Song: You Know Me
Artist: Steffany Frizzell
Album: The Loft Sessions

Song: Shelter
Artist: Birdy
Album: Birdy

For the ones questioning their existence, the meaning of the world and whether there is a God . . . this one’s for you.

To say that putting the pen to the paper for this story is hard would be the biggest understatement I’ve ever made. And that’s because it’s so much closer to home than any other post I’ve done since it’s my story, and it’s a hard one to write. Partly because it’s not finished, but also because I’ve never really shared it in its incomplete entirety with anyone before, let alone the internet. In the past I’ve tried thinking of ways to write this, but it never seems to come out right; speaking it is just as much a disaster. I’m hard pressed to find the right words, and that’s unusual for me when writing things down. I’ve rewritten, edited, rewritten and scratched the majority of it.

All the same, this is me, this is my story and this is why I’m all in for life.

Like all good stories, it starts at the beginning. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” But what did the world look like before the fall? Did the fall even exist? Why has death been proven to have happened before that piece of proverbial fruit was ever eaten? These were all pressing questions for me, but I’m getting ahead of myself — first we need a little back story.

I grew up a Christian of sorts, led by the most incredible parents anyone could ever hope for. I said the right words somewhere around my fourth or fifth year and accepted that strange man known as Jesus into my heart. It was a special moment, I don’t doubt, and Christianity quickly became all I ever knew growing up. It was my entire world. I didn’t really understand why I would get ridiculed by some of my friends for being a Christian, but I soon learned that if you hid your faith the mocking stopped. So I tended to play it down, sidestep the matter, look another way. And those words I spoke at the bedside in my grandparents’ high-ceiling, Victorian styled spare room, however sincere, never seemed to make the colossal journey from my mouth to my heart.

That was pretty much me till somewhere around the hazy latter half of my teenage years. During these years I constantly had incredible moments filled with awe and wonder towards God, and my heart continually seemed to grow closer to his on a daily basis. But an atheistic storm was gathering on the horizon, and it was about to blindside my down-to-earth, even-keeled mind like a Fiordland winter. My faith had been growing stronger daily up until this point, but it was about to encounter conflict, which is the very building blocks of deeper truth.

I was first introduced to serious and devoted skeptics of Christianity somewhere close to my 20th year. And it caught me completely unaware. My whole life I’d been a seeker–someone who digs deep when others appear to just be scratching the surface; one who can never just take someone’s word for something–and this introduction to intelligent people who clearly believed God was an elaborate invention of dark age thinking was completely new to me. Church became a strange juxtaposition of encounters with God, and doubts about their veracity all in the same sentence. It was maddening. I went from the one who had it all worked out to the one with the awkward questions that I could never bring myself to ask anyone for fear of getting the “just believe” lecture. It was too emotionally draining and scary to share that deep place of my heart with people, even the ones closest to me. I’ve always felt solace by myself amongst nature and I would often find myself staring out into the unknown of time and space, lost to wondering about that age old question . . . “Why?”

Birds still sang beautiful songs of joy to meet every new day, crickets still rubbed the bottoms of their forewings together with indefatigable energy, but the world was quickly draining of colour. You see, I wanted to believe. Trust me, I did. But I needed to make my belief mine. Not anyone else’s. It had to be worth something. And nowadays, people tend to compliment a “depth” they find in me, which I perhaps struggle to see in myself, but that is probably because I’m the only one to have seen the fight that was invested into my faith in the first place. The progress, like the initial problem, has taken me by surprise. For me the struggle was never with comparatively “normal” things like pornography and parties. I could never understand how a woman’s abstruse wellspring of life, veracious depth of character and eternally voluptuous makeup could be crammed into magazines or rolled into a convenient internet video to be acquired at the click of a button or the flick of a glossy page. And I certainly couldn’t see the appeal of getting wasted every weekend and not having any recollection of what happened. Memories and the making thereof are what build the very essence of life, and to waste the precious gift of life seems to me the most absurd thing in the world. No, my fight was always with my mind. And if I claimed that territory, I knew there would be a greater good that came of it somehow, somewhere along the journey.

“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” –Winston Churchill

Atheism seemed to change in appearance every day, as if it was coated in pearlescent paint. Some days it was scary, some days appealing, and some days it was utterly repulsive. It had evidence, good arguments and intellect all rolled into one. But it was the threatening monster aspect of it that, if true, would spell the end of my optimistic self and all the beliefs I had held dear for so long. It was like the scary noises chasing you up the stairs in the dark. The fear of the unknown can be unbearable at times, and as far as I was concerned, if God didn’t exist, the world was an utter waste of time. Yet as much of a threatening beast these doubts were, they still didn’t have answers to any of my deep questions hidden close to my heart. It left me in a strange quagmire of doubting both sides of the story. This was one of the lowest moments in my life as I struggled to keep up the appearance of having it all together while my spirit was flickering in the winds of despair, threatening to wink out completely.

