A Boring Love Story

Since I started writing here, my parents have been 

pestering me about "sharing too much." 

So today I'm going to write about my parents.

Yesterday, our family went to the Village Church at the Dallas campus and it turns out this weekend was one of their baptism weekends.

*Quick theology note* I am very much in favor of full-immersion baptism. 

There was a baptism at HPPC yesterday morning that was done by sprinkling 

and when I compare the two, full-immersion seems to more 

deeply and intimately symbolize the meaning of baptism.

During the baptisms at The Village, each of the soon to be baptized would share their testimony and then a friend of theirs, typically someone who was a key player in their salvation, would baptize them. As I sat and watched this great display of God's grace and glory, and listened to so many stories of how they grew up in a Christian home with a life filled with Godly influences and consistently attending and being involved in their church, I couldn't help but think about my parents.

My parents grew up around the corner from each other, but their childhood's couldn't have been more different. In order to save myself an angry text from my mom, let me just give you the very short version: my grandparents on my mom's side adopted three boys from a very abusive situation with their birth parents. My mom was a little miracle in that my grandmother had multiple miscarriages until God finally blessed them with little Debra Diane Griner.

My dad started life as the baby in the family with two older brothers. He remained the baby of the family for about 7 years when his younger brother was born. And from what I can piece together from the many stories he told to my sisters and I as children, the Robinson family lived a somewhat normal, typical family life there in Sanford Florida.

My parents families attended the same church for a while and became good friends. My parents however, to hear my mom tell it, did not get along. All the years they knew each other as children, my mom found my dad annoying and obnoxious (which if my childhood is any resemblance to my fathers, he most certainly was annoying and obnoxious). My mom had a lot of family troubles and as a result, she went through a fairly rebellious stage of life as a teenager. My father, however, fell in love with Jesus at a very young age and was very involved in the Church and his own mission to bring to Christ everyone around him.

I like to think that if Jesus himself had come down and shown my teenage mom a snapshot of what her life would look like when she was 30 something, being married to that annoying super-Christian kid, Dennis with three kids, living in Hawaii, she would have laughed in His face and turned her bell-bottomed booty around and walked away.
So when God finally did put them together, it got a little weird.

(mom and dad, i'm sorry if some of the details are wrong, 

but i'm gonna take a little artistic license here)

 

After my mom's little rebellious stage had sort of come to a close, God began to press on her about my dad and she began to see him in a new light. It wasn't like she needed to get to know him because she knew him his whole life and knew every little thing there was to know about him and he knew the same about her. So after Dennis had pursued her for a while, she gave in and went on some dates with him. Things were going well, but Debbie was having trouble really committing and confessing her feelings. So one day they were parked in Dennis' car just sort of "talking" (that's their version, but i don't know if buy it. i've sat in cars with girls "talking" before too) and God started to press on Debbie. She knew she needed to tell Dennis how she felt, but she really didn't want to. So, she did what any normal person would do in this situation and started pacing outside around the car. She was pacing and mumbling and occasionally shouting things as if she was hoping to get out of this by scaring Dennis away, but it didn't work. God must have been pressing on the parking brake. Finally, after a sufficiently crazy outburst, Debbie gave in and yelled out "I LOVE YOU!!!"  Somehow, I'm not entirely sure why after such a display, Dennis reciprocated her feelings and their new lives together began.

As I mentioned earlier, while hearing the stories of how these soon to be baptized men and women came to finally accept God's pursuit of them and surrender their lives to Him, I couldn't help but think of my parents' story; because it's my story too. Just like my parents grew up with each other, I grew up with God. I grew up with God like He lived next door my whole life. I knew all about Him and of course He knew all about me, but I didn't really want much more than to just know Him and occasionally ask Him for something as one might borrow a cup of sugar from a neighbor. As much as I thought I was avoiding true intimacy with God during my childhood and teenage years, God was filling my mind with knowledge of Him, surrounding me with excellent examples of Godly men and women, and consistently exposing me to the work of His Holy Spirit. So when God finally pressed on me to surrender myself to Him in such a way that was irresistible, I paced around the metaphorical car while He sat inside watching me until I finally gave in and shouted out "I LOVE YOU!!!" The best part about this story is that once God claimed me, I already knew Him. I had spent my whole life learning about Him and I was already surrounded with great Godly examples and, without even knowing it, was already on the trajectory toward the work He had planned for me.

I remember being young and foolish and wishing I had one of those cool testimonies like being pulled out of drug or sexual addiction or being a murderer on death row or something equally crazy. Those are exciting stories, but I wouldn't trade my boring love story for any other story out there. I'm blessed with a life long relationship with the God of the universe, and I pray the same story for my children and their children and their children until the day of the Lord comes and we can all kneel together at the feet of the Almighty and lavish Him with gratitude for the amazing grace He poured out on us.
Amen.8