Some of you know my testimony very well, others just bits and pieces. I have never been good at telling everyone everything about my testimony because some parts I feel are so intimate to my feelings that I have a hard time opening up to some.
I think though, I have made it apparent to everyone that I once walked away from God. My great-grandmother Vesta was one of incredible faith in God and she suffered for months before she finally went to heaven. It was at the end of my 7th grade year that I decided to walk away from God. I didn't understand how He could let her suffer for as long as she did before he finally took her home.
Two days before she died, my parents, my twin and I went to go see her. She was existing in a body that no longer functioned. She was breathing and conscious, but that was all. She couldn't move, talk, and had to have oxygen to get enough. For a teenage girl who had always known her great-grandmother to be an independent woman, it was tough to take. It was too tough for me to take...
I had a hard time not crying when I saw her. I think everyone had a hard time. Vesta was one to read her Bible everyday, but she hadn't been able to read it on her own for over a month and a half. That day I got to read to her. I don't remember if I just picked something to read, or if I was told where my grandmother and grandfather had stopped in the book of Psalms, but I read Psalm 22-26. Four very hard to read King James Version chapters, but I made it through them.
Until this last Sunday (9/15/13) I never revisited those chapters. I always remember which ones I read to her, but I never reread them for myself. Sunday evening, our new pastor, started a series about Praying with the Psalms. And Psalm 22 was one that he read.
It was hard to explain (or contain) my emotions as he read that. I hadn't heard those words spoken aloud since the last time I read them 11 years ago. I was flooded with the idea and the notion (now that I understand better what actually happened to Vesta as she slowly passed from Earth to Heaven.) And this morning (9/18/13) I read all 4 of them together. These four Psalms are ones that I know was something she needed to hear. They aren't the most pretty Psalms (however the 23rd Psalm in the best known) and they talk about affliction and turmoil, but they also talk about love, grace and hope. The 22nd Psalm was something that our new Pastor took the time to explain in a way that I had never even heard or (or connected.)
In Jesus' time, the Old Testament was all they had for a Bible. It was Holy and most people knew the book of Psalms. When Jesus was hanging on the cross and He said, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" He wasn't asking a literal question (which was how I was taught growing up.) He was starting the 22nd Psalm, which starts out the exact same way. And I am sure that my grandmother was having some of the same feelings, being trapped inside her body that no longer worked.
Those four Psalms are now incredibly important in my testimony. I understand them better in a way that I have not before and it proves to me (again) that God is good. He takes the brokenhearted, the past, the bad stuff we have done (or that has been done to us) and He makes good things come from it.
God. Is. Amazing.
