After two straight posts revolving around my misspent youth, I thought I’d try for something more redemptive…
Although I probably would have denied it, I wasn’t in very good shape in the spring of 1976: living alone in a small apartment…separated from my first wife for over a year…smoking pot every day, usually several times…in and out of short romantic entanglements (the last a one-night stand with a woman I met in a bar—I don’t think I ever did that before)…smoking cigarettes regularly, drinking some times (I preferred pot)…cracked my helmet (would have been my head) in a motorcycle accident. The only stability in my life was my job as a psychiatric aide at Mid-Mo, a mental health center.
This is not to say I was completely spiritually blind. I knew there was a spiritual side to life that most of mainstream society ignores or compartmentalizes into some safe little corner. And I believed that this aspect of life is what gave everything else its deepest meaning. I read a lot, especially Eastern religion and hippie mysticism stuff. But I also realized I lacked the inner strength to practice any spiritual discipline with enough fervor to give it a flying chance.
There was a girl named Mary who worked at Mid-Mo who had as big a reputation for being a recreational (not hardcore) druggie as I did. Then I heard that she had changed—she didn’t do that anymore. She was very pretty. After running into her once or twice, I asked her out. She said, “I won’t go out with you, but I will go to church with you.”
It was a house church, probably 20–30 people when I started going. We were young, and we didn’t know what we were doing, and we did embrace a brand of fundamentalism. (I have come to believe that fundamentalism will suck the spiritual life out of any religion.) But there was also enthusiasm and kindness and generosity and this wonderful shared sense that we had started a new relationship—with God! I was impressed. Their lives seemed cleaner and healthier than mine.
But that wasn’t the chief motivator (not even Mary). That was just another peer group. I will tell you what got me. I was at my apartment and smoked a joint and read First Corinthians 13. Never have words so filled my soul (and I love words!). There was light streaming in the window and clouds breaking in the sky and nothing more than that, but I knew I wanted that more than any other thing I had experienced in my life. I just didn’t think I could get it.
You see, I thought I would have to give up smoking—and drinking—and running around—I would have to become a different person. And I knew I would fail—because I know myself.
So I went to see my friend Ross at the fellowship. I tried to explain my dilemma—I wanted in but I didn’t think I had the credentials. Of course, he led me through the verses—there’s a plethora of them—until it burst upon my poor downtrodden head: “…all I have to do is believe?”
There is a decision to be made. Yes, Lord, I believe.
O, the freedom! Of course I am going to change. Of course I am going to grow. It’s not my job anymore. My job is to believe and trust and follow. And enjoy! It is one decision I have never looked back on.
As a recovering Catholic it’s really difficult to wrap the brain around the phrase all you have to do is believe ? Yes thank You Lord I now know that it is the relationships He wants with us.
Thank you for enlarging what for me is the never-to-be-forgotten moment when you said, “…all I have to do is believe?” I will never forget the look on your face and the excitement in your voice as long as I live.