Skeptics, Seekers, and Saints
When I was younger, I knew my family was different, but I didn’t fully understand how that would shape my life. My brothers and I were born in Amman, Jordan, to an American mom and a Palestinian dad. When I was nine months old, my dad passed away from a heart attack, and a month later, after living in Jordan for 15 years, my mom moved baby Tara and my six and 8-year-old brothers overseas back to Texas.
In kindergarten and first grade, I attended a private Christian school. I grasped Christianity 101: that Jesus Christ died on a cross and he liked to hold small baby sheep. Then, with my mom teaching in the public schools, I left Christian school and entered public school, and we also left the church. While our weeknights and weekends were full of my brother’s band concerts and hockey games, our relationship was far from friendly. Still, I would seek affirmation, approval, and acceptance from my brothers in any way I could — from the music I listened to the shows I watched — anything for them to like me or even want to be around me. I felt like I was never enough. But I still desperately sought any attention from them, and it led me to start drinking and trying drugs by the time I was 14.
Right around the same time, I was invited to go to a high school ministry called Young Life, so I went. All I had learned about Jesus up until this point, I had learned in kindergarten: that Jesus had died on a cross and carried small sheep- but I heard, or at least listened, really listened- for the first time that Jesus also loved me and came to be in a relationship with me. That he wanted to know me. I wanted to know more, and I began to seek the truth of God through attending church, going to bible studies, and figuring my way through the Bible.
One this was for sure, God was still pursuing me- a heart that was torn between the approval of man and the approval of God. Anytime I came home from a Young Life or church thing and my brothers were there, they would tell me that I was being brainwashed, that my mind was so weak that this cult thought I was an easy target for a convert, or that if I had any intelligence at all, then I would know that the idea of faith was a fallacy. Even then, I wanted my brothers to like me. But I wanted to know the truth more.
After four years of learning about the character of God, I finally rested in the truth that he was trustworthy, and I said yes to the invitation Jesus offered me: to accept him as my Lord and savior. I made the choice to love God back and to accept his forgiveness, his grace, his mercy and his love for me, and his acceptance of me. It still blows my mind that because of the great exchange that happened on the cross - that when the God of the universe looks at me, he doesn’t see my sin, but he sees the righteousness of his son.
I have a painting that I keep in our garage my Young Life leader made for me that has every name used for God in the Bible. Some of my favorites come from Isaiah 9:6
“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
Since I started following Jesus when I was 18, every one of these names has proved true. He has been my counselor amid fear, loss, and uncertainty. He has shown he is a Mighty God, from looking at the magnificence of creation to looking at the way he rescued me and so many others from a life of being enslaved to sin. He is my everlasting Father, a father who will never die and never leave me. And He is my Prince of Peace, speaking truth into anxiety and hope into darkness.
I did not grow up knowing very much about my dad and often wondered about his personality or what characteristics I had that were similar to his. But you and I get to have the Word of God, living and active, full, from cover to cover, telling us about who God our Father is, about how much He loves us and how by the power of the holy spirit is always with us. He is Emmanuel. God with us.
