The Light Within Me

by Ainsley Earhardt

  The first day of the first week of Experiencing God I learned a completely different way of thinking about God. I had grown up in church and I knew a lot about God, but I never understood how the Lord wanted to have an intimate, love relationship with me. Working with Experiencing God, I learned this relationship does not come through a program or a method or by keeping enough rules. The book challenged my idea of being a good person and attending church and hoping my efforts might be enough to win God’s approval. Jesus did everything that needed to be done for me when He died on the cross and rose again three days later. Now, through His Son, God invited me to love Him just as He already loved me. I have to tell you, this rocked my world.

  I’d be lying if I said that as soon as I read all of this I got down on my knees and asked God to take control of my life. However, He had my attention. I wanted to learn more. The next day I started working my way through the questions posed and the Scriptures quoted in the Experiencing God workbook. Day two compared people to pieces of clay in the hands of a potter. The potter works the clay and shapes it into what he wants it to be. In the same way God has molded and shaped each one of us and made us in a unique way so that we can serve Him. The book challenged me to open my eyes and see where God was already working in and around me. Knowing God and figuring out what He wanted to do in my life was as simple as surrendering control of my life to Him. He’d show me what he wanted me to do. His plan will be different for different people. Just like a potter forms some clay into a vase and some into a bowl, He makes all of us different to fulfill different purposes. All of this resonated with me. I was looking ahead to my future and trying to figure out what I should do with my life. This book gave me a way of finding the answers.

  Clara, Jeremy, Matt, and I met once a week to talk about what we’d learned in the study. We were all pretty much at the same places in our lives and that made this group so meaningful to me. No one acted like they had all this God stuff figured out. The ideas in this book were new to most of us. And God was moving in the life of each one of us. Even today I consider this the best Bible study I’ve ever done.

  In the middle of my journey into Experiencing God a friend invited me to go as his date to the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity’s Mountain Weekend. I don’t know if mountain weekends are a part of Greek culture all over the country or only in the Southeast, but at South Carolina it was a big deal to be invited. It was like being asked to prom. SAE was one of my favorite fraternities on campus because so many of my male friends were members. My grandfather and cousin were SAEs at USC and all the boys reminded me of them or my own dad. They were nice, handsome, and a lot of fun. They all grew up in families like mine and I knew many of them because our parents were friends. So when an SAE boy invites you to be his date, you say yes without hesitation. The weekend is always a blast. The fraternity rented a bus and everyone piled in it together. We drove a few hours up to the mountains and drank beer, played music, and partied all the way to our destination. The aisle of the bus was always filled with decorated coolers that were gifts from the girls. I spent hours painting coolers and cups for my dates over the years and always wanted to present the best, most decorative cooler. The girls painted the coolers with their fraternity letters, their mascot (the SAEs were the lions), and used their fraternity colors. My sorority, ADPi, was also a lion and our colors were azure blue and white. We were the first official sorority in the country. Guys on campus told me, “The ADPis are smart and the marrying type.” I was very protective of my reputation when it came to boys. I was a lot of fun, but was not promiscuous. Plus, I was a new student at USC and wanted guys to know I was not THAT kind of girl. However, I knew that at Mountain Weekend, I was going to be sharing a bedroom with my date. I didn’t feel comfortable about this. My date was only a friend, not someone I planned to get involved with romantically.

  I wasn’t sure what to do, so I called my friend Eden, my Christian friend at Wake Forest University whom I’d met making my debut. She had gone on Mountain Weekends and understood the importance of being asked and accepting the invitation. She was very supportive and gave me some good, Christian advice—to basically be a lady and don’t do anything you would regret later. She was always the perfect balance of good and fun. Everyone knew how important her faith was, but she was still in the popular crowd and every friend looked up to her.

  I also wanted a guy’s advice. I went to Chuck and asked him, “What should I do?” He’d gone on mountain weekends before his life changed.

  “I don’t think you should go,” he answered.

  “Chuck! That is not an option,” I said. “I’m going.” I wasn’t asking him whether or not I should go. I wanted him to help me figure out a way to navigate the weekend in a righteous way, since I would be spending an entire weekend in a coed cabin.

  Since Chuck didn’t have any helpful advice, I did what Eden suggested. When my date and I arrived at the mountain weekend I told him, “Listen, I really appreciate you asking me to come on this trip and I hope I’m not going to be a disappointment to you but God’s really working on my heart and I’m doing a Bible study right now. In fact, I brought it with me.”

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s cool,” he said. “My mom’s a really strong Christian.”

  “If you want to, I’m going to go outside and do one of the lessons. You can do it with me if you want,” I said. He didn’t act like I was crazy, which was such a relief. The next morning I got up and did my Bible study outside. My friend, and even my date, joined me.

