The Search

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I often have trouble explaining the relationship that I have with God. Sometimes I can almost pin point it for a moment or two when I’m deep in the spirit. I will catch a glimpse into His eyes and see what He sees and what He feels for me and for his people. When I was a Satanist I marveled at the wonder of God. I explored the countless explanations of His mystery. He was great, infinite, mighty yet (to me) still nameless. And even so, I still knew as a theist and a philosophy major that He had to be.
 

And so my search for who He was never ceased and yet I felt it led be to someone that I could never know. In the depths of my philosophical endeavors and studies I found that God could not be denied or refuted. I found that God was almighty, found all over and in everything and that He was profoundly evident as the talos or the logos of creation. But I never had Him. Like wind, I would experience Him in a divine knowledge or through a shedding of tears in observation of His nature; but then He flew away. Still, I was captivated by Him because I knew that He had something to do with me..why I was. He was my explanation. My pinnacle. My reason and my pursuit of my being.
 

In all my philosophical endeavours, my occult experiences,studies and dedications and my religious studies and experimenting I still could not have Him fully. I could not tind exactly where He was. I never was able to totally know Him or reach Him. But like any good father, He kept pulling me in through the current interests oft life. I wanted the Truth and eventually I wanted it for what it actually was and not for what I desperately wanted it to be. Through a series of profound spiritual and supernatural experiences, God came to me and was before me. This time, it was all Him. Face to face with what I had searched for years to fully know, to fully have, my mind was changed forever.
 

I had been with God. I had finally opened the door, I had finally run through the ribbon. I was with Him and He with me. He had a name. He had a direction and I knew Him. My explanation; the Love of my life. He led me right to him all those years of pain, brokeness, addiction, occultism, trauma and anguish. I cannot explain to you what it feels like to finally know who I had been looking for all along. To be set free of my chains, my brokenness and my pain.
 

Nothing on this earth I have tried, no drug, no drink, no religion, no sexual encounter, no spirituality or out of body experience or spell I had done could break my chains or could make me feel what one moment in His presence had done to me. It could not compare. The false light and sharad of all those things had been to me were snuffed out in an instant when I was face to face with Him. He who is pure Truth. I had a name to the design and to the designer. A face responsible for all my philosophical and theological conclusions.
 

And even more than that, I found the God that I could know and be with. Not just from a distance or with someone impersonal; but God with me closer than a brother. I never understood when people would say they had a “relationship with Jesus”. But now I know. This cosmological titan, this infinite King of creation who ruled my philosophical interests is also my closest friend. Something deeper than my text books or deeper than the philosophical giants I would read could describe and even deeper than my most profound spiritual experiences in His nature. He speaks with me, He fights for me, and He is so overwhelming that I cry nearly everytime I am in his presence because of the power of His love.
 

It is the same love that made my father the father that he was to me. I fell in love with Jesus like I fell in love with my Dad when I was a little girl. He was my first experience with goodness and with the power of the love of Jesus. Because my dad had that same love running through him as well. My father knew Him too. He was raised by Him and he raised me with that same love given to him by God and walked a journey very similar to my own. The love of Jesus changes people, it gives them freedom; it gives them goodness. The love of Jesus is what defines me. It is why I am as opposed to not. The love of Jesus is who I am. It is what made me fall in love for the first time. ♡
 

-Arianna Vairico
 

Photo info: Photo is of myself in North Carolina