Dan

"I thought... please God don't turn me into a Christian… no way.  I will be the laughing stock of my friends."

Hello everyone,

    Maybe its best if I start at the beginning and that will probably get me a bit warmed up by the time I get to the juicy stuff.  So I am the son of my mum and dad and the brother of my brother and brother of my sister too. 

    Actually let me rewind even further to before I was born and my parents hadn't even met first…..lock the doors- its going to be a long night!  My mum came to know the Lord when she was a teenager along with my grandfather who was a Jew before that, and as she was discovering the power of the Gospel she came across a group called the Focolare movement.  Let me tell you a bit about them now, because the movement has had a huge impact in my life.

    The Focolare movement was founded In the midst of the destruction and hopelessness of the Second World War in Italy.  The sirens were ablazing and bombs coming down in Trento, Italy,  a lady called Chiara Lubich headed to the bomb shelters and grabbed the smallest book she could find to have something to do during the wait.   The small book was the New Testament. And as she sat in the shelter she opened it up with a few friends and began to read from the gospels.  And what she found was something that completely overwhelmed her.  Now, this was in the 1930s in Italy where the Bible wasn't read by lay people… so this was new stuff she was reading… and as she read she yearned to follow Jesus' teachings.  She and a few of her friends resolved to live as persons whose actions and thoughts would be based on the Gospel- Radical in the Roman Catholic church of the time.  And really, it was a kind of reformed church within the Catholic church, bringing back the gospel truths.

     Now the Focolare movement is completely ecumenical.  In fact my mother came to know of it at an evangelical retreat.  She was invited to attend a conference in Rome.  She loved it so much that she ended up not going back to England but living in community there for a year.  In Rome, mum learned to speak Italian fluently, and by the time it was time for the conference the following year, she was translating from Italian into English.  My dad, down in Sicily, had also been involved with the Focolare and that year (1979) was attending the conference in Rome. As with many Italians, my dad loved to "try" to learn English but, again, as with many Italians- he wasn't really any good.  To this end during one of the meetings  he switched translation over to English and heard my mom's voice on the other end.  Being very Sicilian he immediately fell in love with her and next thing you know he's placed a dozen red roses in her translating booth.  A year later they were married and my mum moved to Italy.

    Soon, my brother Matt popped out followed by me 16 months later.  And then we were 4- Mum and Dad trying to live a radical gospel life, having come from two completely different cultures (which, believe me, brought some interesting color in to our lives… with battles that really could only be resolved by constantly trying to put Jesus back into the midst and tuning down all the other noises) and of course there were now 2 kids.   Just so y'all can understand a bit better- my mom was the evangelical independent English hippie type and my dad was…. Well the same but in a very Sicilian way- i.e.…not very independent, only son, legendary prince of the family, who could no wrong kind of way. Soon after I was born, dad was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis and over the course of two years had 9 life-threatening operations…. And in the midst of that, whilst we were in England for one of my dads ops and (on my third birthday) my sister was born.  Slap bang- another spanner in the works!

And so my childhood was very interesting to say the least- my parents were growing together and it was a bumpy ride at times.  And as with all children and parents we all got a little wounded in our own ways.  But thanks to God because through these wounds we are  able to bring even more Glory to His Name.

    Allow me to explain a bit about my personal childhood.  When I was born, my parents had been married almost three years and through the grace of God had grown together immensely (something which they continue to do) and which back then I'm sure had an incredible, but maybe subconscious influence on me.  I am so grateful for them.  But as they were fitting together in His great plan there was some friction that was working to refine them. In a way, they were helping to refine each other on our journey back home to heaven. And we children were sometimes there to bear the brunt of this friction….and it must be soooo hard to be a parent… because when there is friction in the marriage there are these little lumps of meat that you can take it out on…. Well not really- but children are so vulnerable and marriage has so many challenges- Thinking about it it makes me just stand in awe of our Father in Heaven who is able to do it perfectly, even though sometimes we don't see it that way yet. 

