Last night we had the pleasure of attending Church in Lima. It was an incredible experience. Three of our team members gave their testimonies, and I am sincerely honored to have been able to witness that. I sat there knowing that I really couldn’t get up in front of a group and do that – I don’t have a testimony to share. I haven’t even given my life to Christ. I haven’t been Saved. There has been a battle over my heart – and darkness has won for so long. I have told myself over the last few months that “Ill do it when I am ready, I am just not ready yet. The walls around my heart are still too strong to let Christ in. Maybe during the retreat this fall. Maybe… “
As many Churches do, towards the end of the service they called for anyone that needed prayer, needed to be Saved, needed to be loved – to come up front. I have seen it happen a hundred times in many different Churches. It has always been my time to freeze and hide. Slowly, people started to come up – members of the Church – very few of which spoke any English. One young man in a white biker jacket walked to the center of the group, talked briefly with one of the Church leaders, and completely broke down. Adam McDonald walked up behind the man, placed his hand on the man’s shoulder, prayed and poured love into him while the Church official prayed and the man cried. More members of our team did the same for the other people that had come up. Adam had left just enough room for someone else to stand beside him.
This time I didn’t freeze. I didn’t avert my eyes and emotions. I didn’t crawl into my little box to hide. I moved. I actually had to move a chair out of my way to get beside Adam. It was time, I was ready.
So there I was, standing in the front of a Church in Lima, Peru with my hand on the back of a young man that spoke a completely different language than me, as he was completely broken and was being prayed over by a leader of that Church. Adam with one hand on the man’s back, and the other hand tight around my shoulder, not even realizing that at that moment I was giving my life to Christ. Finally. Freedom. Peace. For the first time in a very long time I could truly, deeply, and completely – feel. I knew at that moment that my marriage would be safe, my children would know deep, fatherly love, and that I could smile a pure smile. My wife would have all of me, which is what she has been longing for and deserves. And for you to understand all of that, I have to go back to the beginning.
I have been broken most of life – all of my adult life. Horrible things happened early in my life that caused me, as a defensive mechanism, to build solid walls around my heart. These walls were created to protect myself from those memories; to seal them away forever. And it worked. It worked so well that by the time I was a young adult I had completely forgotten about those early events. In my mind, and I mean this completely: it never happened to me. But it worked too well. Along with those memories went the bulk of my emotions. The deep, complete, feel it to your core emotions that most people take for granted were locked away in that same, dark, concrete box. I have spent most of my life incapable of having deep, and in some aspects even minor, feelings of any sort for anything. My Marriage, the birth of my children, relationships with friends, children, and family – all have been shallow.
I have faked emotion so often over the years, and I didn’t even realize it. It took my wife almost walking out the door with our kids – breaking me completely – before I even realized what was going on. I felt deep sorrow and fear. I felt emotions in a deeper sense than I had ever before, or at least that I could remember. There was a small crack in the massive walls, and I was forced to look at what was inside. I remembered. And I was rocked to the core. I had almost destroyed my Marriage, I was failing as a father, I have very few friends, and I now had a glimmer of an understanding as to why. But aside from that sudden spike of fear and sorrow, I was still numb – I was still void of deep emotion. But now I realized I was broken. It was me. Not my lovely wife or my amazing kids who I had laid so much blame on. It was me that was the problem. At least I understood that much– now its time to fix the “problem” – aka: Neill.
I realized that in order to “fix” this (thinking that I was the one to fix it) that I would need to talk about it to someone. I met with a counselor, I spoke about it in life group - and I talked to Joey and Rob Eslinger about it. The meeting with Joey was significant, of course, but I didn’t realize why until last night. After laying out this same story to Joey and pouring my heart out, he paused – just for a moment – and said in his matter of fact way:
“So what’s your question?”
Really? I just poured my heart out! Im a victim! And that’s all you have? What’s your question? You might have just as well said “And….what do you want me to do about it?”
I fumbled a bit, but to me at this point it was an identity crisis. I needed to know who I was because everything before was so fake. So he gave me some things to work on to help me find my identity though Faith – a spiritual gifts personality test and a worksheet that has some guidelines to help find your Christian identity. I took the test, and wasn’t shocked at the results. I guess I did know who I was. Service, Mercy, Helps, Hospitality, Administration. Those were my gifts, and those are things I use and show on a daily basis. Check – I am me, and I know me. At least I know enough about me to move forward.
So the next battle was with the walls. I know who I am, it is time for the walls to come down. I went on this trip because Rob needed men to sign up. That was the main reason. I had very few expectations outside of helping build an orphanage. I hoped that maybe my walls would be broken, but I wasn’t sure.
For the first 2 days, the walls actually grew. I closed myself in and hid. I still served, I still worked my tail off, but I was not open. I was closed tight. I was hiding in my box watching everything from behind these safe walls. Slowly though… I started to crawl out.
On Tuesday, Jamie and I were assigned to breaking large stones in to small chunks that we would use to line the irrigation system for the trees. Yes! I get to use a sledge hammer! We beat on the first 100lb stone for a while before it gave up anything at all. Eventually, small parts of the stone started to break off. And then it gave. It split. And I felt the walls around my heart shudder.
God taught me not to give up, I will break these walls. Little did I know that there was a completely different lesson in the works for me. The real lesson came out crystal clear last night as I sat and listened to the message the Prophet at that Church in Lima delivered (translated to English by one of our awesome Peruvian translators). And Joey’s response suddenly made sense as well.Come to Christ, and there will be no walls. Joey’s response was so simple, yet so profound when I got it. My story is sad in parts, but so what? The real story is about the here and now. I can beat on those walls all I want, but as soon as I asked for forgiveness and Salvation – the walls vanished, as though they were never even real. It was indeed that simple. Much like Joey’s response. There was no question, really – just a simple answer. Come to Christ.
That’s my testimony. This is the beginning.
I could go on and on about how much today meant to me. Today I Lived. I felt deep Joy as I watched Liz wrap her arms around a young girl from the orphanage on the bus as the young girl rested her head against Liz and closed her eyes. That was the highlight of her day – for both of then probably – and I felt every drop of it. I felt pride as I marched through the streets of Chilca in the parade. I felt so many different things today.. I could go on.. but I am not. Its almost 2am here, and I have to be up and ready at 7am to go mix concrete at the same Church in Lima that I gave my life to Christ at.
Neill Horton
One last thing: Scott Sterling, this is for you:
