my story

It's a funny thing that I've never written about this. I guess there's hesitancy in being vulnerable sometimes, and letting too much "religion" out for fear of turning people off, or intimidating them, or sickening them. I think sometimes that I over think how people will react if I were to tell them about the real me, the me that is sometimes not so easy to perceive from the outside. My sister Anna calmed my fears of telling this story today by reminding me that it may actually be interesting for anyone who knows me to know this story, regardless of the flavour of their spiritual life, or lack thereof. I will tell it then, without restraint, because it's what makes me who I am, and is what forms my coming and going, my ups and downs, and the choices I make throughout my life and every moment.

I was born the 3rd of 4 girls to a couple of hippie parents in 1979. My dad had come from a strict Ukrainian Baptist background, which he left in his early 20's, along with the prairies, and headed out west to eventually join up with what he calls "the Jesus People Movement" - Jesus hippies. My mom grew up in a household without a faith foundation, though became a Christian in her teenage years and eventually joined up with the movement herself. They met on Friday the 13th, and were married 6 months later.

My oldest sister Michal came along, and then Teresa, and then me, and then Anna. It was a jolly household with lots of action, lots of fun, and a Christian influence throughout. We went to church and Sunday school and all those good things; learned about Jesus through cartoon cut-outs and crayon colouring.

When I was 8 or 9, my little sister Anna about 4 or 5, we shared a room, and a bunk bed. One night as mom had come in to pray with us before bed, I lay and listened to her and Anna discussing something. Anna asked her if she could become a Christian, and mom respectfully prayed with her. Hearing this, I felt that as the older sister, I should certainly have done that already. So when it came my turn, I did it too.

And so it began. It may sound like a funny beginning, and a rather odd motive, but to me it is still significant. It marked the beginning of an amazing journey that continues today.

We continued to grow and play and learn and live, and when I was 11 years old, my parents registered me to go to summer camp for a week. Keats Camps - I was so excited, though I had no idea what it would be like or what I'd do all week. When I got there, I had a bit of a rough time. It was the time in life when girls start to get catty, and form cliques and act a little nasty to others. I happened to carry the brunt of the nastiness, but nothing could have taken away from my discovery of something very significant. I saw my counselors, and the rest of the staff at the camp, like I had never seen anyone before. They were living every moment for their faiths. They were excited about it, and talked about it all the time, and taught me what an amazing thing it was to be a Christian. I was dumbfounded. At the end of the week there was an opportunity to accept God, or re-affirm your faith. I took it, and recommitted my life in a new way to him.

Life went on, I went home from camp, and went to school, and looked forward to the next summer when I'd return. I did, and continued to for the next 8 years, first as a camper, then as a leadership trainee, then as staff. It was a good time for me. I learned a lot about God and living a life that reflected him and his influence. There was a time in the future that I would have scoffed at that time, but in retrospect I know that it brought me to an important place spiritually that I needed to reach in order to go through what happened next.

I was bobbing along happily when things started to change. I started to change. I guess I got older, started dealing with some bigger issues in life, like where I was going, who my friends were, what my influences were, and then was told by a friend some harsh words that were apparently "from God". Whether or not they were from God or not, they were words of rejection in my ears, and cruel, and I was angry. It started a tiny ball rolling in my head, which built and built and became bigger than I could have ever imagined.

My first question was, "How can we be so sure what God says?" and "How can we know his voice?". It progressed, "How can we be sure of all that we know of God?" and "How can we be so arrogant to assume anything about God, if in fact he's the creator of the universe and we're just little people to him?" It progressed further, "How can all these Christians be walking around happily chirping 'God said this' and 'God said that' and letting it roll off their tongues along with the pukey churchy lingo that accompanies it?" and "Why do Christians act so sweet and happy as if life is just peachy all the time?"

As you can see, my mind started wandering into all sorts of angry crevices and I started picking at everything I had ever learned. It progressed so far that I eventually didn't even know whether I believed in God anymore. It was at this point that I had somehow agreed to go be on staff at the camp for another summer, and couldn't get out of it. So I grudgingly went, and was a sour puss all summer.

I met Ryan that summer, and who knows what he saw in me, but he liked me, and somehow had a peace that I wouldn't be grouchy forever.

It was in the middle of the summer that a very significant thing happened. A man named Dave came up for the few days in the middle of the summer in which the staff got a break. His wife was to be nurse for that time, and he didn't really have anything in particular to be doing job-wise.

One day, he called me over and said that he'd like to chat with me. Taken aback, I agreed to meet with him the next afternoon. So there we met, on a sunny field in front of the camp. He told me that he had come up feeling rather aimless, but immediately felt God prompting him towards a few people, describing it as exclamation marks above peoples' heads. I was one of these people. He asked me to just tell him what was going on in my life these days. So I laid it down. I poured it out. I blabbed for a couple hours about my anger and frustrations and irritations. He listened, nodded and offered wise words, never condescending, never condemning.

After I was done, he started to talk, and talked about his impressions of the life of faith. He talked about camp and what he had seen in the days he had been up there. One of the things he had seen was Ryan and I swing dancing. We had been doing it for talent shows and for fun on time off, and I loved it. To me it was like being on fire. The energy I got and the excitement I felt surpassed anything else in my life in terms of how free and happy I was as I danced.

Well Dave had seen this excitement, and finally said at the end of our talk, that he was going to go out on a limb and prophesy over me. He said that one day in the future, I would feel more excitement about God than I did about my dancing - that my faith would surpass my love for that swing dancing. Even though I hardly knew God in that time, as I walked away from him across the field, I felt that it was true, what he had said. I had a very strong feeling about it, though I tucked it away and continued on in my battle with the faith.

After the summer I arranged to go to England to strip away all that I had known of God throughout my life, and start at the beginning again. I went to a place called L'Abri. It was a self-motivated study centre, with a Christian basis, that had a belief that Christianity was true enough to be put through the ringer and tested, and that it would stand on its own two feet. It was open to whomever wanted to go and study, and the days were split between studying and helping out on the premises with cleaning, cooking, gardening or whatnot. The nice thing about it, and the thing that drew me the most, was that it was not a "conversion centre" and didn't seek to be. They simply accepted people and allowed them to work through whatever they wanted to work through, and challenged them with mealtime discussions and thick books full of challenging ideas.

I stayed for 2 1/2 months, and studied all sorts of different world views, ideas, and thoughts about faith. I could go on and on about my reasons for it, but by the end of my time I had determined that God was real, that he was present with me, and that he was an active force in my life, ushering me to and fro, from this experience to that, all for the sake of his love for me. I had known one thing throughout the whole struggle with him, and that was that if he really was the God of the Bible, that if I asked him to let me know, he would. "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you." (Matt 7:7)

From then, I started to read the Bible again, and I tell you it was like I had never opened the thing in my life. I tore through books, one by one, living the stories and situations as if I was there. It's written that we become "a new creation" and for the first time I really experienced and understood that. It was amazing.

I returned home and later got married to Ryan. We went straightaway to Japan where we lived for 2 years and taught English. It was while we were there that I realized suddenly one day that Dave's prophesy had come true. I was in awe. I had known that there was truth to it at the time, but had tucked it away somewhere in my brain for later. I decided at that time that I'd have to write him a letter to tell him the news. But of course I procrastinated.

We returned from Japan and started looking around for a church to call our own. We started at the church I grew up in, but decided that we needed to forge out and find something of our own. We landed at a church in Coquitlam, and got involved there. It was a great time of learning and growing and God really put me in my place a number of times. It was a time when I learned about the beauty of the diversity of the church, and the sadness of the division between denominations, what I like to call "clubs".

Sometime in the year or two after we returned from Japan, I finally wrote that letter to Dave about what had happened to me. I told him the whole story, and thanked him for being faithful enough to step out on that limb and prophesy to someone who wasn't even sure of God's existence. I never heard back.

Until....one summer not so long ago, some friends and us went up to visit the summer camp that I had worked at for so many years. We were wandering through that very field where Dave and I had talked, when suddenly, I heard a voice call my name. "LAURA!!!" I looked and saw on the porch of the nurse's cabin, that Dave's wife stood there, waving. "THAT LETTER!!!" she called, and put her hand on her chest as if to express that it was something special. I said a quick hello across the field and then walked on.

We met up with a few people we knew and were all standing in a little circle when suddenly Dave walked up and joined in. I was happy that I was wearing sunglasses because my eyes suddenly welled up at the sight of him and all that had happened since we had last talked. I pulled myself together and took off my sunglasses. He looked over and exclaimed, "LAURA!!! THAT LETTER!!" I almost laughed. Apparently it was a good letter? Yes. He told me that it had come at a very significant time in which he was questioning what he was doing for God. It had been the beacon that had kept him going I guess.

Amazing. Amazing that not only had God used him to speak into my life at such a crucial time, but that he had used me in just the same way. I was astounded.

Many more things have happened since then. God has become stronger in my life. He's spoken to me in recent months like I've never known him to before. He's taught me, and continues to even as I write this, and has led me to new understanding of him and his creation. And yet I have so far to go, and so much to learn. At the time after L'Abri, I said that it felt like I had only just spotted the top of a huge iceberg, and that I knew that there were miles more of it below the surface that I had yet to discover. That still stands today, and I can't wait to see what's in store for me next.