Letter to John

Dear John,

I feel a true need to thank you for your sermon two weeks ago. To you it was another Sunday, another sermon, and another hope that you might, that day, reach someone's heart. As you stood before all of us, speaking, I felt so strongly that you did just that. I felt you speaking, directly to me. For me. Asking me very kindly to listen to your story. And like a small miracle, I did. I want to thank you for your words, for your ability to preach with humility and a very true love for God.

I was raised Presbyterian and attended church regularly throughout my childhood, but my connection to God was really my connection to the life of my church, my fellowship with the friends and the family and the people of God, and not to the Life of God. I did not know this then. As I left to go off to college, I did not return to God. God was in the walls of a church I no longer attended, and so, God slowly eroded away. Finally, and I do not know exactly when, but I bid Him adieu and propped myself upon a pedestal of self-belief. This is where I stayed until I fell - all the way down, knees to the ground. I did not know that I was falling before Him. I just knew that I had fallen. That I needed help.

For so long I have not been able to quite understand what my tangled issues with my faith were, but I now know - it was simply that I felt - ashamed. Ashamed for trying too hard to pray to God, but never feeling Him listening. Ashamed for taking communion and not being able to concentrate on Jesus' sacrifice for me, but rather, allowing my thoughts to float elsewhere, often - to thoughts of doubt and my private intellectual conversations about the futility of religion in general. And perhaps, most of all, ashamed of baptizing both of my children and having a closed heart as I did. My decision to baptize my children was rooted in my love for my family, and not for my love for God. I did not know why I had been running from faith, but now I know - this is why. I ran from faith because I had none, but I was too ashamed for so many years to acknowledge this. I kept myself from thinking about it long enough or deeply enough so that I would never have to truly know myself or admit that I was a sinner. I was always - too good, too proud. My mistakes were mistakes and never - sins. Now I think - how selfish and how foolish, but this is how the wheels of my life turned.

My parents, bless them both, raised me, nourished me, to believe in God, but I have now realized - no one else can believe for me. Only I have the power to believe. It is mine to turn towards or, to turn away. And for many years, I have turned away, walked away, and resigned to believing that God merely equaled my awe of infinite scholarship and science and nothing more.

Danny, Addy, Joey and I moved to Springfield in October of 2009, and we would sporadically attend various churches on Sunday. Speaking for myself, I wanted to go to church because it felt like the "right thing to do." The right thing for our children. But over the last few years, the shame became too much for me. Each time I sat in church - any church - I felt like a fraud - sitting in those pews, sitting amongst believers, taking communion, bowing my head in silent thought but never silent prayer. I realized a few months ago - I literally could not pray. My heart was shut. My eyes - closed.

A few months ago, we attended Southside while you were having a family sermon, with a really great potluck organized after church. I almost had a panic attack. Danny wanted to stay, to mingle, to eat, and to let the kids play. But I needed to leave, and to do so immediately. I felt intense shame and intense - anger. I had no idea why. But now I know. It is because I could not sit and break bread and enjoy fellowship with Christians when I was a non-believing stranger - walking in at the most convenient lunch hour, no less. And more than that, more than anything - it was because I would be there, committing a lying act in front of my children. To my children. Watching me there, at church, pretending as though I belonged when really I brought them there with such little true faith or belief in anything.

Now I know, God was asking me that day - "Do you believe in Me?" For so long, I felt unaccountable to God. Unaccountable to anyone. But on that day, the day of the potluck, God came to me and asked me: "Do you believe in Me?" and I ran away from Him, terrified, because I could hear myself. I could hear my voice. It was answering: "No." I was angry because I felt caught. I was terrified because, for the first time, I felt the need to be accountable. The need to be honest. To God and to myself.

There are many things that have happened since January that have led me on the path to where I am in my faith as I write you this letter. It began with the simple act of picking up the pen and writing. I love writing, and have always loved it, but I abandoned it many years ago. I was not good enough to write, I told myself. I convinced myself - "You'll never be a writer." So naturally, I stopped. Even though I lived with contentment and purpose in my life - my children, my husband, my family - I still felt so, purposeless. As I began to write, I felt a calling - to return to the blank page, day after day. And so I did. I wrote my anger and my pain and my nothingness off my soul and I saw myself, honest there on the page, and instead of fearing it, or hating it - I held it. Loved it like my own child. I have since realized, and just in the last few weeks, that it was God, holding me. It was God - calling me back. "Come to the blank page and I will help you fill it up." Now, I am listening. I am answering my calling and doing so with an open heart. And I feel an overwhelming need to share it. Not just my writing, but just my honest soul. My blank page today was calling your name, and my need to tell you about the power of your sermon.

In your sermon a few weeks ago, you talked about how the sister of the girl who first brought you to God was in the congregation that day. You explained how you were, at a young age, on a path towards Buddhism and that Christianity merely lined your fascination with all the other world religions. But then you talked about your first real experience with Christianity, and that afterwards you called up this girl - the only girl you really knew who was a born-again Christian and who truly loved God with all her heart - and how she challenged you and encouraged you to read the Bible and wait for your heart to open. As you described how you took that trip up to Chicago, cracked open your Bible, waited for a miracle, and tried to force tears for dramatic effect - I laughed out loud, thinking, "Yes, that's how God calls people, right? Performs a grand miracle and booms His Voice from the clouds and then people fall over and they become saved and love the Lord, right?" I was never sure what "God's calling" would be like, but it never seemed like to could happen in the way it happened to you - sitting in a hotel room, reading the Bible, sliding it on your nightstand, and waking up just feeling a little different. That didn't sound all that spiritually gripping. God didn't part the heavens on the day you were saved. But here you stood, a man whose love for God was so evident in the way you move and the way you speak and the joy you bring to those around you. As you spoke, it hit me, "God can speak to us in the smallest of ways. I must just listen. I must just be willing to soften my heart, enough to let it crack just the slightest bit open."

You also explained how we can serve God in so many ways. We can be active in the church, sure, but we can serve God by doing His work cheerfully, with enthusiasm, with love in our hearts. When you said these words, I thought, "I can write. I can be a writer. Maybe I am not meant to be a Christian writer. But I am meant to write and God is calling me to do so, and I am not ashamed to say that. I can write that as my Truth and do so with passion and enthusiasm. And in knowing what my Truth is, and by living my Truth, I am serving God." I felt like you - by saying that to me - gave me permission to just answer my calling and to do so with love in my heart. I felt, free. Free to answer my calling, simple as writing may be, and know that I am doing what I am meant to do. For so long, I've felt like I needed to volunteer in my community, to be a mentor somehow - but these things did not fill my primal soul. That I can only do by listening to God and by writing what is in my honest heart. I have so, so far to go in my faith, but my heart has been cracked open just the slightest bit, and I am letting in His light.

Thank you, John, for just being an example for me. We have literally only spoken a few times. I have only attended Southside a handful of times. But I will remember that I found God in Springfield, Illinois, and that you were His disciple, inviting me like a friend to join His table. For the first time, I can pray to the Lord, and I will pray for you as you have - without even knowing - prayed for me.

With sincere gratitude,

Stacey Grant