The story.

It is a beautiful Halloween night here in my little corner of the world. To celebrate, there are two glowing, carved pumpkins on the front porch and I am listening to my Haunted Mansion/Phantom Manor audio. (I am such a dork. Who, but a dork, would listen to ride audio from Disney parks when they're not actually there?)

As riveting as all that sounds, I'm sure you don't want to hear about my lack of festiveness. So I thought this would be a most opportune time to tell the story of the inspiration for ExtravagantlyLoved.

Hold on...as soon as I finished typing all that, my brother got a phone call from a friend, inviting us to come to his house for a birthday/Halloween party. It was his dad's birthday. So we went to the party. And I scrambled to find something to wear that might resemble a costume. I kind of went for a hippie vibe. Don't know how well I pulled it off. You can see a very small bit of it in that picture up there. Anyway, it was a lot of fun. And that's all I have to say about that. Now, on to what I was about to do earlier.

Oh, and before you go any further, I predict that this is going to be very long. Consider yourself warned. You may have to read this in chunks.

I'll go back a little less than three years ago. January 2006. I was 17-years-old. That was a very big age for me, in so many ways, the biggest of which I intend to share in this post. Christmas had just passed not too long before, and I was still kinda coming off of my Christmas-high. I wish I could remember exactly what day this took place, but I don't. If I had started writing in a journal at that point, I would have written it down, and therefore had documentation. But I didn't start writing in a journal until that summer. But what I do know, like I said, is that it was January. I'm thinking mid to late January.

One of the gifts I got for that Christmas was Rebecca St. James' latest CD at that time, If I Had One Chance To Tell You Something. I fell in love with it the first time I listened to it. And I didn't know this at the time, but it apparently was something that I needed to hear. All I knew is that ever since I had gotten it, I had taken to listening to it at least once every night. Most nights, I listened to it twice or more. So at this point when my story was taking place, I had had that CD for at least 3 weeks, and I had listened to it countless times. Enough times to have most, if not all, of the words to all of the songs memorized.

I was living in Arkansas at the time. In the middle of nowhere on a small mountain. In a very small, two-bedroom trailer with my parents and two little brothers. I was extremely priveleged and had a whole bedroom to myself. Not only that, but I had the biggest bedroom all to myself. When I say biggest, that makes it sound really big, but it wasn't. I've seen closets that were bigger than that room. But still, it was all mine. To give more background about my living situation, we had just gotten running water. For just over a year, we lived there without running water. I won't go into detail now about the whole experience. I'll just say that it was very difficult.

There was one particular night, that I was laying in my bed. I had listened to my new favorite CD once already, and I was laying there trying to go to sleep. But it wasn't happening. I was feeling very low at that point, and very distressed. I gave you some insight into my living situation, and even though we were all rejoicing about having running water, it still wasn't the greatest. The biggest reason being that 5 people trying to coexist in a space that small rarely works well. I'm just happy that I and my family get along as well as we do, or we wouldn't have survived.

Also, since we were out in the middle of nowhere, we were really cut-off from social experiences. There were times that I didn't leave there for a week. I was kinda stuck on top of this mountain. And even though I like my space, being cut-of from people that much of the time really wore on me.

On top of that, my mom had gotten sick a couple of years before that. She actually is still rather ill, but there was a year pretty early on that was the worst. 2004, 2005ish, I think. She was in the bed for just about a whole year. I really wish that I was exaggerating when I say that, but I'm not. And that meant several things for me. 1.) My mom was sick, and I was obviously concerned. Worried even, at times. 2.) That left me to be the responsible adult. My dad was gone all the time working, so I tried my best to do all the typical motherly/housewife things. Cook, clean, take care of my brothers. But I was like 15 at the time, and I was still trying to take care of my 15-year-old obligations as well. Like school. My brothers and I were homeschooled. There were many days that my schoolwork was completely neglected in favor of a more pressing issue. Oh, and if I was 15, that means my youngest brother was about 5. Kindergarten age. Supposed to be learning letters and numbers, and how to read and write basic words like "cat." So "teacher" was added to my list of responsibilities. I can say right now that I didn't do a very good job. I tried. But a 15-year-old girl is not supposed to be teaching her little brother everything under the sun. He wouldn't listen to me. Not just with school, but in generally every other area. And why would he? I wasn't his mother. Or I wasn't supposed to be.

