But Jesus: The Journey of a Half-Grown Human and a Divine Being

By Anu Hernandez

Do you feel alone or crazy because you have always known you were designed differently? Are you afraid to ask questions and express strong emotions in God’s presence? Have you felt hopeless, because everything about your life seems to disqualify you from a relationship with God? Have you refused to settle for a set of religious rules, because deep within you know that a relationship with Jesus has to feel more personal?

This book is for you if you are ready to experience a God;

Who is unafraid to step into your darkness just because He loves you.

Who will validate your pain and give you authority in the very places you have been broken.

Who is secure enough to listen to your questions and emotions without making you feel like you are too much.

Who will offer you a beautiful transformative journey birthed from intimate relationship.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jul 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9781664272323

Anu Hernandez

Debut author Anu Hernandez is a creative who courageously shares the beautifully brutal journey of faith. Born and raised in Southern India, she immigrated to the United States in 2013. With a Master of Science in Counseling Psychology and a passion for systemic transformation, Anu is an advocate of global and generational healing. Anu loves telling stories through the visual mediums of words and pictures. When she is not writing, you will probably find her listening to music or watching her favorite creature feature/natural disaster movies. Anu lives in Bakersfield, California.

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Copyright © 2022 Anu Hernandez.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Scripture quotations marked TPT are from The Passion Translation®. Copyright © 2017, 2018 by Passion & Fire Ministries, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ThePassionTranslation.com.

Scripture quotations marked (ESV) are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked MSG are taken from THE MESSAGE, copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, a Division of Tyndale House Ministries.

Cover Photography by Tiffany L. Wong and Marie Camille DuPont

Cover Design and Editing by Sarah McCurtis and Jesualdo Romo

Content Editing by Tiffany L. Wong

ISBN: 978-1-6642-7233-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-7234-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-7232-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022912669

WestBow Press rev. date: 07/19/2022

Dedication

To the rebellious and rejected.

To the skeptics who dare to ask.

To those who walk two worlds in one stride.

To my divine warriors in human skin.

To me.

To Him.

I count it all joy for you.

I love you. It is well.

Now and Forever

Little Leech

Contents

Dedication

Preface

Foreword

Introduction

Chapter 1 But Jesus, Why a Leech?

Chapter 2 But Jesus, Something Is Wrong with the Air!

Chapter 3 But Jesus, I Am Just an Atom!

Chapter 4 But Jesus, Why Rocks?

Chapter 5 But Jesus, I Like My Short Hair!

Chapter 6 But Jesus, I Am Not a Boy!

Chapter 7 But Jesus, They Can Never Know!

Chapter 8 But Jesus, Will You Keep It Real with Me?

Chapter 9 But Jesus, Can I Seriously Be That?

Chapter 10 But Jesus, Can Ya Handle Me Now?

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

Epigraph

I was not an afterthought to You

You knew me from the start

Your promises remain true

You give me every piece of Your heart

Moriah Unruh

Preface

This book was supposed to be my creative take on a suicide note, my swan song project, my final attempt to even the score with God. I wanted Him to hurt—to feel everything I was feeling and more. I wanted to be the first one in human history to play a cruel joke on Him and get away with it. If He was not going to give me the life I wanted, then I did not want life at all. How could He make such lofty claims about knowing the prosperous plans for my life and allow it to fall apart like this?

It was time to take matters into my own hands. Life had once again proven to me that nobody, not even God, had my back. My suspicions of mistrust were justified yet again. So, I made my plans and finalized my decision to end it all. No more of this tomfoolery. It was time for the business of revenge. I was going to expose God for the scam artist He was and let the pages of my book speak to the evidence of His fraud.

However, what I thought was the end of my time on earth was actually the beginnings of life anew. While I was piecing together my retribution strategy, God was creating a divine blueprint for the next chapter of my life. He had heard my pain and executed a counterstrike without me even realizing it. He knew that focusing my energy on a creative project would distract me just enough to give Him the time and space needed to purge the trauma out of my system.

I begged Him to let me die, and He begged me to stay alive. As the enemy spewed curses of death at me and said he was here to destroy me, God whispered promises of life abundant. When I teetered on the cliffs of insanity, God carried my war-torn mind and laid it at the foot of the cross. When my body shook for weeks in a desperate attempt to release the trauma it had suffered, God wrapped His arms around me and held me until the shock subsided.

Over time, I witnessed the venom of hell transform into the vision of heaven. I learned that the deceptive sweetness of death in the face of bitter reality pales in comparison to the gift of life that God breathed into my earthen vessel on the appointed day of my creation. I was reminded that I was never fashioned to fit in but crafted to stand out. I was commissioned to fulfill an assignment from the courts of heaven and not the pits of hell.

