My Faith Journey

Disclaimer: the following is a portion of an essay submitted for my admission into Seminary. It is an intimate perspective on my life events. If you know me personally and do not wish to know how life circumstances have affected me, please discontinue reading now.

In December I will celebrate my 45th birthday. By all outward appearances, mine has been an idyllic life. Raised in a Christian home, the doted-on only child of a working mom and engineering father, I married my high-school sweetheart, mothered three intelligent, beautiful, and kind daughters, and now my weekends are spent soaking up the Florida sun in my swimming pool.

But these nearly 16,425 days I've lived, on this rock hurtling through space around a giant star, have seen their share of pain, brokenness, grief, and questioning. As is the sum of any human experience, the bitter is mixed with sweet, and it has been those challenges that have shaped me, for worse, into something usable, for better.

My father, a Deacon in our church, taught me about god, and the many ways in which humans are to be good and faithful – and the many more ways in which humans fail and are disobedient. The god of my youth was a sickeningly-scary entity, emotionally detached, always watching, assured of my impending doom (because perfection was demanded and no one is perfect). This god condemned almost everything, and most certainly anything which was against his rules and regulations. 

The scariest part? Those rules and regulations weren't exactly clearcut. Of course one needed to avoid murder, theft, and lying, but in that legalistic worldview, in which the Bible was read literally and authoritatively, there existed, always, a drowning awareness of very possible (likely and probable) additional rules, which must be interpreted, inferred, and mysteriously divined as accurately as possible. With each implied-doctrine came the certainty of uncertainty, so damnation was as sure as the air one breathes.

Salvation? Maybe. Best to toe the line and hope god has enough mercy for you.

Grace? A mere afterthought, not entirely understood; best to give it lip service, but not dwell unnecessarily on the matter.

Insecurity and anxiety. Those were the guiding principals in this Christian game, where fear and fire ruled. 

By the time I was a twenty-something wife and mother of three, my beaten spirit had understandably had enough of this one-dimensional, hardened version of god and his anxiety-riddled performance-based religion. But the wound was deep and lasting. Bewildered, spiritually bleeding out, and overflowing with so much emotional trauma that death seemed preferable to living this way, I left the church of my youth – and, also departed from the approval of my father.

As I was wrestling with my faith, and just struggling to be a good mom and wife, my father mounted an attack. “Fearing for my soul”, he refused to accept the reality of my adult autonomy. Week after week, he sent chastising e-mails, phoned me with pleading arguments, mailed photocopies of pages he'd found from supporting books which might convince me, delivered explanations of his hurt feelings, visiting our home to re-hash and repeat scripture lessons, as if I had merely blinked and forgotten the years-long indoctrination I'd been subject to. I finally pushed back hard enough to make my father stop. Writing a nine page letter, I detailed every belief of his with which I took issue, assuring him I was capable of examining scripture and not in need of his parental control; I asked him to understand, bearing my heart to him, while firmly laying out boundaries. For the first time in my life, I put my foot down, and demanded he cease harassing me.

My father withdrew completely. I became the enemy, “lost in sin”, and now a danger to his soul. He detached, not unsurprisingly exactly like the god I'd been raised to believe in – offering only cursory greetings when I would take his grandchildren for a visit, remaining passively cool and aloof until his death four years later. We never reconciled, and this is a scar I will carry with me, an added layer of grief over losing a father – twice.

Mysteriously I clung to a remnant of faith – which inexplicably grew the more I pushed god away, and the deeper I dug into my own Biblical understanding. Something in me desperately needed to make sense of it all. Stubbornly I clung to a belief that Love might, somehow, still be true and good. I studied. I read books. I read the Bible from cover to cover. I spent hours in the library, searching online for answers, for differing opinions, seeking any reason to hope – all as fear and doubt writhed within me.

What if I was wrong and my father was right? If I died tomorrow, would I go to hell?

Still, I persisted, praying to the only god I knew, telling him if he really did want me to seek and find, as the Bible suggests, then he would need to lead me to truth, with intention.

One afternoon, in my reading, a verse in Isaiah 55 nearly leapt from the page:

“My plans are not your plans,
nor are your ways my ways,” says the Lord.
“Just as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways,
and my plans than your plans.”

Just a fragment, like a soothing whisper in the midst of a violent storm, these words were a gentle humming in my soul. In that moment, I heard it, I felt it, a convincing assurance in God's own voice: I've got this. You needn't understand, but you can trust Me and My ways. I am higher than your wounds, higher than your father's beliefs about Me. My plans for you are perfect and good.

