From Matthew Paul Turner's blog.
This is totally awesome - especially the ending!
Pin It
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Legalism
Sarah Mae has a great post about what legalism is, and what legalism isn't.
I find this interesting because, in the past, legalism has pushed me away from church and (wrongly) away from God. There was a lot of legalism at the university I went to, and I am surrounded by a lot of it just living where I do, among the Amish and Mennonite communities. The older I get and the longer I travel this journey with God, the more my ideas about legalism seem to change - especially since I joined a pentecostal church. And yet you see it everywhere, in every denomination.
Of course, you see the opposite, too - people so wrapped up in "freedom" that they seem to forget that God's rules apply to them, too. They forget that "everything is permissible for me, but not everything is beneficial."
These quotes in particular stuck out to me:
I hate to have to admit it, but I'm dealing with this in a big way in my own life right now. My husband and I are dealing with a tough family situation... a teenage niece with mounting drug/legal problems... and it has been far too easy to look at the people that raised her and think I'm "better." I really have to give that attitude over to God over and over, every day because I see myself exhorting myself in this situation, where I really have no right to.
I guess that's really where legalism comes from - being so tightly bound in a belief or viewpoint that you can no longer see beyond the blinders on your eyes.
And none of us are completely innocent of it. Pin It
You are *not* a legalist if by faith and love for the Lord you obey His law – people will tell you you are, but you are not.
You are a legalist if you keep God’s law in order to gain or keep your salvation.
I find this interesting because, in the past, legalism has pushed me away from church and (wrongly) away from God. There was a lot of legalism at the university I went to, and I am surrounded by a lot of it just living where I do, among the Amish and Mennonite communities. The older I get and the longer I travel this journey with God, the more my ideas about legalism seem to change - especially since I joined a pentecostal church. And yet you see it everywhere, in every denomination.
Of course, you see the opposite, too - people so wrapped up in "freedom" that they seem to forget that God's rules apply to them, too. They forget that "everything is permissible for me, but not everything is beneficial."
These quotes in particular stuck out to me:
You are a legalist if you think your higher standards make you more righteous.
You are *not* a legalist if you exhort others to obey God’s word.
I hate to have to admit it, but I'm dealing with this in a big way in my own life right now. My husband and I are dealing with a tough family situation... a teenage niece with mounting drug/legal problems... and it has been far too easy to look at the people that raised her and think I'm "better." I really have to give that attitude over to God over and over, every day because I see myself exhorting myself in this situation, where I really have no right to.
I guess that's really where legalism comes from - being so tightly bound in a belief or viewpoint that you can no longer see beyond the blinders on your eyes.
And none of us are completely innocent of it. Pin It
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
A Few Extremely Unimportant Things You Don't Need To Know About Me
My name is Julie Anne Fidler.
I am the (new) humor columnist at Fine Living Lancaster Magazine.
I came into the world on Cinco De Mayo - May 5 - 31 years ago.
I've been married to the love of my life for almost a decade.
We don't have any kids. Someday, maybe. So far, life hasn't taken us down that path. In the meantime, we have Molly - the moodiest, cuddliest, naughtiest little booger in the world.
We have some really crazy neighbors. Well, some of them are normal. Mostly, mine are not. We have a pseudo-gigolo living 2 doors down, and neighbors I refer to as "the ghetto people" two doors down in the opposite direction. Things have been worse. It has given me plenty to write about.
I do my best to keep the peace.
I am completely, hopelessly and proudly addicted to coffee. Enough said.
I suffer from bipolar disorder and I write TONS about that. It has been a heartbreaking, hilarious, maddening, liberating journey.
I am a freelance writer and the author of Adventures in Holy Matrimony: For Better or the Absolute Worst (Relevant Books, 2005). I hear it's pretty good; you should pick up a copy.
I have been a HUGE Amy Grant fan for the past 20 years now. I had the privilege of spending a Saturday afternoon at her house when I was 17 and have met her several times since then, most recently in August 2010. Her music has been the backdrop of my life.
Most importantly - and I saved the best for last - I am a believer in and follower of Jesus Christ. He has been my Savior since 1992. He saved me from myself. (Keep reading my blog and you'll eventually figure out why.) You can learn more about Him here.
I am the (new) humor columnist at Fine Living Lancaster Magazine.
I came into the world on Cinco De Mayo - May 5 - 31 years ago.
I've been married to the love of my life for almost a decade.
We don't have any kids. Someday, maybe. So far, life hasn't taken us down that path. In the meantime, we have Molly - the moodiest, cuddliest, naughtiest little booger in the world.
We have some really crazy neighbors. Well, some of them are normal. Mostly, mine are not. We have a pseudo-gigolo living 2 doors down, and neighbors I refer to as "the ghetto people" two doors down in the opposite direction. Things have been worse. It has given me plenty to write about.
I do my best to keep the peace.
I am completely, hopelessly and proudly addicted to coffee. Enough said.
I suffer from bipolar disorder and I write TONS about that. It has been a heartbreaking, hilarious, maddening, liberating journey.
I am a freelance writer and the author of Adventures in Holy Matrimony: For Better or the Absolute Worst (Relevant Books, 2005). I hear it's pretty good; you should pick up a copy.