The enemy knows this, and that is why he shudders in fear. He understands that if you grasped the reality of your true identity, what you unleash in this world will obliterate all kinds of feeble demonic plans ever laid. And that terrifies him. It would terrify me too. So, he lies and torments, hoping that you will self-destruct because he has no real authority to take your life. He tells you that you are a failure, that you are alone, and that nobody wants you here. He sells you cheap imitation forged from deception in the brutal moments of life that break you at your core and shatter every dream you ever dared to rest on.

But here I am. I am a testament of what happens when you stand with God and resist the devil. Life left me with questions only God could answer, so I asked. Betrayal handed me a chant of grief, so I turned it into my battle cry. My greatest hope is that as you read this book, you will feel welcomed into an intimate connection with a God, whose covenant surpasses all your fears, failures, and flaws. You are not damaged goods; you are the cornerstone that He sets apart to build His kingdom on earth. You are not an accident; no life is created without His seal of approval. You who have considered yourself foolish, God intends to use you to confound the wise and elite. In all your But Jesus moments, know that you were created to bear witness with authentic finesse.

Anu Hernandez

Foreword

Yes, God is more than ready to overwhelm you with every form of grace, so that you will have more than enough of everything, every moment and in every way. He will make you overflow with abundance in

every good thing you do.

2 Corinthians 9:8 (The Passion Translation)

Many of us have been vulnerable to the pain caused by people who have left us deeply wounded. We go through life feeling sorry for ourselves, living in self-pity and without hope. We struggle with our sense of worth and value, all because of what others broke within us. I was one of them too, but I did not know I needed healing for my soul. I assumed that it was my lot in life, that I needed to get over it and move on!

It was my sister who invited me to a class on dysfunctional relationships at a church. She thought it would be interesting but did not want to go alone. At the time, I did not feel like I had any issues concerning dysfunctional relationships, but I prayed and asked the Holy Spirit if I should go with her. His response was Yeah, for sure! Little did I know this was a setup.

After a couple of weeks, I wanted to drop the class because it was getting uncomfortable. It was causing my deeply buried pain and wounds to rise to the surface. I continued to persevere through the course of that class and graduated, only to start up another one right after that. As I read Anu’s book, I felt some of those triggers from my past resurface, but Jesus told me that this was the purpose behind Him asking her to write this book. But Jesus is supposed to bring healing into broken hearts. Anu is so transparent, delicate, and intimate in her book.

Every chapter is so captivating that it brought me to tears. It reminded me of myself in so many ways. She makes you feel like you are walking in the moments shared between her and Jesus. I loved how Jesus became who she needed Him to be, just so He could relate to her, and she could relate to Him. She quotes in her book that Jesus told her, Healing and deliverance are lifelong investments of heart work that make you more like me. Just because you get saved does not mean that everything from your past vanishes into thin air.

Jesus even told Anu that she was responsible for healing her wounds with Him. The more you heal from your wounds, the more you can live out your divine mandate on earth as it is in Heaven. Jesus cares so much about the condition of our hearts. It is up to us to invest in our healing and allow God to begin the restoration as He has done with Anu. Remember it is a lifelong process, one in which I am still being healed.

Through her book, Anu taught me that it was okay to ask Jesus whatever questions you may have, even something like the meaning of your name. She makes a valuable point of our desperate need to search for intimacy and love that is found in Jesus first! For in Him and through Him, we will succeed in all our relationships!

I am so proud of this young lady and for all her hard work and effort. She refused to let the painful moments of her life be wasted and used them to write her story for such a time as this. Wherever you find yourself today, this book will give you the encouragement you need to partner with Jesus. It will empower you to allow Him to lovingly move you past your pain and brokenness, so you can live out of a healed heart.

Sylvia Smith

Introduction

Her hand raised itself, a few inches at a time. I could see hesitation make its presence known through the uncertain movement. I sat at the back of the room, present only as an observer, a fly on the wall there to partake in silence. This precious thirteen-year-old was about to bare her soul amid her peers. She was risking it all, despite the chances of possibly being mocked by the ones whose approval she craved most. Her courage amazed me, and I wondered what she was going to say.

In a trembling voice she said, Sometimes I question God about a lot of things. I feel bad. I want to believe in everything He says: I want to have faith in all that I have been taught, but I have doubts. What do I do in those moments? Is it okay to question Him? I felt my heart glow with pride. What a blessing it was to have witnessed this profound moment—a young heart boldly seeking for answers. I waited eagerly to hear the response she was about to receive. Surely it was going to be one of gratitude and validation. It had to be some kudos to her childlike faith.

But I was about to witness something so foreign in comparison to my personal experience with God. I am sorry, dear, but we are not supposed to question God. If you find yourself doing that, you better apologize and ask Him to forgive you. That is all I heard because my ears started to ring with shock, like in the movies when a bomb explodes, and people are thrown to the ground. That was it—case closed—onto the next question.

