Happy New Years Adam! Get it? It’s because Adam came before Eve! Yes, I know that I used it on Christmas Eve but it also applies today.
With the new year just a couple of days away, I remembered how I used to spend the days leading up to the New Year. I would spend them examining what I did wrong during the year. Then, I would make a list how I would be better in the new one.
It sounds pretty dismal, now. But, back then I approached each new year with a sense of anticipation. I had a clean blank slate in the form of a new year. It was clean and white, like a piece of paper that had no writing on it. I was full of hope that the new year would be better.
This hope and excitement for the new year lasted for about two weeks. At that point, I would be overwhelmed by reality and find myself making the same mistakes. Then, I would spend the next fifty weeks in a cycle of self-improvement —> mistake —> guilt —> condemnation —> depression —> self-improvement. It was exhausting. I just couldn’t be good enough to last whole year.
This was the attitude of someone who professed to be a Christian. Yes, that’s right. I went to church every Sunday. I had a cross necklace and more than one Bible. What I didn’t have is faith.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I believed in God. I had been taught about God by my great-grandmother and my grandmother. My parents sent me to a Christian preschool where I learned the Lord’s Prayer. My grandmother taught me a bedtime prayer, “Now I lay me down to sleep…” I even was baptized when I was ten years old.
Despite this religious education, as a child, church attendance was hit or miss, due to my parents’ divorce when I was 9. My grandmother who taught me my bedtime prayer lived twelve hours away and my great-grandmother who told me about God was eight hours away. My parents believed in God. But, a lifestyle based on a relationship with God was not modeled for me as a child.
I knew about prayer. I prayed for many years that my parents would get remarried. I saw The Parent Trap on The Wonderful World of Disney. I knew that if I had enough faith my parents would get back together. Only, that didn’t happen. First, my dad remarried and divorced. Then, my mother remarried. Clearly, prayer didn’t work. So, why bother? I mean, God was still there and all. I celebrated Jesus’ birthday on Christmas. But, neither of them seemed to care very much about me or what I wanted and I wasn’t quite sure who or what the Holy Ghost was. It sounded like something off Scooby Doo. But, no one had ever explained it to me. That wasn’t anyone’s fault, though, I never thought to ask.
This was my religious upbringing up until the summer between my sophomore and junior years of high school. My mom had joined a church, probably because her husband had been hospitalized with a severe brain injury, was in a coma for several months, and was now at home with round the clock nurses, and she had told them about her daughters in high school.
One of the youth counselors invited me to join the church youth group for the summer. At this point, I was on my tenth school and tenth house. Desperate for any sort of connection, I said yes to the counselor. To make a long story a little shorter, I had a fantastic summer and school year attending this youth group.
Then, my mother’s husband died, and my mom wanted to move back to be closer to her parents. I didn’t. I was finally settled, again, and I was going to be a senior next year. I learned more about praying from the youth group leaders, but had no evidence that it actually worked. God was still there somewhere. I still celebrated Jesus’ birthday at Christmas. This time, though, I learned about the Advent Wreath. The Holy Ghost, who now was called the Holy Spirit, was still a mystery. But, now I knew that it had nothing to do with the Mystery Machine or Scooby Doo.
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I will tell more of this story later. It’s almost too long already. There’s no way that I can wrap it up the way I want to in the space allowed. So, there will definitely be a part two at some point.
Happy New Year’s Adam!
Journey with Monica 