My Spiritual Journey
I had decided to make it rain. I gathered up a handful of blue seeds from a nearby bush, dropped them in the mud hole and covered them with dirt. I watered them, said a prayer, and deciding the ritual needed something else, I went inside to ask my visiting Tennessee grandmother what more one needed to make it rain. Under pressure from an insistent 4-year-old, she finally said, “You wait for the Thunderbird to fly over.” What made her say that I cannot say. Perhaps something gleaned from her Cherokee grandmother or passed down from Great Smoky Mountain people lore? I waited. I watched. A bird, I presumed to be the Thunderbird, flew over. A short time later, it rained.
I was bursting to tell my slightly older, but vastly wiser 5-year-old neighbor, Todd. He told me, “You cannot make it rain. Only God can make it rain.” These few words stunned and shamed me. The words set me on a path to figuring out where I ended, and God began.
Who wants to go to church?
So when Miss Hesslink asked her first grade, public school class, “Who wants to go to church?” I raised my hand. I was all in. I wanted a clearer understanding of God’s role and my role. Or maybe at 6, I didn’t quite understand that yet. But I knew enough to know I wanted to know more about God, and I didn’t want to be embarrassed again.
Miss Hesslink honked the horn in her green Granada. My surprised mother barely caught up with me as she ran in her housecoat across the lawn to give me 50 cents for the offering. The car sagged with kids. I loved everything about attending Miss Hesslink’s Lutheran church. The illustrations of the Sunday school stories, which I found horrifyingly juicy. I loved the ringing of the bells during the holiday services. I loved a week in the mountains at church camp. I attended summer church camp in the third grade on a scholarship -- to my mother’s horror. She told me we could have afforded camp. But it was my experience with my parent’s busy lives, the answer was no if money or a ride was involved, so I applied.
Church Camp to Healing Herbs
I was voted church camp president and would lead the church songs and prayer. The camp counselors often laughed because although I was among the youngest at the camp I was absurdly confident. A man who was a member of the church had given me my first white Bible a few months before and it accompanied me to every camp pow wow. I felt legit.
My parents left their Baptist and Methodist upbringing when they married. During family holiday meals, I often was the one who prayed. My parents seemed amused I went to church with Miss Hesslink and neither encouraged nor discouraged it. My four siblings viewed my church-going as a hobby, like my younger brother collected rocks. Aside from that, spirituality in my Southern California house consisted of my mother’s knowledge of nature’s healing herbs from her roots in the Tennessee hills along with a gift she honed for hands-on healing. It later translated well to the progressive/New Age movement.
Montana and Evangelical Church
I’m not sure if I grew any clearer where the divine’s role and my own merged and diverged after attending church with Miss Hesslink for four and a half years. But it sparked a love for church and its community. Now in the 5th grade, I was the only child still left in the spearmint-smelling Granada.
Then my family moved to Montana. I didn’t attend church again until a friend introduced me to an evangelical church at 16, which coincided with the time I received my driver’s license. The youth pastor rewarded teens with $20 cash for bringing potential youth members to Wednesday night meetings. I was a good earner. I adored the youth pastor. Our youth group discussed deep topics like the nuclear arms race and whether everyone has a chance to be saved because everyone a some time im their life will hear the gospel. Differing biblical interpretation, while not encouraged, was tolerated. My childhood theological dilemma about crossing God’s boundaries may not have been solved, but I learned I loved a good biblical debate. The pastor of my teen evangelical church unexplainably fled to San Francisco, abandoning his pregnant wife. It broke my heart, but not for long because we moved again.
Arizona, Buddhism, and Journalism
I finished my last year of high school in Arizona, where I was introduced to Buddhism by a friend. I chanted Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, though I was never quite clear on why. I attended a handful of group meditations in someone’s home. I gave my friend money to buy me a gohonzon scroll for my alter. I loved the experience. She absconded with my money and I lost touch with her and Buddhism. However, it opened my heart and mind to learning about other faiths. I armchair-studied Hinduism and Daoism.
Soon college began, and all things spiritual took a backseat as I pursued a degree in journalism. In time, though, I missed feeling close to the divine. For me, that meant feeling loved no matter what and feeling perfect in the moment. One thing did make me feel that way. At least at first. Drinking. In my own bleary-eyed world, I was funny, contented, and beloved. Of course, it didn’t last because it was a false mirror. I quit drinking. And I gained more empathy for people who weren’t perfect, even members of my own family.
