Tearjerker

The weeping caught me off guard, especially since the tears were mine, and I was trying to speak. As part of a Sunday School class, we were supposed to be describing how our relationship with Jesus started, and what it’s meant to each of us. I had told different pieces of my story many times . . .  

Raised by a single mother who made me go to church as a kid, even though she would not.

In my late 20’s, my future wife gave me a Bible. Not to seem ungrateful, I started reading it cover-to-cover, slogging through in over two years.

During that time, I got married and started my own business, as an over-analytical bundle of nerves and doubts.

The very same week I finished the last verse of Revelation, I attended a spiritual retreat, and suddenly, everything in the Bible made sense. Jesus spoke to me directly, accepted me and loved me.

From that moment on, I desperately needed Him. I still have my doubts and fears years later, but thanks to my faith in Him, they are short-lived.

A tear-jerking story? May not seem like it, but I get choked up every time I speak to groups of people about what Jesus means to me.

Pop quiz: What do the movies Finding Nemo, Up and even Despicable Me all have in common? Not only are they animated movies, but they all opened my tear duct spigots. Bonus points if you realized another common thread includes a father or a father-figure trying to protect and connect with lost or rejected kids.

I never got to experience that, because my parents separated before I started pre-school, thanks to Dad’s unfaithfulness. After my cloudburst in the Sunday School class, I realized my testimony actually begins there – the reason why a single mother was raising me by herself.

And that’s why I cry tears of thanks whenever I talk about Jesus. Where my biological father offered rejection, God accepted me. When I got left out, He chose me. When I got abandoned, He invited me into His family. “God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure” (Ephesians 1:5, NLT).

Those words are so sweet to someone who never had a father. The more I learn about Jesus and understand what He did for me, the more grateful, the more thankful, and the more tearful, I become.

*Sniff*  Can someone pass the tissues?

What’s your story?