Blue Like Jazz

The last few weeks have been interesting, to say the least. I was having a really difficult time with my faith, or a “crisis of belief,” if you will. (Hence, the post on Feb. 10th). I felt very disconnected from God; I couldn’t “feel it” anymore. I felt guilty, somewhat lost, and extremely discontent. When I prayed, I felt like I was talking to myself, like God was maybe screening my prayers or something. I was still going to Sunday school, church, Bible study, and a theology class, so why didn’t I still feel it?! Isn’t that how it was supposed to work? I couldn’t bring myself to pray very often or read my Bible on my own. It was a very weird feeling, and I’m still not completely sure how to describe it. One night, I picked up Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. I had never read it before, but I had heard really good things about it. Not wanting to work on anything for school, I began reading Miller’s book. While reading it over the last couple of weeks, I’ve come across numerous passages that seem to be speaking directly to me. Reading this book did amazing things for my sense of spiritual security and seemed to restore my faith and ease the anxieties that I had been experiencing. Here are some of the passages that really stood out:

“I don’t think you can explain how Christian faith works. It is a mystery. And I love this about Christian spirituality. It cannot be explained, and yet it is beautiful and true. It is something you feel, and it comes from the soul.”

“I am too prideful to accept the grace of God. It isn’t that I want to earn my own way to give something to God, it’s that I want to earn my own way so I won’t be charity… Who am I to think myself above God’s charity? And why would I forsake the riches of God’s righteousness for the dung of my own ego?”

“Every Christian knows they will deal with doubt. And they will. But when it comes it seems so very real and frightening, as if your entire universe is going to fall apart.”

“Don’t complain about the way God answers your prayers. You are still living on an earth that is run by the devil. God has promised us a new land, and we will get there. Your problem is not that God is not fulfilling, your problem is that you are spoiled.”

“God is not here to worship me, to mold Himself into something that will help me fulfill my level of comfort. I think part of my problem is that I want spirituality to be more close and more real.”

“I suppose what I wanted back then is what every Christian wants, whether they understand themselves or not. What I wanted was God. I wanted tangible interaction. But even more than that, to be honest, I wanted to know who I was.”

“God is up there somewhere. Of course, I had always know He was, but this time I felt it, I realized it, the way a person realizes they are hungry or thirsty. The knowledge of God seeped out of my brain and into my heart. I imagined Him looking down on this earth, half angry because His beloved mankind had cheated on Him, had committed adultery, and yet hopelessly in love with her, drunk with love for her.”

“I am a human because God made me. I experience suffering and temptation because mankind chose to follow Satan. God is reaching out to me to rescue me. I am learning to trust Him, learning to live by His precepts that I might be preserved.”

“Believing in God is as much like falling in love as it is like making a decision. Love is both something that happens to you and something you decide upon.”

“People hardly care what you believe, as long as you believe something. If you are passionate about something, people will follow you because they think you know something they don’t, some clue to the meaning of the universe.”

“What I believe is not what I say I believe; what I believe is what I do.”

“Marriage is amazing because it is the closest two people can get, but they can’t get all the way to that place of absolute knowing.”

“I no longer think being in love is the polar opposite of being alone, however. I say this because I used to want to be in love again as I assumed this was the opposite of loneliness. I think being in love is an opposite of loneliness, but not the opposite. There are other things I now crave when I am lonely, like community, like friendship, like family. I think our society puts too much pressure on romantic love, and that is why so many romances fail. Romance can’t possibly carry all that we want it to.”

“The most difficult lie I have ever contended with is this: Life is a story about me.”

“There is no addiction so powerful as self-addiction.”

“If we are not willing to wake up in the morning and die to ourselves, perhaps we should ask ourselves whether or not we are really following Jesus.”

“We don’t need as much money as we have. Hardly any of us need as much money as we have. It’s true what they say about the best things in life being free.”

“When we worship God we worship a Being our life experience does not give us the tools with which to understand. If we could, God would not inspire awe.”

“The little we do understand, that grain of sand our minds are capable of grasping, those ideas such as God is good, God feels, God loves, God knows all, are enough to keep our hearts dwelling on His majesty and otherness forever.”

“We are too proud to feel awe and too fearful to feel terror. We reduce Him to math so we don’t have to fear Him, and yet the Bible tells us fear is the appropriate response, that it is the beginning of wisdom.”

“Too much of our time is spent trying to chart God on a grid, and too little is spent allowing our hearts to feel awe. By reducing Christian spirituality to formula, we deprive our hearts of wonder.”

