Over the summer, I started to investigate why I have had a difficult time finding a church I felt accepted at. I began with my first church.
I was born into a Lutheran church in Phoenix, AZ, started by my grandfather and others in the community. I wrote about my initial experience briefly in a previous blog post here. One event that scarred me to the point of blocking out all the good I had experienced.
Entering into my teenage years, my cousin’s family moved to another state in early 1993. I had lost who I had considered my best friends. About the same time, my stepmother and father began attending a Wesleyan church. I was halfway through my confirmation courses utilizing Luther’s small catechism and decided to quit and join the new church.
I had been arguing with my mother, and it was decided that I would move in with my father during the summer months. New home, new school, new church, and new friendships. I probably shouldn’t leave out that I had two sisters at my mom’s house and two stepbrothers at my dad’s. The difference wasn’t lost on me.
I faired well in my new surroundings. Being the new kid wasn’t something that scared me. I knew how to introduce myself, contribute, and present myself with kindness to others. However, I began to recognize the compartmentalization taking place within me. Mom’s house. Dad’s house. Grandpa’s church. Stepmom’s church. Public school. Different neighborhoods. The only constant I had was my relationship with God. The Father. His Son. And the Holy Spirit.
I had first prayed for God to save me when I was about six years old. I had an abusive stepfather and new that only God could save my mother, my sisters, and me. My prayer life became my go-to, as those around me were dealing with their own issues. I prayed for my salvation through Jesus Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, bridging the gap between a perfect God and my fallen nature. I prayed that the Holy Spirit would fill me and guide me.
Now in eighth grade, I had a new youth pastor. The greatest memory I have comes from the last night we met before him and his family moved away. The youth group was small, no more than ten from what I can recall, but abundant in the Holy Spirit and growth in scripture. He washed our feet as a final act of service, filled with love and tears.
I was certainly no saint as a child, teenager, or young adult. Nor am I one now. But I am and always have been a child of God, forgiven by His grace and mercy. My faith has always been, despite bad choices, questionable influences, and surrounding divisions. The Wesleyan church had its fair share as I would soon find out.
With youth pastor number two, our group grew in size if not in scripture and spirit. Number 3 reduced size, but became tighter knit as we got more involved in scripture and the community. Number 4, chosen by the adults, reduced the size of the youth group to nonexistent. Over the years, we went to multiple youth conferences, youth camps, Promise Keeper’s summits, and a mission’s trip to Mexicali, Mexico.
I am not here to relitigate the past, as those that may have sinned against God, were not sinning against me personally. I had my own sins to repent from. The pros were not outweighed by the cons the way they had felt from my first church. I learned. I grew. I kept going back to God. I prayed so much my last youth pastor called me a liar.
Four different youth pastors over four years. A worship pastor’s questionable dismissal. A senior pastor’s adulterous relationship with the new worship leader. The divisions in our own family as my parents got more involved and I was left to fend for myself while they were serving the church. I was well provided for, excelled in high school, and had friends in multiple places, including having joined Young Life and attended the Woodleaf camp. A perfect environment for my growing independence.
The compartmentalization had caught up to me. I was considered a rebel in the youth group and a brown-noser in school. Whether that was my perception or others’ perception of me, I couldn’t say with certainty. But I was becoming my own independent adolescent adult.
I quit going to church after turning eighteen in January 1998. By graduation in May, I had chosen to move out of my father’s house after refusing to sign a contract of reasonable rules to continue under his roof. My mother had assisted me in my out-of-state tuition at Ball State University. My stepbrother gave me a summer job at a furniture warehouse. A family I had met through an ex-girlfriend gave me a place to stay until I moved in the fall. I call them my foster family, for which I am extremely grateful for.
In Muncie, Indiana, I attended a couple services at a local church and struggled to find a place of belonging outside my dormitory. I met with a counselor on multiple occasions. I attempted to rush a fraternity, got my first tattoo, tried weed, and dated women without expectation of marriage. By the end of the first semester, I was ready to move back to Arizona. So, I did.
My foster family took me back in for a month before realizing my semester abroad had corrupted my descent manner from the summer before. I moved back with my dad for a couple months, being rehired at a local Taco Bell. Then I moved in with my older sister in north Phoenix, who had two little ones and a husband, that all seemed to appreciate my presence. I took theater classes at Arizona State University with a high school friend, who with the help of another friend helped me get a job at Best Buy, an exciting time during the tube to flat screen, analogue to digital television transitions.
By the end of 1999, I was let go from Best Buy while simultaneously moving in across town with two out of my three friends to Goodyear. I got a job at TGI Fridays and was rehired at a new Best Buy in town in 2002. I revisited the Lutheran church once after an all-nighter worshiping loudly in the front row to onlookers. I think they knew who I was, but I was in my own world. I visited another Lutheran church in Avondale for an Easter service with a coworker from Fridays, as the pastor had become one of our regulars we deemed “The Dr. Pepper man.”
