has been had been.

I'm sentimental. I celebrate anniversaries of things. I like stories that fold in on themselves like a Hollywood movie where no character ends alone. Though I have traditionally tried to slip past my birthday without fanfare, I enjoy it all day long--like a little secret I keep with myself, and smile. I am sentimental, and corny, and romantic.

No surprise, then, that on the eve between the one-year anniversary of my first Sunday at JRA, and the date of my first Sunday, I'm sitting at my kitchen table looking through the James River section of my scrapbook memento collection (for the scrapbook I haven't started, but will, you know, next season).

The directions from my house to the James River campus, written out on notebook paper in my messy handwriting, with reverse directions not to home, but to Target. A bag, with map, and CD recording of JRA core values, and literature I got during my tour. There's a card with Wanda's name and cell number on it--that's sweet. "Baptism Instructions," with a blank space where the testimony ought to have been because I decided to "wing it." Little slips of paper with the names and numbers of JRA regulars, offering themselves to me in friendship. A recipe from my first Life Group. A thank you card, written to me for some editing I had done of a friend's early manuscript on a book that is now being published (praise God!)--a friend who reached out so early to me, so lovingly. My DFL wristband. The church Christmas card. A New Life brochure, given by Tim Keene during one of his numerous attempts to talk me into the Sunday morning class. A thank you card from my first JRA roommate, in the weeks leading up to her wedding. The ILA prayer list, and some run sheets for the advertising placements I helped with. Several sermon notes marked up with production directives. A beautiful, glossy magazine challenging me to "Dare to Dream."

A year.

I'm feeling sentimental. I'm wondering how it all happened, and who I was. Who I've been, at each step. Ultimately, though...

This is the day that made all the difference, but the difference has been made.

I'm new. A new creation. Not a perfectly-behaved one by any means. But one "washed by the blood," as the creepy phrase goes. One redeemed. One saved. One with God for eternity.

So, I'm trying to recapture that person, for memory's sake, but she's gone. This is in fact my life. It isn't a dream. I'm not hallucinating. I am a Christian. A pentecostal one at that. I live a life that seeks, if not always fruitfully, after God with purpose, with effort, and love. I'm sold out. This isn't an experiment. It's not a phase. I'm not "trying this on for size." Christ is one-size fits all, folks. He came for everyone, everywhere, and my any time was one year ago today. This is it.

Mostly, I'm excited. I'm thinking that if He did this much in just one year, what else is there to come?

I sat in service this morning, and Lindell is preaching on about Ephesians, and thievery, and other stuff that my intellect was paying attention to, but really... I'm just trying not to break into smile. Trying not to laugh aloud, or to tell my friend next to me that I could have come past a year far from God, but by His grace I live saved--I live close. Not to move, or dance, or lift my arms in the middle of the sermon, or cry. I'm just trying not to show the exhilarating joy I feel.

Then, suddenly, an image pressed powerfully into me -- I was 14 or 15, shortly after having heard of Christ, but having already become disillusioned with the church, I had fallen. And having fallen, I felt awful. I rode my bike down to my favorite stretch of the Lake Michigan beach. It's a lonely, empty little dune that is not even publicly-accessible anymore. I was afraid to be out there alone, with good reason. But I felt that God had called me there. I was safe in His sight. So I walked out, and falling to my knees in the sand a few feet from the water, I came clean with God. I was confused by the church, and in turmoil over whether I had been "saved" and what it even meant. What made the difference between a life saved, and one lost? I wasn't sure that God existed--had I created him? But I promised my life to Him, anyway. Through confusion, and tears, and anger, and hurt.

Today may be one year in the church. It may be the longest time I've been in the church for ten years, since I first heard of Christ. It is definitely the greatest time of spiritual growth I've ever known.

But my life has been promised to the Savior for some time.

Was I saved when I moved here? I don't know, and it doesn't matter. I'm saved now. He has been faithful. Though I have strayed, and though I have tossed off the things of God as less than dirt, He has been faithful. Though I turned from the Truth I had heard, He did not turn from me.

This is the day that made all the difference, but friends, the difference had been made.