Wait! What just happened? That is what we were going with to raise the next generation of the kingdom? I sat up straight, trying to make sense of this. A rage surged through me, radiating from my core to my extremities. I felt my inner Hulk growing, but I had to contain her. NO! I do not receive this. This is not you, Jesus. My entire relationship with you emerged from a plethora of questioning and healthy dialogue. This is wrong. You are being misrepresented. You have to do something. You have to put your foot down on this. You have to tell her the truth. She cannot live the rest of her life believing that she cannot come to you in her uncertain moments. What kind of cruel life sentence is that? It is a lie that has overstayed its welcome because of an outdated belief system.

I could not verbalize anything in that moment without being perceived as disrespectful towards authority, so I chose to keep quiet. The empath in me understood what this young heart might have been experiencing in that moment, I felt the searing shame that burned through her flushed cheeks. I swear I could hear the embarrassment of her heart as it shut down with locks and chains. In that moment, a divide was created, a separation of human soul from divine spirit. She probably just made the decision to never show Him her true feelings again. If she could never question Him, then she could never find the answers to clarify the mysteries of her heart.

Right then, in that moment, sitting on a cold plastic chair at the back of an even colder room, I felt a nudge. You know that nudge. Yes, that is the one. The little jolt of accountability from the Holy Spirit that you cannot deny. Why you gotta do me like that, God? My nudge took on the form of a memory.

I saw myself in India over a decade ago, sitting in a crowded bus that was so full of people that it leaned precariously to one side. The summer breeze carried the sweat of tired men on their way home from a hard day’s work, blended with the fragrance of wilting jasmine flowers pinned on women’s braids.

Despite the overwhelming bustle, I was lost in thought within, partially because I myself was exhausted at the end of the day. I loved my job, but it required me to travel a couple of hours by public transportation to get to and from work. I also had to walk a couple of miles to get to the right public transportation. If I was lucky, I would find an empty seat on the bus to rest my tired body during the forty-five-minute ride home. On unlucky days, I had to stand most of the way, inappropriately crammed next to strangers.

This evening, life had decided to be kind and allowed me to find an empty spot next to a window so I could escape the world around me. Soon I drifted into the realm of wistful thought. While I wholeheartedly believed that this season of struggle was crucial for my overall development, I did not want my entire time on earth to be marked by it. As I settled into my corner, my mind relaxed into a space of processing some bigger life questions. The emerging theme of my long-term questioning seemed to center around the dreams I wanted to bring to life. Suddenly I heard my inner self saying, "I want to write a book called The Culture of Convenience, a book that discusses the various facets of the oppressive culture I live in and how Jesus has proven to be a contrasting advocate of my freedom." I complimented myself for the catchy title and closed my eyes to take a quick nap.

After that, I thought about it every now and then, but there were always other things vying for my attention. I would feel the momentary guilt but rationalize away the discomfort. I will get to it at the right time, I would say, hoping that life would take upon itself the responsibility for keeping my promise. That right time never showed up at my front door.

Now, here it was again, roughly ten years later, reminding me of that incomplete dream that sat on my spirit’s shelf. And even that holy nudge was not enough to ignite a concrete step of action. It took a ghastly horrific turn in my life a few years later and death staring me in the face to set my creative project in motion.

Being thrown into unexpected grief instead of joyful reward confronted every excuse I had ever made. It was in the abyss of catastrophe that I found God once again pointing me toward the assignment He had given me years ago. The first couple of months post-trauma, I entertained both life and death. One moment I would be fine, and the next I would want to pull out a knife from the kitchen drawer and end my life. After all, I had experienced everything I had deemed an abundant life. I had tasted the sweetest moments of pure love and bitten into the toxic rot of betrayal. What else could life offer me at this point?

At the core of my being, I knew I did not really want to die. I wanted to escape the pulverizing pain. I wanted it to leave me alone. But that did not seem likely to happen anytime soon, so the only viable option in my volatility was for me to disappear. It was either that, or I cut my heart out. Some mornings I woke up feeling like I was on top of the world, filled with hope, knowing that God was going to fight my battle. Other days I woke up realizing that I was crying in my sleep because the pain was too unbearable to feel in an awakened state.

The day I decided to write this book, a sense of calm resolve washed over me. Even though my motives were dark and twisted, there was peace. Writing certainly helped. I lost track of time when I wrote. At times, I would write all day and night. God forced me to invest myself in this type of creative activity because He understood how needed it was. Writing opened a wormhole of sorts to escape from my dismal reality. It demanded that I focus on the origins of my walk with Jesus, a walk that had started way back when I was just a little girl.

In the midst of this, something miraculous began to take shape. I did not see it at first. It happened so unassumingly, without show or demand for recognition. As I poured myself into my writing and became educated on the process of publishing a book, a simultaneous work of healing was taking place in my heart. I did not have to put myself back together in my limited wisdom. I simply had