    Trying to get deeper with Christ recently- I've been asking God to take me back to those times in my childhood when I was vulnerable, to expose some ways in which I was wounded…. And then asking God to bring wholeness and healing to those times.  And I think that I have begun to touch on some issues, and the healing process has begun- thank God.  So many of the problems that I experienced later on in my life…. And still do struggle with, come from a problem with rebellion…. And here is a trace of that root:

My older bro even at the age of about 3 or 4 was trying to be the perfect little angel…. In some ways trying to do this to not cause any extra stress to a colorful marriage (and this wounded him…. But this is my testimony- so on to ME!!)… as a result of that the trouble I caused sometimes…. In the battle to win attention…I was dealt with by my dad and mom who sometimes had built up a little store of frustration because of struggles they were dealing with.  My dad in particular was surprised by the way in which an English independent hippie wouldn't just clean and cook and be submissive in whatever way he wanted and so I guess it was releasing to abuse his power a little with his kids…. Especially the second one who always seemed to be getting in to mischief!!

    So what has God helped to reveal in my hunt back to the truth in the past (theophostic)…. Well I think that when I got sent to my room or was spanked…. I thought- this is so unfair…. Wait until I grow up and then ill get you all back.  I was just a kid and could do nothing about it…. And to some degree I felt rejected and wanted vengeance- the truth is that God still loved me immensely and had already died for me to prove that…. But my source of acceptance was mainly from my parents at that time so I didn't feel accepted…. And the lie that I was believing – that I was being rejected as a person- lead me to being vengeful…. Even at a deep subconscious level…. And I was building those vengeful thoughts out.

    A fantastic book which I have just finished reading talked about our feelings in a fantastic way. Ill try to explain it very simply- just for the sake of my talk.  When something happens, good or bad, we have a level of emotions that goes up and down…. So say it goes from one to ten.  When someone or something triggers an emotion our feeler will go up… and when it gets high, to like 7 or 8, well we're kind of justified in some kind of action.  But the feeler takes a while to go down and when I kept getting in to trouble and I was dealt with in ways that seemed unfair ways…. When my feeler hadn't got back down to zero…. And it kept happening…. I got stuck at like a level 5 or maybe even higher…….. and that meant that it only took little things for me to get me to a level 7 or even 10 and give me a desire to lash out or be vengeful.

    As I got older I started releasing a bit at school; by purposefully acting badly, chatting back to teachers.   If they told me off I popped straight to a ten even if my feelings only went up 3 levels and I found that when I chatted back people laughed and accepted me a little- and they were the cool Kids.  Acceptance from the cool kids has always rivaled acceptance from Christ for me, to be fair- but its not the same as I found out later, and I found out the hard way.  Anyway, I was learning to become accepted by people and I was getting pretty good at it.  I didn't mind crossing lines or taking on dares in order to fulfil my need to be accepted, so I did.  And as I got older those lines became progressively sketchier.

    Now- just a side note- even though I didn't know God  in such a personal way at that stage, having been created by Him I was created having a need for love.  I had a burning desire for love (which really was a burning desire for God)… but that hadn't sunk yet.  So really God had created me with these needs so that I could turn to Him to meet them but I was turning to others to meet them.   So throughout high school I was always the first in line to get up on the school roof, run through the park naked or try to drink more than everyone else (but being small always had me be one of the first to pass out in my own vomit), among the group of cool kids behind the school shed smoking, and then smoking marijuana, and then drinking, getting high and going in to class to talk back to teachers…. And Wow what a combination- in many respects my need to be accepted was getting met to some degree- and it was also great because finally my parents started to worry about me and I had started to get them back for all those times

    One time, they got a phone call in the middle of their 18th anniversary dinner from a hospital on the other side of London saying that I was laying unconscious after having been found passed out in my own vomit.  They had to stop their romantic evening to drive over an hour and come and get me and drive back with the windows down in the freezing cold cause I stunk of stale vomit.  And to think that I had gone into London to accompany my little sister to a Green day show that she wasn't allowed to go to without her responsible older brother. I still respect my sister to this day for having gone in to watch the show after the ambulance had come to get me and said I was stable.  But I could never keep fully up with that line that I wanted to cross to get that pat on the back from my friends…. It kept getting further away- I needed to go to further extremes to try to get to it.

    So, then came college- University!  Man I was petrified…. I had spent years building up and earning my rights as a cool kid…. Performing to earn my acceptance… and now I had to do it all again from scratch.  But here is what I discovered on my first day.  University was swarming with kids that were also petrified and wanted to build relationships quickly, and accept as a means to be accepted.  So really life was easier than ever there.  And I have to say (maybe because of the lower drinking age) but University in England  is completely different. My first night was a University-organized, as much as you can drink, traffic light party.  You wore red if you were taken, yellow if you were willing to have a bit of conversation before you took a girl back to your dorm or green if conversation didn't even matter.  Thankfully I had the sense to go in black that night.  But I loved the freedom of being away from home in a place were I could really start to rebel…. By now I didn't even need to get triggered in order to want to rebel. 

