The One Without Any Real Purpose

This semester has been the hardest one so far for me, and it's only six weeks in. I am in the final class that I have to take to get my required Bible minor and it has brought to light all of the bad theology that I was taught growing up. I'm not saying that the profs here are changing my mind about things, but they are making me question what I have been taught. The fact that in my head I know that salvation is grace-based doesn't transfer over to my actions or motives. I was raised being told one thing, but then outwardly having to act as something else.

The Prayer of Jabez was popular when I was about 10-11 and my Mom read it several times, was in a Bible study about it, and fell for its message hook, line, and sinker. She would insist that if/when we prayed out loud - at the dinner table, during Wisdom Searches, etc. that we use the same format that was laid out in that book. This made God seem like a short-order cook to me, but only if you were already close to him.

And how exactly did one get "close" to God. Well, that was simple. You had to read your Bible for hours a day, pray for even longer than you read, and be a good, obedient child. To a 10-yr-old with ADD, the reading was out of the question because I would get bored within the first few minutes and start thinking about something else. Of course, if I were to tell my parents that I was getting bored while reading my birthday Proverb in King James English for the fiftieth time, I would have been told to pray that God would give me patience. But there was another issue. I was never really taught how to pray. I had heard my parents and older siblings pray many times, but I didn't know big words like "substitution," and "propitiation," nor did I know how to use "thee, thou, or thine" correctly. I was convinced that if I were to pray I had to use those kinds of words and if it was less than three minutes long I was somehow being blasphemous because obviously if I couldn't talk to God for longer than 30 seconds I must have some major strongholds in my life that were keeping me away from a deep relationship with God.

When I was little there was a family who lived down the road from us who had three girls around my age and I would play with them for hours at a time. They were the first to introduce me to secular music with the dreaded "back-beat" in the form of Hanson, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, and other pop bands of the 90s. I felt so guilty when I would come home from their house, but I couldn't tell my parents because I knew that I would get in trouble for not telling them to turn it off. There were a few times that I did ask them to turn it off, but I felt like a prude and I didn't want to be embarrassed by asking them to stop something that I couldn't find anything inherently wrong with, besides the beat. I would be in a bad mood for the rest of the night because I felt guilty, but didn't know how to express it. I was convinced that I was in a bad mood because of the music and the effect that Satan's noise had on me. I would blame my inability to pray or concentrate on the fact that I was disobeying what was definitely the 11th commandment "Thou shalt not listen to 90s pop."

While the "stronghold" theory is a somewhat acceptable way of explaining to kids how sin can pull you away from God, it only served to make me feel guilty and question my motives and the reasons behind my actions. I was one of the most guilt-ridden children you can imagine. I blamed myself for my Mom's depression after Grandma died. I blamed myself for my younger siblings being undisciplined. When my brother started molesting me I blamed myself for that too - maybe if I had said "no" that wouldn't have happened. When I got to be about 16, it became "maybe if I had not let him do that I would be courting someone by now." There had to be some reason that God wasn't blessing me. Was it because I listened to and enjoyed sinful music? Was it because I was damaged goods? Could God not love someone who had become dirty?

This pattern of guilt was systemic. It eventually made me decide that God just didn't care about me. I tried to be the person I was called to be, but I didn't know what that was and I didn't know how to find out. And so, I gave up on God because I thought that he had given up on me. I went to sleep horrified of what the implications of not knowing if God existed could be. Mostly, I just wanted answers and I couldn't find anyone who I could ask without being judged and told to pray for faith.

I had a tough few years, but coming to this college has helped a little bit. I'm not as worried about my questioning. I know that it can be a healthy part of a Christian walk. I just wish it didn't make you feel like such crap and that it didn't consume all of your waking thoughts. What I wish more than anything is that someone would have cared enough to tell the scared, depressed 13-yr-old that 8 years ago.

The One with the Obligatory 9/11 Post

It was a beautiful, sunny September morning for me in Northwest Ohio when the world changed. It was my little sister's 5th birthday and I was excited for my best friend's family to come over for dinner that evening. I was working on my schoolwork while listening to the barely approved Christian radio station. I knew that if I didn't finish up at least my math I wouldn't be allowed to play with my friend and her siblings later.

My brother came into my room about 15 minutes after the first plane hit and told me that the WTC had been bombed. I was 11 and thought that the WTC was something like a big market. We didn't watch TV at that point, (my parents still don't) so me and my 14-yr-old brother had to haul the TV out of my parents' closet, set it up on Mom's dresser and get the bunny ears pointed just right. We stayed in that room for the rest of the day. As we came to realize that it was a planes, and not a bomb, I thought that was better because it would mean that the building could stand because the base was still strong. I knew that the people on the floors where it hit were probably goners, I thought maybe the firemen could get everybody below out and then put out the fires. I watched horrified as the first and then the second towers buckled and collapsed. I remember staring in disbelief and then pointing and gasping because I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

Dad came home from work around 10:30. I remember hearing the garage door opening as I watched the first tower fall. Mom didn't get up from her chair and Dad spent the day pacing back and forth. I made lunch for myself and my siblings and for the first time I could remember we were allowed to eat on the carpet.

We assumed that my friend's family wasn't coming over and so we experienced the rare occurrence of going out to dinner at Fricker's, which is a family favorite. Our waitress was wearing a pin that said it was her birthday too and my sister thought it was fantastic. It was one of the most somber, depressing meals I can remember. No one talked, except for the little kids and even they got the hint after a while that talking wasn't really a high priority right then.

My Dad made the decision on 9/12 that we wouldn't watch anymore coverage because he didn't think that my younger siblings - who were 5 and 8 - should be watching the towers collapse over and over again.

My sister was robbed of a birthday - she turned 15 today and she couldn't advertise it because people would make comments like "oh, I'll bet you'll have a blast", etc. She refuses to put her birthdate on facebook because she doesn't want people to know. While that is awful, the effect that those few hours had on my family were tremendous. My oldest brother had just recently commissioned as a 2LT in the Army. In 2007 my brother who was 14 on 9/11, enlisted in the Army, and a year later, the third of my brothers joined the Army. My younger brother who is 18 now is in his first year of Army ROTC with plans to commission in 2015.

Without that single event of terror, I don't think that my brothers would be placing their lives in jeopardy, but I am unbelievably proud of them and everyone else who is bravely fighting to protect my freedoms. Every year on my sister's birthday I remember the men and women who died trying to save people from a fiery death. I pray for their families, I pray for their children, but mostly I pray that we get those sons of bitches who did that to them.

In the now infamous words of George W. Bush:

"I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.”