Darkness and Light

So, my family had stopped going to church, for which I was relieved. I was dressing in black, trying to be as "goth" as possible--which was kind of hard, since my mom was so controlling. I couldn't dye my hair, couldn't pierce my ears more than one hole each, etc. The best I could do was dress in black as much as possible and wear dark lipstick. This was 10th grade. I had a boyfriend, Zac, whom I had met in a Creative Writing class. He liked my poetry and short stories. He loaned me a keyboard so I could write songs with funky synth noises. He was my first "official" boyfriend, and I did something I suppose is typical for girls with low self-esteem to do with their first boyfriend--I started hanging out with him almost exclusively, at the expense of my other friends. He was a year older, and could drive (unlike most of my friends) so that was a contributing factor, as well. We did the typical teenage romance things: bought each other gifts on Valentine's Day, went to Prom together (he was a junior), hung out at the lake, made out, had deep talks. He had beautiful red hair, which, in retrospect is amusing simply because I've never been attracted to redheaded guys, and I wasn't even very physically attracted to him, but I always thought he had great hair.

And, he was a Christian. I don't think he was dating me as a "ministry," you know, Missionary Dating, because the default position of anyone who lives in the Buckle of the Bible Belt is "christian," unless they specifically state otherwise. And because I had grown up in church, and had frequently said the "sinner's prayer," I waffled back and forth about whether or not I was really a Christian.



Except, I got the inkling I wasn't, because apart from those factors (church and saying The Prayer), I wasn't comfortable with Christianity. And when my best friend Lisa approached me one day before class about the amazing Experience with God she had had over the weekend, I wanted to just get away from her. It made me very uncomfortable, and I couldn't explain why. She mentioned feeling an overwhelming sense of God's presence, or something, and I knew that I had never felt anything like that. It made me feel like a fraud, and I didn't want to hang around her anymore. She started badgering me all the time about Jesus, and I didn't know what to do. I had said the Sinner's Prayer at least a hundred times: in church, at special youth "outreach events," as well as at home. I couldn't make myself feel anything, and I didn't know what else was required of me. I started hanging around Lisa less and less, till we weren't even friends at all. I hung around my boyfriend, and I hung around my "choir" friends, who (in my eyes) were much cooler anyway. They were all Christians, and they talked about God frequently, but didn't badger me the way Lisa did. They, like most people in Oklahoma, just assumed I already was a Christian, so I could safely go about my life without always having "the state of my soul" being the topic of discussion. Hanging around someone who only wants to discuss that feels like being under Constant Medical Scrutiny: you're wearing one of those hospital gowns that doesn't quite cover all the stuff you'd like covered, and the doctor is only interested in you as a patient: did you eat the proper foods today? Take your meds? Let me hear your heartbeat. Let's take your blood pressure. Oh, you say you had a delightful lunch of green eggs and ham? Are you not aware of what that's going to do to your cholesterol?!



The truth was, I was beginning to feel like God didn't want me. This should come as no surprise considering my upbringing, but of course as a teenager I didn't have this level of self-awareness. I had gone to church, said the Sinner's Prayer, didn't have sex, do drugs, smoke, drink, or even disobey my parents (much). Heck, I even made good grades. I must've heard the "Gospel" presented about 100 times. I put it in scare quotes only because I don't know that the full gospel was ever really presented to me, it was usually the truncated "Chick Track" version:

1. You're a sinner who deserves hell.
2. Jesus died for your sins so you don't have to.
3. Say this prayer, accept Jesus into your heart, and God will forgive you.
4. If you really meant it then Congratulations! You're a Christian now!
5. Now go read your bible a whole bunch, attend church, and tell your friends and loved ones the same message. The end.

I had concluded that either a) I hadn't really meant it all those times I asked Jesus into my heart, and therefore he hadn't made me a Real True Christian (RTC), or b) I had meant it (how could I not? I didn't want to go to hell, after all. I wanted to feel God's presence and be a part of what all my friends were a part of) but God didn't want me.

It never occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, there was more to The Message than what I had been told. Oh sure, I had heard a lot about "Jesus loves you, God loves you and that's why he Sent His Son," and a bit about "Grace that is Greater Than All Your Sins," but it wasn't real to me. I had never experienced such unconditional love and acceptance in my life. The message I heard loud and clear over and above the Love and Grace Message was the You Don't Measure Up message. Yes, I heard it frequently at home (not in so many words, of course) but also at church. You don't know the right Sunday School Answers, so you don't measure up. You don't read your bible enough (or, it's obvious you don't read your bible at ALL, since you don't know the Answers), so you don't measure up. You don't want to pray out loud, so you don't measure up. Everyone seemed to be keeping me at arm's length because I didn't measure up. Nobody accepted me just the way I was. Gotta do more, gotta be more. "You have to be one of us to really be accepted," was the message the church gave.

The fact of the matter was, the reason I didn't measure up, didn't want to read my bible, pray out loud, etc., was because I wasn't a Christian, duh. Of course I didn't measure up. I was unsaved and doomed to hell. How could I be enthusiastic about that? I was lost; not because I didn't want to be found, but because no one was searching for me. They wanted me to be one of them before they really cared. Even God, apparently. It seemed, despite what people said, that my salvation was dependent on me; my response to God (say the Sinner's Prayer, muster up the right "feelings," read the bible and abstain from sinning). I had done what I could, and I didn't measure up. And God didn't seem to be responding to my efforts. You can only muster up so much enthusiasm for a God, and a belief system, and a church, that says You're Not Good Enough; Let Us Know When You Figure It Out. We don't like you for who you are, only what you might become. And you're not IN until you actually become it.

