it finally made sense

My name is Klarisa McEntire, I live in Lake Jackson and this is my story. 

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Picture this. You’re in an old country church that’s sitting in the midst of a little Texas gulf coast town. The carpet, you can tell was once pure white, but after years of foot traffic, it would be lucky if it were called cream. You’re sitting in a pew with a pea-green cushion that creaks every time you move. You notice buttons missing from the cushions and you consider that years of being sat on has definitely made some impact and imprint on these cushions. The song leader has everyone stand up and gives you a page number in the hymnal to turn to and announces the song. Everyone else has done this before. Some people don’t even grab the hymnal. The piano starts playing while you’re still rushing to the page, knowing (or feeling like) all eyes are on you. “Is she going to sing?”, you know they’re wondering in their minds. You’re just lucky you know how to keep up with verses from a hymnal page. You read along as you hear the congregation singing. You keep your eyes on the page, and just skim over the words “I will cling to the old rugged cross and exchange it some day for a crown.” Hmm. Well, that’s interesting. It sounds beautiful. You try not to think about the fact that you know no one here except the person sitting next to you, and he is singing along as loud as can be with everyone else. It’s because he knows the song. He’s done this before. You haven’t. You’ve never heard this song a day in your life, and you stop for a second to take it all in and you think to yourself…”WHAT in the world am I doing here, and WHAT in the world have I gotten myself into?”. 

 

That was me. Circa 2009 in little ole Freeport, TX at what is now MY “old country church”. The carpet is long gone, and the pews have been replaced. “The Old Rugged Cross” even has a different page number now from a totally different hymnal. The piano hits differently but the singing and the songs are just the same. Well…ALMOST the same. Only this time, I’m singing along with them. This time…if I’m reading the words to the song that I’ve sung time and time again now, it’s to take in the awe and the trueness of the message being sung. It’s not a distraction, it’s a reflection. 

 

Growing up in a broken home, the only thing that was consistent in my life was the inconsistency. When I lived with my dad, we went to the Catholic Church down the road and made sure to say our “Hail Mary’s”. When I lived with my mom, we went to whatever non-denominational church struck her fancy, and that was usually going to be an IF we went to church…not a WHEN. Both of my parents were the “cool kids” so to speak in their group of friends, so having weekly gatherings at our homes was a fairly normal thing. The adults would do their thing, while all the kids snuck around, played games, and worked on finishing off the adult drinks that were left behind. Living with my mom, we would move from home to home, school to school and church to church. Always having the same old struggle with us…stepdad fighting (and usually losing) his demons in drug and alcohol addiction, along with my mom fighting (and usually losing) her own hypocritical demons as well. With each job that was lost, each home we were forced to leave or vehicle that we saw getting towed away,..the answer was always the same coming from mom; “It’s in God’s hands”. It’s in God’s hands?!?! Being a young child, irresponsibility and a lifetime of bad choices didn’t seem to be a viable option in my mind as to why all of these negative things were happening. According to mom…there was only one reason; God. Welp. If that’s the case…I have zero interest in him, seeing as how he has zero interest in me and my well-being. 

 

I grew to have no desire in knowing him or learning about him, but I still believed that he was real. The older I got, the more I simply just focused on “being a good person”. I was a good employee, I was there for my friends, I was a good student in college…I even volunteered on my off days. Eternity was not really much of a concern of mine, simply just living day to day and making sure that I was making myself happy in the end. I kept certain “morality” rules, but truthfully, alcohol had become a very large part of my life (even though I wasn’t even old enough to drink yet), so when it got involved, all of those so-called rules had gone out the window. I was living for Klarisa, and I was living in the moment. I wasn’t hurting anyone, so I was fine. The reality was I was only hurting myself and I really wasn’t fine. I would compartmentalize things I didn’t understand or want to think about, and I would put aside any feelings that I had of religious curiosity. Those were all of my great plans, but little did I know…that God had greater plans for me instead. 

 

In November of 2009, God opened a door that I was convicted enough to walk through. He opened up the opportunity for me to go through a 2-part Bible study with the Pastor of that “little old country church” from earlier in my story. The first session was QUITE the eye opener for me. It wasn’t because the Pastor was telling me that I was a person who inherited sin. It wasn’t because the Pastor was telling me that the wages of sin is death. It wasn’t even because he was telling me that all sinners are born condemned already and headed to hell. It was because THE BIBLE was telling me this. I wasn’t sitting in a Bible study with people who were just telling me what they thought or their opinions on things. It was simply…reading the Bible. It was GOD’s word. No one else’s. God was the one who had written down these things thousands of years ago about me that no man could ever know or even TRY to articulate. The second session was a lot more comforting with going over answers to my sin. I asked *ALL* of the questions. “Whaaaat about all of the tribes and villages in Africa of people who’ll never hear or have never heard?” Without skipping a beat, the Pastor led me to the passage in the Bible where it very clearly explained to me that they were without excuse. The earth and the heavens scream out God, so there is no reason for anyone to not come to know him. Well…that was a convenient answer. But in my heart I knew…I knew I wasn’t concerned about the villages in Africa. I was concerned about myself. I was concerned about having to “give up” certain things in my life if I chose to go “the church girl” route. I pondered these things for a while. The longer I thought about them, the more real Christ became to me. The more I started contemplating who I TRULY was. The inner part of me that no one knew. But God knew. God knew all of it. The good, the bad and the ugly. And He sent Christ anyway. For me. For MY sin. By then, no one else mattered. Giving up my sin didn’t matter. Just doing the right thing and knowing Christ is all that mattered to me. So, I did it. In my heart, I knew I repented of my sin, and I believed that Christ Jesus had died on the cross for my sin, and that on the third day, HE rose again and will one day come back for me. But was that it? Was it THAT simple? How can I know that was all I needed to do? Did I need to ask God for forgiveness EVERY TIME that I sinned? OH MY. How could I do that? How could I know that what I had done and believed was all that I needed to do?  

 

Well, that’s the beauty of having people around you who you can ask these questions too. Due to my new set of circumstances (surrounding myself with people who knew the Bible) I now had someone I could go to, where I could ask “HOW CAN I KNOW?”. The answer I was pointed to was oh so simple…and also not one of someone’s opinion or thoughts. It was straight to the Bible. I was reminded and shown what 1st John 5:13 said. It says, “These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.”. That was it. It clicked. It FINALLY MADE SENSE. It truly felt in that moment as if God had his men write that down SPECIFICALLY for me. It was in that moment, that I KNEW I was saved. I was truly saved and there was nothing that I could do to ever lose that. 

 

THAT is what led me to that old country church that day in 2009…and almost every Sunday and Wednesday evening since. It’s where I go to sing songs. It’s where I go to get encouraged. It’s where I go to be reminded of who God is and what he’s done for me. It’s where I go to get my toes stepped on and get convicted. It’s where I go to love on people and be loved on. It’s where I go to be reminded that there’s a little old country church on the corner of 4th and Velasco in Freeport, TX that God saw fit to put there knowing that I would need it one day. To be reminded that he did that just.for.me. 

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My name is Klarisa McEntire, and this is my story.