The Eternal Search
This is where, depending on your world view, you start to think I'm a flake.
When my parents met, my mother was a Seventh-day Adventist. Her whole family was. Neither my father, nor his family, were. This was a big issue. Following true love, and after a lot of soul-searching, my father followed his heart and converted. This did not go over well, at the time, with his Catholic family. That changed in time. As did my father's family, which became largely Mormon.
In my early life, I remember an Adventist upbringing. My grandmother on my mother's side was always a strict Adventist, sabbath-keeping and church-going. My nuclear family followed suit for a time. I have early memories of church, and eating some vegetarian meals that Adventists are famous for. But my nuclear family had a bit of a meltdown, and after the divorce, there wasn't a great of deal religion involved...except, of course, for the constant influence of my grandmother, and visits to her home were always met with religious music, Bible stories, and definitely no TV on Saturdays.
My late maternal grandparents, who brought Adventism into the family line
Near the end of my mother's second marriage, she decided that she wanted my sister and I to have an Adventist education, as she had. In the fourth grade, while still living in Auburn, I was enrolled in Pine Hills Junior Academy, a small Adventist school. This was my first taste of religious school, and it was an adjustment. Such things had not been a part of my life for many years, and I knew that my family didn't fit with the usual model of Adventist families I found there (no church, an alcoholic stepfather, etc). But it was a nice school with good people, and I fit in well enough, and had good friends.
We moved to Sacramento the following year, and, as my mother's marriage ended, my sister and I were enrolled in Sacramento Union Academy, the same Adventist school that my mother had graduated from. It was a big school by Pine Hills standards--covering grades kindergarten through twelfth--but small by any measure of the public education system. Class sizes were generally in the twenties. It was nice. Advocates of smaller classrooms know what they're talking about. You knew your fellow students, and your teacher, very well. It was a good home for nine months of the year. And though my family still never became regular church-goers or strict Adventists (we ate meat, heathens that we were), we became part of the church family. And for the rest of my pre-college years, I had an Adventist education.
People who went to religious schools know how this goes. The faculty try to instill the values and teachings of the church on you, and it sticks with some students...but for others, it's just ritual, and you don't take it too seriously. I was by no means an atheist, but I was no zealot either. I wrote papers on theology and bowed my head in prayer, but it wasn't really a part of who I was, not completely. By my senior year, I was one of the "bad kids" (such a term, by the way, is laughable for what we were, especially considering the teens of today). I was a partier, out drinking with the boys, and I experimented quite a bit with drugs at the end of high school and into the first part of college. When college did come, I was back in the non-religious educational system. And while I carried certain values with me (a very good argument for religious schooling, in my opinion), religion itself didn't really hold much real interest or a major place in my life. I was part of the world now, free from the boundaries of the Adventist school system where concepts such as right and wrong were taught. I tried to sample every new experience that came along.
The hard-partying high school days
Jump to later in college (actually a few years later, because I took five years to finish my two-year degree at American River College), when I was a student at California State University Sacramento. I was living in Folsom at the time, about a half hour out of Sacramento and, for the first time, away from easy access to my group of friends. I was going through some growth, going in new directions now that I was taking college seriously. I had already had my first heart episode, which got me off the heavy partying. Beer was pretty much all I was left with--that, and the cigarettes. I'd quit the Marlboros reluctantly after my hospital stay, but started again when my father went into the hospital and I had been a smoker again since his death some months before.
One night a friend of mine dropped me off at my home in Folsom, as I still didn't have my own transportation at this point. I was living with my mother and stepfather at the time while I went to school, and they were fast asleep, as it was late. After a few minutes in my room, I went out onto the back porch on this cold November night to have a smoke. I lit up a red and relaxed, and started staring up at the night sky. It was amazingly clear that night, and all the lights in the neighborhood were out because of the late hour. You could see nothing but stars as far as the eye could search. It was very impressive, and as I smoked, I stared up at them, and my mind wandered. My thoughts turned to the universe, the stars, the world and its vast size and its insignificance compared to the limitless suns I saw above me.
