Denise Chen's Testimony

A Missing Peace

I was not raised in a Christian home.  Neither was my childhood a perfect one, but as a nine-year old, the belief that I centered the world held strong.  I wanted to discover everything on my own, and I took no one’s advice into consideration.  Headstrong?  Perhaps.  I would come to acknowledge that the harder I fought to pull the pieces of my small world together, the more these same pieces would fall apart.

As difficulties in my family of four arose, my mom began to bring my brother and me to church—now I realize that it was most likely to expose us to a different lifestyle and provide us with role models.  But at the time, religion was a concept much too deep for my ten-year old mind to grasp.  The Bible’s guidelines became a way for me to live my life; church became a place I went to each Sunday.  But as suddenly as we had begun to attend church, we ceased attending.  And I continued once again, the lone pioneer of my life, so confident and assured in my childhood naïveté to even fear the future. 

 This same confidence eventually correlated to a very superficial group of friends, most who were unable to understand me.  But I was also unable to understand the way they were.  Unwilling to change my mentality, I became cut off from those same friends.  At our school, everyone knew everyone else, so basically this left me with a small handful of people I could associate myself with.  And that was not adequate.  As a middle-schooler, friends were an integral part of any child’s life and so this emptiness in my life prompted devastation (or at least to me at the time).  Loss of friends resulted in my dislike to be at school; dislike resulted in a lack of interest in class and little regard of my academic performance; poor performance resulted in the disapproval of my parents.  And such unfamiliar emotional darkness enveloped me much too fast for me to even vaguely realize what had happened.  The following year was one of intense inner turmoil where I heatedly debated between the will to live vs. the desire to not live at all.  Those days merged into a blurred smear and I had no significant contact with the external world during this time of blindness.  As I grew alone, I plunged into my own pit alone, I emerged alone.  I began my slow hike up the ever-so-steep hill—not only was I required to climb what I had failed to climb in the past, but I also had to climb my share for the present. 

 High school.  I will not say the climb went smoothly out of the depths of my oblivion.  Multiple times, I regressed back into what I had just recently climbed out of.  But as I continued through my early years of high school, I found a few things I truly loved, and those propelled me to every next day.  I began my recovery and self-discovery period; I gained through my losses, I overcame.  I began to realize that money was no longer an issue as my family gained financial stability.  I began to realize that grades came with as much effort as I spent in my courses.  I began to realize that friendship was a two way street, as is every other relationship.  As I was opened to boundless possibilities, I looked mostly forward and, not as frequently, backward.  But it became evident to me that, more often than not, my life had started to proceed very much in a cycle, with no end goal to be attained.  I began to wonder what it really meant to know God personally, or even know a God.  All this time I had considered myself a Christian without even knowing anything about this label.

 In effect, my parents gave me a 1000-piece puzzle.  The kind that no one expects to finish within the first few days, weeks, or even months--but rather with time.  In my elementary school years, I carried the box around to merely admire the beautiful picture on the cover, with little intention of even opening the box.  In middle school, I began to wonder if the puzzle could even be that difficult to assemble.  I decided to take a peek.  I discovered that the box was too tightly sealed, and pulled forcefully on both sides.  The lids gave way, and the pieces were launched everywhere.  I slowly began to piece together the puzzle in attempt to clean up the mess I had made.  Sometimes, the pieces would fit incorrectly or fall apart, and I would have to start over again.  But the big picture began to emerge.  As I neared the end, I noticed one area where a piece was missing.  Having flung the contents every which way, I had no way of knowing where this small piece could have settled.  But when God truly came into my life for the very first time, he filled that space in the puzzle—and the same joy and sense of completion felt upon fitting the last puzzle piece into its place accompanied the end of my spiritual search, and begun my spiritual quest.

-Denise Chen