It's Tough Being a Believer

Things are about to get really real right here. I'm going to revist a topic I know is quite cringe-worthy, and one that, quite frankly, makes me a bit uncomfortable. I've been sitting on this post for a few days, and since it's pretty up-front, I know it's got to go public. I am, to be honest, quite scared of the reactions that could insue, but it's time I stop living in fear of judgment of others and the fear of possibly losing some connections. It's a bit of a doozy, but if we can get through it, I think a lot will be stirred up. Both good and bad. So, now that you're hopefully intrigued enough to continue reading, here we go... ;)

I essentially grew up going to church. (Yes, that's where we're going with this one...) My mom and dad found one when I was in 2nd grade, I switched to a private, Christian school the following year, stayed there till I started high school, and had a fairly-typical Christian upbringing.

I went to Sunday school as a child, always ecstatic when the teachers would bring donuts in and crafts were involved, and after I "outgrew" Sunday school, I started helping every Sunday with the little kids's programs -- rallying the troops, being the voice for the hand puppets, the works. By the time I was going to start high school, I was tired of dress codes and private school-imposed restrictions, and made the valiant choice to go to the very large public high school of my district. (How many of us can't write/think/speak the word "district" anymore w/o thinking of The Hunger Games!? I know you feel me!) Anyways, that's when everything started to change...

My faith had always been strong and central in my life, I was on fire for God, wore Bible-based-ish shirts, and even though I snuck and brought a tank top to change into at Marine World on our 8th grade trip (which was not at all allowed b/c it was sleeveless. Remember, dress code), I was all about Christ and keeping with what He wanted for me! But then, when I went to my new, big school, I started to see cliques in a whole new way, and my tendency to be a follower and naturally-born rebel-in-excess was amplified.

It's not that there weren't cliques in my small, private, Christian school, of course there were! Just because you're a Christian, doesn't mean you don't form cliques. And to level with you, my mom has told me that I was considered "mean" by the younger children within the school. I remember being quite rude to fellow students, and mimicking the behavior of eighth graders when I was in seventh to be cooler, and certain things I said will never leave me. All I ever wanted was to fit in and be liked, so I did a lot of following and peacocking, copying and adapting. However, I feel like I'm digressing (likely to happen a lot in this one, fyi)...

So cliques, yes, we had them in my Christian school, but I was presented with them on a whole new level when I entered high school. Suddenly, I was seeing people wearing brands I'd never heard of, shopping places I'd apparently never seen, and since I was one of two kids from my 8th grade class of 18 who filtered into this high school, I knew no one, didn't have any friends, and felt a little desperate to hurry up and find some! Thankfully water polo season started before the school year did, one of the reasons why I chose that as my fall sport, so I was able to become familiar with some people before I had to step into the lion's den entirely alone.

But it wasn't long before I started "friends shopping," and seeking out which people I'd most like to be linked to. Which, for someone who has perpetual self-confidence issues that have been embedded and fueled since toddler-hood, is a sure-fire way to end up doing things you don't want to, and becoming someone you might not care to be. As for my faith? Well...

My parents kind of forced me to go on the Mexico Mission Trip my first summer after high school. It was something I'd always known about and wanted to do, but as the time drew nearer, I became more certain I was absolutely, definitely going. to. DIE! I had never slept in a tent outside, I had never had to shower with a water bag, I had never been around construction tools or in another country -- a "third-world country" -- and with all the stories we're fed here in the States about Mexico, I figured if a hammer didn't fall on my head and kill me, or the house we were building collapse on me, the water, food, bugs, rabid dogs, and culture would. I begged them not to make me go all the way till I was on the bus at 3am getting ready to leave, but they wouldn't budge. And really, thank Heavens they didn't!

It ended up being an incredible experience, it shot my faith back into a place where it had been before, I was in love with Jesus all over again, and I felt higher and better than I ever had! (This isn't a reference to drugs, b/c I hadn't started using them yet.) I rode the spiritual high all summer, but then when the year started back up and I was confronted by the pressures of high school again, I grew distant. And then, I started partying.

I was tired of hearing other people's wild stories from the weekend, being left out of the jokes that ensued after nights spent together partying, and feeling like I wasn't part of some great thing -- some epic club -- that was going on/forming around me. I was tired of spending my Friday nights walking laps around the neighborhood with my few friends, not realizing, of course, how true they were, and wanted to be a part of this super-cool big group. No longer did I want to live on the outside and just be part of the fray. So I finally got close enough with some of the partiers that I, too, knew where the parties were happening, and even ended up with a ride to get there! (Remember, this was all happening before everyone could drive. We were only just starting to get our permits and such.)

I'll never forget the first time I got drunk/high, or the second, and I'll certainly never forget the first time I was caught coming home drunk..

