Photo by Wayne Stadler
“I will praise you Lord, for you have rescued me.”
The words of this Psalm resonated with me as I read them over and over early Sunday morning as I sat in my prayer chair. I am a firm believer that God has allowed me to mess up, to come so close to destroying myself, to hit rock bottom, all so that He in all of His glory could rescue me.
The Story of My Love Affair with Myself
For the first twenty years of my life “me” was all that mattered. There was no God for me, in fact my “god” was the one I had fashioned for myself, the false god of self, and boy was it a shiny one. I paid homage to this “god” by seeking my own physical pleasure, material success, and constructing a false facade to hide the broken man I was inside. Of course, this was all subconscious. I never even thought about the lifestyle I was living, it came so natural.
My Masquerade
It really began in high school with my intense desire to fit in in a place where I never really did. Being biracial never seemed to matter to me until I became a teenager. The school I attended boasted over 3,000 students, most of whom were white suburban kids which is the way I always self-identified. But they didn’t see me as such, for on the outside I was a black kid. But I never felt a part of the black community at school either, which consisted of about maybe 20-30 kids. From this situation was born the idea to build a fake persona that might feed my desire for acceptance. I changed my style and started wearing expensive clothes, dressing like a big rap star and hoping that would do the trick.
Money, Money, Money, Moooneeey
As soon as I started working at 18 I began the ever so natural quest for material success. Money was what mattered and I wanted more of it. After graduating college my income pretty much quadrupled overnight and I continued constructing that facade which also fueled my pride. I often looked down on others who didn’t make the kind of money that I was making. I was a show-off of sorts. All about me.
Addiction = Destruction
Eventually, I realized that I didn’t really have any friends. Then I fell into a latino crowd, started my own lowrider car club, and continued falling deeper in love with myself. At this point physical pleasure became my “god”. I was on the verge of addiction to sex and substance. If it felt good, why not do it? Alcohol helped me to step out of my shy persona and really become that false character that I had been building, to really live it. Pornography kept me even more focused on myself. I was a slave to myself, a slave to sin.
Normal with No Need for Saving
Of course, our individualistic American society tells us all of these self-centered behaviors are normal. So not once did I ever feel like I was harming myself in any way. It wasn’t until God entered my life—or until I became aware of Him—that this all began to change. It was God that rescued me from sin, from myself.
I never believed in God growing up, in fact I had no thought about eternal things at all. It was through a relationship with a girl who would later become my wife that God would call me to Himself. Sitting alone in Mass on a Sunday morning in central Phoenix I had an epiphany moment. God was real. Then began a journey into the Catholic Church and a relationship with the living God who drew me out of myself and helped me to focus my life on others and on Him. He turned my world upside down. He straightened me out. He transformed me. And I never asked for any of this. I was content with myself.
It’s funny now looking back I can say that He rescued me, but I never asked to be rescued, in fact I never knew I needed to be. He was able to see my self-destructive behaviors and turn me around.
My God is Mighty to Save
This notion, this reality of God coming to the rescue sometimes is lost on me. I can see it when I think about my conversion to Christianity which I just shared rather briefly, but in the day-to-day I often forget. I think it’s very important to call to mind. In the Bible, God continually reminds the Israelites that He has saved them from slavery in Egypt. It’s not out of conceit, but out of necessity. Every time they would forget about how God saved them and fail to see Him at work in their day-to-day lives, they would fall back into sin, building false gods for themselves, and getting into more and more trouble. And God allows it every time. He allows it because He wants to be able to rescue us, to save us. No matter how many times we spit in His face and walk the other way, He is always ready to come to our rescue, even when we don’t realize we need rescuing. That’s love.
“I will praise you Lord, for you have rescued me.”
God rescued me from sin. He has saved me from myself. The idea of God’s saving power now has meaning for me, in fact, we even named our son Joshua which means “God saves” and He truly does!