This is my story... which now belongs to God.

“Faith like a child.” I remember hearing this phrase used in Sunday School when I was, say, around four years old. Every week (and I was there every week, without fail, thanks to some very dedicated parents) we would get a full color sheet with a Bible story on it and one particular Sunday’s was about having the faith of a child. The front picture had Jesus with a little kid on His lap and tons more surrounding Him. Jesus looked just like I always thought He should- you know, white dude with deep brown hair blending in with his carefully matched beard. It wasn’t until later that that picture in my head was torn down. But I remember the teacher telling us that Jesus wanted us to have faith like children.

You know when you’re a kid and someone tells you something- you believe it. It could be anything and you would take their word for it without any kind of qualm or problem. And if you weren’t that kind of kid, I’m sorry. There is a lot of fun and beauty in innocence. I was one of those kids and know a lot of them. Most people would say I was gullible, but as a kid, you trust without any doubts that what people say is true. For me, it was the same with the Bible. When my Sunday School teacher told us that Jesus wants us to maintain the unswerving faith of a child, I couldn’t understand why anyone WOULDN’T believe Jesus was real and the Bible was true. I couldn’t understand why you WOULDN’T believe in Jesus as your Savior. It was a crazy notion to me. There were people in the world who didn’t actually believe that Jesus died for them? WEIRD.

I went through grade school at the Lutheran school connected to the Lutheran church (in the sanctuary of which I am currently typing this story), always going to church with my parents, always having the faith of a child. 8th grade hits. If you know anything about how Lutheranism works, you are baptized as a baby (if your parents brought you to be baptized then) into the Christian faith and when you hit those awkward pre-teen years you are forced to memorize what seems like the most pointless things on the face of the earth and told to go to events that are way out of your comfort zone with people you rather not see or hang out with. Ever. Okay, so maybe it was different for other kids, but for me this form of punishment was called confirmation. Luckily, I could memorize things pretty fast and most of the time I could work my mom so she wouldn’t make me go to all the events. In fact, I worked her so well that she didn’t even make me go to the confirmation meetings on Wednesday nights. After all, she sent me to that school so I could get my religious learnin’ during the day from synodically trained teachers. Once a week (conveniently on Wednesday mornings) we were taught a lesson in chapel by Pastor. Our whole school day revolved around religious activities- why make my whole night revolve around more religious activities with people I hated being around? Man, I was good at making my mom do what I wanted to. I wonder if she knows that. Sorry Mom. You were always right.

Yet there was something about church that I couldn’t quite place. Something bigger than me. Something that, when we would walk out the door after church, I could feel. I knew was real. It was something bigger than me, bigger than the building... and it made me EXCITED to be there. Excited to be a part of it all and even more excited to get older so I could be even more of an active role in this bigger thing, whatever it was.

I guarantee it was that feeling of something bigger that kept me coming back in later years.

I went through confirmation, took the big test at the end that proved that I held all the head knowledge of my faith and Confirmation Day grew closer and closer. I could feel something (what I now attribute to the Holy Spirit) telling me not to be confirmed yet... He told me that I didn’t know what I was professing, that my faith wasn’t my own and that I wasn’t ready for this leap yet. He said that I didn’t know what faith was. But my parents wanted me to be confirmed. Everyone thought I had faith and that I was strong in it. I had to do it. I had to keep up the appearance that I knew what I was doing and that everything was great in the Christian area of my life. So I was confirmed on Confirmation Sunday. In front of the whole congregation, my family and friends, my peers who had gone through the same studies and test with me, in front of God and everyone gathered- I professed my faith and my allegiance to God and the Lutheran Church. Nothing in my life has ever felt so wrong and to this day I wish I hadn’t ignored the prompting of the Holy Spirit. Had I known it was Him, would I have listened? Probably not- I have always been about keeping up appearances. If everything looks fine to everyone else around you, it must be fine within you. At least, that’s what I’ve always believed.

I sit here and type this and I want to puke. God, I don’t want to tell my story. This is hard. I don’t want this level of vulnerability with anyone, even this paper- even You. I don’t want to tell You this stuff because I’m afraid You’re gonna be mad at me. And I just don’t want to disappoint You... but I already have. If I come clean with everything on this paper, will You forgive me? Will You see me for me and still love me? Will others love me when I show them this story? Will it bring You glory? God, grant me the strength to finish and perservere. The devil has no domain here- Your will be done in my life, that everything I do and everything I say would be for Your glory and Yours alone.

Back to the story.

I think a lot of my problems stemmed from not following the Holy Spirit that day. Suddenly, it was my choice whether or not I would listen to the prompting. I must have ignored it for years... in fact, I think I still do far too often. I wonder now what would have happened if I had just refused to be confirmed or if I had told my Mom that I wasn’t sure if I was ready for it yet. I wonder what would have happened if I had listened to Him. Would I be here today? Would I have made all of the mistakes I did at the times I did? Would my life be so much less broken if I had decided that day that my faith was not yet my own but rather the faith my parents had always brought me up in? What would Pastor have said if I told him that the head knowledge was not my heart knowledge and that I wasn’t truly in love with Christ?

What would people say now if they knew I wasn’t fully in love with God? What would they say if they knew I stumbled on a regular basis? Would I have any friends left, or would I be left alone?

