Stormie: A Story of Forgiveness and Healing (15 page)

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Authors: Stormie Omartian

BOOK: Stormie: A Story of Forgiveness and Healing
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“I can never go back,” I said, suppressing the tears. It was still important for me to keep up a good front, so I struggled to keep from crying. I was grateful that he understood my feelings, and if I had to leave the church, he knew the reason.
Then he did something totally unexpected. He came over beside my chair, got down on his knees, put his arms around me, gave me a firm hug, and said, “I want you to know that whatever you decide, I still love you and this church is still your home.”
Now I could no longer control the tears that poured down my cheeks. Never had I faced such unconditional love. I tried with all my might to choke back the immense swell of uncontrollable sobs that lay just below the surface. “If I let them loose, Pastor Jack might see what an emotional mess I am and change his mind about letting me stay in this church,” I reasoned.
I left with a promise to return for more counseling, and considered it a great victory that I had not completely fallen apart. I was grateful to God that I didn’t have to leave the church and that I could be loved even when I failed. It was my first experience with this kind of love, the depth of which I had never before imagined. I expected judgment. This was what I lived with before I met Jesus. Instead I found God’s love. And I was soon to discover that it went far deeper than I even dreamed possible.
CHAPTER TEN
THE DELIVERER
I ripped open the large white envelope from a motion picture company that I had worked for well over five years earlier.
“Another residual check!” I exclaimed gleefully to no one. It was only 276 dollars, but it would cover the rent, buy the groceries, and pay off the two bills sitting on my desk.
“God, you are so good to me!” I prayed thankfully. “Every time I need to pay a bill, You send money from the most unexpected places.”
I had lost track of how many times the Lord had done this over the last few months of no steady work. He had sustained me in many other ways too. Because of the extra time I had, I was able to spend many hours at the church, especially in the counseling offices. With no regular work, I was having to learn what it meant to put my identity in Jesus rather than my last job. It was a slow and painful process.
I was also learning about “fellowship.” What a strange, “churchy” word that was to me when I first heard it! It reminded me of tea and cookies after a women’s meeting, or a potluck dinner in the basement of a church. I soon discovered that it was much more than coffee hour, however. It involved getting to know other believers and entering into a caring and sharing type of relationship with them. I entered these new relationships with caution. The difference between my believing friends and
non-
believing friends was like two different worlds. But I found a strong bond between people who love the Lord that made other relationships seem shallow by comparison. That common bond was compelling and irresistible.
“Growth is a relational experience,” Pastor Jack would say. “You do not grow except within relationship to a body of believers.”
I understood this to mean that there needed to be ongoing circulation with other believers in order for me to experience real growth. I learned that fellowship expands the heart, bridges gaps, and breaks down walls in us, leading us to realize who God made us to be. I wasn’t sure exactly how it worked, but I knew that it did work.
I woke up with a start Sunday morning and realized immediately by the brightness of the sun shining through my bedroom curtains that I had overslept. In spite of all the Lord’s blessings, the counseling at the church, the times of joy and peace, and the support of other believers, I still struggled with periodic depression. I was constantly exhausted from the struggle to rise above it. I suffered from insomnia, and after tossing and turning for hours I would finally fall into a deep sleep toward the morning. When I woke up I felt as if I hadn’t slept at all.
“Church starts in 20 minutes,” I groaned to myself. “There’s no time to wash my hair or put on makeup. I’ll just have to sneak in and hope no one I know sees me.”
I quickly dressed, ran a comb through my hair, grabbed my Bible, and rushed to the car. Sunday morning church was my lifeline. Missing it was absolutely out of the question, no matter what my condition.
I pulled into the church parking lot, jumped out of my car, and ran to the church entrance, where I bumped unavoidably into Paul Johnson and Terry. As we greeted each other, they turned and waved excitedly to someone driving into the parking lot.
“That’s Michael Omartian. He’s coming to this church for the first time,” Paul explained.
“Great!” I said, to cover my alarm and kicking myself for not at least putting blusher on my cheeks. I wanted to escape before he saw me looking so awful, but it was too late. Michael was out of his car and over to us in an instant.
“Michael, look who’s here—it’s Stormie!” said Paul.
“Hi, Michael.” I tried to sound joyful. “How have you been?”
“Good,” he nodded. He looked wonderful. Even though his hair was too long and in need of a good shaping, he was still the best-looking man I’d ever seen. I excused myself and rushed into the church alone. I couldn’t bear to sit next to them in my disheveled state.
