Again, I was cleaning out closets when I ran across a photo album of the year I studied in Spain. Here I found silly pictures and started leafing through the pages of my past. So lost, alone and unaware. Then I found it! The HOST! Yes, the very host (holy bread) blessed in church to eat as a reminder of His death!! Oh the story!!! Tears filled my eyes and I cried for that girl!!!
While living in Granada in my late teens early 20’s I had been very lost and….searching. I found myself in a world with others on the same journey. I did things teens sometimes do and in positions I stumbled upon. One night, after an evening at some bars, we ended up at a Moroccan Tea shop which are so very popular in Spain. A few hours of chai tea and smoking hash I started a quiet, lovely and picturesque walk to my house. I was blessed to be living with a host family that had a picturesque home right next to The Alahambra and all it’s little shops and old churches. On my walk home I became increasingly paranoid and couldn’t think straight. I quickened my pace and thought about how much this street looked like a back lot of a studio. That it was too picturesque and too perfect. I just knew it had to be a set up by the government. I was so busy convincing myself that I was being watch that I barely noticed it!
A host. Yes, a host…the big white round one with the cross imprinted on it! Yes, the one a priest blesses as Christ’s body for us to share… there on the floor, at 2am, in the dark, in Spain, on the street! What? Surely this was part of the plot I was being set up for right? Paranoia grew. Surely I was hallucinating this! I was too high. Mental note: No more tea and hash for me. So, I kept walking but was getting closer to it and yet it didn’t disappear. Ah, a brilliant thought! It wasn’t there was it? No, it couldn’t be! A plan: I’ll step on it and prove to myself that it’s an illusion! So I walked and tried not to look at it and stepped on it and took another step….I heard it! A very clear and audible crunching sound!!! What??? I pivoted around and stared at it….now behind me….cracked, with a clear shoe mark on it. Broken into two pieces………
I fell to my knee’s, tears fell down my face, and here….it was my turn to break in two!!! Who was I? Lost, in a foreign world, unaware of what my current actions would do in my life so many years later. I refused to believe in this host, on the floor, so I challenged it’s existence. Yet, it still lay there, no broken because of me! He loved me!!! Even if I refused to believe in his existence and chose to challenge it by stepping on it….it remained! I sat there crying and picked it up and ran home! Woke up my roommate to tell him about it…..though not a believer he was clearly moved and at first light….he went to church with me and we sat there quietly.
I’d like to tell you my life changed immediately and I never did anything wrong again! I’d like to tell you that….but it did take me a little longer however, that was the day “that I first believed.”
Here I am 13 years later. On my living room floor, with 3 year old triplets running around and asking me what this white broken thing was. The mercy, grace….how do I explain that to them? “Mami what’s that?”…..all I could mutter… “A present from God.”
Now I see how so many times I stepped on a gift, questioned its validity, ignored it’s existence, challenged it’s truth and yet it remained. Broken and stepped upon yet the pure value untouched. Such a testimony to my life….and to yours!
Scripture to lean on:
Mark 5: 24-34
John 4
John 9:1-20
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