So, anyway, back to that night in January '06, where I was to be found laying in my bed, feeling distressed. I'm sure you can tell why at this point. And then, I hear my parents down the hallway, the very, very short hallway. Another argument. My parents will be the first to tell you that they haven't had the greatest relationship. They just celebrated their 25th anniversary this year, so obviously something has held them together, but it's been an extraordinary struggle. And I know that all married couples have ups and downs, and arguments, and things of that nature. But I think my parents have been on the extreme end. I can't stand arguing. And I've listened to it my whole life. But I think what has bothered me more than that, is the constant wondering in the back of my mind if this time is going to be the last straw. I'd honestly rather them argue the rest of their lives than give up because it's too hard.

So I was laying in my bed, feeling particularly depressed because of all this junk, and then I hear this arguing. And it wasn't typical arguing. It was the really, really scary kind of arguing, like your-life-is-about-to-change-dramatically kind of arguing, or the if-this-gets-any-worse-someone-might-get-hurt kind of arguing. An overwhelming feeling of desperation overcame me. I started crying and I felt the need to pray, and all I could say was "God, help me. Help us. Help." Over and over again. All I could do was plead for help.

After I don't know how long, I finally thought I'm not getting anywhere or helping the situation at all with doing nothing but dwelling on the problems. So I decided to go through and thank God for everything under the sun that he had given me. Even my problems. I eventually got to all the people in my life. I started with my immediate family, then expanded to my extended family and out to friends. And as I was going through and thinking about all these people, I started to realize just how much I really loved them all. And it became completely overwhelming. I don't know if you've ever felt so much love for someone that it hurt or overwhelmed you. If you haven't I can't really explain it. But that's where I was. Completely overwhelmed by love.

It gets better.

I decided to listen to that CD again. The first song started. Guess what the title of that song is. "God Help Me." The exact same thing I had just been praying. A fresh wave of tears came over me. I settled in to listening to the rest of the CD. Guess what the theme of that CD is. Love. God's love. That's what the title refers to: if Rebecca had one chance to tell anyone something, she would tell them that God loves them. So here I was having just felt a tidal wave of love from myself to others. And I hear her saying that God loves me. It all clicked at that point. Oh my. All this love that I had just felt, even though it was overwhelming me, was just a small fraction of how much God loved me. God loved me. God really, truly, honestly loved me. I had heard that my whole life. Had you asked me before then if God loved me, I would have told you that yes, he most certainly did love me. But for the first time, I really felt it. And if I thought I was overwhelmed before that point, and that I had cried as hard and as much as I could cry, I was wrong. I was laying there convulsing and gasping for breath I was crying so hard.

After I finally calmed down enough to think, God started showing me some things. I started wondering why I had never felt this before. What took me so long? I had been a Christian at that point for at least 12 years. What was the deal? God showed me, that I had to come to a place of complete brokeness where there was nothing but him. So when everything was shattered and I was left with only him, I was able to experience the vastness of his love, of his very self, for the first time in my life. Wow. He also told me, "Okay. Now that you have felt this love, go share it with the world. Everyone you come in contact with."

I ended up listening to that CD about four times total, I believe. The third time through, my desperation had turned to jubilation and if it hadn't have been in the middle of the night, I would have been singing at the top of my lungs and dancing around my room. I had to settle for dancing in my bed and mouthing the words.

Shortly after that, I happened to read 1 Corinthians 13 in The Message. I absolutely love how Eugene Peterson words that passage. I got to the end of verse 13 and I read, "Trust steadily in God; hope unswervingly; love extravagantly." I liked that word in that context, "extravagantly." It perfectly described how God loved me. I actually quite dislike that word in many other contexts. Because I tend to associate extravagance with negative things, like overindulgence, and waste. But when it comes to love, extravagance is a good thing. A thing for which I am very grateful.

I got up the next day, after what I soon thought of as the most incredible night of my life, and my circumstances weren't any different, but I was different. No one can walk away from an encounter with God and be left unchanged. Therefore, my world felt very different. And it's been different ever since. I am not the same person that I used to me. I can't tell you all the changes I have noticed in myself since that point.

And that's my story. Well one particular story, at least. I have many. God has been good, and I love sharing his goodness. But I'll save them for another time, maybe another place. This post is far too long already. If you have made it to the end, I applaud you. You couldn't see it, but I actually did clap as soon as I said that. And I hope that it was comprehensible. I pretty much let the whole thing flow, and I'm not going to back through to do any editing.

Now, go do something! Get away from the computer. Dance, run, jump, do the hokey-pokey, YMCA, something.