My Story- Part 4
I quickly learned that having a family drama very easily parlayed into having an excuse. Where I had strived to be the “good girl,” even co-hosting advertised “alcohol free” parties and inviting friends to church, I suddenly didn’t care. Maybe I would feel better if I drank, maybe life would be easier if I didn’t have to try so hard. Maybe, after all, I didn’t really care what my parents thought. I slowly started making decisions that I would not have made before. Friends that I kept at arm’s length I suddenly made better acquaintance with. In my mind, I had every reason to drink, to party, to try to feel better. My behavior modification “good girl” lifestyle, based on a belief system that I didn’t really understand, was over. The last bit of high school was more of a coming to terms of who I believed myself to be. I acted of my own accord, followed my emotions. Armed with a sloppy grace faith (Jesus loves me anyway so I can do as I please mentality) I set forth on my own terms.
In the mind of a seventeen to eighteen year old, the long-term impact of who I was becoming or the situations I was getting myself into didn’t even cross my mind. The point was no longer “fair” but “fun.” What I think I took away from the situation with my parents was that trying inevitably led to failure, we were all doomed. Or even that being “too” good when you are younger leads to the need to “act out” when you are older. (I think this one was brought to me by my dad’s first therapist that we had a family session with). He probably mentioned it with something else equally important about my dad’s actions being a mistake. However, that in and of itself sentiment stuck with me and I strangely internalized it. If I didn’t act badly now, like a kid was expected to act, I would be jeopardizing my family 20 or so years down the road.
The second semester of my senior year is when I really made the decision that I was definitely not going to try to fit into a mold anymore. Drinking quickly fell into drunkenness and the party crowd led me to smoking pot. I met my first boyfriend right around the time I graduated. Lying became second nature, because there were tracks to be covered and “fun” to be had. I suppose this is normal for a lot of teens and is a coming of age story for most. But, I can’t help but look back and see how I was running from truth, masking my pain, and trying so hard to fit into a world in which I knew that I didn’t belong.
As I learned later, a true understanding of Jesus will set you free, not enslave you more to the ways of the world. If I had sought God in my trouble, and not the world’s answers of escapism, I would have found love, peace, healing and love. All those fruits of the spirit that find us when we begin to grow deeper in our relationship with God. But I didn’t know any of that existed because no one really told me. If they did they didn’t try very hard or perhaps I had just blocked out anything to do with Him to soothe my pain. As my parents discovered who I was becoming, through my music, my friends, my boyfriend, it remained all about what I did or didn’t do. I was a disappointment when I listened to lyrics with bad words. I broke my mom’s heart when I smoked weed. My father was outraged when he learned I started smoking cigarettes.
I think part of that was it was what their generation was told to focus on. The “moral majority” did more than affect the political sphere. It was more of a continuation from my childhood, yet I was now on the other side. Not measuring up. Instead of pointing to Jesus and his love, the church culture often pointed to the rules and how you weren’t living up to them. It reduced to Christ to a way of life that is highly unattainable without connecting with His Spirit inside of you. Without knowing his immense love for you. That he knew we would make mistakes, that our feeble minds would carry us down difficult roads and unbecoming ways of behaving. If you are there, please hear when I say he does love you so much, and he doesn’t want your heart and your following him to be all about rules, but because His ways are so much higher than our ways.
Also hear me when I say I know my parents loved me and tried their best to communicate Jesus. I think in many ways they weren’t taught how, and it trickled down to the next generation. This was not a break down for them, personally, but as an over-generalization a break down for the church at large. And I am sure my sin nature and desire to want to emotionally react suppressed the truth at some level. We had somehow started missing the point.
At the time, I understood Christianity as just about appearing better than the world and following a different set of rules. Rules involving not drinking, not cussing and not showing cleavage. If you did these things then God was pleased with you and you could go to heaven. If you didn’t follow the rules then he was mad at you and you were going to burn in hell. And while I was scared of hell in theory, I was almost equally as scared of living forever, because I couldn’t imagine a life where I wanted to live forever. I had not experienced any type of presence of God, or feeling embraced in his goodness, love and mercy, so the thought of living forever somewhere, even if it was a beautiful heaven with gold streets and pearly gates, was laden with more anxiety than excitement. In my line of thinking, heaven meant I had to *try* to live up to some impossible standard for forever? Sheesh. That did not sound fun at all. And with a God who was probably now angry at me for all the ways I was failing. No, thank you.
By the time the early 2000s came around and the emergent church, well, emerged, I was more than ready to explore alternatives to everything I thought I knew about God.
