Summer 2009

Summer 2009

For the most part I have a ton of questions that are slowly being answering. I’ve been to many of churches in my life, and I’ve had friends from many different religious backgrounds ranging from Mormon, to Adventist, to Charismatic. A lot of family on my mother’s side is Catholic. She was raised Pentecostal in a small town down south in Southern Illinois. Oddly her maiden name comes from a Jewish bloodline traced back to what is now Central Poland.

My father has a very deep faith, and a good understanding of scriptures. He has been a great help in offering his commentary for me to weigh against my own feelings on matters of religion and scripture. It turns out that he was in a pastoral seminary school in Arizona when my mother became pregnant with me, so he left school and they came back to Illinois. We've had very few discussions on his decision, all I know is that he attended Wheaton College for awhile, but then fell into a career as technician with Sears.

We attended a Christian school before going to public schools. My first memory of church is from when I came forward one morning at school to be saved. I really enjoyed hearing all the old testament narratives every day before going to class. When I moved to public schools, we left the church at our school for one that was local. They had an Awana group for kids, so I decided to do that instead of Cub Scouts. One night they asked what we wanted to be when we grew up, and I said "a pastor." I don't know exactly when it happened, just that there was a fight within the church that cause the pastor to leave, so we stopped attending.

We gravitated between Baptist and Presbyterian from then onward, and my spiritual growth came to halt. I found that a lot of churches promoted an idea of faith that was easy, but salvation that was nearly impossible to achieve. I came to resent the fact that it was hard for me to push the I believe button, when it seemed so easy for the other Sunday school kids. I was surrounded by people who never talked about a struggle with faith, and it never seemed to resonate correctly. Church became very uncomfortable because of the every Sunday salvation sermons, and in those times I always perceived the vibe to be dark and unhappy. Gradually it began to feel like the congregations were made up of people who were bleeding from their spiritual misery, and they were no more happy with their secured salvation belief than I was sitting there feeling horrible because I was struggling with faith.

Later I came to understand that I wasn’t created to follow in the manner of 'make yourself believe or go to hell.' I hungered for a living faith, and nobody could explain how to find this kind of faith. I was asking some profound questions for someone so young… questions that most adults don’t feel comfortable talking about, and I certainly didn’t have the capabilities to answer them for myself.

Eventually we stopped attending churches, so instead 'Focus On The Family' began to rule our home. James Dobson and his cult of fear, ooooh joy. The instruction manual came complete with 'what tapes to burn, how to enact moral rule by traditional values, and why to favor fundamentalist ideology over Christ's teachings of grace, love, and forgiveness.' When I heard the word 'love' out of a Christian's mouth, I came to know it as only being associated with discipline. Love to the fundamentalist seems to be such a non-word. I have bias, and I will admit my bias.

Fast forward...

While on deployment in Bosnia we were having weekly bible studies, and I began reading a lot of Christian books. I started considering a career in religions as my path when I got out of the Army. What I wanted most of all was stability in my life, and a career that would support a family. I reenlisted as a Biomedical Technician with marriage in mind. It was one of the most non-field oriented jobs in the Army, as opposed to being an infantry medic that was always in the field or on deployment. It felt nearly impossible to maintain a relationship when you're never home.

My girlfriend of a couple years was a closet atheist, and in a lot of ways I understood her reasoning. I really thought she’d come around at some point. She was a German-Croatian woman forced out of her birth country because of war. What do you say to someone who can't reason a God that would let such terrible things happen over religion?

Our relationship towards the end was forced to be long distance, and communication was hard when I was in the field, or on deployment. She became pregnant the last time we were together, so I tried to get her moved over on a Finance's Visa. When that didn’t work, I asked to be let out of my training, seeking a change of duty so that I could go back to Germany. I appealed to all the Chaplains on our post, and I was told by each of them that my obligation to the Army came before my religious beliefs. I felt like my calling was towards a family, but it was stripped away.

Being rendered completely powerless to stop something bad from happening is the most helpless feeling any person can have. It felt like God died the day my girlfriend had an abortion. I cried myself to sleep every night for weeks. Drinking became a crutch, soon it had been months since I could remember the last night that I hadn't passed out drunk. I didn't care about the Army anymore. I gained a lot of weight over that winter, ending in a discharge on weight control standard for being .07 over my body-fat allowance. A year into my second enlistment I found myself driving back home, completely lost inside.

Two months later I got one final letter ending with, “Adam I will always love you, but we are just not meant to be together in this lifetime. Maybe we can be together in the next." Years of darkness and depression followed. I had little to no desire for relationships, my identity detached itself from the world I once knew, and I literally dreaded going to sleep because I’d have to wake up and live another day of a life that had become my curse. At some point I had forgotten how to live a normal life.

A few years go by before the next big shift in my life. I had nightmares of falling off a roof that whole week before it happened. We were almost finished with the project, it was late in the day when I must have lost my footing, and the next thing I remember is waking up in the ambulance. The paramedics said to my parents, "he must have landed perfect, he is very lucky to be alive." I broke a bunch of bones in my face, and there were some fractures in both my elbows. Rehab took a while, so it seemed like a good time to start going to school.

In 2005 I bought a bass off an urge that wouldn't go away. The next year I was given a quarter of bass lessons as a birthday present from my brother. I took two years of bass lessons before it felt like I hit a brick wall. My teacher advised me to go out and find a band to play with because that is the only way to get better. I was very hesitant to do so, but my brother finally convince me to audition at his church for the praise and worship team. On May 21st of 2009 I played my first service, and I loved it.

Everything has started to feel right. I really can't explain why Christianity now feels different then it was in my past. It is something that I'm feeling inside, and it has completely trumped the idea of simply having a belief. Part of my questions hinge on trying to understand my story. I’ve been reading The Church Experiment, trying to understand faith and religion, and I can identify with a lot of the sentiments like, “the holy roller persona tend to feel fake, and in a lot of ways it appears to very creepy.” I felt miserable in those churches, and it didn't change as I grew older. Now I feel welcome in a community of loving people, and it feels great.


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