A couple of weeks ago, our pastor asked me to speak at the Easter Sunday services. From time to time–especially on days when there are likely to be a lot of people in the audience who aren’t necessarily believers–Pastor Dale likes to have a member of the congregation share their story as a real-life example of how God moves and works and lives in us.

Here’s what I said:

“Today we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, and with it our hope of new life in Him.

Twenty years ago, I was sitting out in the pews of a church in New York City that I’d been going to with my roommate and best friend, Julie, who was a Christian. I wasn’t a believer, but I liked the people there and we were friends with the pastor’s sister, so I went from time to time. But when the talk got to resurrection and new hope, it started to sound a bit like the adults in a Peanut’s skit to me. So if that’s you, bear with me. It gets better.

Back then, I was a highly opinionated, extremely willful young woman who swore like a sailor. Julie, and others, would ask me often to reign in my language, but I vehemently defended it, saying, “this is who I am … it’s part of me!” I saw no need whatsoever to change … I was just fine just the way I was.

Except that I also lived with a sense of disconnected chaos that would wake me up at night hyperventilating in a state of panic. And many of my waking hours were spent thinking through worst case scenarios, with the logic that I would somehow immunize myself to the hurt if they actually did come to pass.

Around this time, I was introduced to New Age philosophy and spent a good deal of time reading about it and learning to hone my intuition. I’m an intuitive person, so it felt natural and came easily to me. Only at some point, I realized that no matter how good I got at listening to my intuition, I’d still just be listening to myself. And deep down I believed there was something more.

no matter how good I got at listening to my intuition, I’d still just be listening to myself

That’s how God met me.

I began going to church more frequently with Julie and tracked completely with the God part. But when talk turned to Jesus, I balked with my whole being. To me, Jesus and Christianity meant being forced into a Norman Rockwell, cookie cutter mold of pot lucks and casseroles and Mary Janes and rote prayers. And that just was not me. I was the one who wore python boots and a black mini skirt for our family Christmas photo.

I was the one who wore python boots and a black mini skirt for our family Christmas photo

So week after week I respectfully passed on communion. Until one day I felt God nudge me, as palpably as if He were sitting beside me. “Get up,” He said. “Go to the front and be fed.”

I was shocked out of my seat and remember walking down the aisle, thinking, “what am I doing?” It wasn’t like a switch had flipped and I suddenly believed all that communion symbolized. It just felt more right to get up and take communion than it did to stay seated and pass. I wasn’t at 100% … I wasn’t even at 60%. But I was at 51%.

I wasn’t at 100% … I wasn’t even at 60%. But I was at 51%.

As I swallowed the bread and the juice, I felt like they were illuminating me from the inside out. I knew something wild was happening. I just didn’t know exactly what.

Another tipping point came soon after when I went to argue with the pastor, Keith, about why New Age was just as valid as Christianity. He listened patiently, and he talked to me about sacrifices across cultures and religions and explained how Christianity is unique in that the sacrifice is a once and for all, by God himself, and yet it’s not exclusive in the least. In fact, it’s radically inclusive.

Something clicked in me. God pushed me past the 51% mark again and I whispered that I wanted in. I wanted to be part of that sacrifice Jesus had made.

I’ll be honest, I was a flighty person back then who ran after shiny objects and couldn’t hold down a relationship more than six months tops. So I fully expected to wake up the next morning thinking, “wha?” and just write the whole experience off and move onto the next thing. At the very most, I reasoned, it might last a few months.

But instead, I woke up the next morning and immediately noticed a dizzying sense of calm. The tornado of anxiety that I had lived in for most of my life was no longer there. Instead, there was just quiet. Something is happening, I thought again.

The change continued when I went to work. As soon as I started talking with people–in the way I normally did, with about every third word being “colorful”–I started choking on the words as they came out. The profanity that I had so ardently defended as being part of me suddenly felt completely foreign. Those words just didn’t belong any more and they completely faded from my speech by the end of the day.

The big wow wasn’t that I stopped swearing, it was that I didn’t have any desire to any more. No one could have forced me to do that; that was something supernatural.