That moment happened...you know the one, when you start thinking about things that are just too big, and your head starts to protest and tell you to switch to a less complicated channel, like the one where you wonder who's on Letterman tomorrow night or think about the quiz that's coming up at the end of the week in one of your classes. But for some reason, I didn't listen. I couldn't. I kept thinking. Unfortunately, with this much distance from the event, I don't think I can properly describe it to you. But something happened. I had a clarity I'd never experienced. I saw the world, and life, and my life, in a way I still can't quite understand.
And something happened to me. Again, I can't properly explain it, but my entire life changed that night. Over a cigarette.
Some great event didn't lead up to it. I wasn't a drug addict looking for a way out, I wasn't at the end of my rope with a gun to my head, I wasn't trapped in a burning building begging for my life and bargaining for a few more years if I turned my life around. It was an average night. And an average cigarette (wasn't even a 100...).
Before the sun rose I was on my knees, for the first time in years. My upbringing being what it was, there would be little mental prayers from time to time (come on, God old buddy, help me out with this, would you?), but never serious, deep prayer. It was a compulsion I couldn't fight, like I wasn't even in control (the "me" I was used to being certainly wouldn't be doing anything like this). Something changed...everything changed. I had a clear vision of my life, my place in the world, the finite nature of all things, and I was keenly aware of the presence of the eternal, of the vastness of life and time. How small I was. And how precious a gift my life was, and everything in it. I was humbled. I was awakened. And for all intents and purposes, it was that night when I finally found God.
Hence, the flake statement earlier. Go ahead. I can take it.
Now, you're probably already working to explain away what happened to me. And hey, feel free. We all have our views on how life and people work. But me, I can't explain it away. It was a defining moment in my life, and, as welcome as you are to your interpretations, it was real to me. I'd say otherwise if it was just a whim, something that come on from some dark moment in my life and lasted for maybe a couple of weeks. But it didn't go away. And it hasn't still.
One of the main things that happened to me that night was an awareness of all things in life we ignore and never think about. I believed, then and there, that there is a greater truth. It was as though that truth called to me and invited me to find it. And that's what I pledged to do. I wanted truth. The meaning of life, the great answers. And I resolved to start trying.
Yeah. That was going to be a breeze.
What followed was a lot of Bible and religious study on my own. And life changes. I quit drinking and smoking, convinced, at the time, that it was the correct thing to do, religiously speaking. Realizing that this change in me wasn't going away, I knew I had to let people know somehow if I was serious about it, and I knew it wasn't going to be easy, as most of my friends had either no experience with religion or had no apparent desire to explore it. The way I found happened about a month later, at Christmas time. I went out and bought a big load of Bibles. In each of them, I wrote something on the inside cover to each person. Not just talking about my new religious experience, but also expressing how I felt about them and what they meant to me. A little over-dramatic, you think? Yeah, I'd say. But it got the job done, and it was a good opportunity to express to these people, friends and family alike, how much they meant to me, so it did feel good. Oh, and I vastly underestimated how long this would take. I don't think I slept at all the two days before Christmas, struggling to get these done. But they got done, and got delivered in time for Christmas. While there was an expected amount of confusion, I've got to give it up for my friends. They handled it, and what I was going through, well. What can I say? I have good friends.
I dropped out of school about this time, too, just because I realized I had no idea what I really wanted to do with my life...but I was pretty sure the degree I was seeking wasn't it. During this period, though I had initially discounted getting back into Adventism (what are the chances, when you're searching for the truth, that it was the one you were raised with?), I started going to a small Adventist church near our new home in Rocklin. I'd say that was my most religious period. I really got into the church, and went there every weekend and on some weeknights when there were Bible studies. It was a good experience. Great people, a real family. And it was nice to be around people that I didn't have to explain my theological interests to.
