FamilyLife Today®

Dave Wilson: What is the one thing that always makes me cry? Makes me tear up?

Ann Wilson: Well, you cry at every single movie you see. Every movie. And so I would say a good story.

Dave Wilson: Yeah, that's it. If I'm at church and there's an emotional moment, video, worship, hands raised, singing my heart out, that's emotional. But when someone walks up and tells their story, I don't know what it is. I'm over there sobbing most of the time. You love that, huh?

Ann Wilson: I loved that you do that because you don't do it every day in normal life. So there's something that's maybe there. But I think all of us, a good story is compelling. It draws us in.

Welcome to FamilyLife Today where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Dave Wilson.

Ann Wilson: And I'm Ann Wilson. You can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Dave Wilson: Today is story day. We've got Quina Aragon with us, a spoken word poet, an author, a speaker, a wife, a mom. We're going to get to hear your story. Quina, welcome.

Quina Aragon: Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here, and I'm a sucker for stories as well.

Ann Wilson: Well, you create stories with your words.

Quina Aragon: That's what I want to do.

Dave Wilson: Can you tell us your whole life story in a spoken word? Could you just make one up on the spot?

Quina Aragon: Back in 1989—I wish I could. I wish I could.

Dave Wilson: A lot of your spoken word, though, is your life story, I'm guessing.

Quina Aragon: A lot of it just comes out of wherever I'm at in life. Honestly, writing poetry and spoken word pieces came after I came to know the Lord. I've always seen it as a gift from God that I want to use for His glory in whatever capacity I can write creatively. I've always enjoyed writing in general, but it was always very academic. Class presentations and things like that.

But when I was 16, a friend on my volleyball team shared the gospel with me. I saw later on, as she and her mom were tag-teaming discipling me in that first year, I saw her older sister do a spoken word piece to honor their mom and I was like, "That's cool." I've always liked hip hop, but I've never really tried to write like that.

Ann Wilson: Are you artistic?

Quina Aragon: I never really was. I was an athlete. That was it. School and sports and that's it. Actually, the girl who shared the gospel with me later was like, "I remember you used to be terrible at poetry. We did the poetry segment in tenth grade and your poems were not good."

After I came to know the Lord, I would write in my journal and it would come out as poetry. Whatever I was processing in life, whatever I was processing as I was learning about God. An English teacher caught wind of that, and she was like, "You're going to be a part of this poetry slam that I'm putting together." It was a big public high school here in Orlando. She said, "You need to memorize a poem and perform it." That was my first time getting on stage and performing a memorized poem.

It was in front of multiple classes of 300 students at a time. I remember a lot of my peers coming up to me afterward teary-eyed and saying how it touched them or how they had never really thought about God like that. Immediately, of course, I'm like, "Wow, this could be a ministry in itself—a ministry of words, a ministry of storytelling."

Dave Wilson: Tell us your story.

Quina Aragon: In 1989, I was born in Manila, Philippines. My mom is half-Filipino, half-Puerto Rican. My dad's Jamaican. I have an older sister. She was four years old when I was born. My real name is Iva Quijana Valenciano Parchment. But in very Filipino fashion, everyone just calls me Quina.

I was born in the Philippines and then moved as a baby here to Orlando and grew up here. I grew up with a pretty Catholic background, and I really didn't have any interest in God. It was in middle school, maybe, that I started to ask the nuns questions. I was the annoying student that's like, "Excuse me, how do we know what Muslims believe isn't true? How can we really believe the virgin birth?" I just had questions like that.

The answer I would get back a lot was "just have faith," but there really wasn't much of an object to my faith. There wasn't really this study or love for scripture. I didn't know much about it. I went into high school, a big public high school. I went from this small little Catholic school where I'm one of the only black kids there, experienced racism, experienced all this stuff, but I found this identity and sense of belonging through sports.

Going into high school, I was asked to play basketball for one of the public high schools here. That was going to be my focus. Basketball and then volleyball. I experienced in tenth grade just this sense of "what's the point?" At that point, in a high school way, I had it all. My family was fairly well-off at the time. I had the boyfriend. I had the popularity. I had done well in sports, done well in schools. I felt very Ecclesiastes. "All right, I have all these things, now what? It's meaningless. It feels like chasing after the wind."

I started to very much to myself grapple with some of those questions. "What's this all for? What's the point? If you're smart, you die. If you're not so smart, you die. If you're rich, you die. If you're poor, you die."

Dave Wilson: You had those kind of thoughts in tenth grade?

Ann Wilson: Even before that. That was the same as my story and age. I remember being in bed thinking, "Why am I here? What's the point?"

