The Father Knows Best

So many people today are floundering, searching for meaning and purpose or looking for direction and self-fulfillment. I get it. Back in the 70’s I was on that same track. Lost in the world of “doing your own thing,” I sought happiness in the things the world had to offer and landed in a big mess. It all started with the lie that you need to find yourself. At the time I thought that was the right course. I didn’t know that God had the ability to teach me what is best for me and direct me in the way I should go (Isaiah 48: 18).

Listening to my own inner being, I “lost” myself in seeking adventures, traveling, getting high and having fun. At the ripe age of nineteen I set out with my Geodesic dome building, hippy boyfriend to India. He made it there and crashed and burned in six weeks with a severe case of dysentery, which brought him stateside. I didn’t go seeking the holy guru but stayed in Europe and wandered the land by EuRail, hitchhiking, staying in hostels and backpacking through Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Holland, Spain and Greece. I joined the hundreds of other seekers as we traversed the planet experimenting with Tarot cards, numerology, astrology, Eastern mysticism and mind-altering drugs. We sought the pleasures of island life in Ibiza, lived in a cave in the Canary Islands and visited a hash farm in Morocco as a Spanish senorita. Yet I grew discontent and lonely, but I had no idea why. I had no clue that His Son said, “Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it (Matthew 10:19)” I wanted to grab life and explore all it had to offer.

Though I had known Jesus as a child, I din’t accept him as my Savior and therefore, I didn’t have the Holy Spirit to enlighten me on spiritual matters and give me the power to resist “the pull of the World.” So, I continued in my sin. I changed my major to art, simply because I started doing sculptures and a friend told me how great SUNY New Paltz was for art. I got out of the hick town college I was attending and moved to the “enlightened” college town. There I met a dreamer like me and moved in with him. When that relationship crashed, I went down into a sink hole. Everything that I thought this progressive lifestyle would offer me, turned to dust. Ironically, two years later my no longer a boyfriend invited me to a Christian meeting on campus. After and few months I became a believer. I realized that God the Father was the one true God and Jesus Christ was indeed His Son.

Though “New Age” philosophy had promised me peace and joy, I didn’t find it until Jesus Christ entered my life. He immediately delivered me from the path of destruction I had traversed, and slowly lifted me out of my depression. I began to read the Bible and that’s where I began to understand the plan God had for me and for others. Knowing Jesus brought great enlightenment, peace and joy. Though I balked at times about His way of doing things, I learned that the “Father knows best.”