“I need something mysterious to happen after I die. I need to be somewhere else after I die, somewhere with God, somewhere that wouldn’t make any sense if it were explained to me right now.”

“It is always the simple things that change our lives. And these things never happen when you are looking for them to happen. Life will reveal answers at the pace life wishes to do so. You feel like running, but life is on a stroll. This is how God does things.”

“I used to love like money. The church used love like money. With love, we withheld affirmation from the people who did not agree with us, but we lavishly financed the ones who did.”

“I hoped that love would work like a magnet, pulling people from the mire and toward healing. I knew this was the way God loved me. God had never withheld love to teach me a lesson.”

“Nobody will listen to you unless they sense that you like them.”

“I loved the fact that it wasn’t my responsibility to change somebody, that it was God’s, that my part was just to communicate love and approval.”

“We have the power to bring a little of heaven into the lives of others every day.”

“Your value has come from God. And God wants you to receive His love and to love yourself too.”

“God’s love will never change us if we don’t accept it.”

The Beginning of My Journey

I’ve been going through an extraordinary transformation in my life. As a warning, this is very honest & rather personal, but after some consideration and inspiration from other people sharing their own personal struggles, I feel compelled to share my story with hopes that (1) it might inspire or help someone else and (2) it’ll help to keep me accountable on my journey. Anyway, here it goes…

I’ve felt a pull from God for some time, but I don’t think I ever realized that’s what it was until about a week ago. I was always the girl with the boyfriend. I never meant for it to work out that way; it just kind of happened. I would be in a long-term relationship with a guy, we would break up, and I would start dating another guy soon thereafter. I wasn’t promiscuous; I wasn’t a “whore” or a “slut.” I was always committed to the person I was with. However, there was always something that didn’t feel right. I always had some weird, nagging feeling about the relationship, but I could never figure out exactly what it was. Obviously, those relationships didn’t work out, but I was always able to bounce back & move on.. with the exception of my last long-term relationship. I was with the person I thought I was going to marry. I had started planning my life around his plans and where he was going to be for his military career. Then, after a string of events, things ended very badly, and I was completely devastated. I felt like my life was falling apart. It took over 10 months to work past the pain, and sometimes I’m still not sure that I’m completely over it. Regardless, that relationship led to me planning what I thought was going to be our life together and that planning led me to Stillwater, Oklahoma State University for graduate school, and, in turn, Sunnybrook Christian Church. This is when everything changed.

I feel like I should stop here to provide some background information because if I would have read something like this a couple years ago, I would have seen the person writing it as a socially-awkward, conservative, Bible-thumping religious fanatic who lived a sheltered life, didn’t know anything about any real-world issues, and just hid in their rooms on the weekends knitting or playing video games. (If you don’t really know me, you probably had similar judgments going through your head about me. It’s okay.) I never went to church as a kid aside from going to youth group and Sunday school for maybe a couple of months in junior high. There was a very, very low point my freshman year of college when I wasn’t sure if I believed in God at all. I didn’t understand how I could be going through everything that was happening in my life and be in so much pain if He really existed. Although I did go to church some in college after I worked through that rough time, it wasn’t regularly, and I didn’t ever establish a group of Christian friends or get involved in a small group or Bible study. I decided I did believe in God, but I would quickly change the radio station if it was a Christian station because I felt a sudden, weird sense of anxiety. (I’m guessing you may have felt that way in the same situation.) I didn’t feel comfortable in church. I kind of felt like I was faking it, but I felt better for just being there physically.. and hey, I did believe in God. Not only did I believe in God, but I got to have fun too. I drank and partied, had sex, and smoked (not just cigarettes) on occasion. I lived the typical college life. But I was also in a service sorority; was dedicating my life to helping kids with special needs; associated myself with good people; and was honest, open-minded, hard-working, and compassionate. (Any of that sound familiar?)

Now that you know I wasn’t raised in a bubble, I’ll continue..

