Salvation II

No one is forsaken, no one is a liar,

He plants the tree of life on our foreheads with water.

Sunrise- Grateful Dead

The Easter Eve of 2001 marked my official entry into organized Christendom. We had months earlier began attending a Catholic parish near our home. My husband's parents upon learning that we were going to church, starting going again themselves after many years of sitting out. His dad was raised Roman Catholic. His mom being raised Methodist, joined years later. They were pleased at this turn in our lives and were very supportive of us and are the godparents of all of our children except for the youngest, who was born after we left.


The Church celebrates 7 Sacraments:

Baptism
Eucharist (Communion)
Reconciliation (Confession)
Confirmation (dedicating your life to Christ and/or receiving the Holy Spirit and/or completing your baptism)
Holy Matrimony
Holy Orders
Anointing of the Sick or "Last Rites"



I would be receiving four of these on that Easter Vigil celebration. Many of the people joining would have to have gone to Confession first, if they had been baptized at any point in their lives. I hadn't, so the waters of Holy Baptism were going to wash away all sins I had committed to this point. That was pretty cool.  I would then be allowed to participate in the Bread and the Cup. Then I would be Confirmed, completing my entrance into the Faith. After the ceremony was over, those whose marriages had not been sanctioned by the Church would have a special blessing said over them, so we would be doing that, too. It was going to be one big evening!




My husband had stopped going to church in high school when his parents couldn't force him to go anymore and he never received Confirmation, but did in 2000 at a huge event downtown.  What was strange the day of that event were protesters with signs saying that Catholics were not Christians. Catholics were the only Christians until the Reformation was what we were told in class, so these people just didn't know what they were talking about.



An Easter Vigil service is long. I don't remember exactly how many people joined the Church that evening, but the ceremony lasted around 3 hours. There was all the baptizing and confirming new members and then the Mass itself. My husband's parents and grandmother were there while my mom and step dad stayed home to babysit our daughter.

A baptism gift from my husband's family.

I was about 7 months pregnant with our second child at the time I was baptized.  I thought the ceremony was a bit awkward, and not at all how I wanted to be baptized, but hey, what did I know? Catholic priests perform the triune baptism where water is poured over one's head three times in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Next came communion, which I was very happy to partake in, then Confirmation. Once everyone had been processed and Mass ended we had our marriage blessed in the chapel and then we went home.






My husband was very excited for me and said he wished he could do it all over again understanding it like we did now. It seemed like a lot of empty ritual to me, especially since this was so far removed from my initial experiences in the Spirit. For instance, the Church teaches that we receive the Holy Spirit upon confirmation (well, not exactly, but kind of) as if the ritual can infuse one with the Spirit.  I knew darn well that I already had the Holy Spirit. The same with Baptism, which they teach is being "born again". That was not at all what I had formerly believed and experienced. I didn't feel born again after Baptism at all. There was a big disconnect in my mind to the importance they put upon all this stuff and real worshiping in Spirit and in Truth. But, I did honestly feel that God had called me to the One True Church, so I was determined to learn and understand it and eventually be able to take it to heart.





I remember going to sleep that night thinking something was definitely off about all this.  I truly wished I could believe all of it. I believed in God and I wanted to please Him, but this was not what I had thought it was all about.







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What Not to Believe

Was it love, or was it the idea of being in love?

Or was it the hand of fate, that seemed to fit just like a glove?

One Slip- Pink Floyd

In the fall of 2000 I was enrolled in RCIA (the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults) in order to be able to join the Church and finally be baptized. The first few weeks we learned about all the things that the Church did not believe and delved into things I'd never heard of like:



Arianism, Marcionism, Gnosticism, and all false doctrines of early Christendom. They taught us how the Bible was put together by the Church, the Council of Nicaea, the Apostles' and Nicene creeds, the Mother of God, the Virgin Birth and Immaculate Conception (which for those who don't know aren't the same thing). They were very adamant about absolute importance of the Trinity, which to this point I had not ever really considered as foundational.  Later we were taught about the Schism of the East and West, the Reformation, the Council of Trent, the infallibility of the Papacy and Sacred Tradition and how it is at least on par with if not more important than the scriptures.

We learned how the Eastern Orthodox religion was closest to Roman Catholicism and those in that sect were considered separated brethren and how Protestants churches could not be considered churches at all, since they protested against the one true faith. They called non Catholic churches "ecclesiastical communities". We learned that the Roman Catholic Church was founded by Jesus himself when he announced to Saint Peter that on this rock (Peter, the first pope) Christ would build His church. The priest teaching that particular evening even went into the whole petra/petros controversy to which I would learn more about in my own studies later.



Before this, I had always felt that whatever denomination one was in was more due to personal preference and they were all pretty much the same. Boy, was I wrong!



It was stressed that the bread and wine used in communion indeed became the body and blood of Jesus after the priest had consecrated them. The teacher that evening even added a little jab at the fundamentalists to the effect that this verse of the Bible is one they don't want to take literally.



I was shocked when one evening we were told that the book of Genesis, up until Abraham comes on the scene, was complete myth and folklore. The tales of Creation and the Flood, the Tower of Babel and such were just ancient stories and not to be taken as historical fact. We learned that all Abrahamic faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam all believed in the same God.



We learned about how praying to the Saints, especially Mary, was not idolatry and actually very beneficial. It was explained that we were just asking the Saints to pray to God for us since they were already in Heaven.  We spent the last half of class one evening learning about and reciting the Rosary.




All of this was completely not what I thought believing in God entailed, but the history, reasoning, confidence, and splendor of the Church started me thinking that I was very blessed to have happened upon the One True Faith. It was as if God had set this up for me all along. I was being led into the Truth, and it was overwhelming. I had had this whole thing wrong before and God was taking me to the next level. If this was indeed where the Truth was and God had led me here, I was going to give it all I had.





