A Love That Is Beyond Understanding

As a young Christian woman, I have faced many obstacles in my life with Christ and as well in my life before I knew Him. But the changes I faced with Him have been some of my biggest challenges to date. My life has been one of my ups and downs grewing up in some of the toughest neighborhoods in Southeast Washington, DC but through it all God has been my protector and my friend.

In 1993, my family and faith in God was rocked when my sister who was 8 months pregnant was killed by our next door neighbor after an argument. My mother, brother and other sister were also shot that night. It was this night that the little faith I had in God died that night too. I would go on to experience the death of my brother two and half years later. He was gunned down in the same alley where my sister was killed. Following my sister’s murder, I would go on to see many friends, neighbors and associates die violent deaths.

I became so discouraged with life that I fell into a deep depression. In this depressive state I tried to commit suicide four or so times. The last suicide attempt started me on a path to the only Person who could heal my broken spirit and soul. The last time I tried to commit suicide, I was almost successful. In my failed attempt on my life, God reintroduced Himself in my life. The day I was released from the hospital, my mother at her wits end and out of things to do to tried to help me out of this depressive state she came in my bedroom and dropped her Bibles on my bed and as she left out of my bedroom, she verbally and spiritually left me with God. I heard her say, “God, I tried everything I can think of; now I give her to You.”

I sat on my bed with Mom’s Bibles not really knowing what to do with them. When my mother walked back through my door to hand me the phone on the other end was my grandmother, whose words would led me to open the two bible in front of me. My grandmother shared with me these “God did not turn His back on you, you turned your back on Him.” So, after getting off the telephone with her, I decide to open the Bible.

It would open up to Psalm 23 and it was like God Himself was reading the words of this Psalm to me. As I read “Yea, thru I walk through the valley of shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and staff, they comfort me.” God was letting me know I am here for you Ryane, just turn your heart to me, but like Saul I missed my first encounter with God. There would be other missed encounters with God until some years later I had my on “the road to Damascus” experience. This experience did not take place in a church or any other holy place. It took place in my living room as I sat and watched television. Yes, as I sat there flipping through channel after channel the Lord begun to minister to my soul. He brought those old painful memories up of my sister and brothers death; other painful images started to come to me like the night my brother’s friend came into my room and molested me, the day I laid down and killed my baby. Those painful memories were followed by thoughts of my college graduation and more happier times but the happier times were limited. Then the Lord reminded me of things I was spared from like the night I went to a hotel room with a friend and two guys we really did not know. The guy wanted to have sex but I was a virgin and did not want to lose my virginity in that way. I walked out of that hotel room with my virginity. Then the day I was suppose to go out with this guy but at the last minute decide not to. Almost thirty minutes later the car was shot up and one of the guys was killed. It was at that moment the Lord told me it was Me who was watching over you through the happy times, it was Me who spared you from going through other things, and it was Me who keep You through the bad days. Then something in me said it was time to stop running from God and go home. So, I went and give my life to the One who was able to restore the lost years to me.

In my foolishness I thought things were going to get easier; even after I heard the preacher tell all of us standing before him that the enemy was going to step up his attacks on our lives. So, after about a month or two of being in the Lord’s house; I was feeling real good about things, I was been delivered from some of my afflictions. Life was looking good and then I had my first setback. One of my afflictions is sex and for the first two years of my walk with Christ I would wrestle with this afflict in my own strength and fail each time. It would be this affliction that would cause me to decide to leave the church. As I sat in church thinking this is my last time because I was so discouraged that I could not be faithful to the God who had saved me and loved me beyond anything my human heart and mind can comprehend. In my fleshly mind I did not think I could get this Christian life right and at that moment the Lord started to minister to my soul, as the Lord ministered to my soul the thought of walking away from the relationship we had started to build over the last two years disappeared.

There were still days where I felt discouraged but it was in those days the Lord kept me. For me I think some of my saddest and challenges days were when I disappointed the God who loves me. I look back over the times when the Lord provided an apparent escape from me and I still went and did what Ryane wanted to do. In His word the Lord tells us in 1 Corinthians 10:13 “But when you are tempted, He will also provide a way out so that you can stand under it.” Each time I chose not to take the escape route the Lord gave me would end in me feeling like I had disappointed Him yet again. When I would talk to Him in prayer I would feel so guilty and thoughts that He should not forgive me came to me mind. I wondered why He kept forgiving me each and every time I sinned against Him in Psalm 51 it says “For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Against You, You only, have I sinned and done what is evil in Your sight, so that you are proved right when You speak and justified when You judge.” I knew in my heart that God would have been just to punish me for being disobedient to Him. But instead of punishing me every time I sinned against Him, when I prayed and asked for forgiveness, I found love.

It reminds me of the parable of the lost son in Luke 15:11-32, we go out and do our own thing and once we are broken and weary; we remember the Lord of our salvation. We remember whose child we are that we are royalty that we are children of the King of Kings; that we did not have to live a life of despair. It is in our brokenness that we return to our Father, who always welcomes us back with love.

See even in the most challenging of times in my relationship with my Heavenly Father, the times I struggled to understand why He loves a sinful young woman like me. Why He continues to forgive me time and time again and why He will not let me go is so far from my comprehension. I am just overjoyed that He chose me to be apart of His family. I might not know the why’s but this I do know, my Heavenly Father loves me!!! He loves me so much that he looked hundreds of years into the future and knew I would need Him one day. "For God so loved Ryane (the world), that He gave His only begotten Son, that if Ryane would (whosoever) believe in Him she should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16). This is the love my Heavenly Father has for those He calls His children. So, while I do not understand why, He loves me I do understand that His ways are not my ways and His thoughts are not my thoughts. Isaiah 55:8” Thank You Father!!!