Fall 2006Ryann Lachowicz
I don’t know if you’ve ever felt engulfed by darkness or in a pit of hopelessness, but I was just there.
I grew up “knowing” Jesus, but that knowing has been more like a constant anxiety in my stomach over not measuring up.
As I got older, I thrived in ministry involvement in college and academics, striving after a life of social justice to the marginalized. I had gotten really good at jumping through the necessary hoops to show others (and myself) that I was “ok.”
And then I fell apart. After graduating from Western, I received some personal blows that shattered the neat little path I had set up for myself. I felt lost. I didn’t have any direction to go . . . no clue what to do with this degree I’d slaved for. My heart hurt badly. Relationships failed. I felt so distant from God and even disdainful. I started to turn my face from God and for the first time in my life identified with the prodigal son of Luke 15 instead of the older dutiful son. It was deep shame that drove me away from the Father, and after returning, deep shame remained.
Sometime in late spring I found myself sitting in Tierra Nueva’s upper room at a migrant outreach training. I had been walking toward healing with God since November, but I was still severely disillusioned with the church, my life, and faith in general. That morning I came expecting a program. I came expecting to hear a list of good approaches and well-tested human efforts that would make an effective outreach. I expected to need to prove my
worthiness for the task.
Instead, I was met with something real. I was confronted with people’s hearts. I heard about their deep hunger for God, and that they had nothing to give without drawing life straight from God. I heard about how they were seeing God pour out life in supernatural, beautiful ways to people they minister to. There was peace in their eyes and it felt like life was seeping out of the baseboards and into my shoes.
From that day forward, deep in my gut something has been drawing me to Tierra Nueva. The first time I came to soaking prayer, I wept the entire two hours. It was the most overwhelming time of restoration and receiving God’s delight that I’ve ever experienced. As I practice lying on the floor not “doing” anything but receiving from God, I feel the heaviness, the duty, the rules and the strivings crumble away.
For the first time in my life, I am desperately hungry for God. There’s something strangely wonderful about being a major mess up. It’s freed me from thinking I have any chance of measuring up! This place of desperation and hunger has opened me up to receiving outpourings of the Holy Spirit, filling me up, knocking me over, feeding my soul, speaking words for my life or for others, and giving life to the scripture.
I feel a bit like a bewildered child, but I know now what an incredibly GOOD Father I have. I am so thankful God has led me to this Tierra Nueva community where we receive love, listen for the Father’s voice and minister out of a place of rest and empowerment by the Holy Spirit.
