Jealous of the Conviction

featured image collage mine; other photos below courtesy of the Diocese of Atlanta

I went to two high schools: one private school, one public.

When I was in private school I was painfully shy and frankly – I was a weird kid. Which also meant I didn’t have friends.

When I switched to public school I was determined to learn from my previous friendship making mistakes- I was going to have friends.

Part of that meant going to the things that everyone else went to… as it so happened, week day youth group events were the popular thing for my group of friends to go to. There was one at a Methodist church and another one at a Baptist church. This was my first exposure to praise and worship services.

Culture shock is the only way I can describe the experience. You see, and I think I’ve said this here before, I’m a cradle Episcopalian. Meaning there’s an order to each service that doesn’t change. And our church was a building built just after the Civil War with the original pipe organ. I had never before in my life seen big screen tvs or heard music that resembled what I heard on the radio. Culture. Shock.

And I judged the heck out of it.

At our school we had a moment of silence and I would pray to not judge this style of worship anymore. I knew I shouldn’t be so put off by it all but I was, and yet I continued to go because that was our social hour with my friends outside of the school walls.

Eventually, my judgmental thoughts would melt away but they were replaced by another one: jealousy.

I was intensely jealous of my friends relationship with God.

They believed in God and Jesus so easily- from what I could see- that it was so blindingly easy for them. When the minister told them rap music was of the Devil and to repent and not listen… that was what they did. It was just so easy for them. (I’ll touch on the racism behind all that in another post.) I, however, struggled. I’ve written here before that I am Doubting Thomas personified: “I need to place my fingers in the flesh of the risen Christ before I can sing my Alleluias again. I waver between that feeling of great doubt and one of great faith when I see so many around me suffering. Knowing that God is here for me and has raised me above so much and while I never doubt his love for me- I cannot tell someone else they should not. What does that make me?” That was even more the case back then. I questioned all of it all of the time.

And even though I had a faithful minister at St. Paul’s Episcopal who told me- and I still very much believe it- that by questioning my faith I will grow stronger in it… I was still jealous. These friends of mine believed and KNEW so easily and they were so happy.

Then I went through the phase I’ve talked about where I truly thought God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit weren’t for me… because an abuser in my life said as much.

The phrases “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” and “this is happening for a reason” are extremely painful for so many, but for me they make sense. I would never say them to anyone else now that I know better, but for ME- my path has become more clear and my pain and struggles feel like they brought me down my path for a purpose.

My friend Scott Mitchell posted a Brene Brown quote today: “One day you will tell your story of how you overcame what you went through and it will become someone else’s survival guide.” This, this I feel so deeply.

I have gone through what seemed to be so many ups and downs over life- and in our discernment (Episcopalian discernment? Here I Am Day Training? not sure what to call it) for deciding if we move forward with exploring becoming ordained… we were told in an exercise to explore how God has worked in a straight line in our lives.

Honestly, and this will reflect in the later podcast conversations I’ll publish, I didn’t think God HAD worked in a straight line. A straight line sounded like a joke to me.

But I think now I see…. there was a straight line for me. I just didn’t know it. I was meant to work through these things, that doesn’t mean God allowed abuse towards me because I don’t think that necessarily… but God gave me the tools to get through it. Even when I thought I was abandoned, I was carried. Even when I thought I was crying alone, there was a shoulder for me.

This past Sunday as I watched my oldest two get confirmed I knew it. For the first time I felt that conviction I had craved for nearly forty years.

Forty years- mirroring the forty days and nights. We are, after all, in the middle of Lent- absent of our hallelujahs.

But I found mine, my hallelujah came in the Cathedral of St. Phillip- one week after Here I Am day.

After forty years of searching, my conviction came.

It’s not to say I won’t still ask questions… I know I will! It is, after all, so much of what makes me an Episcopalian Christian. But the conviction is here, it a way it never was before.

Here I Am God- and my arms are open wide, drinking in all that you offer me.