I have been a HUGE Amy Grant fan for the past 20 years now. I had the privilege of spending a Saturday afternoon at her house when I was 17 and have met her several times since then, most recently in August 2010. Her music has been the backdrop of my life.
Most importantly - and I saved the best for last - I am a believer in and follower of Jesus Christ. He has been my Savior since 1992. He saved me from myself. (Keep reading my blog and you'll eventually figure out why.) You can learn more about Him here.
Monday, January 4, 2010
My Testimony - A Reawakening (Pt. 1)
On New Year's Eve 1997, I had one of the worst nights of my life. My friends and I were arguing (though I don't remember what about) so my plans for the evening went down the toilet. I spent that night with my parents and their friends. They were in my mother's friends' dining room playing games and laughing, I was in the den watching the news about Michael Kennedy's fatal ski accident. When the ball in Times Square dropped, everyone cheered... then I went outside and had a good cry.
My parents were fed up with me, and with good reason. I struggled through high school and threw their money away in college by flunking out. My mother had already told me - through clenched teeth - that if I thought I was going to sleep all day and sponge off of them, I had another thing coming. I never intended to do that, though. I was relieved to be done with college. I hated school. It kills me to say that because now I'd love to go back, but back then I hated it with a passion. With no clue what the future held for me, I made a pact with myself on New Year's Eve: I was going to work my butt off, make as much money as possible, and move back to Nashville permanently and as quickly as I could. Pennsylvania represented everything I hated - the snobby wannabe rich people, my horrible relationship with my family, and the years of sexual abuse. It was all stuff I wanted to run away from and never look at again. Nashville felt like home and I missed my friends.
In 1998, I did work my butt off. I became a supervisor and took any and all hours that were offered to me. If there was a special dinner, I'd offer to work it, even if it meant being on my feet fifteen hours a day. I was still living at home, not really getting along with my mother, but at least my folks were happy that I was working. They stayed off my back about that. I wrote songs with a guy named Brian and did a lot of late-night drinking with friends. I spent hours and hours with my Nashville friends, sometimes talking to them on the phone till the early hours of the morning. I even flew down to Nashville a few times for a weeklong vacation. I guess you could say I had the life - no expenses, job flexibility, and plenty of money.
I had no interaction with God, but I have to say I genuinely missed Him. I thought about Him constantly and told myself I was going to get right with Him, but it was easier for me to push it to the back of my mind. I figured I wasn't getting myself into too much trouble so I might as well leave things alone for the time being.
In the fall of 1998, I decided I would try to move back to Nashville by spring 1999. I went out and bought new luggage and made my parents aware of my plan. They didn't like my plan at all and basically told me I'd never make it but I had it all figured out. I had the money, I had a friend to stay with until I got on my feet, and I even had a donated futon. The plan was to fly down there, get a job, buy a car, and find my own place within a couple of months' time.
There was just one little speed bump in the way: I ended up falling in love.
I started dating Scott in January 1999. It took us 3 dates to fall madly in love with each other, and by March we were looking at engagement rings and naming our future babies. I tried to convince Scott to move back to Nashville with me, as he had worked as a Christian music buyer and had his own connections to Music City, but he wanted to stay near his family. I loved Nashville but I loved Scott more. I chose him.
Scott wanted June Cleaver, and I was anything but. He wanted a woman who didn't drink or smoke, too, and for a while I was able to hide it from him, but eventually I told him the truth and even dragged him to a few of my drinking parties. I told him nothing about any other drugs. He eventually told me that if I wanted to be with him, I was going to have to stop partying. He thought the smoking was gross, but it was the partying that really bothered him. His older brother has fought a drug addiction for more than 30 years and Scott didn't want to be anywhere near the party lifestyle. He gave me an ultimatum - either I knocked it off, or he walked. Begrudgingly - very begrudgingly - I agreed to curtail the boozing.
I saw my impending nuptuals as an opportunity to build the God-centered family I had always dreamed of having, so Scott and I found a church together, which was pastored by a friend of Scott's, and began attending and shortly thereafter became members. Unfortunately, I didn't realize it at the time, but I was going through the motions of being "churchy" but I wasn't spending anytime working on my relationship with God. I was trying to make Thanksgiving work with the fixings but no turkey. I figured if I looked the part, that would suffice, and maybe it would even make me want the real thing.
After Scott and I married in 2000, we settled into lovely Lititz, PA and joined a new church that was closer to us. Less than a year after we married, I lost my job at the bank I was working at, and that began a downward spiral. There were job woes, major financial struggles, and my husband's health began declining. I won't go into all the details of our once-broken marriage - you'll have to go out and buy my book to read about that. :-) But even as we went to church and took classes and I overwhelmed my senses with Christian music and Christian t-shirts and Christian posters and everything short of Christian bagels, I was still in the clutches of my faith crisis.
Because I knew my faith was in a state of upheaval, I began to develop quite a complex. I thought other Christians sensed that was I evil and I also began comparing myself to other women in the church. In my mind, I wasn't blond enough, pretty enough, soft-spoken enough, I didn't have kids (which I assumed was a huge strike against me) and I wasn't terribly domestic. Plus, there was some other "thing" that "church ladies" had that I didn't, or at least that's what I told myself. I just wasn't like them. I was too rough around the edges, too easily annoyed, too outspoken, too this, too that. It didn't matter how many people told me it was all in my head, I bought it hook, line and sinker and it drove me away from church and away from other Christians altogether.