Quina Aragon: It always felt very empty despite all the good things God had blessed us with. I had a friend in my English class who was a track star. I admired her because she was another athlete and she was very smart. But what I noticed was, even though she was very approachable, she wasn't cursing people out like we were. She wasn't gossiping like we were. She wasn't doing the same things.

I just took note of that, and eventually she ended up being my best hitter on my volleyball team. I was a setter. Of course I liked her for that because she got us all the points. I started to spend more time with her outside of practice. I'd go to her house and her family were believers. They didn't thump me over the head with the Bible or anything, but they were just very welcoming. I always say it was really their hospitality that drew me in. The sense that I could feel grace and warmth, the way they interacted with each other. All things I noticed. I'm like, "Wow, they're different."

I think it was after prom or homecoming. I remember talking to that friend. I slept over and I saw a Bible verse on her wall that she had printed out. I don't know if people still do that where they print out Bible verses and throw them on their walls.

Ann Wilson: Oh yeah, they do. We've done it.

Quina Aragon: It was the oddest Bible verse to have on your wall, but it was from the book of James. It said, "So you believe there's one God. Good. Even the demons believe that and tremble." She had that. Honestly, the Lord used that because I would have said at that time I'm Christian. "Yeah, yeah. I'm good. I'm a good person. I have morals." Of course, at that time I was also seeing my sin snowball. As much as my parents tried to raise me with morals, in high school I got exposed to so many things that I got enslaved to—sexual sin, all kinds of stuff.

I saw that verse and I was like, "What does that mean?" God really used it. She shared just that you can have a relationship with God. I'd never heard that language before. She just more so shared story at first. She didn't necessarily share the full, "Okay, this is what Jesus did," but just that you can have a relationship—it's possible. Of course I thought about that later.

I remember one providential night, I was in my room wrestling with those same questions. "Why am I here?" I think I was stressed about something, maybe volleyball. It led to this breakdown. I finally had an emotional breakdown. I didn't used to cry. I was very avoidant with my feelings. Just suppress, suppress, suppress. I'm tough. I don't have issues.

I was in my room and just had a breakdown. I have an aunt and uncle who are my Ninang and Ninong, which is like your godmother and godfather in the Philippines, who are believers. They would send me a Bible all the time as a gift. I had Bibles in my room; I just never read them. They were just dusty. That day, that night, I opened up one of the Bibles they sent me, not really knowing even how to read scripture or what it's about. I just opened it to the middle, which happened to be the Psalms. It was Psalm 69.

All I remember—of course it's poetry—all I remember was just seeing the type of emotional language. I thought the Bible was "thou," "thy," old King James language that I couldn't understand, and I thought it was all commands. To see a poem where the poet is like, "Save me, I'm drowning. I have more enemies than hair on my head. Rescue me with your sure salvation." These types of words. I was like, "Wow." Something drew me to that.

Ann Wilson: I want to read that.

Dave Wilson: Maybe you should read it because you're good at that. I like hearing your voice when you do it.

Quina Aragon: That whole beginning. "I'm exhausted from crying for help. My throat is parched." That's exactly where I was at. This is what blew me away was the beginning. "Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in deep mire where there is no foothold. I have come into deep waters and the floods sweep over me. I'm weary with my crying out. My throat is parched. My eyes grow dim with waiting for my God. More number than the hairs of my head are those who hate me without cause. Mighty are those who would destroy me, those who would attack me with lies. O God, you know my folly. The wrongs that I've done are not hidden from you. Let not those who hope in you be put to shame through me, O Lord God of hosts. Let not those who seek you be brought to dishonor through me."

Dave Wilson: Are you remembering that night? Is that what's hitting you?

Quina Aragon: I am. But I'm also thinking how relevant those words have been to me now, 20 or so years later of walking with the Lord.

Ann Wilson: How sweet of Him to take you to that scripture that just sunk and pierced your heart. What did you feel? This is a God that what?

Quina Aragon: That allows me to feel. I didn't allow myself to feel, and I would say in some ways in my childhood, I wasn't allowed to feel. I wasn't allowed to express anger. I wasn't allowed to express those things. Maybe not explicitly, "Hey, you're not allowed to have those things," but implicitly, those were things that I didn't know that I could safely express. Here I open the Bible and it's words like that. I'm like, "Wait a minute. You're allowed to talk like that? That's how I feel."

Dave Wilson: It's so beautiful as I hear your story to think, number one, God used a family. This mom and dad, your friend.

Ann Wilson: Their hospitality.

Dave Wilson: You being in their home. I think often we as families, especially Christian families—I'm sure our listeners think, "God's not going to use us." No. When you have people in your home or in your neighborhood, it's powerful. You watch them. You watch the way they talk. You watch how she lived at school and you notice there's something different.