    To skip some of the details…. It only took a few months before I found a way to get my needs met for a bit.  By the time I came back to college for the second trimester I was a  drug user involved in an intricate web of drug dealings in central Birmingham.  Bouncers were using a friend and I to traffic cocaine, ecstasy, ket, LSD and speed into a few major club nights each week.  And why did they use us? Well we were of about the same stature and we were both a long ways from even being able to grow a few whiskers on our chins- we looked harmless and unsuspicious…. So were at lower risk of being caught by the police- and get the club in trouble.  It felt great to be needed by others higher up in the chain- after all, those clubs didn't think they could function without drugs. Anyway I thought I was an essential part of a network of people who were also trying to get their needs for love met.  And to some extent I was the provider.  People seemed to love me and everyone was calling me and wanted to be my best friends…. But the high it wasn't that long-lived…. It wasn't long before I spent a few nights a week in a ketamine hole and then needed a few lines of coke to go out, answer the phone or even get up in the morning.  I went to most of my first year exams high on whatever, putting things in whatever hole just to get a new buzz, whatever just to get my fix.  And guess what- I failed my first year abysmally- 18%- the lowest grade seen by the school of biosciences from someone who didn't drop out.  They chucked me out.  I was broken- that was it.  My life was over…. I would have to return back home and live with my parents, get a temp job in a warehouse and keep hearing from everybody how great College was.  So I phoned and got a second chance.  The department was going to allow me to resit my exams a few days before the new year began.  I had lived at University but I did not really attend classes so I had to borrow a good few thick folders and start learning.  But first let me tell you about going home at the end of the semester.  During the year I had lost close to 30 pounds; I often went without eating for days when I was on a drug binge. The three days before I returned I had just had a 3 dayer- no sleep, no food.  When my dad came to pick me up I had tears in my eyes and looked a pale yellow colour… and my eyes appeared to have sunk in to my skull (my bro said).  I was desperate- how could I go back home and be without these friends that were feeding me security, how could I go home and face what my family had to say (sure I wanted to rebel still-but not to this extent… I'd gotten too carried away)- where did I begin with all these folders and books.  Well…. I had organized a way of getting coke and pills in the mail inside the slip of cd covers. My friend had taken pity on me, we used to cut drugs with other white powders and sell less pure amounts so that we could keep some for ourselves... so what we were selling became more and more just teething powder or crushed Tylenol-but he had said that he would keep taking what he could and send it to me…. So I guessed that would help me through.

    When I got home I went to my room and straight to bed.  My dad is a psychiatrist and was working in a dodgy area of London at the time.  So a proportion of the crowd he was dealing with had similar stories or addictions to mine.  When I got up in the evening of the next day he asked me if I wanted to go out to the pub with him.  I went.  We sat with a drink and he told me that he loved me.  Then he asked me if I was hearing voices or if I was taking something.  I guess I was sorry and felt a lot of shame and guilt. And I did love him, loved both my parents. And I was desperate to get back to University, and to do that I needed help, and to have a psychiatrist in the home... well, I'd be silly not to ask for help.  So I came out with just about everything (apart from the coke which was in the mail as we spoke).  I won't go in to the details of the frustration/intensity of that summer.  But there were definite phases to my going clean.  First I tried to go a little bit clean…. Only having a few lines during breaks of revision in order to get back into University and then be free to get involved in that lifestyle again. Then, when I lost touch with so many drug friends, because they just stopped calling me as soon as I wasn't any use to them, all of a sudden I was broken and lonely because I couldn't keep performing/ providing. My love was something I earned. It was performance-based acceptance.  So amidst  anxious depressive breakdowns I conjured up a new plan!  I was going to cut cleaner and study so hard that I'd pass my exams and then start just going out a little bit at a time… but sensibly.  Keep the few real friends I had made, if they took me back after I had completely neglected them for months.

