A Story, Part I

About three years ago, a young girl "found herself" and discovered there was nothing there.
She had abandoned God years before, deciding He was irrelevant. Though she had grown up as a Christian, the only good she saw it did her was that it helped her achieve success. It made her work hard (do everything to the glory of God), helped her brown-nose those in high places (respect those in authority), and kept her from ruining her life with drugs and sex (your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.) However, in high school she had discovered that she could follow all Christian morals that helped her get ahead without doing the inconvenient stuff. She didn't have to get up early on Sunday to go to church. She didn't have to be honest when the truth hurt. She didn't have to be a goody-goody when she could fool everyone into thinking she was. She didn't have to take time out to read the Bible and pray. Essentially, she didn't have to follow rules when there was no benefit to doing so. God and Christianity were nothing more than a bunch of good ideas, and those who didn't embrace these ideas were just plain stupid.
For all of high school, her way of looking at the world worked for her. By the time she graduated, she had risen to the top and had been given a life most girls would kill for. She had a job that was the envy of any American female waiting for her in an exciting new city. She would have her own apartment, set up according to her dreams. She had been able to look at all those who thought she would fail and shoved her glorious success in their face. She had everything she had ever wanted.
So how did life get so bad so quickly? How in the world could this kind of girl battle clinical depression? How in the world could she be a walking shell of a person within four months? With all her energy focused on existing, she wasn't even capable of realizing she was dead.
As this deadness took hold of her, her dreams became curses. The job became something that took more energy than she could give it, and it left her empty every night. Most nights she fell asleep wondering how she could go back the next morning. The wonderful apartment became a cage. She found no joy in it but couldn't find an incentive to go anywhere else for a few hours. And her success vanished as she became incapable of achieving anything close to her potential.
One day everything changed - and this could only be explained by the grace of God. That which was dead woke up. It woke up, looked around, and asked what had gone wrong. In that moment, this girl remembered whisperings from her childhood, and turned to a God she had thought she didn't need. First she read her Bible, but the words were as dead on the page as they had always been. "Lord," she cried, "show me that you're real. If you're not - if this is all there is - then my life is meaningless."
She thought maybe lightning would strike. Perhaps she'd be knocked to the ground, "slain in the Spirit" like she'd seen happen in churches when she was young. Perhaps tears would stream down her face as she felt a tingly sensation of pleasure overwhelm her. She didn't know exactly what she expected, but she expected something. Instead, she sent her prayer to the ceiling, then eventually fell asleep. She never noticed a seed of life had been planted.
Over the next two weeks, her miracle eluded her. She waited for indisputable proof that He was real, but none came. Yet each night her prayer never weakened. In fact, it got stronger and more desperate. She knew He was real, and was determined to hound Him until He showed Himself to her. She would seek with all her heart. She wouldn't give up. She would show Him she meant business. She would show Him that she was willing to work hard enough to be worthy of His time. She had no other choice, if she wanted to go on living.
Despite her spiritual disappointments, she did notice she was becoming more alive. She began to see a reason to go to work every morning. She started to be able to enjoy things. People started to notice a difference in her performance. Slowly, her life was building to a climax. After two weeks, her miracle happened. When it happened, she was so overcome with awe and terror at the reality of God that she knew she would never be the same again.
God had waited until she was almost ready to give up, but He had eventually come through. In that moment, He revealed Himself to her. She would tell this story as her testimony for three years.
But one day she would look back and realize things weren't as they had seemed.