So I went back to some of my old friends and my old ways. I started drinking again and started ditching my husband to go out of town and party.
Also, my deep depression was back, with a heaping helping of rage on the side. I was constantly angry over anything and everything. It wasn't that I just got a little ticked, either - I would FLIP OUT and destroy anything in my path. I'd be chopping an onion and accidentally drop my knife and go absolutely ballistic, screaming and yelling, slamming doors, punching the wall, cursing... OK, so clearly I had an anger problem of some sort, so I decided to go back into counseling. After I felt like I had talked all of my problems to death, I was still filled with rage. I couldn't turn it off. I was powerless to calm myself down. Once I got angry, it snowballed and I felt completely out of control. When the dust finally settled - after my husband had been screamed at and insulted, after a fresh hole had been slammed into the wall, after my pet rabbit was cowering in the corner of her cage - I felt incredible shame, like a knife being driven through my heart.
I said horrible things in my fits of rage. I told my husband I wanted out of our marriage, I put him down and I cursed God. When I was done, I just wanted to die. I hated myself and felt like there was no going back on what I had said and done. Often the depression would last for days or even weeks and I'd do nothing but cry and sleep, missing a lot of work and threatening suicide.
My erratic behavior was taking a huge toll on my marriage, and our relationship had reached a breaking point. It was further exacerbated by the fact that I had lost another job - this time because of my anger problem. I had missed a lot of work and was constantly sick because I wasn't sleeping and my mood... well, that was anybody's guess from day to day. And losing a job meant financial problems, which meant more stress on our marriage...
That was the final straw for me. At that point, at the ripe old age of 23, I had nothing more to lose. My marriage was going under, I felt a million miles away from God, I had no job and no money. Plenty of well-meaning folks told me to relax - I was young, I would get through it. I didn't want to hear any of it. Life seemed to be over. I could have given up; I WANTED to give up. But I decided, instead, to do two things:
1. get help
2. become a writer
My first priority had to be finding out what in the world was wrong with me! Pin It
My parents were fed up with me, and with good reason. I struggled through high school and threw their money away in college by flunking out. My mother had already told me - through clenched teeth - that if I thought I was going to sleep all day and sponge off of them, I had another thing coming. I never intended to do that, though. I was relieved to be done with college. I hated school. It kills me to say that because now I'd love to go back, but back then I hated it with a passion. With no clue what the future held for me, I made a pact with myself on New Year's Eve: I was going to work my butt off, make as much money as possible, and move back to Nashville permanently and as quickly as I could. Pennsylvania represented everything I hated - the snobby wannabe rich people, my horrible relationship with my family, and the years of sexual abuse. It was all stuff I wanted to run away from and never look at again. Nashville felt like home and I missed my friends.
In 1998, I did work my butt off. I became a supervisor and took any and all hours that were offered to me. If there was a special dinner, I'd offer to work it, even if it meant being on my feet fifteen hours a day. I was still living at home, not really getting along with my mother, but at least my folks were happy that I was working. They stayed off my back about that. I wrote songs with a guy named Brian and did a lot of late-night drinking with friends. I spent hours and hours with my Nashville friends, sometimes talking to them on the phone till the early hours of the morning. I even flew down to Nashville a few times for a weeklong vacation. I guess you could say I had the life - no expenses, job flexibility, and plenty of money.
I had no interaction with God, but I have to say I genuinely missed Him. I thought about Him constantly and told myself I was going to get right with Him, but it was easier for me to push it to the back of my mind. I figured I wasn't getting myself into too much trouble so I might as well leave things alone for the time being.
In the fall of 1998, I decided I would try to move back to Nashville by spring 1999. I went out and bought new luggage and made my parents aware of my plan. They didn't like my plan at all and basically told me I'd never make it but I had it all figured out. I had the money, I had a friend to stay with until I got on my feet, and I even had a donated futon. The plan was to fly down there, get a job, buy a car, and find my own place within a couple of months' time.
There was just one little speed bump in the way: I ended up falling in love.
I started dating Scott in January 1999. It took us 3 dates to fall madly in love with each other, and by March we were looking at engagement rings and naming our future babies. I tried to convince Scott to move back to Nashville with me, as he had worked as a Christian music buyer and had his own connections to Music City, but he wanted to stay near his family. I loved Nashville but I loved Scott more. I chose him.
Scott wanted June Cleaver, and I was anything but. He wanted a woman who didn't drink or smoke, too, and for a while I was able to hide it from him, but eventually I told him the truth and even dragged him to a few of my drinking parties. I told him nothing about any other drugs. He eventually told me that if I wanted to be with him, I was going to have to stop partying. He thought the smoking was gross, but it was the partying that really bothered him. His older brother has fought a drug addiction for more than 30 years and Scott didn't want to be anywhere near the party lifestyle. He gave me an ultimatum - either I knocked it off, or he walked. Begrudgingly - very begrudgingly - I agreed to curtail the boozing.