My mom had to open the door for me, because I was so loaded, I couldn't get the key in the lock, and was missing time after time, causing some parental eyebrows to raise inside. It was a Saturday night and she said to me, "We'll talk about this after church tomorrow. You and I are going to lunch." So after suffering through the first of many hung-over-Sunday-mornings spent in church trying to keep my eyes open, we went to TOGO's, and I did what I could to eat my hot pastrami sandwich. Her opening words were, "So, do you want to tell me why you smelled like a bar last night when you came home?" And so it went. I was grounded for a while, and then began a decade plus of my parents being concerned about me and my life choices. Rightfully so in many ways.

To say that my faith wavered throughout high school is being kind. I was definitely a party girl, but then each summer I would go on a mission trip, and it would send me soaring into the spiritual atmospheres, and I'd feel more amazing and right with the world than I did at any other time. The high was higher than any other high, and by this time I was a certified stoner, popping extacy pills almost every weekend. But it could never last, because as soon as I wasn't in that Godly setting, and I was surrounded by my pill-popping, powder-sniffing, pharma-med-taking, drunk and stoney friends, there was zero support for my walk with God, and I wasn't about to stand strong in it.

I'm not blaming anyone for my falling off the wagon, but I am saying that it is virtually impossible to remain steadfast in your walk with God when you have no outside support. Especially if you are inclined to people-pleasing and suppression of thyself. Let's look at a different example: you cannot expect to surround yourself with negative people, and still shine your best, bright, positive light, right? Well, it works the same. It's hard to grow in anything alone. As my friend once said, "Imagine you're sitting in a chair on top of a table surrounded by a group of people. Which is easier, to try and pull everyone below you up, or to be pulled down?"

Once I left high school and went away to college, I no longer had my parents nagging me to go to church every Sunday morning, and telling me to go to youth group on Sunday nights. The battle had ended, but only because I moved away. Now, with no one around me who was going to church, I wasn't going to try and do what I could to get my hung-over self there in the mornings. I figured God wouldn't want me there anyways, considering the condition I was in.

Really, it was my shame keeping me away. Because how could I dare to face The One Perfect Person ever to live, when I was perpetually forgetting what I'd done the night before, and disrespecting myself? No, there was no place for me in a church, or so I thought. And since that was my sentiment, it played in nicely with my lifestyle, and no one was keeping me accountable (including myself), I stuck to it.

I think in the four and a half years I was at uni, not including the time I was home and had to go to church with my parents, I probably went five times. And even then I feel like I'm being a bit generous with myself.

It wasn't until after my year abroad that I actually started to calm down a little bit and party a little less. I was still raging face far too often, but the bars definitely had started to lose their appeal, and my time spent out drinking wasn't as satisfying as it used to be. But I'd been caught in this cycle for so long, I didn't even know how to change it, no matter how much I felt it was time to. I mean, I knew exactly who to turn to, where I should go, and what I could do, but it seemed so far-fetched, and I was still so ashamed, I just couldn't bring myself to step inside the church and face God.

I'd like to take this time to digress just for a "brief" moment...

If you are like me, or like I was, and you feel your shame is far too great for God, I beg of you: do not engage this sentiment! Never for a second think that you are too far gone for God! When you are at your absolute worst, He loves you the most! When you are in your lowest of lows, He is waiting, hoping, wanting so badly to lift you up out of it! He will not run interference on your life unless you turn to Him and ask Him, but once you give it up to Him and give Him the chance to, He will so gladly turn it all around! We are literally His children, and He loves us more than we will ever be able to understand and/or accept. No human on Earth could ever offer a love so good, kind, and pure, no human can ever offer us truly unconditional love, and that is why no human could ever help us the way He can. Do not let your shame keep you from Him, if that's what it is. There is no other way to overcome our addiction, our pain, our suffering, or relieve ourselves of our burdens, except through Him! Please, if you feel it inside you like I did, this deep-seeded knowing that something higher and greater is what you need, seek Him through someone honest near you, and honor what you're being told within. It's the Spirit, your intuition, and you can trust it! He is wanting and waiting to save us from ourselves, we just have to realize there is nothing we could do to change His love for us, and step into His Light, fully drenched in our shame and suffering. Remember: "nothing you confess, could make me love you less."

Ok, thank you for bearing with me on that one! Now back to your regularly scheduled programming ;)

Fast-forward a little bit, and I'm beginning my grand spiritual awakening.

It's my last semester of school, and this idea, this law, this Law of Attraction is presented to me, and I latch onto it. I start putting it into practice, and I start to realize that my life and my spirit are opening up in new ways. I was inducing consciouness, and my name had finally been called.