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Truck Stop

The Family Begins

Come to this house

Be one of us.

Make this your house

Be one of us.

Welcome- The Who

After the birth of our daughter, it was decided that I wouldn't be going back to work after all. My husband was quite convinced that I needed to stay home to be with her and I couldn't imagine leaving her with anyone else either. Things would be tight financially, but we would figure it out.



I had a very rough few weeks after the birth, with some postpartum depression and extreme sleep deprivation. What I didn't know is that when you are nursing a baby, there is a feeding round the clock every 2-3 hours. I never would take naps when she did like I should have and I was completely frazzled.  I honestly thought I would never sleep again.



When she was about three or four months old, my husband decided that we should start going to church. We were a family now and it was time to do family things.  He tried a Calvary Temple that was right down the street from us, where his former manager Kyle had attended, but he didn't like it at all. He felt the need to go back to the church in which he was raised, a Catholic parish in a neighboring town. We visited there once and then started going to the parish nearest us on a trial basis. He wanted to have our daughter baptized and I also wanted to be baptized, so we went through the channels to get the process started. The baby could be fast tracked, since my husband was still technically a Catholic and she was Christened a few weeks later. I, on the other hand, was informed that I would have to go through a seven month class to learn all about the Faith before I could receive baptism. The classes would be once a week from September up until Easter when the new members would be officially initiated into the fold.

Our daughter's baptism

I began the classes that fall and after learning that the Church was not hip on birth control, we started to learn about natural family planning. We did want more children, but it would be nice to have some control over it so learning about fertility was very interesting to me. Our first attempt at this planning resulted in me missing my daughter's first steps as I was in the bathroom getting sick. I was already pregnant again.



What I didn't realize when joining the church was the amount of things that they felt it was very important for the initiates to know before we could become members. There was a textbook for the class and homework, note taking, etc. I was pregnant during the entire time of the class and to be honest, learning Catholic dogma was not really something I wanted to do at this time. But do it I had to to be baptized. I don't remember being terribly impressed with the classes and I had a feeling some of the people there didn't think I was taking it seriously enough. I would take Catholic theology manically seriously later, though. I wished in the years following that I had paid more attention and asked more questions during this class, but at this point it seemed rather complicating the whole thing. I believed in God, what is all this other stuff?



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Around Town

Dylan

Relax

It's just a phase

You'll grow out of it

Caffeine- Faith No More

In the late summer of 2010 we were enjoying a nice Labor Day weekend with some family members. While everyone else was busy doing other things, one family member sat down with me and starting talking. What started as small talk became another turning point in my journey.



"I have to tell you something," she said.

I could tell this was serious.

"Dylan is gay.  He told us a couple of years ago and we were worried to tell you. He thought you guys might take it badly and not want your kids to be around him anymore. Everyone else knows but you guys and I didn't want you finding out about it from someone else."


Time stopped for awhile as his mom went on to tell us how they had always suspected this and how he had always known as well. She went on to tell me that even though this had been devastating, they had accepted it. She had even joined a support group and was coming to terms with this new reality.



Wrong answer, I thought.


This person was a Christian, his mom was a Christian. What is going on? They know darn well what God thinks of this, don't they? No. This won't do...won't do at all.


As I sat there and listened my mind was scheming about how I was going to gently tell them the "truth in love". I couldn't just stand idly by and let him go to Hell could I?


That night at home I couldn't sleep. I hadn't told my husband yet, I wasn't exactly sure how he would take it. I sat at the computer in the dining room and surfed around a bit. I remember walking to the window and looking out and just crying.


The next day I wrote a long letter to Dylan's parents about how since Dylan was still under their roof and what he was doing (not doing actually, yet but feeling) was a sin, they had to put a stop to it. After all they wouldn't condone his breaking the law, or drunkenness, or stealing, or bringing home a different girl every night, or doing drugs would they? This is the same thing...sin. I refrained from quoting scripture at them and just mentioned that they knew that the Bible said it was wrong and since the Bible is the word of God that we had to obey it. I even suggested that this was just rebellion and he would grow out of it or perhaps even a hormonal imbalance that could be fixed with medication. I did let them know I loved them all their eternal state was my utmost concern and motivation in all this.



After a couple of days I sent the letter and the response I got back, though very polite, let me know that it wasn't going to do any good. They had already accepted it and there was nothing that would change anyone's mind about the fact that this was just who Dylan was. I was heartbroken. I loved them all so much and couldn't believe this could be happening.



Personally, I never had a problem with people being gay. I always figured it was none of my business what two consenting adults did, and live and let live and all that. But now, what my heart actually felt (that Dylan's sexuality was none of my beeswax and it didn't change the way I felt about him one bit) was in direct odds with God's word. I wanted to love the family unconditionally, put my arms around them all and tell them it would be okay.


But it wasn't going to be okay.


Dylan was in absolute rebellion and he didn't see it that way at all. He believed in God and felt like he was closer than ever to Him. He felt like he could honestly be who he was. Why couldn't I explain to them why what he was was an abomination according to the Bible? His parents had accepted it and they supposedly don't love him nearly as much as God did.


I got to thinking, what if one of my children was gay? Would I turn my back on them and choose God over them?


I knew that some Christians were okay with homosexuality and believed God was as well, but our variety was not. When you are literalists, there is very little wiggle room for compromise on this one. This widened the crack that had already started to develop in my bubble of faith.


I blogged about this situation (sort of) here a couple of years ago.



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Spiderweb

Leaves and Light

And Baby Makes Three

In a couple of years they have built

A home sweet home

With a couple of kids running in the yard

Of Desmond and Molly Jones

Oblidi Oblida- The Beatles

After moving into the house we continued our quest for learning about God. My husband was very passionate about God and who He really was. We gave money to TV evangelists, we sponsored a child from the Dominican Republic. Since we had the room, my sister moved in with us for awhile while she was having a hard time. We also had a kid that we knew who was down on his luck stay with us for a few months as well. We wanted to be used of God to bring people to Himself. Eternal doom was not on my radar yet as part of the package, I was just so in love with this God who had saved me from myself.