I saw my impending nuptuals as an opportunity to build the God-centered family I had always dreamed of having, so Scott and I found a church together, which was pastored by a friend of Scott's, and began attending and shortly thereafter became members. Unfortunately, I didn't realize it at the time, but I was going through the motions of being "churchy" but I wasn't spending anytime working on my relationship with God. I was trying to make Thanksgiving work with the fixings but no turkey. I figured if I looked the part, that would suffice, and maybe it would even make me want the real thing.
After Scott and I married in 2000, we settled into lovely Lititz, PA and joined a new church that was closer to us. Less than a year after we married, I lost my job at the bank I was working at, and that began a downward spiral. There were job woes, major financial struggles, and my husband's health began declining. I won't go into all the details of our once-broken marriage - you'll have to go out and buy my book to read about that. :-) But even as we went to church and took classes and I overwhelmed my senses with Christian music and Christian t-shirts and Christian posters and everything short of Christian bagels, I was still in the clutches of my faith crisis.
Because I knew my faith was in a state of upheaval, I began to develop quite a complex. I thought other Christians sensed that was I evil and I also began comparing myself to other women in the church. In my mind, I wasn't blond enough, pretty enough, soft-spoken enough, I didn't have kids (which I assumed was a huge strike against me) and I wasn't terribly domestic. Plus, there was some other "thing" that "church ladies" had that I didn't, or at least that's what I told myself. I just wasn't like them. I was too rough around the edges, too easily annoyed, too outspoken, too this, too that. It didn't matter how many people told me it was all in my head, I bought it hook, line and sinker and it drove me away from church and away from other Christians altogether.
So I went back to some of my old friends and my old ways. I started drinking again and started ditching my husband to go out of town and party.
Also, my deep depression was back, with a heaping helping of rage on the side. I was constantly angry over anything and everything. It wasn't that I just got a little ticked, either - I would FLIP OUT and destroy anything in my path. I'd be chopping an onion and accidentally drop my knife and go absolutely ballistic, screaming and yelling, slamming doors, punching the wall, cursing... OK, so clearly I had an anger problem of some sort, so I decided to go back into counseling. After I felt like I had talked all of my problems to death, I was still filled with rage. I couldn't turn it off. I was powerless to calm myself down. Once I got angry, it snowballed and I felt completely out of control. When the dust finally settled - after my husband had been screamed at and insulted, after a fresh hole had been slammed into the wall, after my pet rabbit was cowering in the corner of her cage - I felt incredible shame, like a knife being driven through my heart.
I said horrible things in my fits of rage. I told my husband I wanted out of our marriage, I put him down and I cursed God. When I was done, I just wanted to die. I hated myself and felt like there was no going back on what I had said and done. Often the depression would last for days or even weeks and I'd do nothing but cry and sleep, missing a lot of work and threatening suicide.
My erratic behavior was taking a huge toll on my marriage, and our relationship had reached a breaking point. It was further exacerbated by the fact that I had lost another job - this time because of my anger problem. I had missed a lot of work and was constantly sick because I wasn't sleeping and my mood... well, that was anybody's guess from day to day. And losing a job meant financial problems, which meant more stress on our marriage...
That was the final straw for me. At that point, at the ripe old age of 23, I had nothing more to lose. My marriage was going under, I felt a million miles away from God, I had no job and no money. Plenty of well-meaning folks told me to relax - I was young, I would get through it. I didn't want to hear any of it. Life seemed to be over. I could have given up; I WANTED to give up. But I decided, instead, to do two things:
1. get help
2. become a writer
My first priority had to be finding out what in the world was wrong with me! Pin It
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Goal Setting In 2010
Was over at Rachel Hauck's blog today, where she was discussing her goals for 2010, which got me thinking about my own.
I really hate New Year's resolutions. Most of us need more than a new date on the calendar to inspire us to make real change in our lives. For more years than I care to count, I have resolved to lose weight and quit smoking. As if, suddenly, on January 1st I would be able to un-addict myself from smokes and roll back years of unhealthy eating habits. Please. So instead of saying that as of January 1, I'm going to stop doing such-and-such or suddenly START doing such-and-such, I'm going to take a different approach. After all, Rome wasn't built in a day, right?
Instead of viewing the new year as a starting and ending point for good and bad habits, I'm going to look at the entire year as a whole and set goals that I can work on for 365 days and beyond.
Numero uno for me this year is making connections. Hubby and I became members of the church we had been attending for a year back in September. We were officially announced to the congregation as such in December. (Picture a professional wrestler's entrance with pyrotechnics and everything. OK, just kidding.) I still have a bit of church anxiety that I deal with when it comes to "other church ladies." I struggle with feeling like everybody has it together but me, and I have to work really hard at not keeping myself at arms-length from others. But recent events in my life have shown me that God put these people in my life to be my family, and after a year of much loss, I need family now more than ever.
I guess you could say I want to stop making church a spectator sport. I don't just want to go on Sunday and then go home; I want to build a family and create a home.
Another biggie on my To-Do List is shutting up and letting God do His thing.
When things do not go at the speed I'd like them to, I throw myself into the ring and push as hard as I can, when I KNOW there are times God just wants me to hang back. As it applies to my writing, God has repeatedly told me, "Just write what I tell you to write about and do what I tell you to do and you'll be fine" but I wasn't seeing the progress I wanted, so I took matters into my own hands, only to watch it all backfire.
