Signed, sealed, delivered.

My 10-year high school reunion is next weekend.

Now, peacocks and reunions are not really related at all.

But this past week, I was thinking about this fantastic bird at the zoo.

It is so clear that he, and all of nature, is not a complex accident of chance and time, oh no.

Isn't he fantastic?

And he reminded me, as this awkward reminder of my embarrassing growing up years is approaching,

he reminded me of how I discovered that I, too, was no accident.

I never, ever, felt in place. I was keenly aware that I was not completely whole.

I was keenly aware that the religion I had so fully grown up in

had yet to satisfy that deep wound I knew was there.

And when I was sixteen, I began going outside at night.

Freezing cold, or in thickly humid air with the bugs.

Late, late, late at night.

I would just walk and walk and walk the country roads I grew up on.

And at first, I didn't know why I loved it so much.

I just knew that when I was out there, all the other voices went away.

And I was more the me I really was. And I could think.

And over those months, I began to naturally talk to the God I always somehow deeply knew had to be there.

And I talked and talked, and didn't talk, and just enjoyed feeling so small under the high canopy.

But I was feeling more and more sure I wasn't alone.

And I was supposed to be there, taking the grandness in.

And over the next year, as naturally as it could happen, Jesus stole my heart whole.

I found a Bible we'd had for formal reasons at my house, and sat up late one night,

searching the pages randomly, finding the Gospel of John. I'd never read the Bible alone before, no one had shown me how.

And this girl was captivated.

I mean, I was totally in love.

I read the entire book of John in one night, completely absorbed in it.

I couldn't stop.

And so I got one of my own, and couldn't get enough of Jesus.

I mean, I could not get enough. This was no passing phase.

I was signed, sealed, delivered.

And I was happily welcomed in to a circle of other people who were seeking God, too.

Looking back, we were all so very far from perfect- but God used them, and me, anyway.

And when I'm wondering if I will love the right way, or say the best things, when someone is hurting or lost-

I look no further than my own story of God finding me-

to know by faith He'll keep using this imperfect woman,

and keep blessing this imperfect woman, amazingly,

not based on what I do, but on Who He Is.

Years later, Sara Groves released this song, Maybe There's A Loving God.

It always brings me right back to those moments

in the darkness when I found the light.

It so perfectly explains exactly how I felt, and how He rescued me.

Maybe this was made for me • For lying on my back in the middle of a field • Maybe that's a selfish thought • Or maybe there's a loving God • • Maybe I was made this way • To think and to reason and to question and to pray • And I have never prayed a lot • But maybe there's a loving God

Here's an amateur YouTube video, so you can hear it, if you don't already own All Right Here