A few weeks ago, I took communion at a church where I hadn't before. While my home church, Mercy, already does it a lot different than many churches, this was even further from anything I'd experienced. For me it can seem a mere ritual and a backslide into some of the old ways, those of my religion.
I grew up in a much different way of practicing Christianity than what it looks like to me now. I honestly don't remember a day of my life without a notion of God existing; doing whatever He does, wherever He is, up somewhere. I went to grade school where I had to memorize bible verses that were theologically way over my head. I jokingly say you can only read about Noah's ark so many times, but it's somewhat true - I haven't much touched the Old Testament in a long time, partially because of my childhood. We attended weekly chapel services where we sang several hymns. None of what I was raised in was wrong or tainted me, but I lived so many years without understanding in my heart why I even believed all this stuff. Some of it is probably even tainted in my memory because of my lack of understanding.
Then while hearing the gospel presented while on a mission trip in Appalachia as a freshman, it clicked. There's no more of an in-depth story, save for the sweet memory of spending probably an hour alone in awe. Flash forward through all the years to follow that moment, I honestly think I would have been one of the ones who didn't make it, if it weren't for that mysterious moment of truly knowing. As my faith climbed, so it felt did the weight of the things I faced.
I remember so clearly, after a difficult few weeks there was a night where my best friend at the time confirmed she was walking out of my life, cold-turkey without so much as a warning or even a good blowout. She didn't even plan to tell me. The gravity of that moment could until recently still take my breath away. That night, I cried so hard my nose bled. Even in the aftermath of that, I don't remember all the gritty details, but that I spent a lot of time pleading with God to ease my pain and He did. I don't know where else I would have found hope.
My recent radically-refreshed taking communion wasn't necessarily different in the way you might expect. The pastor simply invited us all to take pause and ponder what Jesus' death has meant to us personally. In the span of those two or three spared minutes, a wave of gratitude came over me, as when someone gives you exactly what you need right when you do - because that's what I recalled all in an instant. Years of my life, learning to trust the God I learned so much about all that time, through the realities of the pain of life and even find the hope to press on with joy!
I often wish I had a better "story" to tell, because it's just so subtly knit into my life that it's hard to pinpoint a moment, or tell of something beyond God giving me peace or hope, but that is what takes my breath away now. Not the pain of anything that previously ruled my life, but now the gravity of how God's hand has been in it all, and the freedom I continue to know deeper in Christ.