We were trying to live the Christian life, but that started to take a backseat to life getting in the way. Marriage was starting to feel more like work and less like fun, I suppose. We worked in separate towns with increasingly separate friends and found that each of us was doing our own thing more and more. I don't think that we were on the same page as far as what we wanted out of life. It seemed that we were growing apart.



It frightens me to think that this could have just continued and the marriage may have ended, but it didn't, to which I am very thankful. One night I got home from work and my husband told me he thought we should start a family. We had talked about it at various times before this, but felt we weren't ready financially or otherwise. He thought now was the time. We did need to settle down and act more responsibly. I don't know if that was the reason he wanted to have a baby, but it was true. Plus, I really did love him and I know he really did love me, we just needed to grow up.


Six weeks later I was driving home from work and had to stop the car to throw up. I was pregnant.


We were the first on either side of our families to have a child, so we were lavishly given many gifts and attention.  I worked as a waitress up until a few days before the baby was born. I imagined I would take a short maternity leave and then go back to work. Most of my friends had kids and worked and I figured we would do the same.


Before the birth, my husband had quit his restaurant job in order to find a more adult vocation with more family friendly hours, benefits, better pay and such. He was taking this very seriously and was stepping up to be a responsible husband and father.


On the morning of my 27th birthday, it was about time for him to get up for work when I realized my water had broken. He asked "Is it time?" and called into work and we proceeded to do the things people do when you know the baby is coming very soon.



After about 10 hours of labor, not awful at all thanks to the wonderful advent of pain meds, we were parents. A little girl was born, 8 pounds 1 ounce, perfectly healthy arrived on my birthday. What a gift.





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Bats!

We were at my sister's house yesterday and my husband saw these in the top of her gazebo. Ewwwww. I hear they are good for eating bugs, though. 

Reason To Be

Never been a sinner I never sinned

I got a friend in Jesus

So you know that when I die

He's gonna set me up with

The spirit in the sky

Spirit in the Sky -Norman Greenbaum

(I thought this might happen. When I starting writing all this out I was alternating back and forth from one time line -childhood through to exiting the Catholic church - and another- going back to church up to the present. The former timeline has more that needs added, so I'll stick with it for the next few posts.)

***********

After my salvation experience, I was super hungry for anything that was or seemed to be of God. I watched tons of TBN, read my Bible at work when I got breaks talked with other believers, and prayed and thought about all these things. My husband believed, too, but we may have been on very different pages for awhile. He was raised Catholic, so his idea of God was different than mine, I'm sure. I don't really remember any of the early conversations we had about it, but we started to think of ourselves as believers. Going to church at this time was not something we could do as we were both in the restaurant industry and always had to work Sundays.


The first Christmas time after I believed was very special. I played a Handel's Messiah cassette that I had in my car stereo and it was finally so meaningful. I still didn't understand the core doctrines of the Faith, I just knew the feelings that I had were wonderful.


I found that believing in God took away my depression. I finally had a reason to be and I would go to Heaven someday.  One day while I getting ready for work at our apartment, I got a sense that I didn't need my antidepressants anymore, so I just stopped taking them. I remember once at work a dishwasher asked me why I seemed so happy. It showed!


I was fascinated about the End Times and since my husband's manager, Kyle, was into it, he talked to him about it at work and I discovered Jack Van Impe Presents on Christian Television. It seemed to him (Van Impe) that we were going to see Jesus at any moment. He went through all the day's headlines and quoted scripture that seemed like prophecy was literally being fulfilled before our eyes. I was so excited to have started believing when I did. It was very likely that I would never die at all since the Rapture was so close at hand. I was quite vocal at work about all this and I found that most people plain didn't want to talk about it. They didn't want Jesus to come back yet, stating reasons for not being done here on Earth. All I could see was this amazing new world to come.


This was a time when I truly felt as if I had a personal relationship with God. I talked to him all the time, had prayers answered, felt His presence constantly. If I could go back and not investigate the faith further, I may have stayed this way until now.


Reading the Bible, I found troubling things then, too, but figured I had so much to learn. Van Impe was using Ezekiel and Isaiah and the other Old Testament prophets quite a bit to point out things happening in the news and when I went back to those books to read them, I wasn't understanding one bit of it. When the people on Christian TV and radio quoted scripture, they seemed so sure as to what they were talking about. I wanted to be that sure, too. I wanted to know what was in the Bible, be sure about it myself.  If this was God's book, then I needed to know all about it.


Around this time my husband's grandfather became too ill to take care of himself and needed to go into a nursing home. His mom asked us if we wanted to move into his house to keep an eye on it. Since his grandmother had passed a few years prior, it would be empty and she didn't know just what they were going to do with it yet.  We agreed and moved out of our apartment to the house. A new chapter was beginning in our lives and I saw the hand of God in all of it.



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An Old Photo

from an old camera, doctored up for effect. 

Salvation

Now your life's no longer empty

Surely heaven waits for you

Carry on Wayward Son- Kansas

For the first few years of our marriage, things were pretty much the same as they had always been with us as far as our lifestyle. We both continued to work and party together and didn't see the need for any of that to change.


We were very much in love, but weren't doing anything to move forward with life, just kind of floating around with no real plans or goals. (I won't go into the Amway debacle.) I still had issues with depression and fear, but I wanted to put the past behind me and move forward to live with the man of my dreams. I guess I had what they call the "God sized hole" issue in my heart. The fact of my mortality was always present and one would think that that would keep me on the straight and narrow, taking good care of myself and trying to stay healthy. On the contrary, it seemed to do the direct opposite.