    My parents supported me financially for that summer so that I only had to work from 8 until 12 at a local hospital to pay back some of the debts that I had built up.  And from 12 until 11pm I studied and then woke up to do the same….I gave up coke and smoking a bit for heavy smoking- I was petrified that I'd put weight back on (and I'm a little ashamed of saying that even right now)- but hormones are hormones and I felt I was more attractive looking haggard and with less puppy fat. It felt like a marathon to chase a dream I was building of a life where I'd earn back my parents' and real friends' respect by working hard and keeping my head down.  I passed the retakes by 1 percent- that's 41 percent (in England that's all you need to get through the year…. Mind you, that's probably equivalent to an American 98%).  And on paper I was doing well at the end of the first trimester…. I was on an average of 67%(that's like 120% in American standards).  And 11th in the biochemistry class of 120.   Sure I was still smoking a ton and feeling bad when I ate- but it felt good to keep some control over my body- after all, I had learned and developed a bit of a habit of controlling it with chemicals before.  And on the outside I was fine. But on the inside there was still a need to rebel- this time by self harming. I was sure this was healthier though because I did deserve it. And no one else had to pay this time- my parents had paid enough.  But this was very much a battle at the subconscious. And God was allowing all this so that I could come to eventually know Him fully and bring glory to Him.

    As Christmas approached,  Jesus started coming up in conversation at home more and more.  Throughout my life I had passively accepted Christ and I believed in God. But in England it wasn't exactly the IN thing to be a Christian- quite the opposite- it was very IN  to make fun of the Christians… so I had spent many hours arguing with my family about how the Bible didn't make sense- God keeps contradicting himself all over it… its not consistent blah blah.  And at Christmas 2003 I was starting to get annoyed with all the jazz about Jesus who was this hippie poor guy and was kind to the point that he gave us life through His death and yet everyone was getting in such a hype about presents. I understand it now-it was the Holy Spirit really preparing me through these frustrations, but at the time I was getting so frustrated with the greed and materialism in England- THERE IS NO NEED to display Father Christmas in the shops at the beginning of August. And this is to celebrate some poor guy that didn't even have a home?

     Well, I started to get in to little arguments with my mum about Jesus but found that I was highly ignorant on my knowledge of the Bible… sure I knew the story of Noah and a little about Calvary but my arguments against Christianity were a little thin on….. well any type of knowledge…. So I never got very far. I told my mum I would read the Bible if someone wrote it in a language that I could actually understand- not this thy thee thou- Shakespeare-type intellectual stuff.  But I didn't really mean it.  In any case she came back the next day and handed me a copy of the New Testament in the message version- a Bible written in contemporary language that I could actually understand.  She just handed it to me… she didn't say I had to read it or ask me any questions. My mum- she is brilliant.

    So back I went to Uni in the second trimester of my last year…. A new man on the outside but a very frustrated man on the inside.  Three months down the road I was having dinner with a girlfriend I had at the time and we started talking about God. And she said that she didn't really believe, but she did, and then well who knows…. And I started to realize that there was something in me that was gutted at the prospect of being with someone who didn't believe (what a hypocrite I was… because I didn't really believe anything myself)….. anyway- that was the final straw- I had never read a book by myself in my life (I never read the book assignments so I only got to hear the excerpts that were read out loud in class)- but I thought- if I'm going to read one book in my life it may as well be THE BOOK.  So one morning I opened up and started to read the first Gospel.   A little like what Chiara Lubich did during the war at the start of the Focolare movement.  The way the book was written was fantastic- it wasn't very intellectual at all- just up my street.  But soon I started to get lost in the depth of the philosophy of that renegade Jesus.  I started to think- my God this is how I want to live- this feels like my body and soul would feel at home living like this.  And then I shut the book and I was petrified.  I thought…….. please God don't turn me in to a Christian… no way.  I will be the laughing stock of my friends…. My family will love me in an all Christiany happy-clappy kind of way… I will join the clicky Christian union at university and start smiling without end and condemn people like me to hell at the click of my fingers.  But in the New Testament I hadn't read anywhere about that yet.  And my whole being was yearning for Jesus' teachings of grace, acceptance and mercy and so I opened it up again.  And over the next few weeks I became hooked, I read, locked in my room in hiding… and then I finished the gospels… and thought- well I feel that God is calling me to love Him and accept his grace and mercy. And logically I thought….. this isn't like me- to follow an idea that isn't the cool "In" idea. And I thought well this might really be God calling me then- and I did feel that Christ offered me a life that was on the edge and was full to the brim, where I could still be radical (which is pretty cool) but have real fullness- real acceptance- acceptance that I wouldn't have to earn….a love that was there by grace a free gift that I couldn't earn and could never act so badly that it was taken away from me- after all Jesus had offered his life to me when I was still dead to him- he didn't wait until I was better…. But did it whilst I was sick.  And I knew it was him because this was going to be one of the first times I did anything without looking to be accepted by the crowd.  The more I thought and really just sought to hear God- the more I was building the courage to tell other people.  And to give an example of really how much God was ministering to me through his word which was so evidently alive in these days I'll give one of many examples.   There I was reading on the bus on the way back home one day…. Trying to pluck up the courage to share something with my roommates…. Praying that God would give me an opportunity to drop him in to the conversation when I came across this passage:

John 10:27-30

"My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father's hand. I and the Father are one."

