Redeeming the Unredeemable

I accepted Christ as my Savior at a very early age, but it was not until my teen years that I really began to grow in the Lord. Though I can remember specific instances of God working in my life, I had not developed the relationship I began with Him at salvation. As I grew older, I remained stagnant, and saw very little victory over sin in my life.

I felt bitter and defeated, I built up walls between myself and my family, and retreated into my imagination. But because my heart was dark and bitter, my imagination was also very dark. I devoured fiction and replayed those stories over and over in my imagination, so that, no matter where I was or what I was doing, my heart and mind were off somewhere else.

But my imagination could not satisfy. I became more bitter and withdrawn, and used my imagination as a way to escape from the feelings of hurt and defeat. That is, until one night, God intervened. In the middle of a particularly dark imagining, it was as if He laid a restraining hand on my shoulder. I remember suddenly jerking back to reality and thinking “Wow, that was dark.”

That night, God shined the light of His truth into my imagination, revealing just how dark it really was. From that night on, I began to come back to reality, and as I did, God began to show me, one by one, the sin in my life that I needed to confess and reject in order to be close to Him.

Throughout that time of darkness, I was still saved—that never changed—but I had wandered very far from my Savior, and it took a long time to get back.

In the process of cleaning out the sin that had taken such a stranglehold on my life, I set my imagination quietly aside, thinking it irredeemable. I even had to stop reading fiction for a time, because the tendency to escape into it when things got hard was still so strong.—Perhaps that seems extreme to you, but it was what I needed to do at the time. Above all, I did not want to fall back into the darkness I had finally been delivered from.

This summer at Church Family Camp, our visiting evangelist read us this verse:

“But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make manifest is light.” (Ephesians 5:13)

Basically, this means that the things God reproves, or shines His light on, become a source of God’s light to others. That truth thrilled my heart, because I recognized how God had done that very thing in me!

You see, about two years ago I “accidentally” began to write a novel. It scared me at first, because I had viewed by imagination as irredeemable. –I hadn’t noticed that as God cleaned up my heart and life, He cleaned up my imagination as well.

When I began writing on the story in earnest, I knew I wanted it to be true, even though it was a fictional story. I wrestled with the ideas of theme, and conflict, and eventually just took the whole thing to the Lord. That was the first of many times I placed the story in His hands and reminded Him that if He wanted me to write it, He had to help me do it right.

As I write this, Katherine of Harborhaven is about to be launched out into the world as a full-length novel. People keep telling me it’s a major accomplishment, but to me, it’s a trophy of a different sort. This first novel is a trophy of the grace of God, a reminder that He can and does redeem the irredeemable.

Through Katherine of Harborhaven, God has used that which was once filled with darkness to radiate His light to others, and I pray that the story will help others begin their way back to God.

So, dear reader, rejoice with me in what God has accomplished, and be encouraged: no matter how dark that one corner of your heart or mind may be, God’s light is enough not only to drive out the darkness, but to make that very corner radiate His light into the lives of others. But remember, this only happens as we let His light in, choosing to say “yes” to God and “no” to sin.

“For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.” (John 3:20-21)