Why are we here? Why does it matter? The bubbly, cheeky, fun-loving nature that is the true me was slowly ebbing away. What’s the point of even being alive if we’re all a giant mistake anyway? And how do we even have the ability to think about these things in the first place? It was too much to handle. I read part of the God Delusion; saw the memes; heard all the arguments about pink unicorns, paradoxical deities, death existing before the fall, evolution being an unavoidable fact; and spent hours reading countless other dribs and drabs of various articles, comments and posts scattered helter skelter around the internet.

“These times where the world falls apart make us who we are.”

That was the truest statement to aptly describe that moment in my life. Somewhere in the very back of my mind — the part that seems to miraculously stay lit up with light when all else lies in darkness — I knew that this was a defining time for me. I was being prepared for something. Right there and then I decided that if I finally found God on the corner of 1st and Amistad like the very relatable and haunting Fray song so disturbingly suggested, that I would hold onto him with all my might and never let go. It was promised in Jeremiah 29:13 that if I searched with all my might that I would find God, and I intended to find out if that was indeed the truth of it.

The thought of living the rest of my life doing church to appease well-intentioned people was too much to handle. I could not slap God on the side anymore. I was getting asked some tough questions and was asking a few of them myself. And it was crunch time. Do or die. Live in hope or live for myself. People would bring the subject of doubt and questioning up in sermons saying they had faced the same fears and problems at my age, and as my pulse quickened and I edged to the front of my seat hoping for enlightenment and pithy wisdom, they would leave me with “but I just knew deep down that God was real.” Don’t get me wrong, that’s good . . . for them. The problem was that I didn’t have that same conviction deep in my spirit. If I did then I wouldn’t be searching.

I always wondered why there were so many unbelievers in the world. It seemed to me the most important decision one could ever make, yet millions don’t seem to take much notice of it. Even stranger is the fact that Jesus seemed well aware of this fact during his short time on earth. He had no problem with offending people, putting religious nutters in their place and even turning away ones looking for truth. This was strangely comforting, however, because to my thinking, if Jesus was aware and still in control then that was enough for me.

I’ve seen many people in this life–Christians included–pretend to have answers to everything. They’ll say they don’t, but then forge an answer, no matter how half-baked and shaky it is, to ward off the sticky questions. But I’ve learned to be OK with mystery. I don’t have all the answers and I don’t need to do some sort of awkward ball-juggling, face-saving attempt at looking like I do. And while I can’t offer answers to the questioners, I can offer experience and a listening ear. That’s all anyone really has, anyway.

Ben Crist, the frontman of The Glorious Unseen, always seemed to ask the right questions.

“What is the meaning of grace; when it speaks to my darkest place?” Where is the message of hope; when I’m sick and I’m all alone? Why do you let evil have its way? How can you let orphans die in vain? When will you give answers for the pain? Is there a place where hope can still sustain?”

It’s quite a pickle of emotion right there. On the one hand it’s depressing, verging on bitterness; while on the other hand it’s refreshing for its brutal honesty. Asking the hard things always made my soul breathe a sigh of relief. As if finally someone spoke what everyone was thinking, and then those impossibly large mountains turn into more readily scalable hills.

Do I have answers? No. Do I have evidence? Perhaps, as subjective as it is. Many doubt the credulity of documented miracles, but it’s much harder to doubt when you see them firsthand. I’ve seen many otherwise impossible things happen, and heard even more from reputable sources. And I believe them. I’ve always wanted to be someone who doesn’t just doubt for the sake of doubting, meaning that if there is something that is legitimately undeniable, I won’t write it off to positive thinking or mind control. But I’m certainly not going to leave my brain with the door greeters on a Sunday morning.

There are too many people to list who have helped me through what has been the biggest valley of my short life thus far. Many peoples’ heroes of the faith are Biblical celebrities. That’s cool; I can understand that. But my heroes are all still alive today and I know and relate to them on a regular basis. They are not your normal, everyday people with “normal” faith, and I so admire that about them. I want to continuously honour every single one of them and one day help others the way they helped me. They live and breathe honesty. Nothing about them is fake.

These are some of my favourite people alive: My parents; my brother and his wife, my sister and her husband; my best friend, Jamie Garrick; my spiritual parents, Symon and Kristy Drake; my other spiritual parents, Josh and Amberley Klinkenberg; and my role models, Kim and Skyler Smith.

On the day of my baptism my wisdom-laden brother left me with these words which I have never forgotten:

“My prayer is that you won’t be a fake Christian, you won’t be a cheesy Christian, but you’ll be a real Christian.”

And that has stuck with me for over 11 years. I simply cannot be fake. It’s not in me. It doesn’t work. It will never describe me.

Getting back to my story, from there I spent two years with two of my favourite people on earth — Josh and Amberley — doing a study on worship (for lack of a better description), and to put it in plain English, their School of Worship is the best thing that has ever happened to me. I owe finding God for real to the marvelous Christian Community that is Orama. The six incredible months I spent on Great Barrier Island will stay with me for the rest of my life. That place has a cataclysmic call on it that is bigger than any of the founders could ever have dreamed.

