The beginning of this journey

A little personal history, for myself or anyone who may actually discover this blog.

I was born 23 years ago into a loving Christian family. I did all of the classic things a child in a Christian family should; attend Sunday school, VBS, refrain from cussing, learn the Bible stories (to a shallow enough extent that they seem happy and sugar-coated, only to be reevaluated later on with curiosity and slight fear of what was actually taking place in them), etc. It wasn't until I was in high school that I really had to begin making choices that backed up my beliefs- avoiding partying, committing myself to staying a virgin until marriage, attending Bible studies, and going off on mission trips. I took my faith in Jesus so seriously that I felt certain during my junior and senior year of high school that God was calling me to attend a Christian college. I ruled out secular colleges and ended up going off to a school were I would be able to dig deeper into theology and Biblical meaning, but equally as important to me, meet others who took their faith as seriously, maybe even a future husband!

All of this was extremely pleasant. I was happy to be one of the saved ones. I took deep joy in reading the Bible, discussing passages with friends of mine who shared my beliefs, and pondering how God would choose to use me to impact his kingdom. I wanted nothing more than to make an eternal impact and though I had never brought anyone else to Christ, out of fear and an aversion to the idea of approaching complete strangers all creepy style and trying to shove something as mysterious and important as the gospel down their throat, I hoped that God would work through me to bring people to Him in the future.

I really loved the college that I chose and felt like I had found my place there, however, by the end of the first semester, with the help of a chapel speaker (Shane Claiborne) who spoke on simple living, and the reality that after I graduated, I would be entering a low-paying field and it would take decades to pay off the tens of thousands of dollars I would rack up in debt, I decided that I could only afford this one year there. So much for God calling me to a Christian school. I didn't put much effort into choosing school #2, deciding to go back to my hometown and attend a college 10 minutes from my high school (not what my high school self had had in mind! But it all worked out.)

Something very important happened to me the summer after leaving my Christian college. I got a job at a beautiful, relatively high-paying arts camp in Maine. I had initially hoped to work at a Christian camp where I could be more open about my faith to the wee ones, but most of them were voluntary or very low-paying (understandably so, but I needed some scrilla). During my last few weeks at the college, I felt sure that God was sending me to this camp to shed some light on the counselors and the kids who did not know him. I felt the same way about the non-Christian college I'd be going to. I was on a spiritual high, in a Christian bubble, surrounded by people who, overall, subscribed to the same beliefs I did and didn't make me defend myself.

By my first evening at the arts camp, I realized that I was very outnumbered. Throughout the summer, I realized that there were about 3 other Christian counselors, but I considered them pretty nominal. My two co-counselors, Laura and Alex, were fantastic, fun, smart girls, but initially, I was freaked out by Laura's eyebrow ring and Alex's "fuck" and "shit" littered sentences (it's cracking me up to think of how I was back then)! I wasn't in Kansas anymore. I believe that it was the second night we all bunked together (there was a 10 day orientation before the kiddies arrives) that we laid on our beds in the dark, having a popcorn discussion the way little girls do at sleep-overs. When I told them which college I had just left and that it was Christian, there was a pause. Alex said, "So... are you really religious?" I nervously laughed and said, "Yeah, I guess I am." She replied, "Oh, well I'm not at all. I hope things are cool between us." My heart sank as I realized how difficult this spreading the gospel to others thing would be.

My summer at that camp was my first real exposure to people who didn't share my faith. Of course I'd gone to public school all my life and knew about the partying and the different lifestyle, but I'd had my little posse of Christians who made me feel safe, not like a freak or a nun. Well, here I had no community of like-minded believers and for the first time in my life, I began to see the weirdness of believing in a human that supposedly rose from the dead 2,000 years ago. I hated myself for having these doubts. They really plagued my time at the camp, which was clearly a lovely experience for everyone else working there. My struggle to hold onto my religion got in the way of me having much fun. When the counselors went out for drinks, I stayed in. When they laughed and told jokes, I suppressed giggles, when they discussed politics and religion, I remained silent, too afraid of my inability to articulate my rich beliefs- or afraid my doubts would get in the way-, to defend Jesus. By the end of my summer there, I felt like Peter who had denied Jesus countless times. I felt like Thomas, who needed to see the wounds to believe. I had stepped foot onto the campgrounds a brave soldier for God. I was leaving a soldier wounded, knowing I didn't make a bit of difference in anyone's spiritual journey, though my coworkers had greatly impacted me, for, what I believed, the worse.

The doubts that were birthed at the camp, to try to keep this from becoming a novella, ebbed and flowed throughout my college years. I would suffer from doubts greatly at one point, then months later, be on a spiritual mountaintop, only to find myself weeks later back at ground zero, wondering if my prayers for faith were even being heard, or if- to my shame of even processing this thought- there was nobody listening to my earnest prayers.

Maybe later on in this blog I'll get into individual episodes of faith boosts and relapses, but to sum things up, four years of going back and forth about what is true, I'm now beyond a doubting Christian. I am embracing my curiosity and skepticism for the gifts that they are and committing to finding the truth, be it that there is a God (Christian God or not), there isn't a God, a completely different system of belief is actually true, or that I just can't know for sure. In the past, I've kept one foot in my Christian faith and even when I've suffered doubts (I'm now not thinking suffering is the right word, but that's how it feels from a Christian perspective), I've remained faithful in praying to the Christian God for a revealing of the truth. Now I'm more in the agnostic camp. I want to look at the options objectively and openly, paying attention to the reasonableness of each belief system, the facts, the followers.

This blog will serve as a place for me to track my progress on the road toward Truth.