The Backstory, Followers, and Barney Stinson, Part 2

This continues directly on from my previous post.

For that class, I had to get a mentor. I had asked Jaki, and she said that she needed to pray about it, and I'm thanking God that she took me on. We had already had a few good talks that year about some of the crap in my life, but I am as stubborn as a freakin' mule. She knew that I would be a challenge, but she took me on, anyway.

We had to do all of these personal response papers (yeah, they weren't even close to done on time), and we had to meet with our mentors and talk about the class, and our lives.

It was during this whole time, when the stuff from my past was brought up, I realized I knew nothing about being a Christian, and my attitude was terrible, that I had a major issue.

I realized that part of my brain could somehow use really screwy logic to eliminate God. I went through several months where I had no clue if I was a Christian, if there even was a God, and if I could ever believe in Him, even if there was some remote chance out there that He was real.

Most of the semester continued with me not doing any homework, walking around in a daze, shutting down emotionally, and fighting with Jaki that there couldn't be a God, and that we looked just as crazy and unbelievable as I had been told some other religions or cults looked.

Things began to take a turn for the better, and I went on the 6 week tour with my school. Thankfully, Jaki was on it with me. This whole crisis of faith kept popping up during those six weeks. I remember there were two nights in a row in the middle of nowhere where we stayed in hotels after really long drives. The second night was one of the few nights that will stand out in my mind forever.

I had had some sort of stupid disagreement with one of the girls on the team. This wasn't an unusual occurrence when stuck in a van with 10 other people for 6 weeks on end. As everyone got settled into their rooms for the night, I took my Bible, notebook, and pen, and stormed out the door into the courtyard outside. I spent nearly half an hour just fuming about everything, and thinking that it was about time that I called my family and got them to fly me home. I'd pay them back with a job that summer. I was so done, and I just didn't care.

Jaki finally came out and we began to talk. It started with me just ranting about everything that I felt was going wrong on tour, and ended with over an hour of me sobbing because I didn't know if I would ever be able to fully believe in God again. Nothing was resolved that night, except that I knew that Jaki wasn't giving up on me any time soon.

There were a few other really tough nights on tour, one of them being the night where we prayed and asked for words from God to give each other. It was our second to last night. We were in Edmonton. I finally left, crying, for awhile. I still didn't know if I even believed in God, so how could I sit there like I did and do this activity?

There was no resolution on tour. I went home happy that I had had the experience with everyone, but I still didn't know, deep down, if I could ever truly be a follower of Christ.

The day after I got home, I began my internship at my home church. I spent an entire summer working with some of the people that I trust, respect, and look up to most in the world. Our church and our leadership went through more crap this summer than I have ever seen, but we made it through. Not only did I get to see, over and over again, real followers of Jesus in action, but I got to see so VERY clearly how God works. There were maybe 5-10 distinct situations that happened this summer that I could pick out and almost draw a diagram of how God used those horrible, crappy moments to move our church right into the direction He wanted us to go in at the end of the summer. After everything had happened, and plans had been made due to all of those issues at the very end of August, I found myself sitting there in the tiny little office, talking to Doug and Rebecca about how I could almost see it as an image in my mind. All summer, little things had happened, that had progressively gotten worse and worse, finally making a decision for us. This decision, though is totally a massive door opened just by God, because there is no other possible way that it could have happened the way it did.

I am so thankful for this past summer. I learned how to love God again. I learned why the Bible and devotions are so important. I watched and learned from people who have given their entire lives, every minute of every day, to Him and His work. I saw His plan for our church SO clearly, and the way that He used all of those little (and BIG!) hopeless, crappy situations to get us to where we needed to be.

Most of all, I left my summer at the church with a new attitude about everything. Devotions and spending time with God are top priority. Classes aren't just school. They are life lessons that need to be learned and appreciated. Homework isn't torture, it's the best way that the teacher can think of to really drive home an important point. Friends influence you. Choose them wisely, and limit time spent with ones that may be leading you off track. The people in authority over you aren't there to make your lives horrible. They are often older, and almost always wiser, and want to see you become everything that God wants you to be. Make commitments to God and STICK WITH THEM!