My husband was working as a cook in a restaurant with a manager who was sure we were living in the End Times and would try to proselytize him regularity. I really liked Kyle, he was about our parent's age and I think he saw us as a bit of a project.


I was working many hours a week waiting tables at a family owned restaurant. The owner's daughter was my direct boss and she was rather mean and grumpy all the time. I think now that this was due to her own mental and physical health issues.  But she put up with so much from me, oversleeping, showing up late to work and showing up not the best shape for working sometimes.  I have many happy memories of that place.


One night after getting home from the restaurant, I was watching TV, waiting for my husband to get home and something very strange happened.  I'm not sure what you would call it, not quite a vision or a trance, but a feeling, a very tangible feeling.  I felt as if I could see emptiness, utter despair and hopelessness, non existence. I used to think it was God showing me Hell, but it wasn't Hell. It was nothingness.


It terrified me, and I remember getting down on my knees and praying that if God and Jesus were real, they would reveal themselves to me. Suddenly, a wonderful peace washed over me and I knew I had been heard.


There were a couple of times prior to this that I thought I had seen Jesus's face in the contours of a door, in a shadow, in the trees, etc. It was if He was trying to get my attention.



I honestly don't remember when I told my husband about this, or the rest of that evening at all. I started shortly thereafter becoming very interested in Christianity. I started talking to some at work who I knew were believers. Someone gave me a NIV bible which I used for years. I had a new glow about me, the grass was greener, the sky bluer, the air fresher.



My aunt and uncle who were Baptists found out about it and sent someone from a Baptist church to the apartment to talk to me and I remember going to a service one night. I sat in the pew and everyone was so friendly and warm. They gave an invitation and I went up front to receive salvation. I remember saying "thank you" to the people around me. One lady told me that I could get baptized later. I was saved.


I had no idea what all this meant, but it was amazing, real, and life changing.




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Trying Church Again

Ain't no reason to go in a wagon to town

Ain't no reason to go to the fair

Ain't no reason to go up, ain't no reason to go down

Ain't no reason to go anywhere.

Time Passes Slowly- Bob Dylan

In 2008, we were not going to church at all and that was fine by me. My husband was starting to feel like we should start trying to find one to go to, though. He was listening to quite a bit of Christian radio and I think something he heard there convicted him that we needed to be in a group of the faithful. I didn't feel the same way, but then again, I had a few groups on the web for Christian fellowship. However, the kids being home schooled didn't give them any social network of peers to speak of, which was starting to concern me, so I did think getting them into something would be beneficial. My husband's desire was to find a place to worship with like-minded believers without the heavy indoctrination that Catholicism required. He said that we had a whole bookshelf of Bibles and didn't need to gel 100% with any church's doctrine, but we did have a few things we were looking for in a place of worship.



The two biggest of these were an emphasis in absolute grace over works for salvation and the general dispensational premillenial scheme of eschatology. We had visited a Vineyard church once, but it really wasn't our speed, plus they were amillennial, a big no no to me.



We looked around on the web for a few weeks and found a place not too far away that sold us when the phrase 70th Week of Daniel was included in the statement of faith. He went to check it out a couple of times before we started going as a family.  He was enthusiastic to start not only going to service, but to Sunday school as well. He explained how the kids would be in their programs and we could join a Bible study group ourselves. I wasn't quite ready for all that, but saw that this was important to him, so we decided to go for it.




The first day we decided to all go together there was tons of snow in the driveway and I thought it wasn't going to happen, but he shoveled us out enough to get there.



The church was warm and inviting and everyone was so genuinely nice.  The kids were all put in their age appropriate Sunday school classes and I went to the nursery with my littlest who was only about five months old and still nursing so frequently that we were hardly ever apart. I remember being so nervous and talking some of the ladies heads off that morning while waiting for classes and the service to be over. I was so uneasy about doing church again, but was willing to give this an honest try since my husband seemed very excited about it.  I didn't leave the baby in the nursery for the next couple of weeks, but then joined in on the adult Sunday school classes and service with my husband. It looked as though had found the Bible believing church that we wanted.




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Love and Marriage

Can it be a dream come true

Now that I am here with you

Tearful eyes of joy is something new

Runaway with me tonight

Dream the dream and light the light

Happiness is what you give to me

Steal Away - Ozzy Osbourne

After I quit college, I worked hard and played hard during the next few years, yes indeed. My life was just a matter of making enough money to live on and to have fun.



It was during these years that I met my husband. I'll never forget the first time I saw him, I was instantly in love and it was if I'd always known him. If I did believe in soul mates and reincarnation, I would believe that we had been together before in other lives. We hung out in the same circles, so over several months, we got to know each other and found we had a lot in common.


One evening during a substance-fueled discussion about life, the cosmos and everything, several of us were hanging around and the people there, including myself, were saying how we didn't believe in God. I remember him speaking up and saying there most certainly was a God. It made quite an impression on me.  I would say I definitely believed there was something else out there, another dimension or something if you will, but the conventional God of the Bible idea was just not on my radar as something to be taken seriously. I have always really valued my husband's opinion even then and the fact that he had no doubts about it made me stop and think that there may have been something to it.


We eventually started seeing each other romantically and moved in together. We were so much in love and I knew this was meant to be (I still do:))


 One spring day few months later, we found out that the Grateful Dead were coming to town for a concert that summer and for some reason decided that it would be a great honeymoon. So we decided to get married. It was impulsive and we didn't put too much thought into it, but I've never regretted it.


We didn't really have any money to speak of, so the wedding would have to be smallish, but we (I) did want a ceremony of some sort. We decided to get married at my dad's house outside. I hired a reverend from the phone book and a lady I worked with made the cake. My sister did the flowers and my dad built an arch for the ceremony. We only invited close family and a few close friends.


