We Fall Down, We Get Up…

I’m going off course today. This isn’t a travel blog, or a book blog. This blog is about us: TJ & me:

I love football. This has only a little to do with my testimony, but this needs to be said. We are heading into football season. Go Cardinals! So… I love football. Although the hubby can’t understand this, or see it, football is a game of life. You could compare the play to good and evil fighting against one another, but on a field. With an endzone and goal posts.

There are a lot of rules in football, and the referees make the calls about right and wrong. If you mess up, they send you back 5 or 10 yards. Sometimes you get kicked out of the game. But your main goal is to work your way up the field to the goal line. Paul told us in Hebrews 12:1: Jesus, the Example

Therefore, since we also have such a great cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let’s rid ourselves of every obstacle and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let’s run with endurance the race that is set before us.

This life is a race. I was raised Catholic, going to their equivalent of Sunday school, except on Saturday morning instead of Sunday morning, all through the school year. I remember little of Catechism, except the Apostles’ Creed. We had to learn some stuff by rote so we could take communion, and I do remember many Bible stories. However, I think I read most of them from those children’s Bibles you find in the doctor’s office. King David was my favorite.

When I was 14, I began to pull away from the church when people, my parents probably, told me I couldn’t understand God. They thought only the Pope and priests could really get a handle on God. I promptly got on my bike and rode to TG&Y (who remembers that place?) and bought a King James Bible of my own. The Bible cost me $5.

Proceeding to read that Bible from cover to cover, I only stopped to deeply consider John 3: ¹⁶ “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, so that everyone (!!!) who believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life. ¹⁷ For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but so that the world might be saved through Him. ¹⁸ The one who believes in Him is not judged; the one who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 

And Romans 10:¹³ for “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord (Jesus) will be saved.”

Immediately, I told God I believed in Him and in Jesus, His son. I realized what this meant because the Holy Spirit filled me at that time. I tried to tell my parents, at which point, they told me not to be a fanatic. It makes me wonder, now, if I told them I wanted to be a nun, how would they feel? They’ve both left this plane of existence, so I can’t ask.

In high school, I hung with some Christian kids—Jesus Freaks. These were here, in Phoenix. Just like the movie Pastor Greg Laurie put on a year or so ago. I kept my faith to myself at home but told people about Jesus at school. Even my sister. I carried my Bible with me, reading it at lunch.

I was dating Tim at that time, and I didn’t know he had once committed himself to Christ too. Neither of us were acting like Christians, so I became pregnant. We married, but not in church. Not that a secular marriage matters to God. Marriage is a contract, a commitment, any way you slice it.

Life was difficult for us. We were so poor we could barely afford $150 for rent. Our life was miserably difficult. I was drinking to drown my sorrow, and we fought all the time. Our life wasn’t pretty. I wasn’t Cinderella and he wasn’t Prince Charming, living happily ever after.

As the kids grew, Sonja asked me if I believed in God. She was about six years old. Where that came from I don’t know. A friend and I found Calvary Chapel. We started going to church there. Soon, Tim followed me.

Life was still tough. We almost divorced at one point, but pulled ourselves back together because neither of us wanted to be like our parents. We didn’t want to fail at marriage. I don’t think we even liked one another, anymore. But God (all the good things that happen in the Bible start with “but God) told me to look back at why I loved Tim at the beginning. HE doesn’t like divorce, but that’s another story.

Together, with some Christian counseling, we recommitted ourselves to each other, to Christ, and to our marriage. We’ve managed to stay the course through a heart attack, Tim’s shoulder accident and surgery, and my two cancer issues, but God is always good, even when things look dark.

You wouldn’t have liked me before Jesus took over my life. Of that I am certain. I am stubborn, cranky, sarcastic now. Imagine that personality mixed up without Jesus!

Hubby and I are here today, loving God, loving each other, because our Lord God Almighty first loved us. The song below reminds me about running the race with Jesus.

This song by Bob Carlisle explains our path: You can find the video here!

Cursing every step of the way, he bore a heavy load
To the market ten miles away, the journey took its toll
And every day he passed a monastery’s high cathedral walls
And it made his life seem meaningless and small

And he wondered how it would be to live in such a place
To be warm, well fed and at peace, to shut the world away

So when he saw a priest who walked, for once, beyond the iron gate
He said, “tell me of your life inside the place”
And the priest replied

We fall down, we get up
We fall down, we get up
We fall down, we get up
And the saints are just the sinners
Who fall down and get up

Disappointment followed him home, he’d hoped for so much more
But he saw himself in a light he had never seen before

‘Cause if the priest who fell could find the Grace of God to be enough
Then there must be some hope for the rest of us
There must be some hope left for us

We fall down, we get up
We fall down, we get up
We fall down, we get up
And the saints are just the sinners
Who fall down and get up