I gave my testimony last night. I've been asked to do this many times before: youth group disciple now weekends, worship nights, mission trips (translators involved, very frustrating), when I was baptised (three times now, woo hoo!), and various other instances when someone wished that I could somehow convey exactly what happens when you are transformed by the power of God from something bad into something good. But this...this was different. This was a different group of folks who wanted to know my life story in its truest form, my testimony. And I decided that it would be best for everyone if I just be very honest about all of it.

I talked about small moments that peak out above everything else, moments that don't seem as significant as they claim to be, a dream or a song that made me cry and stay up late and write things down that I didn't want to forget. And now when I think back on it, I wonder if I documented the right things. It's people's faces and the conversation inbetween that holds it all together for me. And those people, most of them gone from my life, make up a multitude of longings, sharpened and relieved by the history of friendship or love. But most importantly for me, it was a chance to be honest about my doubt in front of everyone.

I don't like it. I don't want it to win. But it's there. And it was good to talk about the great dissapointments that settled when I graduated from school. I wanted to kill myself. Or maybe less kill myself as much as lay down in a grassy field and be swallowed up into deep purple three-dimensional clouds by an F5. But that's a tangent that I like to talk about and nobody really likes to listen to much. So yeah, I was talking about how, no, I cannot deny that there is a substantial relationship between me and my concept of God, or God as he actually is, but that all of this christianity stuff, so far as I have seen, starts to get on my nerves. I want to run from it. Point out all of its American failures. I can't read the bible without remembering the dull felt cutouts on a flannel board illustrating Peter's Fishing trip in Sunday School. I can't remember church without hearing DC Talk's "I Want To Be in The Light" at youth group playing in the background and knowing that no one really knew how to change the small world they lived in. But oh how I wanted to be a hot and focused source of energy, sending shivers and sighs of relief throughout the crowds of hungry and desperate people of my generation.

And if the most valuable thing to God other than himself is people, why is he wasting all of these people? Why don't they know what I know? Why are they going to hell for reasons they don't know? Meanwhile Christ died for us.

Last night was the first time I was able to discuss this kind of testimony with my body of belivers.

Then came the questions:

-When was the last time God spoke something over your life?
-I don't know.
-Do you feel like God still speaks to you?
-Yeah, everyday.
-How? What was the last thing he told you?
-I don't know.

Then came hope. And prayers. And love. And all of the things that drew me to God in the first place. I sat a little confused and unaffected by everyone with their hands on shoulders and legs huddled around me. The only thing I could think of was how I wanted to get in my car and drive for hours with the windows down, silent, without the radio. Instead I stayed and laughed along with everyone else...believed that these people loved life. And I wanted to love it too, so I ate guacamole and chips and played music in my car all the way home.