And I thought, I can't believe how personal my God is. And I felt so grateful that he was calling me in to a personal walk with Him.  A personal walk with God- I thought, Well how can I be scared? Anyway, I went onto telling my house mates and just between exams and graduation the came an opportunity to be baptized. So I invited everyone. Although, it really wasn't easy.  But I did it knowing that I wanted to celebrate the death of my 'old man' and celebrate the fact that through Jesus I had a new resurrection life.

And I wanted to let everyone know.

    From that day on, zero of my friends have become Christians, and there have been many hard times of being questioned by them, or  being called a hypocrite when I tripped up. I know that all of you would agree with me that its not a job of just accepting Christ and His mercy and grace come in the mail a week later, you put them on and you're perfect. I still live in the same body with the same patterns I had before… and renewal of mind is something that happens by faith and works- by knowing that when Christ came to live in me he did give me an entirely new resurrected spirit but that doesn't mean that I can just lay there and he'll walk for me.  I'll get a new body when we get back to our heavenly home but for now I have the same earth suit that started to be wounded from when I was a child.  Christ can bring wholeness to that but it takes time, And that is God's time. Because I know that he is a Father who loves his children so deeply, I know that through the wounds that are healing and the ones that are still bleeding there are lessons to be learned that will only draw me closer to him and will only make me bring more glory to him.  Right now and the first time Christ gave me this new spirit I was blameless and whole in the eyes of God- fully accepted. Sure, some of the stuff that I do doesn't please him but as for me- myself- I am fully accepted .  

    And when I started rebelling against my folks I started to create patterns in my body- wounding it. And the enemy has a great time with this, check out how he fooled me into a downward spiral from an early age.  My 'feeler' got stuck so that I would feel frustrated and trapped easily.  That lead to me lashing out, which then made me feel cool, which eventually got me to search for acceptance from drugs, which gave me a sense of control over my body that lead to heavy smoking, self harm, and eventually to years of controlling my weight by chucking everything I ate; bulimia, which until three months back I was still fighting; Antidepressants, anxiety and depression.  But here is something that I am discovering more and more:

1 John 1:5-7 (The Message) 

This, in essence, is the message we heard from Christ and are passing on to you: God is light, pure light; there's not a trace of darkness in him.

If we claim that we experience a shared life with him and continue to stumble around in the dark, we're obviously lying through our teeth—we're not living what we claim. But if we walk in the light, God himself being the light, we also experience a shared life with one another, as the sacrificed blood of Jesus, God's Son, purges all our sin.

    I have walked the Christian walk lying through my teeth at time, Making out that everything was good and easy on the outside. While inside, the enemy was having a ball with me.  We are in a battle and we need Christ family allies. And it wasn't until I started to bring some of my most embarrassing problems into the shared light (Jesus in the midst) that I started to have more faith  to fight back. To act as though Christ lives in me, to act as though I am fully accepted (whoever I'm with, whatever I'm doing, whatever I look like).   And this sharing is something that the enemy loves to shy me away from. But also, it's something that God has shown me how to do more recently. And that is in many ways through the wonderful gift of an amazing wife, Anna.

So, since I accepted Christ, and life did not get easier –it got fuller but not easier- the month after I started reading the Bible- I finished my degree-ended up coming out of University with a 3.9 GPA,  7th in the school of biosciences.   But I needed a 4 to get in to a med school that had conditionally offered me a place,  I had worked unhealthy amounts of time to keep reaching for that plan that I had set for myself- and in an instant God took it away.  But one of the first fruits of faith that I saw was peace. I had incredible peace that God had another route. Even if it was med school the next year or something- but I was going to have to trust him with it.  And I ended up wanting to spend some time getting to know him more and so I went to live in a community of the Focolare movement in Italy the following year.  There I got offered a great job at Georgetown, and in faith took it after really having tried to discern whether it was from God… and now I am married to my fantastic wife…. God really only showed me one step at a time…. And sometimes the little steps didn't make any sense, but then when I look back I do realize how awesome God is.