We were so young and stupid, so we had the wedding on a Monday, the only day of the week we were both always off.  Our poor families all had to take the day off from their jobs. We didn't even give them a reception. One day we would like to throw a big  party and make it the reception we never had...music, dancing, a big fancy dinner, and an open bar, a thank you for putting up with our nonsense.


The night before the wedding although we had been living together, he stayed at our apartment with the best man (his brother) and I stayed at my dad's house with my bridesmaids (my sisters). We figured it would be kind of nice to see each other that day for the first time during the ceremony.


That night I was a nervous wreck, and decided for some reason to look through a Bible that was at my dad's house. I opened up to the book of Revelation and of course had no idea what was going on. But it got me interested and a seed was planted.




The next morning, the day of the wedding, we found out that the concert we had planned to attend that night for our honeymoon had been cancelled. (We did get to see the Dead a week later in Chicago, so the honeymoon was just a bit postponed.) I guess I could have taken it as some sign of doom for the marriage, but I didn't. I loved him and I couldn't wait to be with him forever.




It was hot that day and very windy. The ceremony was short, nice, kind of awkward since we just made it all up and didn't rehearse or anything. He was beautiful and that day is one my very favorite memories. For once I wanted to be happy and live and believe that there was a force behind all this.  Maybe God was real after all.







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Bee!

Where Two or Three are Gathered

Let's see with our heart, these things our eyes have seen

And know the truth must still lie somewhere in between

Blues for Allah-Grateful Dead

In the years in between us leaving the Catholic church and joining an Evangelical fellowship, we tried to figure things out on our own, to worship in Spirit and in Truth.



At this point I, as well as my husband, were pretty sure about the premillenial dispensational theology. (I find it interesting in retrospect, that that is what is mainly taught on TBN and such, so I wonder how much of that played into why we could have come to such conclusions.)  Also, due to all my reading I was increasingly convinced that Calvin was onto something with the fact that God does predestine certain individuals to salvation. This in some way helped me deal with the problem of evil since Calvinists believe that God has every single thing under His control and the evil is definitely a part of the plan and not just senseless. It's not really a good answer to the problem, but I was satisfied with it for awhile.



Theology dominated most of my husband's and my conversations at the time and we loved talking about it.  I brought up the Calvinism thing to him. He saw my points, but also believed that the Bible seemed to say we could choose, too. It's both was his thinking and he for the most part was okay with the paradox of it. I was not, but it wasn't important for me that he agreed 100% with me on this. I did pass on the dispensational/Calvinist pastor's teachings to him and he listened to them too.



We were doing Bible study with the kids most nights from a children's Bible story book since they were all so little. I even remember once doing communion at home. It was a very sweet time.


One day while reading the book of Acts during lunch, I became convicted that I wasn't baptized correctly. Baptism was a huge hot button issue for me at the time and would continue to be so. It concerned me greatly that Christendom could not agree on age, mode, or meaning of this ritual. I called my husband at work and told him my fears. He assured me that I had been baptized. However, I hadn't been immersed and I was somehow afraid that this technicality would be a big issue in eternity.  So when he got home that night, I asked him to baptize me in our kiddie pool that was big enough for full immersion. I felt that I had taken a great step of obedience.


I really enjoyed this time it was full of discovery and just pure leaning on the Spirit and each other. I figured this was just fine and was happy for things to stay this way.

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The Lost Years

It's a picture perfect evening and I'm staring down the sun 

Fully loaded deaf and dumb and done 

Waiting for sedation to disconnect my head 

Or any situation where I'm better off than dead

Sweet Adeline- Elloitt Smith

My late teens and early twenties were a time that I wish I could say were filled with wonderful things, but they weren't. My parents' divorce, an abusive relationship with a guy in high school, and my just plain stupidity, rebellion and immaturity, not to mention the fact that I was later diagnosed as clincially depressed (for which I took medication for) all led to me not really giving a you know what about what happened to me. I was suicidal quite a bit of the time, not actually doing anything serious about it, but entertaining the thought nonetheless.  On the other hand though I really, really wanted to live, but not the way things were.



Looking back, I feel a bit embarrassed about how melodramatic I was about everything. I guess that just comes with the territory for young people trying to figure out life. I felt like I couldn't escape my own mind and thoughts of hopelessness and death.



Oh but I tried.




Let's just put it delicately and say I discovered the party scene and I'll leave it at that.


There is much during this period of my life that I would never want to see the light of day, so I won't go into many specifics. I wouldn't want to damage anyone else's character and a lot of this I just plain don't wish to relive, but I feel like I have to at least mention it since it is part of my story and part of the reason I came to believe in Jesus. The things that happened during this time of my life would go on to shape the woman I became, but also caused me a great amount of guilt and shame and fear.  I am very grateful that I didn't end up in jail or dead.


I went to college for three semesters. My dad was insistent that an education was of utmost importance and looking back, I did want to make him proud, but I knew deep down that I didn't want to go. I don't know what the heck I wanted, but I had just finished twelve bleepin' years of school and I wanted to go out and live real life. I was a good student in high school, and I got a partial scholarship to a small private liberal arts college. I was going to major in English/Lit. I figured I would be a teacher, preferably a college professor, and of course a writer on the side.



To my educational detriment, the combination of the depression and the partying led me to find that my studies were not as important trying to feel good.  And college was so hard. I breezed through high school, but man, this was not high school. I was also trying to take more classes than I probably should have and work at the same time. I hated it, I hated life, and I wanted out.



So I quit and set off to live my own life my own way.




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The Good Test

One two three four five six seven

All good children go to Heaven

You Never Give Me Your Money- The Beatles

As much as I loved the end times stuff, my husband had a different area of interest as far as Christian theology was concerned. He wanted to understand how and why we were saved. He spent a lot of time reading Romans and the passages about justification which I personally thought were snoozeville.  I guess I hadn't really ever thought too much about it... but I was going to now.




We were very worried about our unsaved loved ones, especially the Catholic ones, and wanted to do something to coax (or scare) them into the Way.


