My Story

I thought I was using my brain … I was… using the brain they gave me. And always approved for being “an independent thinker… An Artist, a Problem Solver.” And yet, I couldn’t see what had always been right in front of me… Christian Cultism.

Impossible! It was the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses that were the cults! I knew the material inside and out. My dad had a big black binder of info he’d accumulated on Mormons because we had some close relatives that were deep in it. They eventually left the Mormon cult and never really plugged back into religion at all.

I got saved at 16 after a tempestuous upbringing, several years of contemplating suicide and a final attempt late one night, heading full speed down a huge hill straight into an embankment at about 90 mph in my tiny Honda Civic. With the front axel smashed, and my car rippled like a tin can, I finally came to, and realized that somehow I had spidered the front windshield with my face, broken the driver’s side glass with my head, put dents into the dashboard where my arms and legs had hit… and walked away with only a fat lip and a bump on one knee.

My immediate thought was that my parents were going to kill me! But I also knew clearly that God had preserved my life- and if He wanted me on the planet, I was willing to figure out why. Then I made the long trek through the pitch black night to some migrant workers houses at 3am, to find one with a phone so I could call a tow truck and contact the friends I’d spent the weekend with. They had all been drinking, but for once, I wasn’t. I just wanted to be clear headed and I’d really had it with everything. I left the party a couple times to go driving and I knew they wondered if I’d be ok.

My Story Continued

For years I had tried to connect with God. Growing up I read my Bible a lot, and raised my hand at multiple Campus Life events to “get saved.” I had even been baptized in grade school but it didn’t really help. It seemed that if God was there, He definitely didn’t care about me.

At one point late in the party, a guy who had harassed me since the SIXTH GRADE, finally told me he liked me. It made me SO MAD to realize that I had felt insecure for years JUST BECAUSE HE LIKED ME- it was really my last straw. Nothing seemed to make any sense, and I was done.

In the morning, my dad and brother came to get me at the trailer park I’d been staying at. Dad just looked at the car and said “Yep, you wrecked it” and my brother shook his head quietly, amazed that I was ok. When we got home, my mom hit the ceiling and screamed and yelled at me for a while. Then it was all over and I had to repay my brother for his half of the car. FOREVER after that, I heard jokes about my driving… at EVERY family get together till other things finally replaced it.

My dad was the high school vice principle and one day after I’d graduated and started coaching JV Volleyball, they needed me to drive a team to a tournament in a school van. Dad reminded me of my driving record (with a tinge of superiority) and I finally looked him in the eye and said “I’ve never had an accident.” He said “Well aren’t you forgetting something?” (it hadn’t gone on my record because the car was totaled and I’d just paid for it.) So I said, “It wasn’t an accident.” He looked at me puzzled and the wheels seemed to be trying to turn. “What do you mean?” I said again, “It wasn’t an accident. I wrecked it on purpose.” He just looked at me and then went back into his office. Convo over. I repeated that convo several times over the next couple of years when he would bring it up again. If I asked him about it now I’m not sure that he actually knows. I think it was incomprehensible to him and he seemed to have no idea how miserable my life was- especially since he was the main cause. He treated my mom terrible and there was CONSTANT fighting in our house.

After the wreck I just waited. I absolutely knew that God had protected me and I figured He’d show Himself to me when He wanted to. About 3 months later I went on a Mexico Mission Trip with Campus Life (which was a miracle in itself because my parents were pretty aware how slack the supervision was and they hardly EVER let me go to their events.) But somehow, they allowed me drive off into the blue horizon for 7 days, with people they didn’t know, straight through California to Ensenada, Mexico!

I spent late nights for the next week, debating my position and asking my smart-mouthed questions about God- but all my counselors saw, was a teenager hungry for something I didn’t have. They were patient, and they were Real with me, and they became some of my best friends. Every week after we got home, one of them- a red headed, spunky woman in her mid 30’s, would meet with me at the Pear Tree Truck Stop, early in the morning before school for a Bible study. She’d come with her huge Bible and boldly plunk it down on the little table. We’d pray, talk, and have some coffee. It was definitely the “Jesus” hippie style. I started going to their church 30 minutes out of town up a winding mountain road, past the little town of Jacksonville, Oregon up to a place called Ruch with one little strip of buildings, a Natural Food Store, and a 3,000 member church!

This was the start of a new life for me- New people, new thoughts, and a new Relationship with God. I experienced what so many people were experiencing out there. It was summer then, and we’d all pile in cars and drive out of town, park in the endless gravel lots that they’d added to keep up with the cars, and walk with our Bibles, notebooks and blankets, to join 3,000 other people young and old, in this huge outdoor amphitheater that went down in the center to an open, grassy area and then a raised stage at the front. It had a hewn rock hot tub where hundreds of people came down after every service to get baptized. This was Applegate Christian Fellowship. It was magic and it was beautiful. There was so much true and good and amazing about it, but at the same time, I got set up for a dark side that I wouldn’t see nor understand for another 30 years.

The issues were predictable and unfortunately, I was not the only one to repeat them. After college, a wedding and eight kids later, with a thoroughly failed marriage and an intensely broken family, I was finally ready to understand that it had been Designed to fall apart. Many of my friends now have similar stories. By this time, quite a few of us have started new journeys- a bit more realistic, and hopefully, now able to see the balance in God, His Word, our freedom and Value as individuals and our christian living.

“Until the lion tells the story, the hunter will always be the hero,” African Proverb.

And so begins My Story. 51. Divorced. And finally Happy.