifying one’s actions, and defending one’s pride (my family was full of extremely prideful people). We needed an intervention and we needed it fast, but who on earth could reconstruct the shambles that had once been my family?
Thankfully we had visited Antigo Community Church about a month before where my father, against my will, signed me up to attend a three day Christian retreat the first weekend of January with the church’s youth group. I was irate. I had to spend three whole days with people that I didn’t even know and awkwardly share a room with a bunch of girls that I didn’t like very much. Amidst my family’s Cold War, the anticipation of the trip was even worse. I had to go worship a god that I didn’t even feel like cared or loved me at the time (or that I knew existed for that matter). It sounded like a waste of a weekend, especially with finals quickly approaching. However, my father still forced me to go. He had already made the down payment.
The Friday finally came. My dad drove me immediately from school to the church parking lot with me sitting in the passenger seat, looking solemn as if I were being chauffeured to my own funeral. All I could think to myself was, “This weekend is going to be the worst ever,” as I unloaded my stuff and packed it into Mrs. Rice’s brand new Toyota. She had literally gotten it that day and it smelled strongly of conditioned leather and plastic. When it came time to leave, Mrs. Rice and Jamie Kretz, two of the leaders, Rebecca Rice, Destiny Davis, and I piled into the car and drove off, leaving my dad behind. Admittedly, though I didn’t want to go to this conference, I was eager to get away from home for a few days and hopefully figure out something to do to stay sane when I returned.
After two long hours in a car full of chipper, borderline obnoxious women and lingering new-car fumes, I had fully developed a migraine. I had known Rebecca for about a month since we were both involved with the high school musical, and though she had a tendency to overreact to just about everything and speak her mind regardless of anyone else’s feelings, I had a soft spot in my heart for her. I thought back to seventh grade when I had been just the same before social isolation had smoothed me out. I wondered if what I thought of her was what other people used to think of me (and I’m sure many still did). I wished so badly that I could erase my past so I could create a new name for myself. I had changed a lot and I would have given anything for people to disregard who I was and look at who I had become.
We arrived at the convention center and brought our bags to our rooms before we ate dinner and headed to the first Rally of the weekend. The hallway leading to the Rally Room was full – I mean full – of kids my age. Shoulder to shoulder, shuffling along, we made our way there slowly. When I finally walked through the doors to the Rally Room, I was pretty blown away. I had definitely not been expecting to see an ocean of jumpy teenagers and their youth leaders set out before me. There must’ve been three or four thousand people there, no less. At the front of the room, a DJ was feverishly spinning tracks in the middle of the giant stage, pumping up the crowd with deep bass drops and chaotic dubstep mixes. I didn’t have any idea what to expect walking in there, but I followed Rebecca, the only one I felt comfortable around up to that point, and we sat in our group’s reserved seats as we waited for the Rally to begin.
The things I experienced at the Rally were strange and foreign to me. Sure, the comedian at the beginning was funny and told some biblical stories that I was familiar with, but other than that I was absolutely taken aback by everything that went on. When the band came on and started singing, I didn’t know any of the songs. People around me were singing with their eyes closed, some heads down and hands turned upwards at their sides and others with faces lifted and arms fully raised. I stood among them, dumbfounded and skeptical, questioning what I was missing while they all seemed waist deep in worship. Were the people with pleading faces and clenched fists being sincere or embarrassingly dramatic? What were the girls in front of me crying for? Why does Rebecca have her face down with an arm reaching upward? Are all of these people brainwashed from the hypnotist that had performed before the comedian?
After small group that night when most girls started getting ready for bed, Jamie approached me and began a casual conversation. She asked about me and what I’d been up to during the school year, and I shared with her some details about the guy I liked, my family, and some friends of mine. That’s when she asked me the question that started it all: What did you think of the Rally? I was honest and expressed some of my confusion about the whole thing, and how in light of my current family situation, I was doubtful that the god that I thought I knew was the same God that the pastor was speaking about at the Rally. The pastor had talked about a God that provided comfort and peace in times of trouble and hardship, but I didn’t feel that same kind of security and I was going through a lot of trouble and hardship. Why?
