(Ir)religiosity

Recently I had to write a short “spiritual autobiography” for one of my seminary classes that described a significant event in my faith journey thus far.  Below is what I wrote, a brief snapshot of my narrative.

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During high school and my early college years I spent a few weeks of the summer leading worship for United Methodist district camp.  Music and guitar playing are two of my deepest passions.  I grew in the church and have always looked back on my experience at camp fondly so I could think of no better way to spend my time and to use my talents than to help kids in their own faith journeys.

I have many great memories of those years, but one, the most recent in fact, remains especially salient.  And really, it doesn’t have a whole lot to do with camp at all, only what transpired in the days following.

One of the young girls that week (I’ll call her Jenny) she couldn’t have been more than 14 or 15 years old at the time, came forward during one of the worship services toward the latter part of the week to give her ‘testimony.’

Fighting back the tears, she spoke of how she was born in a prison to a substance-abusive mother and a physically-abusive father.  As a toddler and a young child she was passed between foster parents and her biological parents like a piece of property. She was traumatized and abused both emotionally and physically.  She was told that she was worthless and would amount to nothing.

Eventually, she was adopted into a loving, Christian family.  She finally had a good father figure, a man who was, in her words “the daddy she had always needed.”  She was introduced into a community of reconciliation and healing.  She became a disciple of Jesus Christ.  In fact, she and her best friend were to be baptized on the same day.  Her life was changed.  And then, just like that, her life was turned upside down.

Her best friend, the only real friend she’d ever had was killed in a car accident.

She was killed. Instantly.

No warning.  No good-bye.

Killed.

Instantly.

A few weeks later Jenny’s only brother was also killed in a car accident.

Again, no warning.  No good-bye.

Killed.

Instantly.

I was dumbfounded.  I heard the words come out of her mouth, but I couldn’t believe it.  This girl didn’t deserve this.  Nobody deserved this.

She went on to say that her father helped her through it all.  He was there for her, to support her and to show her unconditional love and support. It was because of him that she retained her faith. She said she knew that God was there for her and that love and grace would always triumph over death and destruction.  After all, that was accomplished through Jesus.

Her story was touching.  It was inspiring.  It was by far the highlight of the week.

After the camp was over, I stuck around to make sure most the kids’ had someone to pick them up.  By mid afternoon just about everyone was gone.  Everyone but Jenny.  She assured us that her dad was on the way and that he must have been delayed.  A few of the other leaders heard that there had been a pretty bad car accident on the main highway leading to the camp ground and assured me that everything would be fine and that I could leave.  So I did.

I was about an hour and half from the camp when I got the call.  I was on a spiritual high, reflecting on the week’s events — and then I got the call.  And in an instant I was jerked out of the clouds and back down to earth. I answered the phone.  It was the camp dean and I immediately knew something was terribly wrong.  I could sense the uneasiness and the pain in his voice. “Blake,” he said, “it’s Jenny.  Her dad. . .he. . .he was in the car accident.  He didn’t make it.  He’s dead.”

I felt sick.  I had to pull the car over.  I sat there on the side of the highway for what seem like an eternity and cried.  I barely knew Jenny and didn’t know her dad at all, but I was viscerally angry.  I could feel it in my gut.  My spurts of rage turned into accusations hurled at God.  “How could you let this happen?! After all this girl has been through?  How could you be so cruel?  Why would you do this to someone so fragile, so delicate?”

Eventually I pulled myself together enough to start driving again.  I finished the trip home.  As I pulled into the driveway — literally, as I pulled into the driveway — the phone rang again.

“Hello?”

“Blake?”

“Yes?”

“This is Jenny.”

And that is all of the conversation I remember.  I have no idea why she called me.  I have no idea how she got my number.  I remember she only said a few words before she burst into tears.  We prayed together, but I have no idea what I said.  It happened so fast, so sudden.

A few days later Jenny called me again, this time to ask if I would play a song at her dad’s funeral.  I said yes and she told me the song she had in mind, one of the popular contemporary worship songs at the time.  Then said something that floored me.  “Oh, and, if it’s ok with you, I’d like to sing with you.”  I didn’t know what to say.  I waited for a minute.  I wasn’t sure that I had heard her correctly.  “Blake?  Are you there?”  “Uh. . .yeah.  Of course, that would be great. I would be honored to sing with you.”  I hung up the phone.  Did that really happen?

This girl just lost her father.  Her constant, her original entry point to God’s graciousness.  And she wants to sing a worship song at his funeral?  Instead of harboring anger and choosing to turn away from God she wants to embrace grace and lean into the Divine?  It didn’t make sense to me.

I’ve written about this experience because I know that it is pivotal to my own spiritual life.  Yet I am still unsure exactly how or why.  I guess what I mean to say is that I can’t boil this story down to “the real point” of what it actually means for me.  There is no “single grain of truth.”  I’m still living in its wake.  This experience is the closest I have ever come to experiencing death and tragedy in my own life.  Which scares me.

At the same time, I am completely and utterly amazed at Jenny’s response to the very tragic experience of death in her own life.  I was really an outsider to the situation, I barely knew her and didn’t know her family at all, but I was deeply angered and infuriated, mostly at God.  But Jenny, a person who had every reason to curse God and to completely renounce her faith, remained unequivocally steadfast and resilient, completely reliant and dependent upon God’s grace.

To this day I am still struck by that.  It still convicts me.  It baldly reminds me of my continual need to be transformed by the always ever present grace and love of God, the very ground of my being, and that I will always be sustained by the overwhelming power and dynamism of the Spirit.

It reminds me even still of what it means to truly be human, to faithfully respond to grace, and to fully participate in God’s redemptive story.  And it reminds me of both the excruciating pain and immense joy that accompany that ongoing process with all its blessings and all its woes — that process of be-ing and becoming.

That is where I am today, seeking to truly savor the un/knowing of that dynamic process.  It is at the same time both tremendously exciting and dreadfully terrifying.  But that. . .that is exactly what makes it so beautiful.