  That night the entire party moved into the cabin where my date and I were staying because it was the senior cabin. Music blared. A fire was going. I could smell marijuana. Everyone was drinking and laughing at things that suddenly struck me as inappropriate. I sat there, a drink in my hand, watching everything going on around me as if I were having an out-of-body experience. The walls nearly shook because the music and voices were so loud. But, for me, it was like the sound just shut off and a hush filled the room. Instead of being in the middle of the fun I found myself thinking, What would Jesus think if He walked in right now? And what would MY DAD think!? I thought about all the Christians in my life whom I adored and wondered what they would do in this situation.

  I got up and walked out onto the back steps. I stared out at the snow falling in the woods while the party blared behind me. I wanted to pray, but suddenly I wasn’t sure how. Someone had once told me that when you don’t know how to pray, just say what is on your mind, like talking to a friend. That’s what I did.

  God, I don’t know how to do this but I want you in my life. I am willing to give up all of this, the smoking and the drinking and everything else. You must already be taking that away from me because I don’t want to do it anymore. I want whatever else is out there. I want this void in my life filled forever . . . I want it filled with you.

  The only way I can describe what happened next is to say that I had been trapped at the bottom of a slimy pit and no matter how hard I tried to grip the sides and climb out, I kept falling in deeper. But on October 19, 1997, sitting on the back steps of the mountain weekend house with snow falling around me, I felt God throw down a rope ladder and help me out of that pit once and for all. This was what I had been searching for all of my life.

  THE WEEKEND ENDED. On the drive down the mountain toward home I knew my life was never going to be the same. I felt lighter. Clean. Free. I kept thanking God over and over for getting me through the weekend and changing my life. When I got home the first Bible verse I read was 2 Corinthians 5:17, which says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” That was me. I was a new woman. I memorized that verse. It was the first verse I’d ever tried to memorize.

  The next Sunday I went to church with some of the girls from my sorority. I discovered that about half of the girls in ADPi were strong Christians. One of them, Michelle, invited me to join her at a Baptist church where the college ministry was so large it had to me
et in the movie theater next door. We sat up front. Michelle asked me to sit next to her. Before the praise band came out she leaned over and said, “I heard you did a Bible study at SAE’s mountain weekend.” Apparently, word had gotten out about me.

  “I did,” I told her. Then I told her about surrendering everything to God and the new relationship I had with Him.

  “That’s amazing,” Michelle said. “I know a lot of people are going to give you grief over this, but don’t worry about them. Your life has changed already but it is now going to change in ways you don’t expect. A lot of your friendships are going to change. People are going to pull away from you.”

  “Really?” I said. All my life I’d tried to be a friend to everyone. When I was in high school and running for a student-council position, I was handing out campaign literature about myself and one girl told me she didn’t like me because she thought I was a prep. I was crushed that someone could judge me for no reason. Now Michelle was telling me that I could expect a lot more rejection because of the change in my life. Couldn’t people see my heart and know that I was always pursuing kindness and trying to love others?

  “They aren’t going to like what you are doing. They won’t think you are fun anymore, but they will always look up to you and respect you,” Michelle continued. Then she added, “Those are also the ones who are going to come to you when they are going through their darkest days.”

  Michelle was right on both counts. All my friends with whom I used to party didn’t want to hang out with a Bible beater. That was all right with me because this Bible beater wanted to hang out with other people who loved Jesus. I just wanted to submerge myself completely in God and learn as much as I could about Him and get as close to Him as I could. I still loved my former friends, but my life had changed. (Most of them are now moms and see the importance in knowing Christ, but they found Him after college, as many do.) Every time I went to church I cried through the worship time. These were tears of joy for the change that God had made in my life but also tears of grief for all the time I’d wasted.

  I also started attending the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. I wasn’t an athlete but that was okay with everyone at FCA. You don’t have to play a sport to go. For me, I just wanted to be wherever people were talking about Jesus and studying the Bible and worshiping Him. I started buying Christian music CDs. Up until that point the only Christian singer I’d heard of was Amy Grant. I found there were hundreds of Christian singers and groups! One time I mentioned a new song to a guy I started dating and he laughed at me. “That song’s been around forever,” he said, laughing.

  “Well, I have never heard it before,” I said.

  Of all the people I told about my new relationship with Jesus, the hardest turned out to be my family. I thought they would be thrilled because here’s their daughter who’s no longer partying and smoking but instead is studying and dating good, Christian men. Their initial reaction surprised me. Now that I’m a mother myself, though, I get it, but I didn’t at the time. From their point of view a daughter had stopped going to the formal church where she’d grown up and instead was going to a more extreme church and was talking openly about something that had always been a private matter in our family. Basically, my mother’s reaction to my saying I was now a Christian was, “What do you mean now? We raised you as a Christian in a Christian home attending a Christian church. We believe Jesus is the Son of God. How can you say that you weren’t a Christian before?” These weren’t her exact words but it was the essence of what she said in the many discussions the two of us had about this.

  All I could do in response was to assure her that I knew all of this was true and that I was thankful for how I’d been brought up, but that something was still missing. And that something was a personal relationship with Jesus, of knowing Him and experiencing Him.

