“How I got here” (Part 2)

The essence of this post can be summarized in one sentence: I am not “mad, angry or bitter” at the Mennonites.

Of course, that raises the question, why did I leave?

I said I am not mad, angry or bitter at the Mennonites. And that is true. I am not going to claim that it has always been true. Claiming that would be a lie.

I HAVE been mad, angry, bitter, spiteful. I have hated myself. I have despised the fact that I HAVE hated the fact that I grew up in foster care and was adopted. I HAVE hated the fact that I am different from almost every one I know. I have hated myself and have felt like everyone else has hated me.

I wrote in detail about my spiritual journey in my memoir, entitled Finding My Voice. I am not going to go into a lot of detail here.

I left the Mennonites because I came to the realization that when I joined church, I was not born again.

I probably need to stop right here and address something. I am NOT telling the story of every young person who has joined, been disillusioned and left the Mennonite church. I am telling my own story. I am absolutely not able to tell someone else’s story.

I also am NOT saying that there at no born again Mennonites. The facts scream other wise. I know there are born again Mennonites, and Amish, and Catholics, and Charismatics and non- denominationals.

See what I did there? Good.

My “faith journey” has been complicated and might actually appear to be non existent at best and chaotic at worst to some one looking on.

It consciously began at age twelve or so, when I let my by then adoptive parents know that I wanted to “become a Christian”. Because I was not able to satisfactorily say what I wanted to become a “Christian” for, or why, it was determined by my parents that I did not know what I was doing and the result was that I was told to wait.

And I did wait, until I was about 19.

I should explain that I was not good at expressing what I was feeling or wanted and for most of my life I was passed off as either mentally retarded, stupid or some other  form of “slow”.

The effect of being told to wait was that I felt like I was essentially turned away from Jesus. So began my extremely chaotic and turbulent teen age years.

I carried, suppressed and hid and exploded and blamed a lot during those years. Blamed myself, a lot, mostly because I thought everyone else was blaming me. Blamed my birth and foster and adopted parents because, well, for no reason.

Then came “one night” during the revivals meetings when I was 19. There were far too many considerations that held me back from “going forward” among them the memory of “the other time” at age 12 or so and knowing that “child evangelism” was frowned upon at our house.

The message was over. So was the invitation song. So was the dismissal prayer.

In the probably awkwardest possible prayer and “being led to Christ” that that little white church ever saw, I went forward and was led in a prayer and declared to be born again.

The only thing was, I felt nothing. Indeed, after we got back home, and after I was in bed that night, I spent half the night trying to convince myself that “it had happened”.

When I say I “felt nothing”, I mean exactly that. Nothing changed. If anything, life got worse. Of course, this was interpreted as “taking strides”. But there was still something that was missing. I felt dead and I did not even know why.

You could literally say I was blind to what “It” actually was.

To be continued…