Sitting at home, safe & sound, didn’t prepare me for a journey into the unknown.  And the fears lurking out there on that journey could only be addressed as I met them.

One at a time, I had to continue to choose the journey and plow on through.  Each time discovering that fear has no power, except to lie to me.  And when I believed its lies, I stopped going forward.  I pulled back and stayed behind and became enslaved by my choice to fear.

President Roosevelt said, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself".

And He was so very right.  But knowing that truth does not make the journey easier.

How many times on this journey, I said, “I don’t want to do this anymore; I want to go home!”  I remembered the safety of home and the cozy couch of tradition. It was comfortable because everyone believed the same. There were no unknowns. We were all safe.  But it was an illusion that wasn’t safe at all.  It was a cage of stagnation without growth, without life, without continuing answers.

So, I struck out on my journey to know God for myself, the way I know my best friend or my husband.  I got off the couch and went toward a relationship that doesn’t have to guess what He means when He speaks.

Without it, the best I could hope was to find someone who could hear Him and tell me what He means.  But how would I ever know for sure that they were really hearing Him, or misunderstanding Him?  After all, it is a fact that we are misunderstood every day by people who don’t know us.  And they make judgment calls about us based on other things besides a relationship with us.

It’s only the people who have an intimate relationship with us who know exactly what we mean. So, if this happens to us, then isn’t it logical that it happens to God, too?

It was obvious to me that the only way I would know the truth about Him was to have a one-on-one relationship with Him. There could be no one between us anymore.  No one to translate. And I had to assume that He was able to have that kind of relationship with me. One where I would know what He meant and I wouldn’t misunderstand.

I remembered a game I played as a child.  One person whispered to another person and then another.  And at the end of the line, the story had completely changed.

The middleman caused distortion.  It was simply a fact of human nature. So, I had to assume that God was being misunderstood simply because we were getting all our information from middlemen. And I wouldn’t know how much distortion there truly was until I got to hear Him for myself.

There are pieces of information that make it to the end of the line in the game. But they are usually in the wrong place. So, how much stuff about God do we have in the wrong place simply because we don’t get the scoop from the horse’s mouth?

So, I left my traditions because they didn’t want to stop being my translator.  They wanted me to be afraid of stepping away from them. And they warned me with stern looks and boney fingers of accusation and fear.

Therefore, right off the bat, this journey was daunting.  And it took all the courage I could muster to rise up from that couch.  Fear was palatable.  And I was sure that brothers and sisters of the faith would judge me and say I was in error. They might even be angry and reject me.

But it had to be done.  I couldn’t get to know Him with anyone in the middle translating and interjecting their opinions and thoughts anymore. I had to go on without them and find out who He really was.

It was like starting from scratch. Setting everything but Him on a shelf. Taking His hand and walking off into the sunset. Trusting that He knew where we were going. Trusting only Him.

My teachers had been good for a season.  They had introduced me to Him and given me a foundation to learn. Unknowingly they had taught me to be brave.  And the good ones would support my journey off the couch and into the unknown.  They knew I would discover Him for myself and my faith would grow. It would become solid like a rock and my Identity would unveil.

So, I set out to know Him, which incidentally revealed me.