  Some of you reading this may have the same reaction as my parents. Or you may think this chapter is very preachy for a news anchor to be writing. I do not mean to preach. I’m simply telling you honestly what happened to me. When I came to Jesus I found someone who loves me, not someone who condemns me. That’s what I hope to convey to you as well. I didn’t write this chapter to make anyone feel guilty or inadequate. Instead I just wanted to share with you why I am who I am. At a weekend that was supposed to be one of the biggest frat parties ever, my life changed because of Jesus. I love Him so much for what He has done for me. He loves you too. If you don’t take anything else away from this chapter, I hope you will hear that. God loves you.

  4

  Getting a Grip on Grace

  As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.

  —PSALM 103:13–14

  NOT LONG AGO my daughter insisted on holding my water bottle. I tried to reason with her and explain how it was too heavy for her but you can’t reason with a one-year-old. Then I tried to bargain with her by offering to pour some water into her sippy cup. Hayden wasn’t having any of it. She shook her head back and forth and said, “Hold it? Hold it?”

  Finally I gave in. “Okay, you can hold it. What do you say?” Hayden rubbed her hand on her chest, which is sign language for please and said, “Please.” I placed the bottle in her hands but tried to hold them in mine to keep her from dropping it.

  “NO! Hayden hold it,” she said as she jerked the bottle away from me. Just as I had warned her, when she tried to take a drink she poured freezing-cold water down her chest, soaking her little body as she sat strapped in her high chair. As I hurriedly tried to get her unbuckled, she screamed in pain.

  I lifted Hayden out of her high chair. “You’re okay, you’re okay,” I said, trying to soothe her, but she screamed and cried even louder. I pulled her dress off and wrapped her in a towel. Cradling her to my chest, I rubbed her, warming her up. “I know it’s very cold. That’s why Momma didn’t want you to hold it. I was trying to protect you, my love.” Hayden placed her head against me, still sobbing.

  As I sat in my kitchen, holding my shivering daughter, I saw myself in her. I have a heavenly Father who loves me, but for most of my first twenty-one years, I did not listen to Him and did things my way. Inevitably, I’d end up shivering and cold, crying out to Him as I suffered the consequences of my poor choices. But I kept dumping freezing-cold water on myself because all I could think about was everything I might have to renounce if I gave Him complete control of my life. Even though He tries to protect us, and we know His ways are higher than ours, we still try to do things our way, thinking we know best. Now, with a daughter of my own who doesn’t like the rules I have set for her, I see God in a new light. I realize He really does have my own best interests at heart because He loves me so much. That’s a lesson it’s taken me a long time to learn.

  God had my best interests at heart when He nudged me to change majors and colleges. Before, I struggled not only to keep up with all my science classes, I also struggled to stay interested. My biology classes went well but I hated chemistry and it hated me. We were not a good match. That just fed the growing sense of discontent within me, that feeling like something needed to change. Deep down, I knew that dental school was also a poor match for me, but my practical planner side kept me locked into that decision. And I am a planner. My life is scheduled and regimented. I don’t like leaving anything to chance. I think that’s what caused me to go ahead with the biology major/orthodontist plan. My future was laid out and I was assured of having a good career and a comfortable life.

  As I have always heard, people plan and God laughs. I think during my two years at FSU God must have been looking down at me, shaking His head and laughing: Ainsley, this just isn’t you. But when I started my journalism course, I felt the exact opposite. I’d found my place even though I was busier than I’d ever been in my life. Anytime you change majors you lose hours, which can push back graduation. If you transfer from one college to another, you lose even more hours and g
raduation gets pushed back even further. I did both. My dad told my siblings and me, he would cover four years of college and no more. After this, I’d be lucky if I graduated in five. I had no choice but to jump in with both feet and take as many credit hours as I could. Once you paid for twelve hours, the rest were free, so I loaded up. I was trying to make up for lost time. Being so busy, though, did have a bright side: I didn’t have time to eat much more than a bagel with a glass of sweet tea for lunch, which meant my dad didn’t have to pay for a full meal plan. At least I saved him a little money.

  I approached school like a girl on a mission and used my organizational skills to get through my studies. Keeping everything straight wasn’t easy but I figured out a system to organize all of my notes. I also did my homework assignments every night. Most professors checked and gave you a 100/A+ test grade at the end of the semester if you did all of the homework. That was a no-brainer for me. In fact, I thought it determined who would and would not be successful in life. There were many talented kids who never did their homework. I thought that was a sign of laziness. Why wouldn’t you take advantage of an easy A? The homework also prepared me for the big exams, especially in math. Midterms and finals were always mastered by studying and reviewing every single homework assignment. When I had to study for my exams, I went back over my homework and redid every math problem. Similar math problems were, of course, on the exam, and if I knew how to do one, I knew how to do them all. The key was studying in advance. That was the key then and still is today.