Before I start getting into more posts on the faith aspect of this journey, I thought it might be a good idea to give you a bit more detail on where I've been, where I am and where I'm headed in my relationship with God. I'm breaking it up into pieces so it doesn't get super long, because as I mentioned before, summarizing is not a strength of mine!
God has always been a part of my life, at least from what I can remember. I was raised in the Lutheran church, baptised as an infant and confirmed as a teenager. We went to church every Sunday and I always remember both of my parents serving in some capacity at our church. I remember spending a lot of Saturdays at Our Savior's Lutheran Church with my dad as we were growing up as he helped out with various maintenance, manual labor types of things. I think I knew every inch of that church by memory.
Even with all of the time that I spent in church, I knew about God, but I don't think I ever really knew Him. I don't know that I ever really understood the Gospel. I am, however, completely aware of the first time that I encountered the Holy Spirit. I was 13 and on a trip to Colorado with the youth group from Our Savior's. It was a strange trip for me because I had moved to a different city a year prior with my mom, but my dad still lived (and lives) in New Ulm, so I hadn't spent much time with anyone on the trip over the past year. We spent the first half of the trip doing a Habitat for Humanity project in Loveland and then we spent the second half at Sky Ranch Bible Camp. Our dinner that evening was a "world dinner" where we randomly drew the name of a country from a hat and the country on the tiny sheet of paper determined the meal that we would eat that night. I don't remember the specific country that I drew at this point, but I know that it was somewhere in Africa. The majority of the people were in the same boat as me, huddled into a small spot on the floor. We were served a big bowl of cold, white rice and a pitcher of water to share. Meanwhile, just a few feet in front of us, there were people from the "USA" sitting at a nicely decorated table enjoying a four course meal. As I sat there, the tears just started running down my face. I think I had spent most of my life up until that point feeling sorry for myself because we didn't have a lot by societies standards, but with that perspective, I quickly became aware of how much I take for granted every day and just how blessed I was to live where I live.
Later that evening we had a "chapel" or worship service. We sang what quickly became one of my favorite camp worship songs, "Light the Fire Again". It was a really simple song, but as we sang it, I started to cry again. Tears just kept streaming down my face and I had no idea what was going on. One of my friends had the same thing happen and I remember our youth director just being completely beside herself because she didn't know what to do with us. Looking back, I know that it was just me being filled with the Holy Spirit and completely being aware of the love that God has for me and for EVERYONE.
I got home and dug my mom's guitar out of storage and started to teach myself how to play every single Bible Camp song I could. It is a shame I have hands the size of a 10 year old...guitar playing never really panned out for me, but I tried for a REALLY long time. I even lead the worship time for the elementary school kids at my church during high school.
I think that during the first 18 years of my life, being a Christian to me was more about going to church, doing good things, trying to be a good person and avoiding "bad" things. I didn't read my Bible regularly, but I could (and still can) recite the Apostle's Creed, Nicene Creed, most of the Lutheran Book of Worship and The Lord's Prayer from memory. I had "religion", but I didn't have a "relationship". (totally cliche, but there is a reason for that, because it is so often true)
I think that I definitely developed some good habits and morals during that time, but ultimately, I was pretty much a mess. I was completely driven by a fear of failure (a theme that you will see many times) and OBSESSED with trying to be perfect. I was obsessed with my grades and had a ridiculous case of social anxiety during most of high school and college. I was controlling my own life and rarely, if ever, turned to God for anything other than a selfish prayer, usually involving whatever boy I had unrequited feelings for at the time.
High School finished up. I was Salutatorian of my graduating class (at least before final grades came in...I actually wound up #3...what a failure, or at least that is what I told myself) and got a few scholarships and awards, I was well on my way to success!
I decided to go to Moorhead State University (Go Dragons!) and major in Music Industry. I still had stars in my eyes at that point and thought that I was going to be a producer, manager or sound engineer. I had to take a site singing class and take private flute lessons...that meant that my GPA was completely dependent on my musical ability. I didn't want to make music myself, I just wanted to be surrounded by it and help other people make it. I pretty much suck at site singing and while I was decent at playing the flute, I loathed practicing and was completely freaked out by the thought of "juries" at the end of the semester. That combined with the fact that I got ridiculously home sick being 4 hours away from my family, helped me quickly realize that any career that would require me to move to LA, NYC or Nashvegas was probably not for me.
I did what I would do in any situation where failure (read, anything less than perfection) was imminent and ran as fast as I could to Mankato State University, where I had friends, family and the lovely title of Undeclared. Ironically, the professor I had for sight singing and theory (Dr. Gwiazda or something like that) found out I was transferring and begged me to stay. He told me that I would regret my decision...some days he might be right, but then I wouldn't be the person I am today. I really think he just wanted me to stick around because I ended up tutoring half of the theory class because no one understood the way he taught it but I had learned much of it in high school a different way and was able to explain it to everyone else.
The sad thing about all of this when I look back on it was that if I wasn't so stinking afraid of failure, I was actually in a really good place. Almost immediately when I got to Moorhead, I met some great girls in Dahl Hall, a few of them I'm still in contact with. We quickly got connected in with Campus Crusade for Christ and I started to know and understand the Gospel and started down the road to having an actual relationship with Christ. I was actually having fun and enjoying myself, but I let fear have control of my life and off to Mankato I went....and we'll pick back up there another day :-)
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