I have been going through the spare room here at my parents’ house, cleaning off a shelf of stuff that has boxes on it from when I was in college. There are also some boxes from the transitional period between high school and college, and the period of moving back home after being away.
I hope to refill those shelves with stuff that Jake and I have bought for our apartment, whenever we move into it.
As I take a box down, I go through it to see what can be recycled, what needs to be burned/shredded, what I don’t need, and what I still want to keep.
Sorting through my past life, if you will.
I have found out that I have saved a *bunch* of crap over the years that I really didn’t need to save.
What was the purpose of keeping these magazines? What was the point?
Literally; boxes and boxes of old Newsweek magazines, blank notebooks, notes from lectures…
Something good came out of today, so far. Besides the fact that I have emptied a fourth of the space, I was reunited with an old friend: the book I used in my Art History I class. I loved that class so much. It was early morning, but I always found the energy to go. I have thought about majoring in art history, but I can’t think of a good use for that major. At least for my life.
Granted, I’d love to work in a museum, but there aren’t that many museums that restore art or aren’t already full of freshly-trained people with matching polos.
I also found other stuff from my past inside those boxes.
Memories.
Some I had forgotten about.
I found all kinds of stuff from when I was a regular church-goer.
The notebook for Sun City Missions for a trip to Mexico in 2001 that never came to fruition.
The notebook for TEAM Institute, a discipleship and youth leadership program at my church which I was a part of.
An outline for people interested in being an Altar Aid, someone who’d pray at the altar with anyone who needed prayer during a service.
Two books from my stint as a Bible Quizzer. A packet of questions from my year as a Bible Quiz leader/teacher.
A notebook with scribbles from Youth Camp sermons years ago.
A prototype newsletter I had planned on creating, running, and distributing for the youth group.
….there was so much.
I had never forgotten about my attendance at youth group; just about how involved I was.
I left the church about 4 1/2 years ago.
I was a very devout person; attending a Christian university in the Midwest and even losing friends because my beliefs went against their lifestyle. (For the record, they’re the ones who walked away. I never pushed.)
I had a mixed CD with worship songs on it that always seemed to get me in the vogue of praying and worshipping and “drawing closer.”
When I started attending a secular university here at home, I found myself drowning among my peers. They would talk about the parties they went to and the people they had sex with and the amount of alcohol they consumed…and they talked about this in English class. I was overwhelmed with the secularism surrounding me.
I sought solace in the Chi Alpha group on campus. They had worked with the youth group at my church, so I was familiar with the leader and was comfortable there. It felt like another room in a house I’d lived in for years.
Despite this familiarity, I never felt like I fit in.
I was used to the Chi-Alpha spirit permeating my life…not just a meeting once a week and a discussion on Sunday mornings. I was accustomed to attending campus-wide Chapel three days a week; having Devo’s with my residence-hall floor every Thursday; talking about God and Jesus in every day discussions in each class I attended…
I had to pick my spiritual self up so many times.
I was physically sick for a time and had been spreading myself thin….delivering newspapers at 5 AM, not making it to class regularly, being surrounded by this non-Christianity after a school year of nothing but Christianity….
I found God pulling away from me…
But I had always been told that He doesn’t ever pull away…that He waits for us to reach out for Him. That He carries us in those times.
I experienced this five or six times over the course of a couple months.
I had experienced this before, and only at the Bible-belt college did I learn what it was called: The Darkest Night of the Christian Soul.
By this time, I had stopped attending college and was working full time at a thrift store, so I had more time to focus on my religion.
I played that worship CD that had seen me through a lot of tough times. It worked for a while.
I read the Bible, and prayed in tongues. It worked for a while.
I watched “The Passion.” It had always worked before.
One time, none of these worked.
So I walked away.
I said, “Ok, God. I’m seeking You. You’re not answering. I’m going to figure out my life, and then figure out where You are in it.”
I “knew” then that I’d return to church one day, and the prophetic vision a leader at my church had seen of me would come true.
I still haven’t gone back.
……today as I was sorting through all this stuff, I was listening to a country station. (It’s the only one that the little alarm-clock radio will pick up clearly today.) The song that came on was a new one by Kenny Chesney…”I want to go Heaven, but I don’t want to go today…”
It made me think.
In my search for life, I have discovered many facets to God that I attributed to Him before, but never in the way that I do now. I have also lost a lot of the secrets I knew back then. Like “everything will be okay” and “trust in Him.”
I wouldn’t say I’m a Christian. {Anymore.}
I wouldn’t say I’m ready to go back to church.
I would say that I am curious about how all this fits into the Plan.
I would say that I am seeing a different side to God.
I would say that I haven’t found my life yet.
I’m just rediscovering things about myself that have laid dormant for a long time.
And I’m amazed at how easily it was for me to walk away from the church life, after I had for so long been someone that everyone could see as a leader in the youth group…after I had said I would never be one to walk away…
Honestly, though, I have a more Zen attitude toward God.
I can see Him through the doctrines of my Pentecostal upbringing, and I can see him through the eyes of other people. Other religions.
I’m just feeling kinda nostalgic, I guess.
=]