When I studied art history in Paris, our teacher told us about Michaelangelo’s Unfinished Slaves, a group of sculptures that I had the privilege of seeing in person later in Italy. They’re these massive blocks of rough marble with just a portion of a human figure visible, and they’re indicative to the way Michaelangelo approached his work. He didn’t think of himself as sculpting as much as liberating the forms that were already inherent in the marble.

He didn’t think of himself as sculpting as much as liberating the forms that were already inherent in the marble

As the weeks and months wore on after that pivotal declaration in Pastor Keith’s office, I realized that I had been totally wrong about what it meant to become a Christian and a follower of Jesus. God didn’t want me to be a cookie cutter cutout. He wanted me to hand Him the chisel and say, “have at it” so He could liberate me from the constraints that I was imposing on myself that were keeping me from being the beautiful being He knows I am. Which is just what I did when I said “yes.”

Once I realized that, life became one big adventure with God at the helm.

I could tell you of so many ways that God has moved in my life since then … through His spirit, His people and His word. Like when I married Christopher in 1997 and stepped into marriage brimming with jealousy, insecurity and fear. God brought me 1 Corinthians 13:7. Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Those words became my template for both action and thought for months and months–Is this thought really trusting Christopher? Is acting this way persevering in our marriage?–until, finally, the natural path of my thoughts adhered more closely to what God clearly wanted them to be.

I could tell you about how, just a few months after we were married, I was diagnosed with lupus, and how I sat across from my doctor while he told me that I needed to change the way I lived and ate or face the real possibility of dying. I could tell you how just a year after that I endured a drawn out cancer scare that led to a series of operations that left me unable to bear children.

I could also tell you, though, how God turned my journey of healing through that horrible time and aftermath into my calling. Now, years later, I am blessed to inspire and equip people to make a lasting shift in the way they eat and live, as I did, through my company, NOURISH Network.

Christopher and I felt called to put everything we owned in storage and drive down to live in Costa Rica

I could tell you about how, just a few months after the surgery, Christopher and I felt called to put everything we owned in storage and drive down to live in Costa Rica for a time. And how we fell in love with Guatemala on the way home and became involved with the service organization Common Hope, through which we’ve touched hundreds of children’s lives and through which God continues to bless and grow us. Or, the big kicker, how that trip eventually led to us adopting our wonderful daughter, Noemi, from Guatemala in 2006.

that trip eventually led to us adopting our wonderful daughter, Noemi, from Guatemala in 2006

I could talk for hours and hours about any one of these big, huge, obvious God marks in my life.

But as I prayed about what to talk about today, I felt God leading me deeper, to a place where He alters the DNA of our human character. And I was like, “you want me to talk about that?” Yikes.

Five years ago, my doctor called. She’d found something in a lab result that made her nervous, and because of my history she wanted to put me on a course of chemotherapy. I freaked. I was a new mom, and I couldn’t get the image of what life would be like for Christopher and Noemi without me out of my head.

I couldn’t get the image of what life would be like for Christopher and Noemi without me out of my head

By that point, I had developed an intimate relationship with Christ and a deep and abiding faith, so I was pissed. “Why?” I prayed (yelled) to the Lord. “Why are you doing this, and where are you? Why aren’t you comforting me and holding me like you did the first go around?”

And then I felt a palpable nudge once again. As if God were taking my face and turning it towards Him. “Because I’m not there in the fear you’re wallowing in, Lia,” He said to me. “I’m here. In the love and hope. When you’re ready to come here with me, I’m right here for you.”

“I’m not there in the fear you’re wallowing in, Lia,” God said to me. “I’m here. In the love and hope.”

I turned. And once again, the anxiety instantly melted away. I realized that, like Michaelangelo’s sculptures, I was the one keeping myself imprisoned in a block of fear. God didn’t want me there at all … He wanted to free me from that crushing burden.

That’s just one of the hundreds of examples of how Christ’s resurrection lives in and transforms me day after day, moment by moment. People might see the big things–bold career moves and radical life shifts–and attribute them to me (although I sure don’t). But those subterranean character course checks that ultimately determine who we are? Those are the undeniable mark of the living Christ.

Are you at 51%?”