The Color Purple

I have often referred to my salvation experience as feeling like what Dorothy must have experienced when she walked from her black and white Kansas into the vibrant color of Oz.

Black and White for me was unbearable. At 21 years old I was clinically depressed, suicidal, and devoid of hope. I commented to a therapist at the time that the only reason I was still alive was because I didn't want my one year old daughter to lose her mother. In a world that hadn't yet given birth to the "emo" culture, the scars on my body bore witness to years of self-inflicted injury. I loved my husband and my daughter, but I hated myself.

Hours before I accepted Christ as my Savior, I commented to my mother-in-law that I didn't believe that God did any more than create the earth. "Sure, I believe that God made the world," I remember saying, "but Adam and Eve and all that? It's just nonsense."

Later that day I decided to drive to a friend's house. She was actually the mother of my husband's best friend, but she and I had developed a friendly relationship. I sat at her kitchen table with her and her husband, and "for no reason at all" I brought up Christianity. Through the course of that life-altering conversation, I came to realize that even though I felt unworthy of love, God loved me anyway.

He loved me in spite of all that I had done. I had always believed that He had abandoned me, but the truth was that I had abandoned Him. He had been there with me the whole time. Though I felt ugly and twisted inside, He looked beyond all my failures and gave me what I had needed all along: grace and forgiveness.

In an instant my heart was changed. I prayed right there for God to enter my heart. I apologized for the hurtful things I had done and asked Him to wipe my slate clean. I praised Him for sending His Son to die on the cross so that I could feel the peace that was rushing through my veins.

I opened my eyes to color. So many things from my life suddenly made sense. I knew that I had a road ahead of me; I had hurt many people in my years of desperation, and it would take time to heal those wounds. But for the first time since I could remember, I felt hope.

And so eleven years passed. What so many people thought would be a "passing fancy" grew and blossomed into a strong faith that affected my entire family.

But even in the happy moments of my born-again life, I knew something was missing. I wasn't growing like I wanted to be. My heart yearned for a closer relationship with God, but days would pass and I would suddenly realize that it was Sunday again and my Bible was still in the van from the week before. Why couldn't I put God first when He was so important to me?

I realized that I needed to actively participate in my relationship with Him. Out of discipline, desire was born. When I started listening to Him, reading His Word, and devoting my quiet moments to prayer, that pure joy that I had been questing for blossomed.

This morning I was talking to a dear friend after my Bible study. I was relating all of this to her, and describing my Black and White to Color analogy. I then told her how exciting my life had become since making the commitment to say Yes to God.

"It's like finding the color purple," I said. My post-Black-and-White life was wonderful, but finding that next shade has made it even better.

As I was walking away, something struck me. I may have picked that color randomly, but it just happens to be the one that completes the rainbow.

"But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life." (Jude 1:20-21 NASB)