Besides being on the internet to research every chance I got, I watched a lot of Christian TV and my husband listened to a lot of Christian radio. We both happened upon The Way of the Master programming and Todd Friel's Wretched shows.



If you haven't seen them, they are a street preaching type presentation of the gospel with also some segments of apologetics thrown in.



Are you a good person? Go find out, I'll wait:


The Good Test


You see the strategy, you can't win. That's the point. No matter how you answered, you are definitely not a good person.  It seemed to me to be a highly effective evangelistic tool and we bought a bunch of tracts from them to hand out.  We even presented the material to family members with varying degrees of awkwardness.



Around the same time a friend from an internet forum I was on sent me a link to a Revelation study a pastor friend of hers had given. This guy was dispensational and Calvinistic, a combination that would suit me well for some time. Reformed theology added the next layer to my understanding of God. I was already warm to the idea of predestination anyway, as even in my pre Christian days I fancied the idea that everything happened for a reason.



Also, it  was very unsettling to me that  maintaining  my salvation was my own decision. I knew that I made very bad decisions. I had had a pretty emotional and some might say supernatural salvation experience (I'll get to that later) and this, coupled with the fact that I wanted to be chosen and special really attracted me to Calvinism. I was chosen from the foundation of the world, how cool is that!?


These pastor's teachings seemed to me to be very comprehensive. He was determined to get through the whole Bible verse by verse.  I spent the next several months devouring all the archives of his sermons and looking into Calvinism very seriously.




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Little Miss Sad

I believe them bones are me 

Some say we're born into the grave 

I feel so alone 

Gonna end up a big ol' pile of them bones 

Them Bones- Alice In Chains

It's not hard to make teenagers depressed and a little crazy, but I was already had tendencies toward that myself.


My high school experience okay I guess. I got good grades, had a small group of friends, was not especially popular, but not disliked for the most part. I was in extracurricular activities I enjoyed.



Our school was very small school but it seemed like every year one of the kids I knew died. One girl who I had known since grade school had a brain tumor and was sick for years until she finally passed away. Another girl who was in majorettes with me had died in a car accident. There was also a boy in the choir with me who had cancer and had his leg amputated. He lived a couple of years after the amputation, but ended up dying, too, during his senior year. I remember going to his funeral. He had written a poem about going home to see God that was printed in the funeral program booklets. I don't remember the words, but he seemed genuinely at peace with the lot he had been given.  I didn't understand how he could believe in and love a God that had made the last few years of his very short life painful and terrible. I just didn't get it.



The idea of my mortality was starting to weigh more and more heavily upon me, though.  Since I wasn't brought up in church, I didn't have any expectations for an afterlife.  I knew there were concepts of heaven and hell, but I didn't really buy into it. I guess I had started to think that life was pretty meaningless. I didn't know what I wanted to do in the future and I didn't really care. I guess I was just your typical apathetic Gen Xer.


My parents got divorced when I was sixteen and I took it very hard. To me, love was one of life's most beautiful truths, one of the only things worth living for.  I wanted true love myself. I looked to my parents as having it and I loved both of them so much. When their marriage ended, I felt that I couldn't believe in love anymore, that nothing was guaranteed.



I became angry and depressed.


I can't blame this all on the divorce, and I don't. I was already well on the way to depression with the thoughts I had in my head, but it certainly didn't help.


My behavior became more and more reckless and rebellious. I moved out of my mom's house to my dad's since he was much less strict. My relationship with my mom became very tense and it was just a bad situation all around. The next several years were ones I wish I could delete and rewrite.




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Lemon Balm

Entering the Internet

London Bridge is safe and sound

No matter what you keep repeating...

Baby Britain-Elloitt Smith

In 2007 I began to become pretty obsessed with the end and all things of the end and the new world order, conspiracy theories and the like and looked for the fulfillment of prophecies in the headlines every day.

Stock Market Down 1000 Points (woohoo!)

Mudslide in China  (another sign of the times!)

Food Prices at Their Highest Levels (right out of Revelation, cool)

I know how awful I must sound, but on some level, if Jesus is coming back when all the bad stuff goes down, then the bad stuff has to go down, you know? I was caught in a mix of trying to live my life, yet hoping that the world really was getting that bad. I wanted to go and be with Jesus more than anything.



I had missed out on the whole 9/11 conspiracy thing initially, being not being prophetically minded at the time it happened, but I caught up with all the stuff I missed. I started reading a lot of end times and prophecy sites and blogs and watching a lot of YouTube videos. I was like a kid at a candy store and didn't know where to start.


I was completely new to the socializing aspect of the web and joined an end times forum where there were many like minded people and it was great fun. We discussed the signs of the times and current events, speculated on when the end would come, but there was also great theological debates going on every day.




Pre, post, or mid trib rapture?
Once saved always saved or not?
The Antichrist probably is....
Do we have to keep the Law of Moses or not ?

Wait, I have to comment on that last one.


There was one particularly "vocal" member of this group who insisted that we did have to keep all the Mosaic law to the best of our ability, including the dietary laws and feasts.  He said that the Apostle Paul was a false prophet and that Christianity in it's modern form was apostate. It was crazy to me and he drove me   nuts.  Frankly, he drove most of the people on the board nuts, and he and I had many a theological duel. I felt sorry for him that he was so legalistically minded. I mean he actually thought that we could keep the law for salvation.  He did make me think, though, many of his arguments were right out of the bible.  It gave me a great incentive to dig into the scriptures more and try to put the pieces together. Although I was sure that he was totally wrong, he did say things that unsettled  me and stuck in ways that would come back later in my studies.



I made some connections with people that would last for years, searched out different points of view and found out things I would have never known or known to look for otherwise. It was a great time. My husband and I around the same time had started a forum of our own with only a couple of regular members posting. He was trying to do something to reach out socially, but he's just not (social) and lost interest pretty quickly. I was the one running it...not that there was much to run. We shut it down after a year and that's when I started the blog instead. I am so grateful for the access we have to information, it really is amazing.



