Clay

There is a very personal, very painful stretch of our path in life that all of us must walk alone, with only the presence of God to shelter us from the world and its voices. For someone relatively new to His kingdom, with no formal Bible school teachings under my belt, and only a five-year journey with the Father to this day, this became something I realized I had to figure out on my own, with God's grace. I am here to share my testimony, and perhaps propel someone else to their stretch of the path in which faith becomes our intimate truth, and our understanding of God's purpose for our lives begins to take shape. 

I have written several times about my experiences as a radio announcer and other media-related positions I have held in the past. I have also shared my faith with others in the form of blogs, or social media posts, as a I walk this road that God has me walking on, barefoot, trying to make sense of it all, often still aching about what I perceived to be a loss. I thought I knew who I was, I thought I knew what I wanted to do and why I wanted to do it - and when all was taken, I felt sorry for myself, and I felt defeated, and sad, and broken. It is amazing the kind of sorrow we will allow our souls to feel when we do not know God, and we are unaware of the plan He has for our lives. 

God will not only bless your endeavor but also equip you to bring it to pass, if - IF - this one aligns with His will and His purpose for your life. The rest are simply battles we go into with no everlasting weapons and no victory, even when it looks like we are winning. I thought I was winning for years, even when I could not see permanent results. I thought radio and music were my world, and I fought tooth and nail to keep them in my life. I was determined to succeed and I saw collateral damage fall flat on its face, as I remained focused on those dreams. I didn't graduate from college because of it. I moved to a different country because of it. My marriage was destroyed because of it. I haven't seen my family in years because of it. I had a baby with someone with whom I was not equally yoked because of it, consequently barely escaping an abusive relationship that has caused me much grieve and much emotional, physical, and financial stress, all because of it. I made decision after decision in my life for years based solely on what I perceived was what I was supposed to be doing - radio and music. To mistake your longings for  assignments, or even for life's purposes, is the most dangerous thing one can do. I wasn't winning. I was losing my life, and I didn't know it, because I did not know God.

God however is faithful, even when we cannot seek His face yet. He knows what we do not know, and He is there, picking up the pieces.

My father once told me that he should have slapped me on the face the very first time I told him that I wanted to work on the radio. He was not a violent man, and I remember feeling hurt when he said that to me. How dare him, I thought. He doesn't understand that radio and music are my life, I thought. My father however knew God, and I can't help but realizing now that he knew my life was going up in flames because of a mistaken conviction, and he wished he would have stopped me from making such devastating choices. I was 16 when I started shifting God's purpose into my own. It wouldn't have made a difference if my father would have raised his hand against me and slapped me then, because I thought I knew what I was doing. I would have done it anyway, with or without the imprint of his hand on my face. I did not know any better. God gave us free will for a reason -  a freedom to choose Him above all else - which can only be attained if you know the One who created you. How will you choose Him otherwise? You cannot choose that which you do not know. Perhaps this was my father's one mistake. In a country of strong Catholic presence, he chose to defy the church and keep his children away from it, which unfortunately meant to keep them also away from God. Good intentions won't teach the Bible principles to our kids. Only the Bible can teach the Bible. It is vital to know this, and live accordingly. I never knew my father believed in God until he passed away. For 27 years I thought my father was an atheist. God already knew this would happen with my father though, and nothing changes His plans for our lives. And so, He remained in the shadows, vigilant, protective, patient, until I made my way back to Him ten years after I moved to the United States, and right when I needed Him the most. It is true that God will meet you wherever you are. And He did. 

I am getting somewhere with this. 

I had collected hundreds of music albums in my almost 25 year tenure as a music journalist. I guarded them fiercely. Many I even shipped to the States when I moved here back in 2005. As I have said many times before, music was my life. I thought I needed it to live, which it is essentially a soul's blasphemy, convincing oneself that something other than God is needed for you to stay alive. I can now say that one of the biggest blessings of my life was to have music removed from my life as a life's purpose. When I became a single mother in 2014, I had to walk away from music and radio for good. And it was around the same time when God spoke to me for the first time, to tell me that I was not an accident, and that I was loved. This could not have been a coincidence. 

I was attending a small Hispanic church, the very first one I ever visited on my own, without my grandmother Rafaela tricking me into entering with her, or going to a Christmas mass with my mother, after my father passed away. It was also the first Christian, non-Catholic church I ever set foot in. God wasted no time, knowing perhaps that He had a small window of opportunity, since church made me incredibly uncomfortable. The very first words I heard the pastor say - a female elder of that church, who happened to be preaching that day - were "you are not an accident". And of course, God being the Creator of all and knowledgeable of all weapons at His disposal to get us to hear Him, He made the pastor look right at me when she said the words. My soul ignited within and was set on fire. Tears started to flow down my cheeks. I don't remember much of anything else she said. All I remember is raising my hand and approaching the altar to give my life to Christ, and knowing  - KNOWING - I had found my home  in Him. It remains the most incredible moment of my life, only perhaps matched by the birth of my daughter. It felt surreal, but  magical, just like when she was born and placed on my chest. Oh my, I thought my heart was going to explode, I loved her so much so instantly. And I loved God so much, in such an intimate, deep way as well that day at that little church, it changed my life and my daughter's life forever. 