This is the year I learn how to shush.
Yes, I want to stay off the smokes and eat more lettuce this year, and that's important, but those things will be made easier if I work on the two biggies I mentioned above. I want to focus more on heart issues, because none of the "palpable" issues are going to be resolved until the heart ones are.
What are you doing this year? Pin It
I really hate New Year's resolutions. Most of us need more than a new date on the calendar to inspire us to make real change in our lives. For more years than I care to count, I have resolved to lose weight and quit smoking. As if, suddenly, on January 1st I would be able to un-addict myself from smokes and roll back years of unhealthy eating habits. Please. So instead of saying that as of January 1, I'm going to stop doing such-and-such or suddenly START doing such-and-such, I'm going to take a different approach. After all, Rome wasn't built in a day, right?
Instead of viewing the new year as a starting and ending point for good and bad habits, I'm going to look at the entire year as a whole and set goals that I can work on for 365 days and beyond.
Numero uno for me this year is making connections. Hubby and I became members of the church we had been attending for a year back in September. We were officially announced to the congregation as such in December. (Picture a professional wrestler's entrance with pyrotechnics and everything. OK, just kidding.) I still have a bit of church anxiety that I deal with when it comes to "other church ladies." I struggle with feeling like everybody has it together but me, and I have to work really hard at not keeping myself at arms-length from others. But recent events in my life have shown me that God put these people in my life to be my family, and after a year of much loss, I need family now more than ever.
I guess you could say I want to stop making church a spectator sport. I don't just want to go on Sunday and then go home; I want to build a family and create a home.
Another biggie on my To-Do List is shutting up and letting God do His thing.
When things do not go at the speed I'd like them to, I throw myself into the ring and push as hard as I can, when I KNOW there are times God just wants me to hang back. As it applies to my writing, God has repeatedly told me, "Just write what I tell you to write about and do what I tell you to do and you'll be fine" but I wasn't seeing the progress I wanted, so I took matters into my own hands, only to watch it all backfire.
This is the year I learn how to shush.
Yes, I want to stay off the smokes and eat more lettuce this year, and that's important, but those things will be made easier if I work on the two biggies I mentioned above. I want to focus more on heart issues, because none of the "palpable" issues are going to be resolved until the heart ones are.
What are you doing this year? Pin It
Thursday, December 31, 2009
The Right Approach To Depression
Happy almost 2010, readers. We're not exactly partying here - there's freezing rain outside and I have to work in the morning. We're watching movies with friends. What better time to blog?!?
Kudos to one of my favorite authors (and a Facebook friend, but of course), Dena Dyer for addressing her own depression on her blog - and for encouraging people to GET HELP.
I'm a little late stumbling across this post, but it's relevant any time of year! Pin It
Kudos to one of my favorite authors (and a Facebook friend, but of course), Dena Dyer for addressing her own depression on her blog - and for encouraging people to GET HELP.
I'm a little late stumbling across this post, but it's relevant any time of year! Pin It
My Testimony - Walking Away
When I was 13, I experienced my first trial of faith.
The father of the children I babysat next-door, a very kind man named Craig, disappeared in the mountains of Western Pennsylvania in a snowstorm on January 15, 1993. I found out about it through a friend calling to see if I'd read the newspaper. Everyone told me that God answered prayer, that all I needed was to ask and believe, and I would receive the answer I so wanted.
For over two months, I prayed. I wholeheartedly believed that Craig would be returned safe and sound at first, but as time went by I began to doubt he was still alive. Finally, in March, people on snowmobiles came across the wreckage, and the body of Craig. Down deep, I wondered if my own lack of faith had anything to do with him dying. During the two months he was missing, I started attending church with family, after two years of them inviting me. Their church became my "home church," the first church I ever attended regularly. I went with them most Sundays throughout the early part of my teens.
His wife was so positive and did radio and speaking appearances and talked about how good God was, and how He promised to provide for orphans and widows. It was the first time I ever questioned the goodness of God. I did not understand how she could be so certain of her faith when God so clearly didn't bring her husband home alive. At the same time Craig's death propelled me to start attending church, it also made me start to reflect on my own life, and wonder... where was God when I needed Him?
Well, by the eighth grade, I had it in my had that I wanted to be on the radio. Not really sure why - that goal was pretty short-lived. But I did manage to charm enough deejays that I found myself showing up on morning and evening request shows as a semi-regular guest. I was all of 13 years old at the time. My dad always accompanied me to the stations and I guess people were impressed with a kid who had so much gumption. I started a makeshift radio station at my middle school - which consisted of playing cassette tapes during lunch in the cafeteria - but that didn't last long, either.
In the meantime, I was making friends with the deejays... really good friends. Too good of friends, in some cases. Most of them were really nice people (with the exception of one morning host who mildly tolerated me) but a few of them were pervs. I met more than one perv, but there was one in particular - a guy who was fairly well-known in the area - that I became quite close to. He had a son my age (he was about 32 at the time) but he rarely ever saw him, and he used to tell me that he related better to kids than he did to people his own age.