Armed with the entire world of knowledge literally at my fingertips, I felt like I could get down to the nitty gritty of the faith, the bible, the real truth. I wanted to be able to defend it to others, myself, give an answer to the hope I had that was not purely subjective. I wanted it to be ironclad.



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Reverse Web

Linking up with NatureFoostep memes: Abstract

3rd Grade Theology

Wade in the water and never get wet

If you keep on doin' that rag

Doin' That Rag- Grateful Dead

Most of my friends at school were nominally Christian. I think most of them went to church.  My best friend all though grade school (let's call her Anita) went to a Methodist church with her family.




I would have sleep overs at her house on a somewhat regular basis. It was a big beautiful house right in the small town where we went to school, but as Lisa Simpson once said about the Flanders's house it had a  creepy, Pat Boone-ish quality to it.



I never felt that I could really be myself over there. Her dad was super nice, with a gentle voice and genuinely friendly smile, but I suspected that her mom didn't like me one bit. Perhaps it was because I was allowed to watch TV shows and listen to music that Anita was not allowed to. I was able to have boyfriends and she was not. Although they did take me to my first concert- Amy Grant.  Maybe it wasn't me at all. I don't think Anita's mom liked much of anyone or anything. She was deeply religious and it seemed to me like she took herself too seriously. It was if she was constantly on guard. I would become that later myself.


The house was always immaculate and Anita and her brother were always very quiet, very obedient with rooms that were also immaculate.  Everything was very nice, a little too nice for it to be comfortable, real.


They would regularly pray before meals when I was there, which I also assumed they did when I wasn't. Not in a rote way, but in an everyone around the table give thanks for something way. It's ironic how I put my own kids' friends through that also, but anyway... For a little kid being put on the spot to thank God for something as if that kid held your beliefs, I thought was just plain weird.


Anita never tried to tell me about God, Jesus, the bible or anything like that, but did say something strange in choir once.

We were singing "Wade in the Water" and she asked me as if she knew a deep secret,

"Why should they wade in the water?"

"Why?"

"Because God's going to trouble it."


I was completely lost as to what that meant, but she knew and it kind of perturbed me. God was going to "trouble" something and not only was it good (apparently) but we are supposed to line up for it.




I didn't bother to ask for clarification, though, but it stuck in my memory as another strike against this God thing.



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Dragonsnaps

are what my four year old called them...

I'll Fly Away

You will follow me and we will ride to glory, way up, the middle of the air.

And I'll call down thunder and speak the same and my work fills the sky with flame

And might and glory gonna be my name and men gonna light my way.

Estimated Prophet-Grateful Dead

After watching Les's program (see part 3) on a regular basis and doing my own studying in the scripture and on the internet about it, I found that what he was teaching (but never called it on the show) was dispensationalism.



If you don't know the term, dispensationalism teaches that God has two groups of people. There is Israel, the actual nation, and the Church, the body of Christ.  God has different dispensations or ages and Israel's program was put on hold once they rejected Jesus. God then starting forming the Church and that will continue until the rapture and then God will go back to his dealings with Israel, there will be a kingdom on Earth with Jesus as king, God will judge all of humanity and then eternity.


There are a great many charts on the web that illustrate this.


This system made a lot of sense to me. I loved it and was all in. I discussed it with my husband and he liked much of what Les said, too, and in fact, had been coming to some of the same conclusions on his own in his bible listening in the truck.




Dispensationalism is a heavily futuristic theology and most of what is stressed is not so much what is here and now, but what is to come. A glorious rapture of the church and us believers being swept out of the world before all heck broke loose at the second coming.  And it was coming soon! YAY.



All this questioning and longing and wrestling with God and the hum drum of daily life was almost over. The world going to hell in a hand-basket was really a good thing, it meant that Jesus was coming back any minute.



I had believed in the imminent return of Jesus back in the pre Catholic days (we'll get there) but they (the RCC) also sees the end times differently. They weren't too worried about it and were more concerned with the here and now. That's where I was during my stay there (plus having a baby every 18 months or so keeps one pretty earthly minded).



But now, refreshed by this new teaching and excited by the idea again, I was ready for Jesus to appear, the sooner the better.



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Dear Readers

I want to stop before going any further and say something.


I was folding laundry last night thinking about the things I have been and will be posting. It has been so good for me to work through much of this in writing, but I realized that what I know about where this is going, you do not. I was hit with a pang of conscience and I felt I had to say something.


It will probably take weeks or possibly even months to weave together all the things I want to say. It may even approach the length of a small book by the time it is all over and I didn't want to mislead anyone into thinking this has a particularly happy ending.


It's not usually a good idea to give away the ending of a story right at the beginning, but I want to be upfront here at the start. I thought I put enough of a hint in part one, but to anyone who didn't pick up on it, I am having serious doubts about Christianity.



These are not new doubts and if you will continue to read you will see how everything has come together to me finding myself here.




I know most of my readers are believers and since I started this blog as a very dedicated Christian, I realize that is my audience. However, wouldn't want anyone to follow along for weeks or months just to find out that this is going in a direction that wasn't expected. I would feel terrible if I caused anyone else to doubt their faith, so if you think that may happen, please stop reading.



I appreciate all of you that read and comment so much and I hope you will continue to read, but I totally understand if you don't want to.



I don't wish to debate anyone about any topic. I just want to tell my story and I hope someone will find it helpful in some way. I will continue on even if it is just for me.


Much Love,

Alice


Next Part

Shadowy Truck

The Weekend in Black and White

A Windy Day

Apocalypse Relatively Soon

We'll sing and dance 

And we'll find romance 

And we'll stroll to the edge of the world 

Edge of the World- Faith No More

When I was about ten years old or so one of my best friends from gymnastics class told me very matter-
of-factly one glorious summer day,

"Jesus is coming back in the year 2000."