I’m not sure what drew me to Sunnybrook in the first place. All I know is that it was one of the first places I saw when I came to Stillwater looking for an apartment, and I looked at the website. I decided I would try it out once I moved to Stillwater, which is what I did. In the same way that I’m not sure what drew me to Sunnybrook, I’m also not sure what made me want to get so involved in the church. Like I mentioned previously, I was never involved in anything other than going to church on Sundays. (Occasionally. If I felt like it. And if I wasn’t too busy. Or too tired. Or nursing a hungover.) Nevertheless, I started going to the college Sunday school, the normal church service on Sundays, a small group, Financial Peace University (an awesome money management program.. check it out), and the Brook (the college church service). I basically threw myself into church, and I had no idea why I was doing it. All I know is that it led to a feeling of conviction, like I was doing something right, like I wanted to be closer to God. I just wasn’t sure how to do it. In my small group, we started reading Crazy Love by Francis Chan (which is an outstanding book, by the way. Very humbling, but outstanding. Go buy it. Right now. Seriously.) Reading this book led to a huge realization. I thought I had been a Christian all my life. Because I said I believed in God, went to church on Sundays, and was, overall, a good person, I was a Christian, right? Wrong. This has been a difficult realization for me, but no. I haven’t been. I thought I was, but being a good person and being a Christian are two vastly different things. There are many good people who aren’t Christians. In my case, I was living my life the way I wanted to, which was far from how I feel that God wanted me to live. Basically, I had never had a real relationship with God before moving to Stillwater, and I certainly didn’t live my life or make decisions based on what God wanted for me. I thought I knew who God was and what being a Christian consisted of; I realize now that I had absolutely no idea. I was a “lukewarm Christian,” as Chan says.

Then, I started “talking” to a guy. Again. Go figure. Only this time was different because I couldn’t ignore the weird, nagging feeling I always had when I started dating someone new. It wasn’t something I could work through and forget about like before, but I definitely tried. It was so much harder this time. I started wondering if it was the right thing to do, so I talked to my pastor (Joe) about it. He thought I would benefit from hearing a woman’s perspective, so he relayed my concerns and questions to his wife (Ruthann). Before we had a chance to meet, the guy came to visit me, and I reverted back to my former ways—drinking, partying, etc.

Then, on Thursday, October 29, 2009, I had an amazing conversation that has changed my life. With the help of Ruthann, I realized that I’ve had this yearning for God and a need to have a relationship with Him my whole life. I just never realized that’s what it was. Because I didn’t realize it, I always tried to fill that hole in my heart and in my life with a guy, and that’s what led me to go from relationship to relationship, continually getting attached, and continually getting hurt. (For those of you who have read this far and are thinking this doesn’t apply to you because you haven’t been a “serial monogamist” as I have, there are lots of other things you could be using in an attempt to fill that same God-shaped hole you may have—food, alcohol, partying, sex, cutting, an eating disorder, smoking, drugs, shopping, gambling, work, you-fill-in-the-blank. Be real with yourself, and ask, “What do I go to for satisfaction? What do I try to use to cope when I’m stressed/sad/angry/upset/lonely/overwhelmed/happy/excited/anxious/etc.?” You can probably answer it if you’re truly honest and upfront with yourself.) In terms of the relationships I was in, that person could never fill the odd kind of emptiness I felt. They could never completely fulfill my emotional needs, I couldn’t fill theirs, and there was always something missing or wrong with the relationship. I’ve learned that this is because I wasn’t putting God first in my life. I always put the person I was in a relationship with first and didn’t acknowledge God like I should have. That was the day I decided I needed to change how I made decisions. I broke things off with the guy that night. That was the first decision that I’ve ever made based on what I felt God wants for me. Then, weird things began happening.

I’ve been considering baptism, but I wasn’t completely sure if it was the right thing to do at this point in my life. I hadn’t said anything to anyone about it; it was my own personal issue. On Sunday (November 1), I was sitting in church and told God that I was unsure of how to make this decision and that I was going to need a sign or two. About an hour later, I was walking around Wal-Mart talking to my mom. Out of nowhere, completely randomly, she asked, “Have you ever been baptized?” (Remember, I hadn’t ever said anything to anyone about considering baptism) and I replied, “Umm, not since I was a baby,” and she said, “Well, I know, but what about since then?” I said I hadn’t. She asked if that was something that I would want to do. As Bill Engvall would say, “Heeere’s your sign.”

