Prodigal-ish…
I know…I know what you’re thinking. Another typical Christian blog post about the prodigal son and how we are the prodigal child in God’s eyes. I feel like I would be doing my blog site some injustice if I didn’t do this. Stick with me, but if you don’t want to, I understand- I won’t even know if we are being honest.
Can you really be a prodigal child if you were never fully invested? Like you lived the life on the outside, but your heart wasn’t fully sure that was the path you wanted. Or maybe you only went to God for answers, but never stayed to see how He was solving the problem. You wanted the multiple-choice God. Not the written answered God.
I think I played the part that people thought of me to be. Now, before you read into this, I loved my friends, and I was with them in their struggles. I prayed for them when they asked, and I listened to what they were saying. But I don’t believe I was truly the “heart on fire” kinda kid/teen. I wanted to be, but it just wasn’t in my cards. I was the teen who sat with my friends during youth group silently, whispered the worship songs, and prayed no one would ask me to repeat this week’s memory verse, and don’t even get me started on the fear that would take over if someone asked me to pray out loud. If I felt that was coming, I would high-tail it to the bathroom and wait in there for it to be over.
So my thought is, does that qualify me as the whole prodigal child thing? You know the one where you run away, blow everything, come back with your head down, are welcomed with open arms, and maybe have a party? Can that happen if you were never really all in to begin with?
I think so? Maybe?
You can feel lost even if you never felt found before. Or you can reject something that you never took the time to explore. There was still something there, and Jesus still wants you back.
I have read the prodigal son story a couple of times tonight, and I have probably overanalyzed because that’s just who I am, but here are my thoughts.
I walked away. Towards the end of my teen years, I was hurt. I was angry. I was trying to figure out so many why questions. I was struggling with my mental health and wanted to here anymore. I went through things that I still have to try and figure out all these years later. I was only a teenager, but in some ways I felt like I had lived 100 years.
I was looking for a logical reason to hold onto Jesus, but in my eyes, I couldn’t see it.
There wasn’t a huge, dramatic exit, no angry tweet, no breakup post…it was quiet because I didn’t know where I stood with Jesus. Life happened. So many distractions, excuses, finding myself as an adult, and poof, before I knew it, I was (what felt like) miles away from God, and I wasn’t sure I actually knew how far away I was from Him.
Somewhere in my mid-twenties, life got painfully loud and empty at the same time. I was reliving the hurt that happened. I was living with a question mark on how I was going to make it in this world, and if we were being honest, I didn’t know if I wanted to live in this world anymore. But, I started to hear something small but steady…” come home”. In my ignorance, I tried to find a home in different things because I forgot what God sounded like. Then I remembered…home. Where did I feel the most peace? Where was that? I need to find that because that is where my home was. I was looking for something physical, but when I started looking for peace, that is where I realized it’s not physical. It’s spiritual. It wasn’t the building we know as the church, but it was what or maybe who was filling the church. That is where I found my peace.
God was steady and kept whispering Come home, my child.
I was ready for the guilt trip for leaving Him. He didn’t guilt me. He didn’t have a list of all the things I did wrong. He didn’t use the parent line “you should’ve known better.” No, he just welcomed me back to a place that I didn’t even realize I had to begin with. He was just waiting for me. He knew His daughter needed to figure some things out. He saw it all. He saw my distance, my doubt, my discomfort, and HE LOVED ME ANYWAY.
I want to focus on this verse in the story of the Prodigal Son..Typically, I don’t just pull one verse, but this one stood out to me.
Luke 15:20 NIV
20 So he got up and went to his father.
“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him, and kissed him.
So let’s circle back to the question of “am I a true prodigal child if I didn’t know where Jesus and I stood in my early years? 100% because my story, my relationship with Jesus was NEVER about how far I was when I started..it was always about how far my Father was/is willing to run just to meet me.