"What?"

"Jesus is coming back, you know... the end of the world."

She said it as if it were the most wonderful thing that could ever happen and yet so nonchalantly that this unheard of to me information was just a fact of life. To me, it was not only very confusing (what is the end of the world?) but horrible news. For crying out loud in the year 2000 I would only be lets see, 28 years old. Even at the tender age of ten I knew that I wanted to be around on this earth for more than 28 years.




There was so much that I wanted to do. I wanted to be a pop singer just like Donna Summer, a gymnastics teacher, a famous movie star. How was I going to get all this done in the next 18 years and more importantly why would it even matter if the world was going to end?  And what did that even mean?  I hadn't even kissed a boy yet. It will be six more years before I can even drive. I am still in elementary school. Didn't Jesus know this?  I was already running out of time.





I knew the name Jesus, had seen the pictures of him at my Grandma's church. Mom had a "Jesus is the reason for the season" pin she wore at Christmas time. I had no idea, though, what this was all about and why in the world He was coming back and what that had to do with anything.



The whole exchange left me troubled, shaken, and quite turned off by this Jesus fellow. That's where I stayed with the whole thing for awhile.



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Small World

While we were waiting in line for the Merry Go Round at a festival we attended this summer, I spotted this young lady's tattoo. It's the name of a band my brother-in-law used to be a member of, and my husband went to ask her about it. Sure enough, it was the same band. She graciously allowed me to photograph it so I could show my sister.


Cool.

Corn Storage

The B-i-b-l-e

I was taught a month ago

To bide my time and take it slow

But then I learned just yesterday

To rush and never waste the day

Well I'm convinced the whole day long

That all I learn is always wrong

And things are true that I forget

But no one taught that to me yet

Character Zero-Phish

Let's back up a bit from that day at the computer (see part 1) and talk about my struggles with the bible since starting to actually take it seriously.



After we left the Catholic church in 2007 we were very excited to learn scripture on our own. My husband had some months before gotten himself a bible on CD set
to take with him to work. Since he was on the road most of the day as a semi truck driver, he could use the time to study. He also bought me a set to listen to while I worked in the kitchen.





I also watched a lot of TBN and other Christian TV whenever I got the chance. I was so ready to really learn what the bible said and to be able to follow and understand the Word of God instead of the pope and the rules of the Church. Most of the reason we left Catholicism was that we found much of their practice unbiblical, which they make no bones about. They don't view scripture at all the way protestants do. Their teaching and tradition is mostly what it taught and practiced.



Honestly, I was running into some snags and much of what I was reading in the good book was over my head, didn't make sense, or was just plain terrifying or confusing. I had done some bible reading several years before, but that was before going Catholic. In my RCIA classes (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults) that I took before joining the Church I was taught that the bible was not the sole rule of faith, so I gave up on trying to make sense of it during those years. We were convicted now, though, that scripture was where it was at and that the Church had it all wrong.




It was at  this time in 2008 that I was nursing our youngest son and one very early morning turned on the TV to the Christian station while I was feeding him. I happened upon a show called "Through the Bible with Les Feldick." It was unlike any other show I'd seen on Christian television.



Les was an elderly, warm and inviting gentleman who wore regular clothes, no suit or tie or flashy set. He stood in front of a chalkboard in a small classroom setting with a few dozen people in the audience. I was instantly fascinated with this guy. He was teaching from the bible verse by verse and not in some topical, feel good, give me some money way. He was teaching.....from the bible and it was making actual sense to me. I found out that it was on each weekday at the same time and made a point to catch it, or if not I taped it.


He had a unique way of harmonizing the conflicting parts of the scriptures. It was nothing I had ever heard before and I was thrilled.  It was as if God was handing me the answers and whole new world opened up to me.




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Last Year's Cornfield

Symptom of the Universe

Everybody knows

Everybody knows

Everybody knows

You only live a day

But it's brilliant anyway

Independence Day- Elliott Smith

A little background:


I was always a deep thinker and quite the worrywart as my mom always said. I can remember one time lying in my bed as a very young girl trying to imagine if there was nothing: you know, no universe, no stars, trees, grass, people, just empty blackness. And I wondered why there was something instead of nothing. And why am I here by the way and what's it really all about?


I don't remember when I figured out that being alive was not a permanent situation, but I could never get that out of my mind.





Why do we know we are going to die? Doesn't that really just take the fun out of living? I struggled just being content and happy with the way things were and from as far back as I can remember searched constantly for some real meaning to all of this.



I wasn't raised with any particular spiritual training, which I am now (but wasn't always) grateful for. My mom is a believer, a Christian, and grew up attending a Church of Christ church. She would take me and my sisters most Easters and we would go to an occasional VBS or mother daughter tea, but she never pushed her faith on us. In fact, she stopped attending church regularly after high school stating that she saw much unChrisitian behavior there and that one needed not to go to church at all to be a follower of Christ. I could dig that.  I was never coerced to make a profession of faith, was not baptized as a baby or child, we never had bible study at home and in fact I never read any of the bible until I was in my early twenties. I knew she believed in God, but she never really talked about it. She did model love for us, though, and she cared deeply about people.




My Dad was and is not a believer. He was also a deep thinker and is very educationally minded. It
was very important to him that us girls got a good education. He never discouraged questions about anything and as I remember was always excited to try to tell us everything he knew about a subject when asked. He was always doing something as if there was not one second to waste. He painted pictures, wrote poetry and such, dabbled in guitar playing, gardened, worked on all kinds of electronics, read, and was always learning about something.  I really thought that he was probably the smartest person in the world. He has a great sense of humor, treated us well and never talked down to us.



All in all I had a happy childhood.



But I couldn't let myself be happy most of the time.




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