So I went through high school, going to church and Bible study even when my parents didn’t. I even got a job at the school, hanging out with the grade schoolers after they were done with school every day. I was always there, always doing something. When I wasn’t there, I was hanging out with my Lutheran friends from my Lutheran high school or going to a Christian concert at a Christian club. Not that there’s anything wrong with any of those things, but when your sole purpose in life is to look like the super Christian and appear good to everyone else, there is. I would play bass in church on Sundays because I liked to have people think that my relationship with God was so good. I would lie about dumb questions in Bible study about my faith to make it look like Him and I were tight. I did everything a Christian should do. I went through the motions... and found no joy in them.

Suddenly I found myself facing college. Of course I wanted to go into church work and be a Youth Director- I mean, I was SO SERIOUS about my faith and had my life figured out because God and I were BFFs (every sarcasm intended- my relationship with God was anything but good at that time). For some reason, I’m still not sure how I ended up going to the University of Minnesota, Morris. It just... happened. I may have to ask my parents about it later. Part of it probably had to do with the fact that one of my favorite Christian bands was from that area, but other than that, I really can’t figure out why I ended up there. But I did.

And it was awful.

Well, that’s halfway true.

I went into my Freshman year of college completely terrified. I mean, everything scared me. I even had a countdown going in my head to the day I moved up there and everytime I thought about it, I grew more and more apprehensive about the idea. Luckily I knew my roommate- she was friends with a few mutual friends in high school, even though she went to the local public high school (ooooo, watch out for that one!) she was still pretty cool and we seemed to get along well. I almost told my parents a few times that I actually didn’t want to go to college... which was not really the whole truth, I was just scared of new situations and any kind of change... especially the kind that meant leaving my family and our dial-up internet connection. Alright, maybe it wasn’t hard to leave the AOL dial-up, but it was hard to leave my parents. They had always been my rock and now it felt like the rock I went home to every day was being taken out from underneath me. Up until this time I had been able to depend on them for everything- food, clean clothes, lights, a warm bed, a car, a phone, and most importantly, my faith. Everyone down at home knew me as Mike and Cindy’s daughter and expected me to be a solid Lutheran. Where I was going no one knew me. No one was there to hold me accountable and I definitely couldn’t trust my public school roommate to do that for me (no offense Kim, I love you dearly. I was just a delusional private school girl when you got to know me).

And so I went to school. I hated it and went home as often as possible. I wanted to switch to a music school and go for music business. But somehow, through the whole first semester, I kept up the charade of being a Christian and living a Christian life, even though I had no clue what it meant. For the first time ever I had drugs and sex closer than ever before and I still didn’t do them (minus the boy I messed around with once in October of that year, but I was so scared by that that I thought I would never do it again... but that didn’t last long), but I still didn’t know what being a Christian was. And then I met a boy. He became my boy, well, my boyfriend, that is. Good Catholic boy, full of value and morals and all sorts of goodness. Our relationship was strong and it was beautiful. And yes, I miss him a lot- probably because he was the first boy I ever truly liked as more than a friend and the first boy who ever truly liked me back as more than a friend. He put up with me and my crazy antics and was the calm to my storm. He was also my excuse to ignore the calling placed on my heart by the Holy Spirit. Our relationship became a physical relationship and while we still talked often, it was my sole reason in being with him. When we kissed, slept in the same bed (believe it or not, we never had sex), or just cuddled with each other I was getting that sense of belonging and love that every fiber of my physical worldly self wanted. But what I needed was to take that sense of belonging and need for love and realize that God was the only One that could fulfill that.

Finally, God called me out of that relationship. I made up some lie about being with someone else (who I hardly knew) and that was it. I was out. I didn’t know why I felt such an urgency to be out of there, but I did. I knew I shouldn’t have lied about it, but I did that too. But instead of turning to God, things got worse. I found websites I shouldn’t have and was suddenly hooking up with guys I had never met. Never anything more than intense passionate kissing, but it was enough for me to know that what I was doing was wrong. I knew no one would ever find out, I knew I could get away without anyone ever knowing and I could continue to appear to have a Christian life and everything all put together with mine and God’s relationship. And up until this point, I have. Over the last two years, I have met four guys over the internet and ended up kissing each of them. Three of them I never talked to again after that night and the fourth, when I told him that I was actually a Christian and wanted him to be saved, he told me goodbye. Some witness I was. In addition, I also found another boyfriend for a short time who satiated my physical needs and made me forget the prompting of the Holy Spirit for God to be the love of my life. I sing the songs about His love being all I need and Him being able to satisfy me fully- but do I honestly believe that? Do I honestly believe that since I cannot seem to control myself that God will give me someone to love for the rest of my earthly life? Do I believe that He will give me that person I can do ministry with and our relationship will be with Him as well? Do I not trust God enough to provide and satisfy and bless? Some Christian I am.

It is because of all of this that I find myself at the point I am now. Unwilling to settle for anything less than what my Father has for me. My Father knows best- I know that. I KNOW that. I believe it. I love Him, He loves me. His love sustains me. He knows my heart, sees my faults, and loves me anyway. He forgives me every time I screw up. I believe in redemption. I believe in taking that forgiveness that He gives me and changing my life to fit His plan and live within the bounds He has set for me as a daughter. And I know that when I do that, my life will be lived to the fullest possible extent. Thanks be to God for putting up with me and loving me through it all.

Thanks be to God for giving me faith and making my life into a ministry... both to be ministered to and to serve with.