Drinking, Methodists, and AA
I started drinking again in my early 30s after I moved to Atlanta for a job as a newspaper reporter. I thought maybe I wasn’t an alcoholic like other family members because I quit so young. I found; indeed, I was. I started attending a Methodist church for the courage to quit again. Why Methodist? Only that I had a newspaper editor who was Methodist, and she was kind, smart and mostly non-judgmental.
In AA, the Big Book talks about having a spiritual awakening that leads to the last drink. Mine came sitting on the floor eating Thai food and drinking Vodka, watching the Sopranos when I was both in and above my body. I understood/
heard/knew: “This is not my life.”
I have been living sober for 22 years since. Getting sober allowed me to experience God’s grace. Timing, coincidence, happenstance, and synchronicity aligned to set me on the path to sobriety and helped me stay sober after I prayed for the will and ability. I no longer saw God and myself on a linear track with a line that separated our rightful duties. I was noticing the miraculously timed, co-mingling of energies and goals. We weren’t separate and thus, our hopes and desires for humanity, and even myself, weren’t at odds when the holy spirit was working through me.
Sobriety, Alternative Medicine, and Hot Lava
Shortly after getting sober, I married and had three children in short order. At one time, my husband and I had three children who were ages three and under. We did not attend church at that time. But I did work on healing personal trauma, both generational and addiction-induced, with therapy, EMDR, hypnosis, meditation, Chinese medicine and my mother’s tried and true body treatments and New Thought-metaphysics. Years down the road, I have deep gratitude for doing the work of healing addiction and the depression/anxiety because it allows me to journey with others who also confront these diseases and mental health issues.
At 9, my middle daughter started mixing fairy tales and what she understood about Jesus’ death and resurrection that included a castle and hot lava, but not a cross. "A cross," she said, "is only on church lawns, because it was Jesus' loving way to provide a place for birds to sit." I laughed. My husband, who came from a Christian fundamentalist background, was appalled. He thought it was time we found a church.
Loving ALL Peoples and Tears
​ But how to marry his upbringing and my Christian-New Age-y background? Suddenly, after not going to church in 15 years, his request to find one seemed vital to me. I know that I wanted a commitment from the church toward social justice works. I wanted the church to love equally ALL people – including the LGBTQ community and make space for people with questions. I also wanted a church that somewhat followed a liturgy. I prayed about it. I scoured the internet for faith beliefs and listened to a lot of sermons from local churches. That led me and that middle daughter, who was also extremely discerning and honest, to Desert Palm United Church of Christ in Tempe, AZ. The first few times I attended, I cried. I can’t fully explain why. I think maybe the body knew something, even before my mind and heart had a chance to catch up. Long before I became a church member, pursued ordination with the help of my church, or attended seminary, my body – my being – knew how pivotal this place would be for me.
"Resting in the Mystery"
Desert Palm’s Rev. Dr. Tom Martinez talks about “resting in the mystery” of God’s world." I’m resting in the mystery of how a scolded 4-year-old’s desire to know God more deeply led me to accept an invitation from my first-grade teacher. That led me to a love of church and community, which as soon as I had a driver’s license led me to an evangelical church that ripened my theological mind. With a broken, but now open, spiritual heart I explored Buddhism and it led to curiosity of other faiths. On the other side of sobriety and depression and anxiety, I learned I liked helping other addicts and people struggling with mental health issues.
My job as a journalist ended in December 2019. My call to serve came in 2020. Or, really, I think it came a while ago, in o many whispers and perhaps a few shouts. It might have come when I became unnaturally excited about a co-worker’s night classes in chaplaincy and disappointment when she dropped out. Or when I developed a keen interest in a friend’s job as a “spiritual director.” Or my husband’s declaration when I asked what my next job should be and he said that it should be something like what the pastor in our church does. Once I finally heard and answered the call, I didn’t waste time. I graduated with a master’s in ministry and find myself drawn to spiritual care.
I have grown from being shaken by someone's criticism of my early relationship with God to being certain that I want to help people. I don’t know where my calling will take me, hopefully to chaplaincy work. I am dedicated to spending every day listening, feeling and discerning so that I can say whatever I am doing, wherever I am, that God is working through me.