Over the next few years I asked questions, studied comparative religion, continued to pray, and sifted through confusing puzzle pieces that lay scattered and smoldering, doing my fragile best to make sense of what I believed. My heart was broken, my spirit shattered. I sought out professional mental counseling to help me with my anger, my grief, and my depression. We visited area churches, testing new denominations before our family stopped going to church altogether; all I could hear from each pulpit was condemnation, which only deepened my anger at god and those who spoke for him.

But the words in Isaiah chapter 55 continued to nudge me.

“My plans are not your plans ...” 

I began to lean into this, my beliefs about a small and vengeful god tentatively shifting into beliefs about God, a Divine Figure who is Love – not like love, but who is Love – a God wholly unknown to me, yet becoming known layer by gentle layer, building a place worthy of my respect and asking me to allow myself to be Loved. Trusting in this God was so scary – the self-doubt, the fear of being wrong and going to hell, and my father's voice in my head now a sort of personal demon rattling chains with every step I took toward the peace I so badly craved.

One Sunday, on a whim, I suggested to my husband that we visit the church down the road from our house. We sat on a back row as this new minister spoke of grace like it was real, as if it were tangible and sweet. I felt myself opening up, so weak from yearning, so weary of fighting, tears trailing down my cheeks.

We continued going to this church. My anger never seemed to bother anyone there. My questions were never met with defensiveness or condemnation, only compassion. After a year or so, my husband and I decided to seek membership, even though we were so adamantly against organized religion. There was something of God in those walls – and, more importantly, in the hearts of the people there, so many of them like me, forged from broken places, now nestling together, sheltered by communal Love.

My growing awareness of God came with a deeper understanding of Jesus and the freedom he affords us all. My beliefs shifted into something more in line, I believe, with mercy – toward others, and toward myself … even mercy toward my father, whose voice began to dwindle, becoming more tinny and less frequently heard. I can't say for certain I won't always hear some form of that self-doubt, trickling in through cracks that are still being scabbed over by blood and water … but I like to think the deeper I lean into God, the quieter and less influential those doubts will be.

Now, after fifteen or so years on the other side of that huge life shift, I've felt a different sort of nudge – and when I am completely honest, I understand it to be one in a thousand different ways God has been calling me to higher ways, to higher plans –

“... my ways are higher than your ways, and my plans than your plans.”

Out of brokenness, I've arrived at a place (to paraphrase and bend a quote attributed to Mohandas Gandhi) of being the change, being the Church, I wish to see in the world. For so long I refused to speak about the pain caused by my father and the hardline Christian denomination in which I was raised. But in cultivating listening to God's voice, I have heard God encouraging me, preparing me, all along, for a ministry of leading in mercy and compassion, planted firmly on a foundation of understanding what it's like to live under the thumb of control and fear.

My father, and my legalistic upbringing, messed me up. But the very way I was raised is exactly what provided me with an awareness of how we hurt each other “in the name of god”; this experience gave birth to my curiosity about the Creator, and ultimately pushed me into the arms of Jesus. I know what it's like to be abused by those who speak for the Church, and I know what it's like to emerge from that to find meaning and hope outside of it.

My vocational goal is to be a Spiritual Director for the spiritually bereft who still seek an open and genuine walk with God. I want to help others who have been wounded by the church and authoritative religion, to listen to them and help them process and sift through their pain and their grief, to help them on their faith journey to the safety of personal spiritual ownership, empowered to step out and be the best version of the Church in God's kingdom. 

I want to be the hands and feet of Jesus.

I wasn't exactly certain how to go about it, however, so I did my research. When a lifelong friend, who came from a similarly broken place, suggested it was time I go to Seminary, I knew he was right. Obviously, I needed more education, a deeper understanding of the historical significance of the Bible and the Church. And I knew I wanted to be with others who were humbly open and accepting of questions, heavy on scholarship, respectfully giving scripture its due, without lording over the learning process with manmade dogma.

I narrowed my search down to three potential Seminaries and spoke with individuals from each one. In every conversation with a representative from Lexington Theological Seminary, in every course description on their website, even in portions of their student handbook — I felt at home. I believe this to be another extension of what has always been God's prevenient grace, holding my hand and my heart, leading me to a deeper evolution on my faith journey.

Last week I submitted an application to Lexington, and today I am absolutely thrilled to tell you I accepted their invitation to begin my studies there toward a Masters in Theological Studies.

I know I will be challenged in ways I can't yet anticipate, but I expect and want to learn so much. I believe I am up for another 16,425 days journey around the sun, and I am very excited to begin this next leg of the journey, taking my next step toward God's calling on my life.