An Unlikely Convert, or How I Became a Christian - Part Three

All you need for that is to believe in him -- to say "Yes, Jesus, I trust you," as opposed to "No, Jesus, get lost."
-Robert Farrar Capon, The Parables of Grace


No one wants to know about your faith or unbelief, your orders are to perform the act of obedience on the spot. Then you will find yourself in the situation where faith becomes possible and where faith exists in the true sense of the word.
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

 It was about another year before the financial foundations of all that outward security I had built began to crumble. The buyer for the penthouse never materialized, and we rented it out for a gaping monthly loss. We were overleveraged and quickly losing income as Wall Street collapsed and a startup company I had joined could no longer pay its employees. My husband and I realized that if we wanted to save our marriage and our family's sanity, we had to get out of the big house in the leafy suburb we were killing ourselves to afford. I prayed that we would sell it for breakeven before Easter.

For the first time I could remember, my prayer was not fulfilled. I was as stunned as a spring bird flying into a window.

I found myself dragging up the hill to Grace Cathedral and knelt before an icon of Christ in the chapel. There was a strange new prayer on my lips, and I didn't know where it had come from, but this time I wasn't praying for something worldly. I prayed just to know him.

He showed up that spring. I whispered to him in the sleepless nights while I hunched at the kitchen table, trying to make the numbers add up. "Are you real?" I asked. "Is it true?"

He laughed the way that your dearest friend laughs, believing you are the most delightful thing in the world. Another time I heard his voice when I was in the shower, stressing about a key date coming up with our home sale.  He told me that everything was going to be fine by the date I was so worried about.  I was so surprised by the sound that I thought an intruder had sneaked in.

In early summer, we let our nanny go, sold the home with the white picket fence for a crippling loss and, much poorer, moved into an affordable rental in our beloved Berkeley. I had a new job, not as glamorous as the startup, but one that suited me well and that paid me enough to get by on. The great myth I had been raised with, the entitlement fairy tale that I could be whatever I wanted to be because I was hardworking and smart and pretty and special, was busted. In its place, a quiet understanding arose.

I didn't control everything, for starters. And not only had all those worldly things I'd accrued failed to deliver lasting security, they had vanished as quickly as they'd come. They had been gifts, I realized. How could I have been so vain as to think that I could command these things, had created these things, had earned these things, had made things happen that only God can make happen?

I realized too that this new start was a gift, and that the grace I had run from my whole life was a gift. Once I knew this, I knew it was not going to be enough to know about Christ anymore. I started visiting churches I'd read about on Berkeley Parents Network. It took me a few months to get to First Pres. I walked in on the first Sunday of Advent 2009. Something strange and wonderful happened: the Lord met me there. He was right there, moving all around me, rushing almost, through the people in the pews and the teaching of the sermon and the music on our lips, the gladness of the music I had never heard before but somehow could sing. My face was wet with tears, and I was filled with relief and gratitude to have found my way here. This was not at all the "dolce vita" I had imagined for myself -- this was the real thing, and it was good.