Monday night (November 2), I was feeling really overwhelmed in general, and I got very emotional. I wasn’t sure why or what I was upset about, but I called my mom and began crying uncontrollably. After talking to her for a while, I figured out that school and all the religious contemplation were really stressing me out. I told her I didn’t know how to tell if God was talking to me and that I felt bad that I still had some doubts about believing and trusting Him 100%. During the conversation with my mom, Ruthann started talking to me online to ask if I was going to a conference for our church that a bunch of the college students are going to and to see if everything was going okay. I told her what was going on, and she invited me to go to a Bible study the next morning. I agreed, changed my plans, and went. After the Bible study, Ruthann & I talked about what had been going on. I told her I still didn’t know how to tell when God was talking to me, and a little later, told her the story about me praying in church about if I should get baptized and then my mom asking if I had been baptized. She said, “Kellen, that’s God talking to you. He put that thought in your head, and your mom asking you that was His echo.” Then, it clicked. After that, we went into Joe’s office to talk to him about baptism. He asked if I had any other questions, and I told him I wasn’t sure about being a bartender anymore. I just felt like it was a little bit counterproductive to what I was trying to do with my life. Then, Joe said, “Would it be okay if I did it?” and I asked, “Bartending? No, you’re a pastor!” and he said, “Well, so are you. You may not hold a formal position like I do, but you’re leading and influencing people whether you realize it or not. You need to ask yourself if serving those drinks to those people is furthering their walk with God.” It kind of hit me then that the best thing to do would probably be to quit. However, giving up financial control to God has been one of the biggest issues I’ve struggled with, and I wasn’t sure if I could do it. It was going to take a lot of time to weigh the pros and cons, and then I would have to figure out what I was going to say if I did decide to quit. I was thinking to myself and almost wishing that I would just get fired. I told Joe & Ruthann I would think about everything we talked about, we prayed together, and I left for class.

Since I had been thinking about work, I decided to text my boss to get my schedule for the week since I hadn’t gotten it yet. (This was about 30 minutes after I left Joe’s office.) She texted me back and had scheduled me for days that I had asked off or said I couldn’t work. I told her that I had put those days down on my availability card so I wasn’t going to be able to work, and I got a phone call. [Note: Apparently things don’t ever come up and schedules don’t change. She’s one of those people who seems to have a lot of underlying pain, and it shows through her words & actions. Most of the time she acts very bitter, angry, selfish, and inconsiderate. Needless to say, she’s been on my prayer list for a while because I don’t think this is her real personality, and I just want her to find peace & happiness in her life. That’s a whole other issue. Anyway, moving on to the phone call..] “Okay, I have a problem. You said when you started working here that you were available on Tuesdays. You can’t just change your availability part way through the semester. That’s not fair to your employer, Kellen. And you can’t just add on dates to when you’re not available. Because of YOU, I have to work a double again on Friday. What it boils down to is that you just want to work when it’s convenient for you. If you’re sick, ya know, it’s fine and you think you can just take off.” (I came down with the flu and 101 degree temperature the weekend of Homecoming. Not the best timing, but also not in my control.) Then she said that, as of then, I didn’t have a job. I just said, “Okay.” Although I was upset over being fired, I also had a strange sense of relief and happiness. I hung up the phone and had to go to a meeting with a professor. I began sobbing in his office, partly because I didn’t know what I was going to do about money and partly because God had handled the situation so I didn’t have to. He came through for me because I was seeking to do what He wanted for my life. This was probably the most amazing feeling of love and support I have ever experienced.

Although I feel that I’ve come a long way, I know I still have a long way to go, and this is only the beginning of my journey. I’ve never claimed to be a writer, so I hope I was able to convey the impact that God has had on my life and decisions. I’m still learning to give up control and place my complete trust in Him, but the changes that have happened in my life since beginning to make decisions based on what God is telling me to do are too big to attribute to coincidence. The feelings of relief and peace that I’ve felt are too strong to ignore. This is only a fraction of what I’ve learned, so please let me know if you have any questions or if you’d like to talk with me about anything in particular. I’m now very open about my religion (another change that has resulted from growing closer to God), and I would love to discuss it with anyone who is interested or thinks that God might be drawing them near. If you aren’t a Christian or if you aren’t sure, I would encourage you to try to open your heart & mind to the possibility. Anyone is welcome to come to church with me. Following God and deciding to do things His way has been the best decision of my life. It’s like having a friend who will never give up on you; someone who will always listen to you and go to bat for you; someone who will love you no matter how many times you stumble, mess up, or choose the wrong path. For those of you who are fellow followers of Christ, you know exactly what I’m saying. For those of you aren’t, please make an attempt. I’m not one to push my beliefs on people, but I can share my story with hopes that someone will read it, be inspired, and come to Christ. If you decide to take that step, it will be a very difficult and very sobering experience, but I promise, it’ll be the beginning of an exciting life-long journey and relationship with God.