Jamie and I ended up talking for a few hours that night, long after the rest of the girls in our room had crashed. I asked plenty of questions and she did her best to answer them, most of which she did and did well. Since she was only twenty-one, she was easy to talk to and we shared common ground on a lot of things. We formed the basis of our relationship that night, and I’ve since grow very close to her. Because she reached out to me that night, a lot of my criticisms about the Rally were cleared up and I felt more open to learning new things the next day. I was able to put aside what I was safe and comfortable with for a while to soak up what Saturday’s seminars and speakers had to offer. I was especially moved by one of the speakers, Jennifer Strickland, who taught about how to live life as a Christ-centered woman and how your past does not affect your future in Christ. The concept just blew me away. She was trying to tell me that no matter how sinful, dirty, rebellious, wrong, deceitful, rude, promiscuous, selfish, or potty-mouthed I had been in the past, if I truly wanted to receive Christ, He would be more than happy to receive me with open arms and He’d shower me with the comfort and peace that the pastor had been talking about the night before. How could that be possible? I mean, people just don’t do that. They don’t forgive all your past transgressions, no matter how awful or insignificant, just because you ask them to. But that was just it. God isn’t like people. He’s, well, God. Interesting, I thought. I’ll have to keep that in mind.
Saturday night came, and we all met up for the Rally. As things got started, we stood to our feet as the band struck their opening chord. The lights warmed from a blinding white to a soft ivory as the first lines to Overcome were sung. I recognized the song from the night before:
“Seated above, enthroned in the Father's love. Destined to die, poured out for all mankind. God's only Son, perfect and spotless one. He never sinned but suffered as if He did."
It was here, in the opening lines of this song, that everything made sense. I was a sinner, condemned to death by the mistakes of mankind, but God didn’t want it that way. He loved each and every one of us so much that He sent His only son, Jesus Christ, to pay the price for all of humanity’s sin for the rest of time. Woah. Jesus had been whipped, spat and cursed at, imprisoned, and nailed to a cross with jagged steel spikes all because I have selfish tendencies. Where is the fairness in that? I didn’t see any whatsoever. I had been chasing after a guy who kind of liked me one day and didn’t the next, when God loved me two thousand years before I was even born and sacrificed His own absolutely blameless son so that I could be with Him once again. My sins separated me from righteousness, but Jesus’s sacrifice allowed there to be forgiveness, mercy, and grace. Seminars throughout the day had helped me to understand the true meaning of these words, and I suddenly understood what everyone was singing and lifting their hands for. It was to show the Lord our absolute awe and admiration for Him and that we were reaching out to Him.
I stole a quick glance to my left; then my right. Everyone had their eyes closed (surprise, surprise). Most had their hands raised. My old self nagged at my subconscious, “Don’t do it. Don’t make a fool of yourself. They know you’re not really a Christian. Only established Christians raise their hands.” But the thing was, at that moment, I wanted to establish myself. I got it. I understood. I felt like God was calling me to Him and He had been waiting for me the whole time. Why did I have this confliction? It surely wasn’t from God. With that thought, I closed my eyes, lifted my face to the ceiling, and raised my hand high. The best part was that it wasn’t for anyone around me to see, it was for God to see His wandering child coming back to Him, coming home, after a tiring fourteen years of making it on her own. Happy tears streamed from my eyes as I sang along with the thousands of others that had found their hope in Christ. There, standing among all those other believers, I felt something. It was something that I had not felt in a long time and had never truly felt up to that moment: It was the comfort and peace that Jesus had promised to all who put their faith in Him. I felt it. I felt the peace and comfort. I had finally trusted God with my life, and it felt nothing short of amazing.
It’s been almost two years since that Saturday night and I can honestly say that committing my life to Christ and His cause is the best decision I have ever made and will ever make for that matter. The weird people that I was so afraid to spend one weekend with are now some of my best friends and, truthfully, I’ve sort of become one of those weird people. Shortly after I returned home, I began reading the bible and asking my parents to return to Antigo Community Church. I started going to ACC’s youth group on Sunday nights. Within a few months, my mother and father received Christ into their lives too and their relationship has never been better. Eunice Rice (as I’ve come to know her), has been literally a Godsend. She’s so graciously mentored me and all of my difficultness/stubbornness over the last two years, and our families have become very close. Rebecca and I formed a great friendship and we’re pretty much inseparable now. The icing on the cake is that at the same youth conference one year later, my brother, against his will, came just as skeptical as I was and he received Christ as well.
Today, when people ask me how I can believe in God when there’s no valid proof of His existence, all I can reply is that I have seen what God has done in my life and there’s absolutely no way He can’t exist because of it. First person experience is all the proof that I need. I can’t convince people that He is real if they don’t want to believe, but I can live my life as a shining light that points directly to the One True Light. It’s definitely not easy and there are bumps upon bumps upon bumps in the road, but experiencing that comfort and peace the pastor spoke so enthusiastically about through my own life’s troubles and hardships cannot compare to anything else I’ve experienced in this world. So there I stood, in the middle of a sea of people, tears rolling down, living out the lyrics of the song that followed:
“I'll stand with arms high and heart abandoned in awe of the one who gave it all. I'll stand, my soul, Lord, to you surrendered. All I am is yours.”