This brings me as close as I’ll ever come to the end of the beginning of my story. And to offer some form of conclusion to this scattered array of thoughts that make up who I am, let me say this: It’s easy to doubt; it’s much harder to believe. Believing takes a commitment to the truth. To working it out on a daily basis. To guarding your heart from apathy. To giving all of who you are, all the time. Not settling for second-best, half-hearted, mediocre, bland-tasting, Christianese-speaking, cliche-indulging Christianity. There was nothing fake or half-hearted about walking up that never ending hill to Golgotha with two ginormous slabs of wood plastered across a bloodied back. And that’s what needs to stay foremost in my mind to keep my focus clear. The ramifications of that colossal act of love and what they mean to my life today.

I’m still, and always will be, a work in progress. But as Jason Wade so beautifully said (and as I referenced at the start of this story), even though I don’t have it all worked out I’m “All in for life”.

If there’s one thing I want to leave you as the reader with, other than Jason Wade’s masterpiece, it would be this: Have a little optimism for the pessimist. The thinkers, the controversial nuff nuffs and the cynics are people too. C.S. Lewis is one of the most regularly upheld heroes of Christianity, yet he had some of the strangest views on certain topics I’ve ever heard (funnily enough, those quotes are never the ones shared on Facebook ). Most of my favourite Christian role models (who I have yet to meet) are the most criticised people I know. Edward Grylls, Donald Miller, William Young, Ted Dekker and Rob Bell have copped more flak than I care to mention. Why? Because they think a little differently to normal. But their faith is certainly real. It’s living, it’s breathing and it’s seeking. Which is why they are my heroes in the first place.

Have a little faith in us questioners, because we’re not just doing it for kicks.

All night staring at the ceiling
counting for minutes I’ve been feeling this way
So far away and so alone

But you know it’s alright
I came to my senses
Letting go of my defenses
There’s no way I’m giving up this time
Yeah, you know I’m right here
I’m not losing you this time

And I’m all in, nothing left to hide
I’ve fallen harder than a landslide
I spent a week away from you last night
And now I’m calling, calling out your name
Even if I lose the game, I’m all in
I’m all in tonight, yeah I’m all in, I’m all in for life

There’s no taking back
what we’ve got, it’s too strong,
we’ve had each other’s back for too long
There’s no breaking up this time
And you know it’s okay, I came to my senses
Letting go of my defenses
There’s no way I’m giving up this time

I want it, I want it, I want it
I want it, I want it, I want it, yeah
I want it, I want it, I want it, yeah

And I’m all in, calling out your name
Even if I lose the game, I’m all in, I’m all in for life
And I’m all in, nothing left to hide
I’ve fallen harder than a landslide
I spent a week away from you last night
And now I’m calling, calling out your name
Even if I lose the game, I’m all in
I’m all in tonight, yeah I’m all in, I’m all in for life
Yeah I’m all in, I’m all in for life

“If you never leave home, never let go, you’ll never make it to the great unknown.

Keep your eyes open, my love.”

The new Narnia films just keep getting better and better. Not only with each new movie release, but every time you re-watch them. I saw Dawn Treader again just recently and since the next Narnia film–The Magician’s Nephew–won’t even begin production for a few years yet, I couldn’t resist a post with my favourite Narnia 3 quotes.

“We have nothing if not belief”

–Reepicheep

“I can only hope that one day
I can earn the right to see [Aslan's Country].”

–Reepicheep

“There is no honour in turning away from adventure.”

–Reepicheep

“The thrill of the unknown lies ahead.”

–Reepicheep

“To defeat the darkness out there you must defeat the darkness within yourself.”

– Coriakin

“Just a word of warning… The sea can play nasty tricks on a crews’ mind. Very nasty.”

–Drinian

“You doubt your value. Don’t run from who you are.”

–Aslan

“You wished yourself away, and with it so much more.”

–Aslan

Caspian: “When I was a boy I used to imagine sailing to the end of the world… Finding my father there.”

Edmund: “Maybe you will.”

“We’re a long way from home.”

–Edmund

“All is not as lost as it seems.”

–Reepicheep

“You know, extraordinary things only happen to extraordinary people. Maybe it’s a sign . . . That you’ve got an extraordinary destiny.”

–Reepicheep

“A noble warrior does not run from fear.”

–Reepicheep

“I’ve spent too long wanting what was taken from me, not what I was given.”

–Caspian

“I would lay down my sword for the honour of seeing your country.”

–Reepicheep

“My country was made for noble hearts such as yours. No matter how small their bearers may be.”

–Aslan

Can’t wait for The Magicician’s Nephew!

Which only makes my happy place that much happier to crawl back to. It’s a space to be away from all things stressful and just make stuff. Creativity flows out as fast as God deposits it. It’s a place to be creative as the Father is creative–which is why it feels so good, because it’s an action which is simply mirroring His nature.

My favourite happy place is music. And at the moment I’m tracking vocals with Rachel for a new song, while a friend lays down some sweet guitar for it. Feels good to record again

What’s your happy place?