I was a pretty stupid kids, too. Did I mention that? If someone said that to me now, I'd freak out, but at that age I "got it." I felt like we had some weird cosmic connection - he preferred kids, I preferred adults. It was perfect. But the conversations quickly turned sexual. He tried to convince my best friend at the time to let me sneak out of her house in the middle of the night to go meet him. My friend - always the smarter one - said absolutely not.
That relationship carried on until the summer before my freshman year of high school, when I told my mother I was going down the street to the library. It seemed fishy to her, so she called the library and found out they were already closed for the day. She encountered me walking up the road, demanded I get in the car, and demanded that I spill my guts. I told her the truth through sobs. I don't know what happened after that. I know my dad called and threatened the guy, but that's as much as I know. I never saw or heard from that deejay again.
I didn't know it was the start of a pattern in my life.
As a freshman in high school, I wanted to change. I was a Christian, actively telling people about the Gospel but sleeping with older men and not living out what I preached. I went to "See You At The Pole" that year and met a girl who was a senior, and we started a school-wide Bible study that met during club periods. We also started a daily morning prayer group that met in the cafeteria. I led both of them, taught lessons, led prayers, and as I got older and both groups continued to grow, I "trained" the younger kids to lead once I and the other leaders graduated. I attended youth group every Wednesday and went to church with my neighbors on Sundays.
I wore Living Epistles t-shirts and listened to Christian music and was doing a great job on the outside with the surface-y stuff.
That year my family got our first computer. The internet was new and most people didn't have it. I had America Online and Prodigy, which were online services minus the World Wide Web. (That didn't come with the package until a year or two later.) Back then, you didn't pay a monthly fee, either, you paid by the minute. Like a lot of other kids, I was fascinated by the online world and I started racking up outrageous phone bills and my parents wanted to kill me, put me up for adoption, or at least give me to my aunt in California! At first, I chatted about my faith in the Christian chat rooms and I got involved in the Friends of Amy (Amy Grant fan club) section of AOL, but it was through the advent of the internet that the aforementioned pattern in my life began to emerge.
I chatted with guys - always online, usually much older - and met them in parks or office complexes. Sometimes it was on the basis of just getting to know each other, but usually it was with the full knowledge that something physical was going to happen. It's a shameful part of my life and one that went on up until I met my husband, but I tell it anyway because I meet so many kids who meet up with strangers online and believe they are safe. Maybe people will look down on me for that, I don't know, but I'm going to keep talking about it. I went for the men versus the boys because I thought they were more mature. Too bad they were pedophiles, but I didn't think that way as a teenager.
I was also starting to drink. My parents always had a full supply of alcohol in the house. I took bits here and there, adding water to fill up the bottles. I started drinking with my friends, too. I must admit, my high school BFF and I still get a laugh out of remembering the night we spilled sweet vermouth on the white carpeting in her bedroom and how hard we worked to get it out before her parents got home from work. I didn't need a friend to help me drink, though. I did just fine on my own, all alone.
And some of those men I met online brought drugs. I smoked a lot of pot and dabbled in a few others here and there. The only thing that kept me from becoming a hardcore drug addict was the fear of how my parents would react when they realized what was going on. To be honest, I was so deep in despair by that point, the thought of becoming a drug addict actually appealed to me. I didn't care. I hated myself and I hated my life and I thought God had given up on me, so what did it matter?
Finally, I did stop meeting men online. When I was 14, I met a 25-year-old EMT online and he took me to the county park, where he asked me to do things to him that I wasn't comfortable with doing.
I refused.
He raped me in a pile of leaves and drove me home.
By my sophomore year, I had attempted suicide twice (and would attempt it again in the coming year) and I had started cutting myself with a box cutter I kept in my backpack. I'd sit in class (on the days I didn't skip school) and slice myself under the desk. I constantly wrote about and talked about suicide. I was flunking all of my classes and I'm pretty sure the only reason I passed from one grade to the next was because my teachers didn't want to deal with me a second time around. I'm a professional writer and yet I was flunking the lowest level of English every year in high school because I absolutely DID NOT CARE about anything in my life.
The feelings I had as a child of being different, of something being wrong with me, came flooding back to me as a high school student. Yes, I'd been molested. Yes, my family was troubled. It was more than that, though. In the 10th grade, I started seeing a counselor and attending a support group for girls that had been sexually assaulted, and I told my counselor that I felt like I was "riding waves." For a few days or a few weeks, I'd feel like I could take on the world. I'd throw myself into my studies, I'd stop cutting and stop writing about suicide, and I fell in love with God all over again. I read the Bible all the time and prayed and hadn't a single doubt in my mind that He loved me.
But after a few days - a few weeks max - the waves would crash over me again. I'd stop caring. I'd give up on following God. I'd go back to harming myself and wanting to die. That was just how my life was - up and down, up and down. The highs were incredibly breath-taking and the lows felt like the pit of Hell. No matter what I did, I could not find a happy medium. I was a chronic insomniac. I rarely fell asleep, and when I did I woke up many times during the night until I finally gave up. I was exhausted and miserable.
In the 11th grade, I attempted suicide one more time... but it was more for attention than actual suicide. I began taking Zoloft, an antidepressant, and it quelled my depression just enough to stop the cutting and attempts on my life. By my senior year, I wasn't sleeping around or harming myself, and I actually had fun that year, but I still wasn't walking with God. I made zero attempts to live the Christian live; I just lived. I believed in God and I wanted to love God... but I was so frustrated with the roller coaster my faith had been in the past, I simply wasn't willing to try anymore.
