The testimony of my salvation
Seriously though, I converted to Christianity when I was 20.
On my college recruiting trip, I drank a six pack and danced on a table in a skirt. It was great, honestly, I had a blast and there were absolutely no repercussions whatsoever. My academic scholarship covered tuition and the softball program paid for everything else - room, board, and meals.
Freshman year, I earned two violations for drinking on campus, which was one shy of expulsion at a small liberal arts college.
In December of sophomore year, I woke up with the dark and distinct sensation that my life was directionless. Excelling at school and sports wasn’t it. Partying and boys wasn’t it. Despite my resting bitch face and other excessive behaviors, I’d made two great friends on the softball team who must have seen the seed of God in me. They were professing Christians and I’d noticed how their lives were strangely less painful and overall more lovely than mine. That morning in December, I remembered my friends and a crack appeared in the shell of my Godseed.
I started attending church with the cool kids and reading a Bible a little bit. I asked questions like, what does it feel like to be close to God? My friend Kelly said, “It feels like loving everyone.”
In February, I found myself on a pleather couch in my coach’s office overlooking the softball field. Crying. Always crying in that office. Coach Cole was 5’6, wiry, weathered, and eternally wearing a bomber jacket; he loved God, his mother, and his Boxer, Precious. I told him I was curious to change my life but I felt afraid. Afraid to lose everything I’d known up to that point - my friends, my boyfriend, my entire sense of self. He said, “You’ll be ready when you aren’t afraid anymore.”
In April, I retrieved two serendipitous pieces of mail from my campus mailbox. One was from my mom’s church and the other was an anonymous note of encouragement. They both contained Corinthians 5:17, “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”
The coincident was too profound. After four months of seeking and praying and holding a hundred questions, I wanted to be made new more than anything. I messaged my two Christian friends and told them to meet me at the campus chapel. Together we prayed, I committed my life, and over and over and over again crossed-legged on the red carpet, I begged God: “Please, use me.”
I was no longer afraid.
The aftermath astonished everyone who’d known me. In one remarkable exchange, the assistant softball coaches told me I had a completely different personality. The next year, someone from Campus Ministries asked me to give my testimony. I went on stage in front of a few hundred students and recited from Psalm 103: “Praise the Lord, oh my soul… who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion…”
Now I have language and an understanding of consciousness to explain the phenomenon Christianity has called “salvation.” Saved indeed from mental-rational domination, from radical self-preservation, and, ultimately, from the illusion of separation. With my consent, a new energy entered me, undid everything I knew before, and germinated the Godseed lying cracked in the soil of my heart.
A sprout appeared.
And thus, I have sought the water of the Holy Spirit and the light of Father Sun ever since. Longing every season to bear ripe fruit for the feeding of planet Earth.
I swear there is no greater analogy for our spiritual evolution than that of the Seed.
In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus puts it like this:
“His students said to him, ‘Tell us about the Kingdom of Heaven. What is it like?’
Yeshua answered them: ‘Let me compare it to a mustard seed, the smallest of seeds. When it falls into prepared ground it grows into a great tree capable of sheltering the birds of the sky.’”
May it be so with each of us.
