For Tatterdemalion - Part 1

Words are slippery things, and my fingers feel clumsy tonight. But I'll give it a go and see what comes of it. I'm not especially good at sharing the deepest parts of myself. I tend towards one of two extremes: speaking through the lens of rationality or veiling things in symbols. That way the soft, hidden parts of me remain invulnerable. But tonight? Tonight perhaps I'll let just a little bit more slip. Tonight perhaps it's important.

So. The highlights, because there are not enough hours this night to write a book. I'm leaving out an awful lot, but the most important parts are here.

Spring of 2011. I had just graduated from college and was in a job-hunting, application-filling, interview-preparing frenzy. My senior year had been a good one, filled with the honey of friendships turned rich by 4 years of searching each other out. It was also a year when I began to feel the tuggings of Christ a bit more persistently. I'd always felt them.

It started when I was young, a 4-year old whose simplicity found Christ good. I said yes to what I knew of Him. It continued on the bus on the way to Christian school when I had no qualms about putting words to this Jesus, telling stories in which He was the hero to whoever happened to be sitting near me on the bus. He compelled my tongue. When I was 8, 9, 10 years old things became more complicated. My mind started getting in the way of my faith even then. Tear-streaked in the dark, I would pad to my parents' room night after night to wake up my mom, desperate for the assurance that I was heaven-bound. Mom would give me comfort, tell me that I wouldn't even be worried about this if I wasn't saved. Somehow that didn't make sense to me. Plenty of heathen felt the worry and chalked it up to something other than God. Or they felt it and stuffed it into the cobwebbiest part of their minds where it could only sneak out at night. Maybe I was a heathen...

In high school the doubts began in earnest. All the classic questions assailed me: is God real? Am I truly convinced of it, or is His reality somehow bound up in the persons of my parents? Would He still be real without them? Do my prayers float up, bump the ceiling, and fall limp to the floor? Is praying just thinking good thoughts about the people I love? What about the sincere Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists who are just as fervent--or more so--than me? Are they all wrong? How can I be right and not them? Am I just a product of where I was born? I was a true creature of my time, full of questions and void of answers. And so it went. Day after day. Night after night. Afraid to talk to my parents. I didn't want to hurt them. Afraid to talk to anyone. Good Christians had no doubts. They just believed. I was desperate for that! There must be something wrong with me...

I attempted, time and time again, to begin reading my Bible and praying in earnest, certain that the broken parts of me would be fixed. But that was all it was: attempts. I would compulsively fulfill this obligation of daily devotions for two weeks, three, four. And then it would dwindle. I would go long stretches without touching the Bible or breathing a prayer, and it left me guilt-ridden. Doubting the efficacy of what I trying to do.

Do you know what the problem was?

All those questions I was asking--they always had different answers. Some days I would believe God was the firmest thing in the universe. Other days I would be tortured by my fear that I didn't think He was real after all. Nothing was solid. I never doubted that there was absolute truth; I merely doubted that I would ever know what it was. One of my deepest worries was that all the Christians who seemed so confident in their faith were merely masquerading. That the Church was all one big facade, that if I knocked it would ring hollow. Perhaps if I had known different Christians, gone to a different church these fears wouldn't have stuck with me. But God planted me in the place He wanted me, near the people He wanted to be part of my life.

Above all, I was disillusioned. My taste of 21st century American church was rancid from long stagnation. I don't mean to make a sweeping generalization. I can only speak for the bit I experienced. But what I experienced was apathy. Lifelessness. A faith that required nothing but my body in a building. And I didn't like it.

My doubts remained my companions as I went off to college. I built deep friendships during my four years. A few of my friendships made no sense; some of my very closest friends had hugely disparate views on a wide variety of issues. But we learned how to listen to one another. We talked about what it means to be human and about what it means to be a Christian. Through these conversations I not only began learning how to listen to--but not be convinced by [my dear friend, if you are reading this you know who you are... and I love you...:)]--"those liberals," but I also began understanding myself a bit better. Half the time in college I felt like my own psychiatrist. But it was good. I learned that yes, I did believe what I was taught growing up. And not merely because my parents told me so anymore.

My senior year of college left me much more convinced of many of my beliefs, but no less hungry for truly knowing Christ, being part of His body in a way that demanded something of me. My mind had gotten in the way of knowing Him, and it was still putting up some resistance at times. But what I really longed for? I longed for Christ to be outside my head. I wanted to know Him in the deep places.

And that brings us back to where we began: spring of 2011, when I had just graduated from college and was in a job-hunting, application-filling, interview-preparing frenzy.

God must have seen all that frenzying and decided I'd keel over if He didn't do something, so He gave me a job. Seriously, though, in His good purposes He knew that the move to a new place, meeting new people, and feeling utterly alone would give Him the space He needed to change me. I do believe I was His before then--starting when I was 4--but I just didn't know what it meant until two years ago.

{Part 2 will be arriving--well, I'm not sure when! If you're still interested, Titi, Part 2 is the encouraging part. It's where things start to get interesting. It's when Jesus starts to come in, all the way in.}