Finding It: And Finally Satisfying My Hunger for Life by Valerie Bertinelli

Author:Valerie Bertinelli [Bertinelli, Valerie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Personal Memoirs, Rich & Famous, Women
ISBN: 9781439141649
Google: -JlLQwAACAAJ
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2010-04-06T04:00:00+00:00

Early the next morning, Tom and I met Angela for breakfast. I was feeling guilty about not being home; Tom was, too. I hated being out of sync and opened up a bit to Angela, who listened like an older sister and recalled how she had gone through a rough patch herself a few years earlier. In telling the story, she said something that really piqued my interest. She said that she had felt as if God had abandoned her in a time of need.

She got angry all over again as she remembered getting out of bed one night and driving to her church, looking for someone with whom she could speak, and hoping to commune with God in His house. But the door was locked.

“I was, like, you’ve got to be kidding me,” she said. “I cried all the way home.”

“What did you do?” I asked.

“I went to bed and I prayed this really nasty prayer,” she said. “It was more like a challenge. All my life I’d been told that God would be there for me when I needed Him. In fact, I was told, He was there all the time. Then I went to His House and I couldn’t get in. What was that about? And so I said, I need to believe in you more than ever. So let me know if you are there. Or else.”

“Or else what?” I asked.

“It was going to be or else I need to re-evaluate,” she said. “As it turned out, I woke up in the morning and went, ‘Oh, my gosh.’ I was different. And I’ve been different ever since.”

“Different?” I asked. “How so?”

“I went to bed thinking I wasn’t loved,” she said. “I woke up knowing that wasn’t true.”

“Just like that?” I asked.

“Just like that.”

I thought, B.S. I was too cynical right then to think that God would enter my life with the suddenness of a light switching on. For the past week or so, I had been going through my own mini-crisis of faith. After months of successful maintenance, I wasn’t feeling great about myself. This trip and the previous one to Chicago had brought that into focus. I had been trying to figure out what had changed, what might be missing, if I was coasting or doing something wrong.

I had tried listening to my inner voice, but it wasn’t talking to me. Or if it was, I couldn’t hear it. Unlike Angela, I didn’t think answers came overnight. I was wrong.

A few days after we returned home, I went out to get the mail and got set to toss out the stuff I consider junk when something in the stack caught my eye. I pulled out the piece of paper and found myself staring at text from I Corinthians 13:4–7:

Love is patient, love is kind.

It does not envy, it does not boast.

It is not proud.

It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered.

It keeps no record of wrongs.

Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.

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