College… such formative years. My journey of faith was a roller coaster during those four years.
After four years of having a few worldly high school teachers, who not so covertly taught that our way of life was backward and intolerant. So they created diversity clubs where you celebrated everyone’s differences. Needless to say during my impressionable youth, my faith was on shaky grounds. When I left for college, I was questioning my upbringing, my morals, and religion – that had allowed prejudice and intolerance thrive or so I was taught to believe. (Looking back now, I am not so sure it was as prevalent as my young mind was lead to believe.)
Here I was, this small town girl, who thought she had everything figured out – her future, her career path, her whole life was planned out in front of her. I chose a college two hours away from home so I couldn’t live with my parents and commute, like my sister had. I wanted the college experience – I wanted to be on my own. I had always had a strong independent streak and wanted to carve my own path. My mother and sister were teachers and I refused to follow that path. I was going to be a police officer. I had planned to come back to my hometown and be the very first female officer for the county.
Anyway, this young naïve eighteen year old girl was off to her first year at college. Surrounded by new and exciting experiences. I was used to everyone coming from the same background, the same moral code, the same culture and I found myself in this college environment of people from all sorts of backgrounds, races, sexual orientation, moral codes, etc. and I found myself enjoying it. It was refreshing change from all the sameness I had grown up around.
My religious faith had been faltering during my years in high school. It started somewhere around age fifteen to sixteen, even though I was still very active in my church. Somewhere between my freshman and sophomore year in college (first and second year), I had a slight resurgence in my religious faith. I remember attending a Benny Hin, a televangelist, event in Louisville, KY at some point before my third year in college. My pastor at the time had been seduced by his ministry and took a group of women to see him. It was an “experience” to say the least.
During those first two years of college, I was taking a lot of psychology classes and a philosophy course and somewhere a long the way the idea was planted that educated people didn’t have blind faith without proof and religion was for the unintelligent or weak minded individual – or maybe it was just cultivated to grow better. At any rate, I would say if I had to pin point when I lost my faith, it would have to have been during my sophomore year (second year) of college.
That year was pivotal. During the fall semester, tragedy struck. My sister’s fiancé was killed in a car accident. It was an untimely death, and I couldn’t grapple with why it was allowed to happen. Normally, if something like this were to happen and you were questioning your faith a pastor would be there to guide and support you, but that was absent. In fact, my mother disclosed my sister’s dream about angels coming to take her fiancé away the day before he was pronounced brain dead, singing the song “Holy, Holy, Holy” – she used that as her next sermon text and theme without the courtesy to see if it would be okay to use that example. Needless to say my mother and sister felt as if their confidence had been broken. At that point, the only person still attending church regularly was my father. My sister completely quit, my mother eventually started back up at some point and I was only attending during Easter and Christmas, with the excuse that I was too busy.
At some point during the year following, our pastor had a sort of breakdown. She had let her house duties go and was living in squalor. My mother and I had discovered the mess while we were taking care of her cats while she was on vacation. We cleaned the bulk of it, but realized the problem was too extensive to take care of on our own and had to involve the church. We got her house back in order, put down new flooring and found some gently used furniture for her. The church placed a bunch of restrictions on animals in the home. By the end of that year, they had decided not to renew her contract. At the time, it seemed like a harsh thing to do as we was just a few years from retirement, she was obviously suffering from some sort of mental issue, and they were basically kicking her out with nothing. (I have come to realize it was the early symptoms of dementia that she would eventually pass from.)
That was the point I walked away from the church and religion in general.
For the remaining two years of college, my decision to walk away was affirmed and solidified in nearly every connection and every class. Religion was for the uneducated, the weak who needed something to believe in. In those two years, I dumped my high school boyfriend, I became involved in what I would like to call a one night stand that lasted six months, then once that “relationship” ended, I promptly entered into a causal relationship with the man who would, years later, become my husband.
A bit of background of the area I grew up in. I grew up in west central Indiana in the Wabash Valley. It was a 30+ mile drive to get to any town with a population of over 10,000 people. My school district had less than 400 hundred students spanning grades K-12. The general demographics of the county were 96% white, 33% identified as being Christian* and many of their families had lived in the area for generations. I’m sure that demographic has changed a bit over last the twenty plus years.
*my assumption was the rate was much higher – over 50% of the population
A Mother's Special Calling 