I thought that attending a Christian university would help me get my spiritual life on track. I wanted to go to school in Nashville, TN to become a songwriter. I chose a private Church of Christ in the suburbs and settled on campus in July 1997 and joined a youth ministry service group and campus Bible study in the hopes of "getting into God." Unfortunately, the extremely legalistic theologies taught at the school and I found myself deeply confused.
I had stopped taking my Zoloft shortly after I arrived in Nashville - at first I forgot it, then I couldn't be bothered to refill it. As my beliefs became more muddled, my depression began to creep back up on me. My insomnia worsened, and a good friend at college spent countless hours trying to talk me out of suicide. I began drinking heavily and taking a lot of risks, like driving with people who were drinking behind the wheel and even sniffing and huffing CD cleaner. I also started meeting and becoming physical with men again. There were good times too - meeting my musical heroes and going to concerts I never would have had access to anywhere else. But nothing could quell the despair that was overtaking me once again.
I flunked out of college that first year. I rarely went to class and I attended chapel even less - a major no-no at my school. By the time I left school and moved back in with my parents, I wasn't sure what I believed about God or if I believed at all. I wrestled with what I THOUGHT I believed versus what they taught me in chapel. I took my old job at a nursing home back, wrote songs, and drank.
By 1998, I was further from God than I'd ever been.
********************************************************
In the next segment, I'll talk about my journey back to God. Pin It
The father of the children I babysat next-door, a very kind man named Craig, disappeared in the mountains of Western Pennsylvania in a snowstorm on January 15, 1993. I found out about it through a friend calling to see if I'd read the newspaper. Everyone told me that God answered prayer, that all I needed was to ask and believe, and I would receive the answer I so wanted.
For over two months, I prayed. I wholeheartedly believed that Craig would be returned safe and sound at first, but as time went by I began to doubt he was still alive. Finally, in March, people on snowmobiles came across the wreckage, and the body of Craig. Down deep, I wondered if my own lack of faith had anything to do with him dying. During the two months he was missing, I started attending church with family, after two years of them inviting me. Their church became my "home church," the first church I ever attended regularly. I went with them most Sundays throughout the early part of my teens.
His wife was so positive and did radio and speaking appearances and talked about how good God was, and how He promised to provide for orphans and widows. It was the first time I ever questioned the goodness of God. I did not understand how she could be so certain of her faith when God so clearly didn't bring her husband home alive. At the same time Craig's death propelled me to start attending church, it also made me start to reflect on my own life, and wonder... where was God when I needed Him?
Well, by the eighth grade, I had it in my had that I wanted to be on the radio. Not really sure why - that goal was pretty short-lived. But I did manage to charm enough deejays that I found myself showing up on morning and evening request shows as a semi-regular guest. I was all of 13 years old at the time. My dad always accompanied me to the stations and I guess people were impressed with a kid who had so much gumption. I started a makeshift radio station at my middle school - which consisted of playing cassette tapes during lunch in the cafeteria - but that didn't last long, either.
In the meantime, I was making friends with the deejays... really good friends. Too good of friends, in some cases. Most of them were really nice people (with the exception of one morning host who mildly tolerated me) but a few of them were pervs. I met more than one perv, but there was one in particular - a guy who was fairly well-known in the area - that I became quite close to. He had a son my age (he was about 32 at the time) but he rarely ever saw him, and he used to tell me that he related better to kids than he did to people his own age.
I was a pretty stupid kids, too. Did I mention that? If someone said that to me now, I'd freak out, but at that age I "got it." I felt like we had some weird cosmic connection - he preferred kids, I preferred adults. It was perfect. But the conversations quickly turned sexual. He tried to convince my best friend at the time to let me sneak out of her house in the middle of the night to go meet him. My friend - always the smarter one - said absolutely not.
That relationship carried on until the summer before my freshman year of high school, when I told my mother I was going down the street to the library. It seemed fishy to her, so she called the library and found out they were already closed for the day. She encountered me walking up the road, demanded I get in the car, and demanded that I spill my guts. I told her the truth through sobs. I don't know what happened after that. I know my dad called and threatened the guy, but that's as much as I know. I never saw or heard from that deejay again.
I didn't know it was the start of a pattern in my life.
As a freshman in high school, I wanted to change. I was a Christian, actively telling people about the Gospel but sleeping with older men and not living out what I preached. I went to "See You At The Pole" that year and met a girl who was a senior, and we started a school-wide Bible study that met during club periods. We also started a daily morning prayer group that met in the cafeteria. I led both of them, taught lessons, led prayers, and as I got older and both groups continued to grow, I "trained" the younger kids to lead once I and the other leaders graduated. I attended youth group every Wednesday and went to church with my neighbors on Sundays.
I wore Living Epistles t-shirts and listened to Christian music and was doing a great job on the outside with the surface-y stuff.