I do not know why I needed to hear those words, I don't know why they cut so deep and yet healed me so much at the same time:

"For You fashioned my inmost being,

You knit me together in my mother's womb.

I thank You because I am awesomely made,

wonderfully; Your works are wonders - 

I know this very well.

My bones were not hidden from You

when I was being made in secret,

intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes could see me as an embryo,

but in Your book all my days were already written;

my days had been shaped

before any of them existed.

God, how I prize Your thoughts!

How many of them there are!

If I count them, there are more than grains of sand;

if I finish the count, I am still with you". - 

Psalm 139:13-18

I am not a scholar of the Gospel, I am only a servant, a child adopted into a Family that I did not deserve, and as such I am now counting my blessings, because what I pursued without His approval harmed me, and when I finally learned this, decisions needed to be made to grow in His love for me, instead of staying the same. Christianity often seems to hit the same roadblock: change. I am not sure many of us understand that allowing God into our lives by accepting Jesus into our hearts, must always come with a change of circumstances - in our decisions, in our environments, in our hearts especially, where we co-exist with the Son of Man through the Holy Spirit. Being a Christian doesn't give us permission to abuse Grace, and Grace - although it renews daily and does go down to the pits of hell to pull us out and give us another chance - does not deserve to be cheated on and lied to. If you stay the same, you are not saved by merely saying that you "believe". Because if you BELIEVE, you want to change, you can't stand being the same old you that got you in the hole to begin with, you hear the words of the apostle Paul and are convicted by their meaning:

"Then, so far as your former way of life is concerned, you must strip off your old nature, because your old nature is thoroughly rotted by its deceptive desires; and you must let your spirits and minds keep being renewed, and clothe yourselves with the new nature created to be godly, which expresses itself in the righteousness and holiness that flow from the truth". - Ephesians 4:22-24

Part of my evolution in my faith has involved some painful soul-searching. I have had to face myself in order to face Him with my truth, allowing Him to re-arrange my mind and start the healing process of many years of damage done to my soul. In the midst of my internal quest, I found myself unable to write about pagan music anymore, and uninterested to be back on the radio waves to talk about music that no longer moves me. I never thought this could happen. For years I believed that the size of my heart was directly related to the many different genres of music I dedicated my life to. My shows were often eclectic . I had allowed the enemy to whisper in my ear for years, and he spoke of music as a way to allow my soul to be free, when what was really happening was that my soul was being filled with noise, so that His voice would be muffled and lost in the rubble. The enemy is a master thief, after all, and he was stealing my blessings.

Don't get me wrong, I mourned the loss of what I thought were my dreams. I questioned God, I pleaded, I asked for a miracle that would get me back on that saddle...until that saddle made no sense to me at all, and I realized I was asking for something I no longer wanted for myself. Change is inevitable when you walk with Him. Your steps may not be perfect, but His are. For the last almost five years I had this subtle, holy whisper in my ear. Why are you keeping all this music, it would say, referring to the hundreds upon hundreds of CDs I had at home. I never had a good answer. I am no longer a music journalist, as far as I am concerned, and I do not feel inclined to listen to music which does not glorify Him. I am not a religious nut, I am merely a committed Christian, saved by His grace, and changed forever. And so this week, I sold some of my music for pennies, and donated the rest to charity. The best part is the feeling of absolute peace I feel today. It was a burden on my life. A reminder of my sins. A chain around my neck, pulling me down at every given chance. I kept Christian albums and Christmas ones, which all together were maybe a 1% of all the music I owned. I kept only the Jazz album of a friend of mine who has battled cancer twice in the last 3 years, and whom I have faithfully prayed for through her battle, and praised God for the miracle that it is that she is still with us. She may not sing to God in that album, but God did save her life and heard her cry. I thought it was fitting to keep her album with me, as a reminder of His goodness. The rest, is all gone and I feel nothing. I let go of my past - a past that He did not want for me - so that I can step into my future. 

I understand now that, while my gifts may be related to my voice for radio, or my affinity to music, or my love for writing, I did all of that away from His presence, and therefore far from His will, and opposed to His plan for my life. It is no mystery that I had to always fight twice as hard to stay in the business, often getting underpaid or not getting paid at all. He could not bless that which He had not prepared for me. I wasn't being blessed because I wasn't working for His kingdom, I was working for myself. Yes, I wanted to inspire others, but I did not want to inspire God. My friends, He is the only one we should all strive to inspire, by honoring Him, and making Him known to others - because He is THAT worthy. I squandered by gifts, and none of us should ever do that with what God has given us. 

There is power in letting go. There is power and a whole lot of faith, filling you with love. 

French Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchari (Rashi), teaches us that "stripped from God's living Spirit, humankind is nothing more than a lump of lifeless clay; therefore, one cannot stray from God's Spirit and survive". 

I was left for dead by the enemy because I was barely breathing. I know I could not have survived much longer. I want to be a lump of living clay in His hands. I hope you do too.