Searching for the true God
My parents were divorced when I was two. My mother was raising us: me, my brother who is two years my senior and my sister, then a new born, alone in Sacramento. She met my step dad when I was six. They were married soon after. We moved to his house in Sonora, California and became a family.
My sister and I took gymnastics lessons over the summer and within two years we became competitive gymnasts. As a young gymnast, I received the most attention and praise when I was outstanding, when I won. When I shined, the audience loved me, the judges loved me, my coach loved me, and my supporters loved me. But when I didn’t, I seemed to have failed everyone. Once I fell off the beam at a championship meet. Afterwards I cried for the rest of the night. I believed my value as a human being was based on my performance.
My life revolved around performing. I had to be the center of attention; even at the expense of others’ feelings. Once in high school I made a joke in class that made everyone laugh except for the one girl it made cry. I became louder and funnier and more obnoxious always seeking validation through the attention of others. My feelings, my sense of belongingness and worth came from my perception of how people perceived me. Whether I made them laugh or made them irritated would determine my state of mind. In my mind everything boiled down to my performance and judgments.
As I got older I could not distinguish between performing and just being myself and I got tired of it. The truth was too glaring, that I wasn’t being who I really am even though I didn’t know who that was. I knew that I was lost. I kept saying things like, “this isn’t me.” To close friends I said, “You don’t even know me.” I began to pray, “God help me. Who am I?”
When I was 24 years old, a “regular” at my work came in on his way into town and he told me that he thought that God was leading him to come in the store. He asked me if I wanted to ask Jesus Christ into my heart and I said, “Yeah!” Although I didn’t grow up in a Christian home, my mother did and so did my grandmothers so Jesus wasn’t an unknown to me. I wanted him. So the gentleman and I made a prayer together and he told me, with tears in his eyes that angels in heaven were rejoicing. That year my mother gave me a bible for Christmas.
I couldn’t get into the bible. I read parts of it but I didn’t get it. I was bored and couldn’t read a lot of the text and wasn’t really paying attention to it. Without a church community to support and teach me I thought I had to interpret the bible and find my own personal meaning in it.
I thought that God was something I could conjure or invent for myself, something far out and spiritual, and something that ordinary people didn’t get. I thought God was far away. So I went looking. I bought a plane ticket to Nepal. Maybe I could find God in a temple high in the Himalaya. I became a vegetarian and tried to meditate on the beaches of Thailand. Often I just fell asleep or daydreamed. In Costa Rica I read the Tao, I Ching, the Gita, Psalms and Proverbs. I’d sit in old churches and cry, my heart aching to be filled with God. I flew to the jungles of Ecuador seeking God’s Spirit in the Amazon. Shamans chanted over me, spit alcohol and rubbed eggs on me as I stood holding a spear and silently prayed to Mary mother of God. I smoked, drank, philosophized, fasted, hiked, danced, sang, shaved my head, chanted, pierced my nose, drummed, burned incense, wrote poetry and ran with tears running down my cheeks crying God, where are you? I feel like I am turning my back on you! Which I was...