The time had come for me to break free, for my mind to become unleashed, for me to stop being such a sheep, and for my third eye to open. Heck, it came time for me to learn that I even had a third eye! Haha. (Did you know?;) So as I'm graduating, I'm learning about all this stuff. All these conspiracy "theories", all this government stuff, that 9-11 was nothing like I grew up thinking it was, that I am so much more than I've ever given myself credit for, that I am worth self-love, and about this other realm, this spiritual one.

Now, since I'd grown up with religion, I don't think it was too hard for me to accept all this spiritual stuff, especially since it felt so right. But what's interesting is that as I was having my spiritual awakening, I found myself drawn back into my relationship with God, and wanting to explore it more. I'd known for a while I wanted to turn to Him, and shifting into consciousness, for me, also seemed to mean a shift towards the faith I'd once had. I wasn't quite ready for Jesus -- He still seemed a little hard to relate to -- but I did believe in creation, I did believe in God, and I knew He was what my entire Being had been yearning for for quite some time. Finally, I decided to honor it, to answer the call. I graduated, moved to LA, got a job, got an apartment, and started looking for a church. (None of which happened as quickly as you likely read that sentence;)

I found one, fell in love with it and how open-minded the people seemed, and wanted to break down in tears every time I went. It felt so good when I was there, and there was so much moving in and around me. My chains were being loosened, and I was being brought closer and closer to the point of really breaking free.

By this time, it had been about a decade since I could look myself straight in the face without feeling some sort of shame, and little-by-little, I could feel myself opening up. I was coming to love and accept myself in ways I never ever had before, and as soon as I was able to do that, the lid got shot so far off, life would never be the same again! But then I moved to Spain, and again, everything changed. This time, for the better!

I still believe to this day that God took me to Spain because He needed to get me the heck away from everything and everyone here at home. Not because they're bad people, it's a bad place, or anything like that, but because for me to grow spiritually and come to know Him in new ways, I had to get away from everything I knew and that had aided in my getting to where I was. To get control of my life back from the drugs, drinking, conformity and shame whilst being surrounded by people doing the same things was not going to be easy. So He worked out me going away (and honestly, if you know anything about the story of me going and the timing of it all, you'd be hard-pressed to deny that some sort of divine intervention went on), so He could isolate me from everything familiar, and begin His rebuilding of my life and my self-esteem/worth. Which is still happening a few years later, and likely will be happening for the rest of my life, but I embrace and honor myself far more than I ever did. It's a long, long process, because there is no way to undo 12+ years of "damage" overnight (though He could. But that's not the point of it all).

So here I am now, 26-years old, continuing to grow in my faith, trying to center my life around Christ and live in a way that honors Him, and you know what? It's really freaking hard!

They don't tell you when you're a little Christian kid that when you get into your teens and twenties it's going to be tough as heck to hang onto your faith. They don't mention to you that you will, most likely, have so little support, because it's not what our society is designed to give, that you will literally feel like you are chastising yourself by being a believer. They don't fill you in on the fact that Christian hate exists, and people -- friends, boyfriends/girlfriends, and family -- will make comments about you and your faith with such a dripping disdain, you will not want anyone to know what you believe. They don't tell you that you'd better be as confident as you possibly can be in Christ, because any ounce of doubt will take over the second you feel mocked for your faith by the people you love.

In the last month, I have been confronted with more Christian hate than I ever have before, and it has been really hard to go on unaffected. I know this as a sign I'm on the right track and that my faith is going strongly in the right direction, but it's still hard not to be offended by it. And to be honest, I'm really sick of it. Especially since all of it that I've been encountering has been coming from the subculture to which I am associated with/"belong to" -- this population of people who associate themselves with higher thinking, spirituality, consciousness, and who try to live their lives with a foundation of peace, love, unity and respect. (Just because you aren't a raver, doesn't mean you aren't a PLURbot. You know this is what we stand for, whether we drop PLUR's and trade kandi or not.) How does bashing on an entire population of people for what they believe in even start to fit into this PLURtastic way of life!? But yet, I digress again... I'm not trying to get into a religious/spiritual debate here, or even stroke the fire, I'm just trying to express how effing difficult it is to be a 20-something Christian. (Sorry if "effing" is offensive and you think I shouldn't use it because I'm a Christian. Skip to the bottom if your train of thought is pulling into that station.)

All of this animosity has left me with a lot to think about so I can be prepared emotionally and mentally for the next times it happens. Through thinking about it, how I can answer certain questions I'm often/bound to be asked, and trying to, honestly, "convince myself of my faith and why I believe what I do," has caused me to realize how hard this period of time is for everyone, but especially for anyone who practices religion.