And then God uses art through scripture that connects to you. I came to Christ at a music concert and I'm a musician. Ann said to me the other day, "Isn't that interesting that God would use music and it hit your soul different than a preacher?" Yours was the word of God, but through poetry in the word of God. That's just pretty cool how God works.

Ann Wilson: I love how He woos us.

Dave Wilson: You guys are both crying. I guess I've got to start crying. Come on, God. Help me out. I'm trying to make it through the interview. You're alone in your bedroom, dusty Bible, open it up, boom.

Quina Aragon: Didn't know how to pray. I just knew I was crying and I was reading that. Then I was like, "I should probably ask my friend about this stuff because she seems to know about it." I was too shy to talk to her because I feel like I've never been great on my feet to just have a conversation or to say certain things.

Dave Wilson: You're a spoken word artist, but you're not good on your feet?

Quina Aragon: Those are memorized.

Dave Wilson: Oh, really? So you still feel that a little bit?

Quina Aragon: I do. I prefer the comfort of thinking through, writing it, and then "okay, now I know what I want to say." I wanted to talk to her, but I was afraid. Even though she was very friendly, I was still a little afraid to ask her about these things. It felt very intimate. I wrote a letter, very long-winded, and that's also very on brand for me. It was a very long-winded letter essentially just saying, "Hey, I don't know what's going on, but can you maybe just explain more of this God stuff to me? I know I used the word 'repent' wrong." I used all kinds of words. I just tried to grab words that I had maybe heard before. I was like, "I don't think I have enough repent."

Because I found the letter years later, I read it and I was like, "What?" Anyway, she knew what I was trying to say. I was nervous to give it to her. I gave it to her and I think it was the next day she had one of those gospel tracts that has the little illustrations.

Dave Wilson: Like the "Four Spiritual Laws"?

Quina Aragon: It was basically that. But it was through the IMPACT Movement. So it was incorporating African American history. It was really special. We were on the bus on our way to an away game for volleyball. She sat next to me on the bus and said, "All right, you want me to explain this?" I was like, "Yeah, for sure."

She opened it, explained it. Especially coming from a Catholic background, it was that Ephesians 2:8—that it's not by works that you're saved, but by grace through faith in Christ. That was very powerful for me because I was thinking, "Wait, what? I thought I had to work for this."

Ann Wilson: Isn't it crazy? Like, "Wait a minute. What are you saying?"

Quina Aragon: She even mentioned God becomes your Father. I was kind of uncomfortable with that. That kind of goes back to my story with that. I just remember being very intrigued, but I knew that God had done the work for me through Jesus. Being a perfectionist and being somebody who felt like I was never good enough, I'm always going to fail, to know that God did that for me and that He wasn't expecting me to try to work my way to Him, that He bridged that gap. Simple truth like that.

She thought that I was not interested just because I wasn't talking. I was just really taking it in. I was very silent. She was thinking, "She doesn't care." After the game, I remember I went home. I kept the gospel tract and I went through it again. It has the little prayer at the end. I didn't know how to pray, so I was like, "Okay, I'll just read this prayer." It was genuine. I asked Christ to save me.

I went to school the next day and I was like, "Cool. So what's next? I did the prayer thing." She's like, "What?" I'm just thrown off by her excitement and she's like, "We're sisters now! We're sisters in Christ." I was like, "Okay, cool." I didn't know what anything really meant, but I just knew that there had been a shift and a change in me and I was hungry. At that point, I just wanted to read the Bible. I'm reading James, I'm reading all these things in the Bible. "Oh, this is relevant! How come no one told me this is so relevant?" That's kind of how it started.

Dave Wilson: I've got tears in my eyes now. It's picturing this high school volleyball player sitting on a bus with you, having the courage because you showed interest. That's something as we as parents dream as we raise our kids that they would know eternal things and know what matters. That was one of our goals in raising our three sons—that they would love God and love others. We called it "make a dent where there's lint." Wherever God's put you, make an impact. She did. And you're now making an impact on the world because a high school girl said, "I'm going to share the gospel on a volleyball bus trip" when nobody else is thinking eternity.

Guest (Male): One of the questions we get most often this time of year is, "What study should we do with our small group?"

Ann Wilson: I thought you were going to say, "Who's going to win the Super Bowl?"

Guest (Male): No, I wasn't going to say that. Honestly, if you haven't done the new Art of Marriage—and I said it's a new Art of Marriage—it's been refreshed, redone, and it is awesome. You should do it. Give it a shot.

Ann Wilson: Yeah, you can do the Art of Marriage. If you want, maybe you want to do a parenting study. We have the Art of Parenting or Vertical Marriage. They're all video studies and workbooks, and they're on sale right now through the end of August. 25% off. That's a deal. I like sales.

