March 11, 2026 | by Cailey Appenzeller
I remember sitting on a wooden bench outside a lecture hall during my second year of college. A mob of ants poured from a slit in the floorboard and raced toward dirty cracker crumbs. These scraps wouldn’t provide lasting satisfaction, but the ants scrambled to secure their perishable prizes. I lifted my shoe, its shadow encasing an army underneath, and brought it down, sentencing them to a squelchy demise. How long would it take the remaining ants to flock to the next crumb, blissfully unaware of the boot hovering above? I was sobered by their fragility, anonymity, and complete ignorance of the bigger picture.
I was not blessed with such ignorance. Growing up, I learned that I also lived under a shadow. My understanding of Christianity was this: We’re ants, God’s a shoe, and his shadow is hovering, a constant reminder that a squelchy damnation awaits. I was a sinner, and God’s just wrath in response to my sin meant I’d spend eternity in hell. I never envisioned God as loving, and perceived no reason he should desire me. Christianity felt like hypocrisy and false advertising. Though it claimed to spread love, joy, and peace, I felt only judgment and wrath.
After high school, I decided I didn’t care about my eternal standing with God. I secretly threw out my Bible and walked away from the church. I was ready to find my own truth. Blissfully ignoring the foot hovering above.
I devoted myself to discovering my purpose through relationships, activities, and possessions. In college, I found many like-minded friends. But the road we thought we were paving toward enlightenment felt strangely disorienting. We waded through darkness without a lamp for our feet or light to our path (Psalm 119:105), our backs bent under the burden of finding our “true” identities.
Nothing provided lasting satisfaction. These scraps left me hungry—and aching.
My wandering led to turmoil within and with those closest to me. I experienced bouts of anxiety and disorienting identity crises. I questioned whether objective truth even existed. Life—hardship, pain, and ultimately, death—felt meaningless. I’d lost all hope.
My life was an incomprehensible and endless pursuit of crumbs. I’d fallen under a shadow of my own making.
Though I couldn’t see it then, an endless well of hope waited patiently by my side. I left the church, but God hadn’t left me. “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the Lord. ‘They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope’” (Jeremiah 29:11).
God began to remind me of his existence—and this time, I was grateful, not fearful. Small mercies penetrated my vacuum of misery. I was moved to tears as I considered all I had to be thankful for: college, food, shelter, parents who loved me, siblings who checked in on me. God had given me these provisions simply because he wanted to.
The stone that had swallowed my heart cracked, creating a space just wide enough for an invitation to slip through. My sister invited me to a Christian ministry on campus. I did not feel ready to return to a church-like environment, but I trusted her enthusiasm. I agreed to just one meeting.
That night I heard aspects of the Christian message that felt completely unfamiliar. Over and over, I heard the word love. As I fought the temptation to run from the room, my confusion anchored me in place. Why was everyone singing about joy? Why were they not terrified of God’s wrath? Had Christianity changed while I was away?
I went again. I listened. And this time, I couldn’t walk away. What if I had only ever understood part of the gospel? God was inviting me to learn it in full. I stumbled across the pure sweetness of the gospel I’d stepped over my entire life. Maybe Christianity wasn’t about me chasing after God, but about God chasing after me. Maybe the looming shadow I’d assumed was a boot was really his open hands.
Maybe God wanted me.
That thought pressed against my heart. One night in bed I asked aloud through the darkness, “God, do you know who I am?” I found my answer in Psalm 139: “For you created my inmost being. You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”
He had always known.
The stone cracked again. My life was an intentional gift, not an unfortunate curse. I was a product of divine wisdom and love. It was not a mistake for me to be alive.
My whole life, I’d failed to understand half of the Christian gospel. God is the perfect embodiment of justice and love. His deepest desire was to share this love with me, despite the fact that I’d despised him most of my life. God and I had a broken relationship that required repair.
God dares to love me, and points to Jesus as proof.
Since I was raised in the church, I knew God’s plan for repair. Jesus, the human embodiment of God, sacrificed himself and received the just punishment for my actions: exile from God’s presence. He paid what I owed to restore my standing with God so that I’d never need to fear judgement or separation. God would have been completely justified to walk out on me, but he didn’t. God dares to extend forgiveness to those who’ve walked away. He dares to reach out his hands to those wandering in darkness. God dares to love me, and points to Jesus as proof.
My life began to change, yielding irrefutable evidence that God was aligning my heart with his, replacing selfish desires with reverence and love for Jesus and his people. I attended Redeeming Grace Church and began to embrace God’s people. I fought to understand preachers instead of fighting to debate. I wanted to understand what God was telling me about himself within the pages of the Bible. I grew in joy and hope, in respect toward my parents, and in a desire to own my actions and seek forgiveness. These changes were not mere maturity. They were foreign desires now made familiar to my heart. This was supernatural.
Soon I started to feel guilt that I couldn’t reciprocate God’s perfect love for me. I had nothing to offer in our relationship. My sister provided the answer to my troubles:
“It’s not much, but you can give him your life.”
The answer was strikingly simple. I had run my life into selfishness, nihilism, and ruin. But now I’d lost my appetite for being at the helm, for chasing crumbs. Now, I knew and trusted that God had the ability and desire to steer my ship out of the path of disaster. With tears and open hands, I told God, “It’s not much, but my life is yours.”
This was the birth of my salvation—the happy relinquishing of my life into the hands of my God, rooted in the power of Jesus’ sacrifice to unite me with him.
I sometimes think of those ants. I remember my old self, with no purpose or meaning, chasing dirty, broken scraps without a hint of satisfaction. Crumbs were never meant to satisfy. But there is a heavenly banquet awaiting where I can feast and be forever satisfied, reunited with the one who saves and gathered with his people (Luke 14).
And a seat is saved for me.
About Cailey Appenzeller
Cailey is a graduate student at the University of Vermont pursuing a master’s in pharmacology. When she’s not hitting the books, she’s exploring novel ideas, wandering through nature, and debating whether today is the day she cleans her room. Her grand ambition in life is to establish diplomatic relations with her cat.
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