In continuing with putting together the segmented pieces of my life, I imagine this next part will be the most difficult to write. Not because I have terrible memories attached to this time, but because it is a part of my life I have thoroughly left behind. Of course, I have some friends that only knew me during these years, and to them, I assume it is a total mystery how I got the way I am today, which is vastly different than I used to be.
At 12 years old, my family moved from Northern BC to Southern Alberta. My parents bought 60 acres outside of Calgary and put a mobile home on it, eventually had a house built there. By the 7th grade, I was beginning to get curious about spirituality. As I laid in bed at night, my mind would drift to the big questions of the universe: Who are we? Why are we here? What is the meaning of life? Who, or what is god? What about the afterlife? Being the only spiritual book I had access to at the time, I started to read the bible.
In the New Testament (where I started), things seemed pretty innocent. You had this bearded dude in a while robe and sandals talking about peace and love. And, oh yes, there were miracles. Blind people suddenly given sight and the dead coming back to life. Knowing that there were other religions in the world, I was hesitant to commit to this one, but since this was the only one I seemed to have a road map for, I decided to give it a try.
They call the area I lived in Cowboy Country, so naturally, the local community church featured someone in wranglers and a western shirt strumming an acoustic guitar. Of course, my teenage self was far too cool for country music, but the people were welcoming. One Sunday, a guest speaker was introduced as a prophet. I stayed after the sermon and went up to see him, think perhaps he could tell my future. After praying for me, he said that he saw me on the crest of a wave, with a crowd of people from my generation following. It never occurred to me to wonder if he gave this prophesy to all the young girls, I simply believed it. That summer, the church held an outdoor baptism service, and I got baptized in the Sheep River.
And the rest of my teenage life went along fairly normally for a few years. I played a lot of sports, basketball and volleyball, had sleepovers with friends and crushes on boys. I was fairly creative but scored only average marks, which didn't matter nearly as much to me as it did to my parents. I chose my high school, a small school of about 350 students.
In the 10th grade, a friend brought me to visit her church in Calgary. Now, big city churches have guitars, drums, bass guitars and keyboards, the style was soft of rock/blues, with plenty of gospel thrown in (pun intended). But this church was quite a scene. People were dancing in the isles, jumping up and down, spinning in circles, waving ribbons and flags. It was colorful and over the top. There people there would line up across the front of the church, and as the pastor came along to pray for them, he would put his hand on their forehead, and they would fall down on the floor and stay there for a good long time. Being the curious soul that I am, I went up to get prayed for, and guess what? I fell down, too. The energy in that church is what drew me to it. Plus, we could show up at church with dyed hair and wild clothing, which in the raver years of the late 90's, was important. I joined the youth group and soon became a leader in the youth group, committing to be there an extra weekday as well as Sundays.
I the 11th grade I started a youth group in my school. The type of Christianity I was involved in is very evangelistic, meaning they are all about "saving the world". We had a few converts, but mostly we just annoyed a lot of people. In case you haven't noticed, Christians can be very dogmatic and close minded. I was the poster child for that. The same year, my volleyball coach recognized that I had potential and offered to work with me to get me a full scholarship to university. I told him that I didn't want to go to university, because I wanted to go to bible college and become a pastor. He offered to help me get a scholarship for a Christian university. I told him I planned to go to the community bible college that was owned by the church I was in.
So after graduation I went off to bible college, and my first year went off without a hitch. Technically, I earned a certificate in Biblical Studies. I had to pay for my second year myself. I worked all summer as a waitress and saved enough for tuition and board. Then one morning I woke up with the most excruciating pain in my face, throbbing and making my vision blur. I needed an emergency root canal. Hello root canal, goodbye college tuition. I signed up for a couple of courses by correspondence, moved home and got a job at a local private school, as an assistant phys. ed teacher and volleyball coach. I went back for my second semester, but didn't quite earn enough credits to complete my second year, a Diploma in Christian Leadership.
By the end of year two in bible college, it didn't matter anymore. I had become disillusioned with the church, fed up with the politics, and frustrated by the limitations of my religion and the close mindedness of those around me. My brother had gone to film school, and we talked on the phone about stream of consciousness writing. You simply start writing and keep writing, keeping your pen moving until you get into a flow. You don't critique or edit as you write, just wait and see what comes out. Eventually, it is like writing straight from the soul.
So, I made the decision not to go back to bible college for my third year. I got an apartment and a job at a nearby coffee shop and started writing. I filled up notebooks and binders and loose leaf. I wrote on anything I could find. I was finding myself, discovering my true inner self, writing about pain, love, joy, disappointment, abandonment, elation, wonder and all the messy and mystical feelings we experience as humans. Some of my work was quite good. Some didn't make any sense at all. At one point, I took a few of my favorite poems to show my pastor. He was very disapproving. I was hurt about the outright rejection of the poems that were like little pieces of my soul, laid out on paper for all to see. I truly felt I had been following my own inner voice and was on the path I needed to be on. My pastor warned me against being a "lone wolf", which I guess means developing my own ideas independent of church teaching. I felt I needed to grow and learn outside of the confines of established and acceptable doctrine, and to express myself that way as well. So we went our separate ways, the church and all the friends I made there continuing to do what they do, and I off on my own, ready to experience the world with open eyes. Thus ended my eight year relationship with the church.