Guest (Male): Me too. So go to familylife.com/shop. Pick out whichever small group study you want to do and go watch God work in your life and, even more importantly, in the lives of those that you're leading. Familylife.com/shop.

Dave Wilson: I've got to ask you this, though. What about the father thing that you referred to?

Quina Aragon: There's a lot of things I'm working through in trauma therapy right now that I'm still trying to put words to and articulate what my childhood experience was. I will just say it was a bit rocky. That's probably putting it lightly. It was tough. I have complex PTSD. I was just recently diagnosed with that. So I do still get into—even though my dad and I have a great relationship now—I still get into these fight-or-flight moments where I get triggered by something or frozen. I could feel frozen or want to run away from stuff.

When I heard that God could be my Father, it was these complex feelings that I had. I want that, but also, what does that mean? What does that come with? A lot of my journey of learning who God is is learning to not project the shortcomings of my father onto God. Also learning that my story didn't start with me being born. It even started before that with my dad's trauma and his story, and he has had wounds. My mom, too, and their parents. There's intergenerational stuff.

But then the story doesn't even start with that. It goes all the way back to the Garden. It doesn't even start with Adam and Eve. It actually goes before that, which is what my books are about. Before anything, you were loved. My journey as a believer has been trying to grow in that reality that I may know intellectually, but that practically or emotionally, mentally, it can be a hard thing for me to really accept or to really soak in and enjoy at times.

Ann Wilson: I think that was my greatest struggle even when we went to seminary. I know God loves me. I know the scripture says that. I know it analytically. But sometimes I can't get it down into my heart to experience it and to feel His great love. It's taken years to be able to figure that out.

Dave Wilson: It's great that you're wrestling with this in your 30s. I don't think I even started to wrestle with my dad wound—because when I heard the same thing, that God could be your Father, my first thought was, "That's not a good thing." My dad was an alcoholic abuser, gone. My first thought was, "He'll leave me like my dad did." I had to wrestle through. "No, that's not the Heavenly Father. He's the perfect Father."

So what you're wrestling through, I think a lot of our listeners are going, "I'm there now." Even your children's books, as I read through them, I thought, "These are great. These are for kids, but they're for adults as well." Because we need to understand that we're made out of love and that love comes from the Father.

Ann Wilson: That's beautiful.

Dave Wilson: As you think through—we've heard all the way up to you coming to Christ—what would you say is the biggest difference He's made in your life?

Quina Aragon: Give me another hour! I need another hour. The biggest difference has been story. To go back to the beginning. I believe story in so many ways shapes our identity and our identities. The stories of, for example, the Taíno people in Puerto Rico. That has something to do with me.

I believe story in so many ways shapes our identity. When you look at the story of scripture, of course it's filled with little stories as well, many stories that make up one. God is never speaking into a vacuum. He's speaking into a story. He's speaking into somebody with wounds, with trauma, with preconceived notions of who He is. He's speaking into a place where it's not like an empty slate.

He knows how to step into the messiness of our stories and the beauty of our stories and to bring dignity to the Imago Dei that's in us, to us being made in the image of God, and to redeem. God is a story writer. He's a storyteller. He's the best one, obviously. He writes with a really good redemptive arc.

That's the biggest difference. Because in my dark moments, I could see my life, and even my walk with Christ past that honeymoon phase that I was just talking about, past that time as just trauma after trauma after trauma. What was the point? Why am I following Jesus? This is hard. I'm experiencing so many things. Or I can look at it as God has been writing this story and, even through the hardships, has been interested in creating a new creation out of me that changes me on a deeper level than I could have ever known. I'm certain that I would have given up on life itself at this point in my life if I did not have the Lord. A big part of that is understanding that He is writing a story with a beautiful end.

Dave Wilson: What a great day with Quina Aragon. Again, her books, kids' books, are called Love Made, Love Gave, and Love Can. You can get your copies by clicking the link in the show notes at familylifetoday.com. Guess what? We've got her back tomorrow. So we'll see you tomorrow.

Guest (Male): Our vision at FamilyLife is every home a godly home. We need your help to get there. When you become a FamilyLife partner, your monthly support makes that vision actually possible. So the question is: Will you come alongside us and alongside families in need? You can go to familylifetoday.com and read more about it and become a partner. Just click the donate button at the top. Again, you can go to familylifetoday.com.

Guest (Male): FamilyLife Today is a donor-supported production of FamilyLife, a Cru ministry, celebrating 50 years of helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.

Ann Wilson: FamilyLife Today. Help for today, hope for tomorrow. Bye!