But there was a problem. I had questions. And I discovered, in this, the truth I'd continue to live with about religion. People in a certain church tend to say they invite questions, but the reality is that people don't want to have to think about what they believe. They're part of a church, and therefore whatever the church says must be the truth. This is natural, and you see it in people with their political affiliations as well. Believe me, I understand it. I've wished countless times since this whole thing started that I could be one of those people who could pick a church and just believe and be happy and secure in that faith. But that's not who I am, no matter how much I wish it was different. I question. I seek. And this was happening with Adventism and me. I had no major problem with the church, per se. It was what I was raised on, after all. But try as I might to just fit in, I couldn't. It wasn't where I was supposed to me. My search, it seemed, was not over. It had, in fact, just started.
It was during this time that another major life event happened to me. I met Emily. Online one night in my Commodore 128 computer (on the Commodore version of the then-still-new America Online called Quantum Link), we bumped into each other in a chat room. We chatted, we ended up on the phone. It turned out she was a Mormon girl from Phoenix. I knew Mormonism well enough from family members of mine, and had no problems with it (unlike many of the Christians I talked to). And Emily and I fell in love, on the phone. Yet another thing I can't explain, something else very unlike me. But like the earlier event, it seemed crazy, but it was real. We wouldn't meet face to face for three long months, but when we did, when she flew into California that first time, I knew it was no whim. It was the real thing.
Me and Emily
While we were still having our phone romance, strange things started happening with me and Mormonism. The first and most glaring was my van. After my father died, I inherited some money from him, which I planned to put towards finally getting a van, as I'd never had my own transportation because of my physical limitations and my lack of funds to afford such a specialized vehicle. I had finished my driving training, and it was time to look for a van. I really couldn't afford one, still. But one day my cousin Jerry (who passed away a while back, one of the best people you'd ever have the pleasure of knowing) called my mother and said he found an ad posted up about a handicapped van for sale near him, and wondered if it might be what I needed. It turned out to be the exact van I needed, with all the exact equipment and specifications. My mother called the woman selling it, and it turned out it was her son's, and he'd died a couple of years before (of Muscular Dystrophy). She was finally ready to part with it. And she, and her family, were Mormon. Her son, Corey, had gone to BYU and lived in Utah. When she heard the story of how Emily and I had met, and learned about me, she decided I was the one to sell the van to. But with the money I had, and the total of the loan I could get to supplement it, was about $12,000 short of her asking price. She sold it to me anyway. And it's because of that that I now have my independence. All because of Mormonism, it seems.
During this time, Mormon missionaries also happened to be in my neighborhood and knocked on my door. I took "the discussions" from them to learn more about Emily's church, and became friends with the both of them, despite their frustrations with my questions. All these pieces seemed to be coming together. Was I meant to be Mormon? Was this what I was searching for? I wasn't sure, but I couldn't deny the direction I seemed to be moving. I had to find out. I went and visited Emily and her family for a month, and by the end of it, it was clear I had to move there to be with her. I packed up my van and my things and left the state for the first time in my life, and started a whole new life in a new city, and with someone in my life I seemed destined to spend the rest of my days with.
For the next two years, I essentially lived as a Mormon as I learned about them. I went to church with Emily every week, to a college ward where I got to know a lot of great young people. Emily waited, patiently and faithfully, for me to find and accept the truth. My lack of actual Mormon church membership was the only thing that was keeping us from being married. We'd already planned the wedding and named the kids. The only thing holding it back was me. She didn't push. She had faith that I'd come around on my own. But time passed. I studied, I learned, I prayed, I lived my life with her and her folks and siblings--all of whom, too, were anxious for me to convert and become a part of their family.
Me and Emily's family in Salt Lake City
But it wasn't happening. I agonized over it. I was wracked with guilt, knowing that I was holding our relationship back. Many times I asked myself why, since I couldn't seem to figure what church I was supposed to be in, I didn't just pick this one and be happy and have a wife and children and a good life among good people. But my questions, again, were there. I learned that Mormons, like many people of religion, but perhaps even more so, didn't care for questions. More than faith in God, their church is about faith in the church itself, and all its beliefs. That's the cornerstone of their faith, and questioning its rightness is like questioning the existence of God. For them, the two are completely intertwined. And here I was, the reluctant skeptic. My conversations with Emily about it never seemed to end well, so we usually avoided the topic. We had an otherwise wonderful relationship, and were very happy together.
