The Rest of My Life

aww: october 27, 2010
non-subject ~ 'the rest of my life'

Last week I picked up my red journal and my black journal to reread some events from 2004 and 2005. To taste where I was at that time in my life.

I wanted to find the exact date that I officially left The Way. The official date is October 28, 2005.

Official because parts of me had been leaving for some eight years prior to that official date. Official because I called my leadership and informed them of my decision. After 28 years of loyalty, and at 46 years old, I was committing the ultimate Judas act in my thinking. I had tried to leave twice, decades previously. This time would be my third attempt; it would be complete. I was turning away from what I had truly believed for decades to be the functioning Body of Christ, the Household of God.

Tomorrow, October 28, 2010, will be five years since I left.

****

At 18 years old I stood in the college classroom, on the second level. I don't recall which building we were in on the Montreat-Anderson Campus, but it seems we were on the second floor. Many of the buildings on campus were built of stone.

We. That is myself, Matt, Judy, Shirley, Phillip, and Scott. We were all fellow students. We were all Christians, though I was the newest to the fold.

Scott was tall and was the first person to tell me that Christians believed that Jesus is God, which stunned me, that people believed a man could be God. Scott told me a few weeks previously, after I had shown him a Way Magazine that I had been given when I had attended a Twig, which was what Way Home Fellowships were called.

Scott and I were sitting in padded metal chairs in the prayer house discussing the return of Jesus Christ. Scott stated, "When God comes back." I responded, "Well, Jesus Christ is the one coming back. God is already here." Scott replied, "Carol, they're the same person." I looked at him totally baffled stating, "I don't understand." He answered, "You will as you grow in Christ."

The prayer house was a small rustic, wooden cabin on campus nestled within laurels, as is much of the Blue Ridge mountains. A small creek with rocks rippled by the back of the cabin where I often sat in solitude on the small wooden back porch writing prayers to God on index cards, begging Him to show me His will for my life. I'd write scripture on the cards, repeating the words over and over to myself in order to memorize the scriptures in order to push out doubt. I thirsted to believe, to know beyond any doubt.

In 1977, Montreat-Anderson College was a two-year private college located in the Blue Ridge Mountains in the heart of Billy Graham country near Black Mountain, North Carolina. I had decided in late July of '77 that I wanted to go to college. I chose Montreat. I'd heard that spirit-filled small gatherings met in close proximity to the campus. They met in homes around Montreat and in coffee houses over in Asheville. Spirit-filled meaning that at these gatherings people spoke in tongues, sang in tongues, perhaps would dance in the spirit and even get slain in the spirit.

I craved to understand these gifts of the holy spirit. I had recently been led into tongues that summer of '77 and wanted to learn all I could about it. Was it really of God like the Lutheran Charmismatic Church where I first spoke in tongues taught? Or was it devilish like the country Baptist Church I had gone to a year previously had taught? But how could something that made me feel so high be bad? Why did congregations speak in tongues out loud all at the same time when I read in scriptures that they weren't supposed to do that?

I thought that once I graduated from Montreat, I'd go to Wheaton College in Illinois, another Bible-based school. I'd get a degree in Christian counseling.

I sat in the college classroom while Matt stood at the blackboard. Matt was over 6 feet tall and lean. He had emerged as the leader of our little prayer group, a group that had come together spontaneously when we would gather at the prayer cabin by the creek. Matt was confident and sure. Phillip stood with Matt at the blackboard. He was shorter and was overweight; yet he was gentler than Matt. Phillip loved the Word. Shirley was Matt's girlfriend, confident like Matt. They would probably be future leaders in something like Campus Crusades for Christ. Judy was Shirley's friend. Judy reminded me of someone raised in the country in a Pentecostal church in West Virginia. Scott was tall like Matt and was the quietest of all.

Judy and Shirley wore make up and dressed neatly, often sleek and business like. I wore no make up and mainly wore jeans or shorts or long hippie skirts. Church had not been a big part of my life, though my parents would say our family was Methodist. I did sometimes go to church on Christmas and Easter. Growing up, I thought God was bigger than the church and wasn't limited to Christianity.

But when I spoke in tongues that summer of 1977, I knew I'd found the way to be one with God. This was it. The Bible had to be true. Jesus Christ was the one true way to the Father. I felt driven to learn more, to prove the scriptures, to know the will of God.

Matt and Phillip stood at the black board in that college classroom and began to write with the white chalk, scripture verses to prove to me that Jesus was God. By that time I had attended a few Way fellowships. The Way taught Jesus was not God. The Way taught I was righteous before God. The Way taught I was worthy because of Jesus Christ and that I was to claim my "sonship rights."

When I couldn't see with my spiritual eyes what Matt and Phillip were trying to make me see, Judy and Shirley chimed in. The consensus was The Way was a cult. The Way was evil. The Way was of the devil.

But my few experiences with The Way had been loving, not evil. At Way fellowships all they did was teach the Word; the Word was the center of everything. The Way was answering my deepest questions. At Twig, people didn't speak in tongues all at one time; that wasn't allowed just like I'd read in the book of Corinthians. When someone in a Way meeting spoke in tongues, that same person then spoke forth the interpretation. All was done decent and in order just like the Word said. At Twig I felt the love of God; it felt real, tangible, authentic. It was gentle yet strong, an enveloped warmth. There was a mystical cohesion that had to be experienced to be understood; mere words couldn't describe it.

The four voices in the classroom rose in volume and became more forceful to convince me of my error, to convince me that my experiences were due to the devil appearing as an angel of light.

But all their voices did was push me deeper into Way fellowships, to where the believers greeted me with a holy kiss and open arms.

****