We've left uni, meaning we're likely not living in the bubble anymore (though we try to hang onto it for as long as humanly possible), and are in this intense transitory phase/period, where we're still trying to find ourselves/understand ourselves, while bearing the weight of all these expectations our families and society have of us and what we should be like/doing. We're kind of assumed to be adults, ready to start our lives, pick our paths, and get ready to think about settling down. And yet, we're still young enough that we're not really taken too seriously in most workforces (the constant paradox of entry level jobs that require 2-3 years of experience. I mean, come on employers, what the heck is this!?!?), therefore causing us to feel the need to prove ourselves. And not just to others, but to ourselves.

Am I really cut out for this? Is this the right thing for me to do? Can I manage all this? WHAT IN THE HECK AM I DOING HERE!? These questions, along with an array of others, will taunt our confidence and run trains on our mind unrelentlessly. It's exhausting. It's not what they prepare you for in college. Nor is it something people seem to talk about. So take that, and then add trying to maintain a faith that most around you don't get/support/condone, yeah..it's not going to be an easy time.

Did I miss some lesson in Sunday school or at youth group? (Probably.) Because I really do not feel like I was at all prepared for this epically difficult time growing up in the church!

I'm not saying it's anyone's fault, and if I'm to be completely transparent, all the fault rests on my own shoulders. For I am the one who strayed away for so long, the one who took their Godly inheritance for granted and abused her ticket to an eternity in heaven, and the one who still, as badly as she wants to center her life around God and spend it serving Him, will hide her Bible under other books just to avoid looks, judgement, or possible ensuing conversations. I'm the one who will downplay her faith, because she doesn't feel well-equipped with answers, and doesn't want other people pointing out her faults, flaws, or lack of information. The one who needs to be around other 20-something believers so badly, but chooses to be a Weekend Warrior and leave town on most weekends instead of joining a small group and attending church regularly. All the fault is my own, the rest is just deflecting, and yet. . .

How do I create balance in all this?

Do I need to find a church in the places I frequent on the weekends, so I know there is a place for me to go on Sunday mornings that will keep me strong?

Do I accept that building my life around Christ means sacrificing other things, and just trust and know that the pay-off in the end will be better than that of running around outside?

Of course I don't want to stop traveling, but I also know that this is an incredibly critical time in my life, in my faith, and that if I want my life to be faith-based, some things have got to change. I cannot continue to justify my "time off" from God by telling myself, "But I'm bringing my Bible and will do my Bible study! Yeah! That makes up for not going to church! No matter who I'm in front of, I'll do it. Definitely. Let my light shine for Christ, who cares about human judgment!?" Really.... how many times will I try on that lie?

I know there are A LOT of great resources for people my age who are struggling with their faith and having a hard time maintaining it. I know there are tons of small groups out there dedicated to people my age, and churches who actually focus on/specialize in the 20-something crowd. I know I need to do more, and I know I've made/am making a lot of excuses, but I also know this is a really hard time to be strong. It's a hard time to believe. It's a hard time to face your demons and all those you're confronted with by others. And it's hard to feel accepted when you proclaim your faith. But then again, whose acceptance really matters?

One of my favorite things to remember is this question posed by, I believe, Pastor Steven Furtick of Elevation Church in North Carolina (amazing, amazing place, amazing, amazing pastor! If you've never heard him, check in with it, I think something is bound to stir inside!) Anyways the question was,

"What will you suffer for? Who would you rather suffer for? Is it better to live a life that appeases others and risk hurting God, or would you rather suffer ridicule and judgment of others, but know you're in good standing with the Lord of all creation?"

So friends, family, beloved Beings that share this sacred Earth Space with me, I urge you, me, all of us, to think before we make a statement that isn't going to be dripping in love, support, encouragement and good intention, but instead dripping in any sort of disdain. It's an incredibly hard practice, but it is so worth it. We can't put a price on general mindfulness, and we can't know the benfits of it till we really apply ourselves to the practice. I also ask that anyone else sharing in this struggle, please reach out, so we can strengthen one another and have someone to lean on. And I urge anyone who has been moved by this post not to leave that stirring alone, but to act on it.

I love you all so, so much. And as a friend recently told me, "I'm not telling you about my faith because I want to judge you. I'm telling you, because if I believe there is a Heaven and a Hell and that in the end we're all going to one of them, then it's wrong for me not to tell you about it." I mean, how messed up would I be to sit here and pour out love for you, but not let you in on this thing I believe to be true? It's like holding on to some epic secret to life! I cannot do that anymore. It's time to really let my light shine, my real, God-infused light, and accept the possibility of fall-outs. Though I hope none of our connections could be affected so.

I hope this touches someone out there.

I hope it makes you feel less alone.

I hope it gives you some answers,

and I hope you'll come Home.

<3

PS. This is a great post about 17 Misconceptions About 20-Something Christians. Pretty humorous, and so, so true. Give it a read if you're looking for some clarity, or if you're considering chastising someone for being bold enough to believe in something at a time when we're discouraged from believing in anything and everything, including, and most especially, ourselves.