But one day, I came home from work to my apartment, and she was waiting there for me. The night before, we'd been there, seemingly happy and normal, watching TV, and she'd driven home. Somewhere between my apartment and her house, she'd realized I was not going to become Mormon, and that I was holding her back, as she put it, spiritually. She was Mormon, and needed to marry someone Mormon. That someone, it seemed, wasn't to be me. The talk started thirty seconds after we went inside. Thirty minutes later, she, and her things she had over there, were gone. I didn't see her again for a year.
This was perhaps the darkest moment in this journey of mine, and certainly the worst night in my life. I was destroyed. I'd lost the woman I loved. And for what? Because I wasn't Mormon? What was I then? If I didn't belong to some other religion, then why couldn't I be part of hers? I was emotionally devastated, not only for losing my one true love but for feeling like the cause of its demise. I strongly considered, again, just giving up and becoming a Mormon, not even knowing if that would get her back at that point. But again, though it could have given me that life I'd seen within my grasp that I wanted so badly, I couldn't do it. I was not Mormon. I didn't know what I was.
And I still don't.
It's several years since that time, and I've been through a lot of changes. I've searched the spiritual path along the way, only to find one dead end after another, left only with frustration and disolusion...but unable to stop searching. What started that November in Folsom has never gone away, though it seems like a lifetime ago. It's a feeling I can't say I recommend...feeling lost and directionless, but unable to stop traveling. I am, at my core, as much hardship as it's cost me, a man of faith. It's who I am. Denying who you are, in my observation, only serves to make matters worse.
What has my search so far taught me? A lot about religion, a lot about faith, a lot about people. I've learned, too, that I seem to be a big target for conversion. Is it the wheelchair thing? I don't know. But people definitely want me to find their truth, to accept that the church that they were raised in or have chosen is that right one. I've learned that people, in this matter, often feel that the ends justify the means. I remember very clearly, during my initial month-long stay in Arizona, Emily's mother coming into my room while Emily was at work, convinced she was going to convert me right there. Understand that her mother's a wonderful woman who did a lot for me, and was an important part of my life. I have nothing but affection for her. But during that conversation and attempt at instantaneous conversation, she ended with telling me to remember that Emily was going to marry someone Mormon, and to remember that I was replaceable. Does wonders to the self esteem to be called replaceable, by the way. Turns out, of course, that she was right. I found similar behavior in people in my life who were trying to stop me from becoming Mormon. One friend even went behind my back and talked to Emily, telling her "You know Mike's never going to become Mormon, right?" Appreciated having the decision made for me. I had people trying to warn me of the "dangers" of Mormonism, one church friend from the old days even reminding me about us not yoking ourselves to unbelievers. An Adventist friend of my mother's, in the middle of my painful breakup, wanted my mother to tell me how "proud" of me she was. I assume she thought that I'd fought off Mormonism and come back to Adventism. Good thing, in the mood I was in, I didn't have her phone number to call her and tell her this wasn't the case, as I was tempted to in the messed-up emotional state I was. And in all this, it didn't matter that I was trying to live a Godly life and seek out the truth. Intentions didn't matter. And the fact that I'd found love in my life, a miracle in itself, didn't matter to anyone. All that mattered was what they had chosen to believe...and that I believe that as well. I got to feel like a football after a while. Or like some kind of prize everyone wanted to win.
My goddaughter, Zoe
I continued my search throughout, looking into all manner of Christianity, and even exploring Judaism for a while (something about rabbis turning you away three times when you want to convert--as opposed to Christian zealots jumping on you like insurance salesmen--had its appeal). While not being a Catholic, I ended up a Catholic godfather to my friend's daughter along the way, as he was one of those rare people who felt that spirituality was its own merit, not just church membership. He was the exception. I found more people who thought all this searching was great...as long as it led me to what they believed. Even people who didn't even practice their religion. From a couple of different people I got this phrase in response to my frustrations about not finding the "right" church:
"Well, have you prayed about it? I mean really prayed?"