My family had left the Wesleyan church after the fallout. My stepbrother had been ordained at that church, and he joined my last youth pastor to start a fellowship at a nearby elementary school. I attended a couple of services, but was living my own life in the service and retail industries. By this time, I was living on my own in a studio apartment.
Through 2005, I attended a community church on occasion with the third high school friend, a youth pastor and Young Life leader, and a fourth friendship had emerged. It had started at my old high school before getting their own building nearby. During my first marriage, I taught one youth group lesson while my friend’s family was on vacation. My wife at the time was closer in age to the high schoolers than me and I declined further involvement. I soon learned that the senior pastor was having an affair with his secretary, as the church declined in its aftermath.
I jumped around from TGI Friday’s, Best Buy, Shamrock Foods, and a life insurance agency as my marriage continued to decline. In an effort to change my adult adolescent behaviors, I moved in with my in-laws around 2007. A pastorship was offered to my father-in-law in Pennsylvania, and we made the move into their parsonage. I listened to the ongoings at the church, and it did not seem that the senior pastor was going to hand off his position after all. The previous assistant pastor had been led to believe he would be the replacement, having been groomed for ministry since high school. I found out that the senior pastor had nine rental properties that were declining in revenue during the housing collapse and economic recession. I told my father-in-law what I saw and sensed our outcome would be. Three months later I would sadly be proven correct. Back to Arizona.
The marriage continued to fail, and I was back at my own apartment before too long. I attended a new church at an elementary school in Avondale with the fourth friend mentioned earlier and his family. I still have sermon notes from multiple pastors and churches since high school to include this one. 2008 would give my wife and I a son, although we were living apart from each other at the time, leading to a divorce by the end of the year.
Then came the military, the prayer outside of MEPS in 2009 mentioned in my media memoir, What Was Meant for Harm. I attended local services on military installations sporadically. My chaplain during my deployment in Iraq had let me down, never having met with me or other soldiers after a death on base in the emergency room I had been serving in. I was on a detail to assist building his office on the Kirkuk Airport property, but the conversation still never happened.
Upon returning to my station at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas in 2010, I met my wife of over fifteen-and-a-half years now. Our chaplain on base helped us navigate premarital counseling, as we had both been previously divorced. He worked through our expectations and experiences, shortcomings and future hopes. A Harley-Davidson riding senior who loaned me his ‘taco cap’ for our own wedding at the First Chapel in February 2011.
I continued to fight in Arizona courts for visitation of my estranged son, as my wife and I welcomed our son in October. We attended a mega church in El Paso at first, but the spectacle of it all, the jewelry of the pastor’s wife, the bodyguards, and the bookstore, didn’t sit right with me, remembering how Jesus had turned over tables. We attended a smaller church for a period of time thereafter before the crowds became too much for my post-deployment sensibilities.
We visited my mother-in-law’s methodist church a couple times without issue, however I kept seeing things in all the churches I had attended up to this point that did not match up with what I had learned through scripture.
My exit from the military came towards the end of 2012. I had missed my older son’s growing years, and I did not want to miss my younger son’s infancy, so I declined to extend my military contract for a second deployment. I was involuntarily separated four months prior to its expiration date. We moved to New Mexico, where my stepbrother had moved and built his own office furniture installation business. Our new family stayed with his for a couple of months prior to finding residency in student family housing at the University of New Mexico, where I would utilize my Post 9/11 G.I. Bill.
During one of my older son’s visitations, my wife and I, with my stepbrother and his family in attendance, dedicated the boys to God at a church in Cedar Crest. I knew their Father in heaven would always be there for them even if I would be incapable.
I focused on school, moved us into a rental property the following year, received treatments at the local VA, and joined the Compassionate Use program. I got off the pharmaceuticals the VA had prescribed that left me in a zombified state. I created a small business as the only employee creating videos for others. Trips from El Paso to Arizona for child visitation were difficult, but in New Mexico became harder.
Court-ordered and requested visitations of my older son were denied which led me to sign my parental rights away. I prayed and cried over signing those documents. I wrote a letter explaining that God had given up his one and only son, Jesus Christ, for the benefit of all who would believe in him. Abraham was willing to sacrifice Isaac. Joseph, the first born of Rachel, was sold into slavery by his half-brothers. I couldn’t find a single story in the Bible where a son was not given up for the benefit of the family.
I secured my son’s stepfather to become his adopted parent prior to signing. I had been given no reservations to do so and my ex-wife declared she would raise our son to never know I existed. His picture still hangs on our wall, and his younger brother knows he has an older brother. I never stopped thinking and praying for him, believing I may get a chance to see him again after his eighteenth birthday.
By the end of the rental agreement, we were able to move into a house outside Belén, New Mexico in Rio Communities. A new church journey would begin soon enough.
