The Year You Saved Me

I always find it a nice practice to reflect at the end of a year. And this year especially so, because this was the year that Jesus saved me. I didn't believe I'd ever say that, but it's the truth. 

In the past, if I'd ever gotten close enough to a Christian to hear them say a thing like that, talking about being saved by Jesus, I'd be wondering what kind of icky, parallel dimension I found myself in and try to get myself out. 

The way my parents raised me was to put up a large wall, thousands of feet high, with an enclosed roof to protect myself against the horrors of Jesus Christ. After all, Jesus and his cult of Christianity were scary. 

It's only now that I can look back and imagine why that might have been the case. I think it's because life is scary, and the idea that a divine creator would put us through the things we went through was unfathomable. 

It would be much more comfortable to believe that we could take control of our own lives. That we could create safety and security in a way that was 'rational' for ourselves. The irony, though, was that it lead to doom. Just like the people of the old testament who strayed from God, led by their own temptations into catastrophe, time and time again. 

I tried too to go my own way. I tried as hard as I possibly could to get away from the mess I was raised in, out of the house, my hometown and ultimately the country to try and make a life for myself. By my own strength I tried to solve my problems by working hard and creating my own name. 

And wouldn't it have happened, that when I moved all the way to Hollywood to live out my dreams, I was faced with the longest film industry strikes in history. I left behind the stability of my community and family and career to attain something that vanished before I got here. 

I also tried without success to find a husband, as if that could have been some kind of alternative to fixing my problems. I could start a family with someone who was stable and secure, someone who could rescue me. I tried so hard to find the man in my imagination that I passed up on lovely people who were not perfect but who were suitable and had good intentions, because I was looking for something more. 

Something so big that at one time, at the beginning of the year I actually questioned my faith against the person I was dating. He found my growing faith unsettling. When that relationship collapsed it served as lesson, one that God had been trying to teach me over and over, which was not to hold things above him. 

Since work was essentially dead and my relationships had lead to nothing, I took a friend's recommendation and started reading the bible in the New Testament. I joined a life group at church where we discussed the Good News about Jesus further. I learned that salvation wasn't gained by striving or how well I could follow religious laws. 

Salvation was gained through belief in Him alone. The God who came to us. Jesus.

The one came to earth as a humble, accessible, human being born in a manger, to live the perfect life that no human ever could. Who, at the height of his glory, rode into town on the colt of a donkey and was crucified, willingly sacrificing himself for us, so that we would not have to experience the consequences of our sins. If only we believed in him. 

In the beginning it was hard. I asked myself how any of this could amount to real change in my life. How learning more about Jesus would make my situation any better, but it did. At first the joy that I experienced was through others. Listening to the story of a man in his eighties who was just now coming to Christ and finding peace despite the end of a forty-year marriage. 

I wanted to judge these people for believing the bible but I was seeing the fruit and I couldn't help but feel better just by being around them. I developed my own prayer life. And then I realized I didn't have to take anyone's word for it, I didn't have to be there to see Jesus' body taken up into heaven. 

I was communing with Jesus myself. I was experiencing relationship with him. I was experiencing his comfort. If the good news about Jesus wasn't true and he had never been resurrected, then why, two thousand years after his death, was he there to comfort me in my living room?

The idea of God was no longer just an idea to me. A God that I could just swap out with any other religion or by calling it "The Universe." It was Jesus. He was the one that I had been looking for. And in that room at my church where I met with my life group, I declared that I didn't need anymore evidence, that I knew what I knew because I felt it. 

While I'd been attending church for years, it was this moment that I decided I was ready to be baptized in the Christian faith, to be set apart and declare my faith in Jesus. How exciting that was, for me to take that step in my faith and commit to Him. I learned though, that getting baptized and being 'saved' were not necessarily the same thing.

In fact, shortly after my baptism, when I expected that God would shine his face down on me from heaven and rescue me from all of my fears and doubts, I was faced with an attack from the 'enemy.'

The enemy, or the idea of Satan is that doubting, fearful voice in our heads that tells us God doesn't have what we need and that we have to fight for ourselves to get it. It tells us in an often compelling and rational way that the notion of putting our faith and trust into God's caring hands is not only scary but ridiculous. 

The voice rang out, "All of this was out of a selfish desire for attention! None of this is real. None of this is going to change you. You're still small. And you're still hopeless." 

Being baptized was a bold act of faith. A threat to the adversary. And thankfully I'd spent enough time in the church to recognize it for what it was. I understood that a declaration of that magnitude would come with strong opposition, so I let the feelings pass. 

In the days after my baptism I continued to face seeming setbacks to life in LA, and I began to revisit what my goals were and who they were really for. I described in my Hollywood revelation, that I didn't want to fight anymore about what God had for me. That I didn't want to struggle against his will for my life, and if no opportunities were to come up then I could simply go back to Toronto, or even change careers, if that was what he wanted me to do. 

That's when I was saved. The moment that I handed over every last idol and stopped using God as a means to get what I wanted. And I can honestly say that in that moment even though nothing in the physical world around me changed, I felt a true peace and contentment that had been missing from my life. 

I was so relieved! I wasn't going to fight against God's will for me. I realized how futile and exhausting that was. I trusted him with my life, that I would be okay no matter what. Better than okay. Even if my life turned out differently than how I wanted it to. 

I finally let myself believe that what he wanted for me was good, and then I stepped aside and let him do what he wanted. And when I did I fully expected new hardships to embrace, but that wasn't what happened. 

When I let go of my plans the phone started to ring, and all of a sudden, opportunity after opportunity started presenting themselves. And they weren't the ones that I was seeking after, the ones that I was cold calling and pitching myself for, they called me out of the blue.

The jobs came back after a year and a half of drought and I realized that God always intended to take care of me. It wasn't like, as I feared, that if I gave my life to him he would hand me over to a monastery. 

Better yet, the jobs were in my hometown. I hadn't worked there in years! What a special opportunity, to get to go back to work with flights paid and be able to spend time with my family. I'd moved all the way to Hollywood thinking it would make my life complete only to be brought back to the place where I started. 

I returned to LA after a couple of fulfilling projects with a fresh set of eyes. LA was a beautiful place to wake up to, not a prison that I was condemned to. I get to go running in the mountains every morning, and I even got to share it with my sister this year. 

This year was beautiful and surpassed anything I could have imagined. I had all of the work I needed, I  signed with an agent, booked a Beetlejuice commercial that landed my first award nomination. I got to take my sister to Italy. I did makeup for the premiere of Star Wars, which for a life-long Disnerd was a dream come true. I attended the Saturn Awards with the cast of Star Trek. I spent time with old friends and new. New family members. And I stopped trying so hard to find someone to marry me. 

I know now, because he has shown me over and over again, that God has a perfect plan for my life. He's always had everything ready to give me, he just desired my heart first. 

Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name given to mankind by which he must be saved. Acts 4:12

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