“Where is God?” I asked my mom with puzzlement and urgency. For I did not see Him and I fully expected to see Him. Because my mom had once told me, when I asked “Where is God?” – that God was in the clouds; that He lived in the clouds. And now, flying at an altitude above the clouds where I could look down into the clouds, I could not see God, or His home, or any of His angels. And these were not soft billowy clouds, these were solid puffy clouds, certainly well able to support God and whoever and whatever He needed with Him. And this was my opportunity to see Him! Being as it was my first time flying through the heavens.
“Where is God?” Why can’t I see Him? I continued and then persisted, beginning a conversation my mom was ill-equipped to handle, being the non-church-goer she was and not having had previous experience with an inquisitive three-year-old child well-versed in asking endless questions. And I don’t remember my mom’s responses. I only remember my over-riding disappointment in this ever so important spiritual matter as well as disappointment in something a bit more tangible. I had believed my mom’s word as truth, and now the truth was proving to be elusive. It was one of life’s early betrayals. There was no veracity in my mother’s word. Why not? Was the truth non-existent? And I believe my search for truth was born in this moment, although I didn’t know it then. And although that search waxed and waned over the years, involving experimentation with Ouija boards and seances, research into New Age practices, and philosophy courses in college, the search was renewed with vigor and intensity at age seventeen after one too many disappointments in life, but that’s another story and one I’ve already shared. I also believe my faith that God would be in the clouds was born out of the truth that God plants eternity in the hearts of men (Ecclesiastes 3:11) including the heart of a young child, already seeking for God, who believed He was out there somewhere, despite having no Sunday school training to direct my heart toward Him. My heart’s cry was always that God would be knowable, attainable.
And so it was that a large part of my early childhood was spent seeking for God and the things I could not see, but knew existed. I don’t know how many hours I spent looking out my second story bedroom window, looking out to the forest beyond our back yard. Looking, looking, looking, but never finding. Seeking well into the night what I could not articulate while my mom and gramma watched TV down below. And as I could hear footsteps coming up the stairs, I was an expert at feigning sleep when one of them came to check on me, because my heart would rather search than sleep. Later, in another home, I would stare wide awake for what might have been hours into my parents’ open bedroom closet as I nestled between them during sleepless nights. There was always a presence I could sense, but it was ever elusive, this realm that existed unseen. And a few years later I would experience seeing myself outside of my body, thus cementing my “knowing” of what I could not articulate – that there was a realm co-existing with the natural realm. But I knew nothing intellectually of the spirit world.
Despite all of my unknowing however, God’s unseen hand was on my life, and it appeared in extraordinary measures when it was needed - the time a man and a woman tried to take me out of the car while my mother was grocery shopping, the time I nearly drowned in my first encounter with the Pacific Ocean, the times I should have been arrested, the time I should have been kicked out of high school the very first week, and all the stupid hitch-hiking and crazy episodes of my time spent as a runaway out on the streets and the people He always sent to rescue me “just in the nick of time” like the time I was rescued from a man chasing me down the streets of Miami Dade County after yet another one of those times God nudged me it was time NOW to get out of the room I was in. Then there was the time I stopped short of stepping over the chasm into insanity; it was an unseen guardrail, or Hand, that kept me from choosing to step over that precipice (knowing I might not ever return) during a very bad mushroom trip. And through it all, through a trail of broken promises, betrayals, broken dreams, assaults, rapes, and non-consensual sex, my journey to know God never wavered or subsided. And my questions and conversations continued but my questions were never fully answered about God, existence, and meaning. I knew there had to be more, I even studied the life of Jesus as I studied religions, but every time I reached for answers I was left me empty handed. Until the time was ripe for my salvation. God knew the day and the hour. Before I was ever born, it was already recorded in my scroll, my book of days. There was simply a time for all things (Ecclesiastes 3:11) and the search was an integral part of my discovery.
And that three-year old-child has never left me. That seeker of truth. Seeker of God. Seeking to know Him. To know His love and His care. To know Him as my Defender, my Protector. The Lover of my soul. And finally, He found me. The Person of Truth revealed Himself to me. Because I earnestly sought Him. And prayed to Him. And asked Him to forgive me in the midst of all my unknowing. And after I finally stopped kicking against the goads, He set me free. To love Him. To serve Him. To worship Him. And to know Him in the ways He allows me to Know Him. And the cool thing about knowing Him, knowing His character and His ways - when you know Him you can trust Him. And this one thing I know: He keeps His word.
And for this also I thank Him. I also thank Him that I would not know Him as I do were it not for the search and the journey that brought me to where I am today and shaped the person I have become. To God be the glory.
His Word:
And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all of your heart. I will be found by you, says the LORD… Jeremiah 29:13-14
He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is He who loves Me. And He who loves me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to Him.
Photo Credit: Photo taken in downtown Houston