As soon as the service began, I started to cry and didn’t stop until it ended. I don’t know what the people sitting around me thought and Pastor Jack must have wondered what effect his message was having on me that morning. All I could think of was how I had blown everything. I could see now that when Michael first came into my life, God had provided him as an opportunity for me to make the right decision. I had heard the truth. I had been attracted to God’s light in him, but had resisted it. I had my chance and typically I made the wrong choice. Now it was too late.
“Oh, God,” I cried, “I’ve messed up everything. These past 29 years have been a total waste. My life is shattered in a million pieces that can never be put back together again. Oh, Lord, I’m grateful that You’ve given me hope and peace and eternal life, but as far as my life ever amounting to anything, how can it happen? It’s too late.” I muffled my sobs into an already-soaked tissue.
In the midst of my utter distress I heard God speak to my heart words of comfort: “I am a Redeemer. I redeem all things. I make all things new. Whatever you’ve lost I will restore. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done. It doesn’t matter what’s happened to you. I can take all the hurt, the pain, and the scars. Not only can I heal them, but I can make them count for something.”
My tears flowed without end. How could God ever accomplish all that? Yet I sincerely believed that all things were possible with God, and His words gave me hope. “God, I surrender my life to You. Don’t let me ever be in the wrong place again,” I prayed.
Until this moment I had only received His life. Now I
gave
Him mine. As I viewed the failure and rubble of my past, I knew I couldn’t navigate on my own anymore. I wanted God to take my life and do with it what He wanted. He would certainly do a better job than I had ever done.
After church there was no way I could slip out unnoticed. Michael stopped me at the door and mentioned that he had just bought a new car the day before. “Would you like to go for a ride?” he asked.
“Great,” I said, again beating myself for not at least putting on some lipstick or eye makeup before I left home.
During our short drive we caught up on the past two years.
“You’ve done well, Michael,” I smiled. “I hear you’re the hot new piano player in town. Remember, I told you so.”
Michael laughed. Then his countenance became solemn. “I hear you’re divorced.”
I looked down and nodded my head yes. “It’s okay if you want to say ‘I told you so.’ Everyone was correct in their predictions.”
“I feel like I failed you by not pressing the reality of Jesus into your life,” said Michael. “Had I tried harder I possibly could have made you understand. You might have received Him and none of this would ever have happened.”
“I can’t tell you how many times I wished you had forced me to listen. But it’s too late now. That’s all in the past, and the important thing is that I know Him today. Please don’t blame yourself. It was what I saw in your life that attracted me to Jesus in the first place. I saw Him in you and Terry and later Pastor Jack—I just didn’t know it at the time.”
I was shocked when Michael suggested that we meet and talk again the following weekend. “Surely You have blinded this man, God, or else he feels sorry for me. I couldn’t look worse than I do today,” I said out loud on the way home in my car. “God, don’t let me make another mistake,” I prayed. “If I shouldn’t be with Michael, I’m willing to not see him anymore.” I was serious about that, and it was further evidence that my prayer earlier that morning in church was sincere.
I felt no uneasiness about seeing Michael the following weekend, so when Saturday night came I washed my hair, carefully styled it, and put on my makeup with the hand of an artist. When he met me at my front door he must have wondered if I was the same woman he had seen the previous Sunday. We went out to dinner that night and saw each other every weekend after that over the next many months. When we made arrangements to go out for dinner
during
the week, I knew it was serious.
I especially loved going to church with Michael on Sunday mornings. After the service, we would go out for lunch and talk about the teachings from the Bible and what the Lord was doing in our lives each week. Praying together drew us closer to each other as we continued to grow and learn about God’s ways.
We both began to see the importance of obedience and the rewards when we were obedient to the Lord’s commands. We learned that God’s ways are good and that we could trust them. All that learning was an exciting adventure, and we were never bored with it or with each other.
After nearly a year of dating, Michael asked me to marry him. I didn’t have to ask him for time to think it over, for I’d already thought through the possibility in depth. As much as I wanted to spend the rest of my life with Michael, I feared making another mistake. “God, let Your perfect will be done concerning our relationship,” I prayed day after day.
“Michael, there’s something I need to tell you,” I said bravely. “There are things I’ve done that I have never told anyone.”
I proceeded to confess everything of my past to him, for I wanted this to be a relationship of total honesty, no matter what the risk. His look of concern turned to a grin when I finished and he said, “That’s it?”
“Isn’t that enough?” I replied.
“The way you were talking I thought perhaps you were wanted by the FBI for armed robbery.”
I laughed and sighed with relief, “You mean you still want to be friends?”
“I want to be more than friends,” he answered, and I knew at that moment I had found the right man.

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