Psalms of Return

“Create in me a clean heart, God,

And renew a steadfast spirit within me.”

—Psalm 51.10 (NASB)

When I became a newbie Christ follower in high school, the cool Bible everyone was using was the New American Standard Bible. Mine went with me everywhere. To jam-packed Tuesday night Bible studies, to Jesus Freak beach baptisms, to wilderness retreats where late-night worship was wrought with teenage angst. By the time I attended a Capernwray Bible school in the mountains of Colorado, nearly every other page in my NASB was marked up with passionate exhortations in purple ink, if not purple prose. It wasn’t long before it was literally falling apart. I had it rebound.

A few years after that, my old fave book of scripture retired to a bedroom bookshelf as I explored other translations. Somehow it began to function as a sort of archive. Flowery birthday cards from friends, an aunt’s crocheted cross bookmark, wrinkled sketches from my toddler, and other sentimental detritus ended up between the pages of Exodus or Micah or Revelation for safekeeping for the next four decades.

The other day, I spotted it while dusting. I took it down and an afternoon of nostalgia ensued. The artifacts that tumbled out belonged to an era long gone—and to a “me” long gone as well. Melancholy for a more innocent time rose up in my chest. 

Southern California during the late 1960s and early 1970s was a hotbed of fervor fueling a countercultural Christian youth revolution. Hundreds of thousands of kids were “finding Jesus” and shocking the Church. I remember the excitement. Something big was happening. My girlfriends and I would attend the massive evangelistic rock concerts, the modern-day tent revivals, and be astonished at all the cute long-haired hippies and surfers raising their hands to heaven. Converts took to the streets to share God’s love, handing out simplistic but clever “tracts.” Jesus was coming back soon, they preached, so turn to Him today! 

I looked down at the pile of memorabilia in my lap. Under a piece of newsprint scribbled with the words I luv u momy, I saw a few old “prayer cards.” Many of the new Jesus People turned their eyes overseas, answering “calls” to become missionaries. These bookmark-sized cards were issued for the task of “raising support” for their assignments overseas. The cards usually bore a photo of a handsome young man and his sweet-looking wife, long hair past her shoulders. A child or three would be sitting in their laps.

I thought about how some of the stories of these earnest believers had played out. They of course had no idea what they were getting into. A dear friend and her husband spent forty years in a remote jungle tribal village, learning the language, building relationships, sharing the gospel, and trusting that God would protect them in the brutal environment. By the time they retired, they had put the tribe’s oral dialect into written form for the very first time, translated the New Testament into it, and delivered printed copies to the growing indigenous church.

Another couple from my stack of prayer cards had struggled. Malaria nearly killed them and their baby boys. Depression got a terrible toe hold. In a few years they gave up missionary work. Their sons got into drugs. Their marriage crumbled. I have no idea where the trust broke down for this good couple.

More artifacts fell out of my old NASB: A note from a former roommate who was developmentally delayed but able to declare she had given Jesus her life, even if the letters were in wobbly all-caps. A list from Mom of all the coffee-klatch friends she wanted me to contact when she died. The last letter I received from my late sister.

Trusting God can feel natural during good times. But those seasons require very little faith, very little true knowledge of God and of real life. Like my missionary friends—really, like most young people—I had been so naïve those many years ago.

It wasn’t that I believed God was a heavenly Sugar Daddy who would never let anything bad happen to me. I just didn’t know how bad life could get.

Under that last batch of items from my NASB memory cache I found one last artifact. On the top of a page of yellow notepaper, written in pencil, was this: A Psalm of Return, August 12, 1999.

I’ve written elsewhere of my sister and brother-in-law’s deaths in 1987 when their truck went off a mountain road. After the shock and grief began to subside a little, what I experienced next was an overwhelming sense of betrayal, followed by waves of fury. What kind of a God would do this? How could He do this to me?

But what had God betrayed? Where in countless Sunday sermons, discipleship groups, prayer meetings, and Bible school classes did I get the notion that God promised to protect me from life? How did I come to believe—unknowingly, I guess—that good Christian girls got rewarded, not robbed of family members?

I do think that death is so unnatural that human beings instinctively rebel against it as something terribly wrong in creation. For a dozen years I wandered in a figurative spiritual desert, resolutely denying the existence of a loving deity. But slowly I began to recognize the hole in my soul. That yellow lined paper from 1999, with its rather juvenile confession and plea, was the first step on my return journey to Him.

As I write, it is the start of Lent, the ancient season of repentance. For centuries the Church has set aside the forty days leading up to Easter as a sacred period in which children of God are called to recognize our utter dependence on God’s grace and forgiveness, and to surrender to Him. 

In that moment captured on notebook paper twenty-five years ago, my trust wasn’t “restored,” as if I could glue back together my broken heart and fill it up to the brim again with “trust.” The surrendering came in fits and starts. Truth be told, it is a choice I must make daily. But moment by moment, memory by memory, I do long to know Him more intimately, love Him more deeply, and follow Him more closely. That is the only basis of trust.

Kyrie eleison. Lord, have mercy. 

A Psalm of Return, August 12, 1999

Master of the universe, creator of everything, lover of the world, Father of life, Lord of eternity, Savior of my soul:

Like many psalms, mine should start with a confession of sin and a plea for forgiveness.

Where did my love for You lose its heart? Somewhere, even before Vicki and Jimmy died, I started to turn away. Why did you let me?

I’m not implying you are to blame. I am. But I will always wonder why you let more than twelve years go by—years in which I spurned you. I was so angry at you.

Now, I am keenly aware of how much I miss having a relationship with you. I am lonely. Nothing else fills the void. Thank you that you are like Hosea, who did not send away his adulterous wife:

“Come, let us return to the Lord. / For He has torn us, but He will heal us; / He has wounded us but He will bandage us … / “So let us know, let us press on to know the Lord. His going forth is as certain as the dawn; And He will come to us like the rain, like the spring rain watering the earth.” (Hosea 6.1,3 NASB)

The featured image, “Palm Sunday Blossoms,” is courtesy of Lancia E. Smith and is used with her glad permission for Cultivating.

Anita Palmer

Anita K. Palmer has always turned to pen and paper to figure out what she thinks, feels, and believes. That propensity launched a career that started with editing a Christian publication (which soon went to magazine heaven — by no fault of her own, she swears). Then came 13 years on daily newspapers, followed by five as a university media relations officer. Since then she has made her way for two decades as an independent book editor, ghostwriter, copywriter, and book coach. Five years ago, free of family responsibilities, she happily stored a lifetime of possessions, stuffed her SUV, and headed for the hills of Colorado, which she testifies are full of goodness, truth, and beauty. She is blessed with many dear friends and a tiny family, including one kind and brilliant adult son.

www.thestrongword.com/