Yesterday I laid in my yard and looked up. I should have been painting, but I couldn't help myself.
My favorite thing about waking up at five in the morning to go to school when I did, was the sky. I don't know if you've ever seen peach and rose pink clouds rimmed with the tiniest morning blue possible and settled along a lavender sky, but I have.
For a few days out of my childhood, I wanted to be an explorer. I didn't tell anyone because I didn't know what I wanted to discover, and you can't just be an explorer without knowing what you're trying to find while you explore. At least I thought you couldn't when I was twelve. Nevertheless, I secretly determined that I would spend some time in the Amazon, searching for something, and then I would go to Nepal and climb Mount Everest. I had always wanted to climb that mountain just so I could sit at the top and touch a cloud. It was my biggest dream.
Yesterday I laid in my yard and looked up. I realized after a few minutes of gazing at that blue expanse stretching from every corner of my eyes that the sky has always been a banner to me. A declaration. Even when I was little, it sold me on the belief that there has to be a great creator.
When I was on the cusp of my childhood blossoming into youth, in that state of being that confuses every growing young woman, I tried not to believe in God. I shed my explorer dream quite easily. I couldn't hold my breath long enough to climb Mount Everest, and no one climbs Mount Everest if they have poor lung capacity. But shrugging Jesus off was harder. I distinctly remember sitting on my white sheets in my bedroom, and light was spilling everywhere because it was the early morning, and I told myself out loud, you are fooling yourself. This whole Christianity thing is a lie. God isn't real. I was actually so scared I couldn't say the last part. I mumbled it. Something like, God is ennnn-t-rer. But I stuck my chest out anyway because I was going to prove that. I thought through it for quite some time. I weighed the choices I'd made and the people in my life and the things they said or didn't say. I went through the churches I'd gone to and the ones I hadn't and I tried to imagine what it would be like to not go to church. Ever. In my life. I tried really hard.
In the end I just made myself mad and my heart hurt just a little because I couldn't prove anything and I believed anyway.
In the end I just looked up at the sunrise and surrendered.
I don't know how not to believe in God. Sometimes I have very little faith, sometimes I doubt, but never His existence. I can't figure out how to do that. I tried when I was twelve, and let me tell you, it's not an easy task when the clouds are long ropes wrapped around a buttery yellow sun and all in a golden sky at an early hour.
I was once asked how I knew God was real. How I knew He exists. I'm not one of those people who has had a miraculous conversion and turned her entire life around from some tragic existence before. I was saved when I was five years old. I can't look at someone and say, because I'm different. I know He's real, because I'm not the same person I was. That's not my testimony. But that's not a bad thing. It's okay to have a "boring" testimony. It's okay to live one of those boring Christian lives where you never did anything worldly or tragic and had to overcome it. I had to learn that, because I felt guilty for the longest time about it. I used to want to make up problems for myself, because it's so hard to convince someone that you needed saving when they think your life was and is perfect. The truth is, evangelical Christianity is so much easier when you have a story that says you didn't know that you are fearfully and wonderfully made.
So I pointed up.
I always point up when someone asks me how I know, how I know that He's real. Because the truth is, I can't look at the heavens and think there is no God. I just can't do it. And I think that's a very human thing, it's very of the earth and dust. Because really, we can't explain all that much about this place. We don't even understand the dirt we were born of and go back to.
The sky is a testimony unlike all others. I'm ever so grateful for it.
It convinced me.
What convinced you?
And if you haven't been yet, convinced I mean, I dare you. Look up.