It was a gospel without hope. The sin and guilt and threat of hell were real enough, but God's love was merely a theoretical exercise. I don't think most "unsaved"* people have a problem believing they're guilty of wrongdoing in some capacity--everyone has experienced such attitudes of hate, greed, lust, pride, etc. I think most people have a problem believing God is real, good, and She really loves us as we are. As humans, we are confronted quite often with our own failures and thus have no problem believing in them, yet rarely are we confronted with a level of goodness and purity of motivation that loves and accepts us in spite of those failures.

The message I got from those in the church was "all you have to do is say this prayer, repent of your sins (sins being thoughts and feelings too--good luck with that, as a teenager going through the typical teenage changes), and you'll be IN; it's going to be sunshine and rainbows of absolution and atonement. You'll feel the presence, peace, and joy of God!" Yet I didn't feel those things, no matter how I longed for them, because the Big Bouncer in the Sky was saying, "I'm sorry, you can't come in, you don't measure up for mysterious reasons which I refuse to articulate." It seemed to be working for everyone else, and I couldn't understand why it wasn't working for me. Because of this gradual realization, this wearing-down of my spirit, reinforced by the constant criticisms I was receiving at home, I began to fall down a slow, soul-sucking spiral of despair.

I came home from school every day and ate through my depression. Some days I ate a candy bar (or two), followed by several servings of chips, and then went on to have a big dinner at around 5:30, and then a full dessert every night. I wasn't clinically overweight, but I wasn't exactly fitting the category of "slender," either. I see pictures of myself from then, and I have a lot of "baby fat" (which I didn't have at the age of say, nine or ten). I didn't fit in at home, at school, at church, and I felt lonely, despite having a few people I called "friends," and even a boyfriend. I contemplated suicide seriously enough to compose "goodbye, cruel world," letters in my head, and get out the sharp kitchen knives and dare myself to slice my wrists on occasion. I could never go through with it, obviously--the thought of pain and blood and going to hell made me more than a little squeamish. But I couldn't see a way out of my dilemma: nobody loved me for who I was, not even God. It was like being at the fringes of the popular crowd: close enough to see how wonderful and happy it must be to be one of them, but not close enough to call those people your friends or be considered part of their group. Even when you tried to do their song and dance, play their games, wear their faces and clothes, they still didn't accept you.

The only person who didn't seem to keep me at arm's length was Zac. One night, while hanging out at the lake, we had a deep talk about God. And I confessed that I thought God must not want me. I broke down crying. I was just so tired of trying to be accepted: by my friends at school, by people at church, by my mom, by God. Whatever I did was never enough. I was always on the outside.

I don't remember much else about the conversation, but I do know that shortly thereafter he loaned me a book, This Present Darkness to read. Now, I know it's not a very good book from a theological or even literary perspective, but it did accomplish what sermon upon sermon over the years had not: the love of God became real to me.



Philip Pullman is quoted as saying, "THOU SHALT NOT might reach the head, but it takes ONCE UPON A TIME to reach the heart." That was certainly true in my case. I can't tell you which day I "became a Christian:" it was a series of imperceptible steps; a gentle unfolding that took place not over days, but over my entire lifetime up to that point. I had read The Chronicles of Narnia and recognized Jesus and the gospel presented therein, I had heard sermons that had made me face my sin and felt guilty and recognized my need for God, I'd had conversations with friends and even my mom about God, and this book, imperfect as it may be, was the final turn of the Rubik's Cube that made everything, at least momentarily, click into place and make sense. And it was as authors, preachers, and saints before had said: like hearing the voice of one whom you'd always, deep down, known and loved, calling to you, and you finally understood that it was always calling to you, only you couldn't hear it properly till that moment. C.S. Lewis observed, "every story of conversion is the story of a blessed defeat." It was this surrender, this letting go and merely Being in the Presence of Being that was such a relief, a sort of waking up as from a strange and lurid dream of being lost in the forest at night, to discover that you're really safe at home, and always have been.

As a child I'd had these momentary flashes of Something Greater, Something Deep and Lasting and Infinitely Good, that was somehow just beyond normal perception: Slivers of Joy, I came to think of them. When I had barely perceived this Something, on the edges of my awareness, I had the momentary sensation of some curtain being drawn back, and the universe and all within it being lifted up and held in this Something; this infinite Goodness. He's got the whole world in His hands.... I had never imagined that this Something might be the stoic and disciplined God of the bible stories, that he was unbound and beyond even those, and that He did, in fact, know who I was, call me by name, and want me for His own, until this Something came crashing in upon my awareness in a way I had never experienced before. Suddenly that Something was not on the edges of my vision, but staring me full in the face. It was beautiful and terrifying, yet reassuring, all at the same time.



I cannot deny that this was an emotional experience. I've heard that people of all faiths have experienced such things, so I'm not going to say the sensation was specifically Christian. Obviously I interpreted this through the lens of Christianity, since that's what I had been brought up to believe. At some point on some otherwise insignificant day in August, at the age of 16, during the course of reading that second-rate Christian thriller novel, I got down on my knees and asked Jesus into my heart, but in retrospect, that was merely a formality. I had already had the paradigm shift away from Nobody Wants Me, to Somebody, the Ultimate Somebody, Loves Me, and that outlook began to change me.

*I put the words "unsaved" in scare quotes for a reason--I think the term itself is misleading and flawed--but I'll try to address that in another post.