"Really" prayed. You know, I didn't want to cop an attitude, but I had to wonder if any of these people had ever literally spent hours on their knees at a time as I had at certain points in my life. But to them, if by prayer I hadn't found their truth, I must have been praying wrong. Of course. What other answer could there be, right?
If I sound burned out on religion, it's because, at this time, I am. I haven't been to church in years, except for a brief attempt for a couple of weeks at a non-denominational church that was just too rock-n-roll for me, and Easters with my then-roommate's family at their very nice local church. But no church of my own. Fifteen years after this all started, I still have no home, still no answers. But it's still with me. I'm still a Bible reader, I still pray. I still live my life the way I've become--my use of language is PG at best, I only have the occasional beer as opposed to my old days of knocking back a fifth of Southern Comfort in a night, and you don't see me in strip clubs (again, unlike the old days...)--but believe me, after all this, the last thing I think about is judging others who don't live the same way. My lifestyle is between me and God, and, unlike so many others I've dealt with, I have no desire to push it on others. Not knowing clearly what I believe, how can I possibly impose those beliefs on others? No, I'm no pious judge. I take people for what they are. Changing others isn't what this is all about. It's me that I have to deal with, and me alone. And "me alone" seems to be the ongoing theme of my spiritual life.
But through all the frustration and hopelessness, I can't deny the center of this wavering faith of mine. There is a center to who I am, whether I like it or not, and at that center is my belief in God. I have no choice. I live in a world that today scoffs at the idea of a Creator, of a heaven or of life after death. At least a world that seems to. When you actually look at the statistics at the population of the world that believes in a higher power, the numbers are quite staggering, We just don't really see this portrayed in our movies and TV. Not a very popular idea in this media. Except, of course, for the ones that get all the news--the zealots, the fanatics, the extremists. Can you blame a world for turning its back on religion in view of what religion has done with religion? I sympathize with people who are hardened to it. In my own personal experiences on a much smaller scale, I have been too. I see ignorance and hate as well, people committing terrible acts both large and small in the name of God. The great irony of religion isn't lost on me, that something that's center is supposed to be love has generated so much hate, from simple of acts of despising someone who doesn't share one's beliefs to flying airplanes into buildings. The problem with religious people is that they're still people. Still human. Still flawed.
And yet, there is good there as well. The good we never see on the news. Anyone who's been part of a church knows that. There are wonderful, giving people to be found, and they are, despite appearances, the vast majority. Religions help and feed people. They take care of each other. They instill a sense of love for their fellow man that translates into the kind acts we take for granted every day. They don't make the evening news, but these are the people all around us, that we work with and share the freeway with and shop with. They are our grandparents, our neighbors, and our friends. It seems like every time I'm about to give up on religion, I run into someone who reminds me what it's really all about. This is what sustains me. And convinces me that maybe there's hope for religion after all. Maybe hope that I'll eventually find the one that's right for me.
I'll never lose my faith in God. In religion? I've had my issues. But God has always been there for me. I believe in a Creator. I don't pray out of ritual. I pray to God. And when I actually have my head on straight from time to time, I can look back and see how events in my life transpire in unbelievable ways to make those requests come around...though not always as I expect. My life is not an easy one. If you know me, and think you understand that, you probably don't, because I don't share a fraction of what I go through every day with the people in my life. I fight with hopelessness, and darkness. Sometimes it's hard to get out of bed and face the day. But I go on. And I don't do so out of habit. I do so because I have hope in my life. I have faith. It sometimes comes and goes, yes. But it always comes back around. It's what keeps me alive, day by day. I think the worst part of my religious stagnation is feeling like I'm letting God down, somehow how failing to find what he seems to want me to. But I have to believe God is bigger than that. And that all this is truly going somewhere, leading me to a place that I was pointed to after lighting up a smoke and looking up at the stars. It's faith in this, and Him, that keeps me going.
And the search goes on.