That year my family got our first computer. The internet was new and most people didn't have it. I had America Online and Prodigy, which were online services minus the World Wide Web. (That didn't come with the package until a year or two later.) Back then, you didn't pay a monthly fee, either, you paid by the minute. Like a lot of other kids, I was fascinated by the online world and I started racking up outrageous phone bills and my parents wanted to kill me, put me up for adoption, or at least give me to my aunt in California! At first, I chatted about my faith in the Christian chat rooms and I got involved in the Friends of Amy (Amy Grant fan club) section of AOL, but it was through the advent of the internet that the aforementioned pattern in my life began to emerge.
I chatted with guys - always online, usually much older - and met them in parks or office complexes. Sometimes it was on the basis of just getting to know each other, but usually it was with the full knowledge that something physical was going to happen. It's a shameful part of my life and one that went on up until I met my husband, but I tell it anyway because I meet so many kids who meet up with strangers online and believe they are safe. Maybe people will look down on me for that, I don't know, but I'm going to keep talking about it. I went for the men versus the boys because I thought they were more mature. Too bad they were pedophiles, but I didn't think that way as a teenager.
I was also starting to drink. My parents always had a full supply of alcohol in the house. I took bits here and there, adding water to fill up the bottles. I started drinking with my friends, too. I must admit, my high school BFF and I still get a laugh out of remembering the night we spilled sweet vermouth on the white carpeting in her bedroom and how hard we worked to get it out before her parents got home from work. I didn't need a friend to help me drink, though. I did just fine on my own, all alone.
And some of those men I met online brought drugs. I smoked a lot of pot and dabbled in a few others here and there. The only thing that kept me from becoming a hardcore drug addict was the fear of how my parents would react when they realized what was going on. To be honest, I was so deep in despair by that point, the thought of becoming a drug addict actually appealed to me. I didn't care. I hated myself and I hated my life and I thought God had given up on me, so what did it matter?
Finally, I did stop meeting men online. When I was 14, I met a 25-year-old EMT online and he took me to the county park, where he asked me to do things to him that I wasn't comfortable with doing.
I refused.
He raped me in a pile of leaves and drove me home.
By my sophomore year, I had attempted suicide twice (and would attempt it again in the coming year) and I had started cutting myself with a box cutter I kept in my backpack. I'd sit in class (on the days I didn't skip school) and slice myself under the desk. I constantly wrote about and talked about suicide. I was flunking all of my classes and I'm pretty sure the only reason I passed from one grade to the next was because my teachers didn't want to deal with me a second time around. I'm a professional writer and yet I was flunking the lowest level of English every year in high school because I absolutely DID NOT CARE about anything in my life.
The feelings I had as a child of being different, of something being wrong with me, came flooding back to me as a high school student. Yes, I'd been molested. Yes, my family was troubled. It was more than that, though. In the 10th grade, I started seeing a counselor and attending a support group for girls that had been sexually assaulted, and I told my counselor that I felt like I was "riding waves." For a few days or a few weeks, I'd feel like I could take on the world. I'd throw myself into my studies, I'd stop cutting and stop writing about suicide, and I fell in love with God all over again. I read the Bible all the time and prayed and hadn't a single doubt in my mind that He loved me.
But after a few days - a few weeks max - the waves would crash over me again. I'd stop caring. I'd give up on following God. I'd go back to harming myself and wanting to die. That was just how my life was - up and down, up and down. The highs were incredibly breath-taking and the lows felt like the pit of Hell. No matter what I did, I could not find a happy medium. I was a chronic insomniac. I rarely fell asleep, and when I did I woke up many times during the night until I finally gave up. I was exhausted and miserable.
In the 11th grade, I attempted suicide one more time... but it was more for attention than actual suicide. I began taking Zoloft, an antidepressant, and it quelled my depression just enough to stop the cutting and attempts on my life. By my senior year, I wasn't sleeping around or harming myself, and I actually had fun that year, but I still wasn't walking with God. I made zero attempts to live the Christian live; I just lived. I believed in God and I wanted to love God... but I was so frustrated with the roller coaster my faith had been in the past, I simply wasn't willing to try anymore.
I thought that attending a Christian university would help me get my spiritual life on track. I wanted to go to school in Nashville, TN to become a songwriter. I chose a private Church of Christ in the suburbs and settled on campus in July 1997 and joined a youth ministry service group and campus Bible study in the hopes of "getting into God." Unfortunately, the extremely legalistic theologies taught at the school and I found myself deeply confused.
I had stopped taking my Zoloft shortly after I arrived in Nashville - at first I forgot it, then I couldn't be bothered to refill it. As my beliefs became more muddled, my depression began to creep back up on me. My insomnia worsened, and a good friend at college spent countless hours trying to talk me out of suicide. I began drinking heavily and taking a lot of risks, like driving with people who were drinking behind the wheel and even sniffing and huffing CD cleaner. I also started meeting and becoming physical with men again. There were good times too - meeting my musical heroes and going to concerts I never would have had access to anywhere else. But nothing could quell the despair that was overtaking me once again.
I flunked out of college that first year. I rarely went to class and I attended chapel even less - a major no-no at my school. By the time I left school and moved back in with my parents, I wasn't sure what I believed about God or if I believed at all. I wrestled with what I THOUGHT I believed versus what they taught me in chapel. I took my old job at a nursing home back, wrote songs, and drank.
By 1998, I was further from God than I'd ever been.
********************************************************
In the next segment, I'll talk about my journey back to God. Pin It
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