God is in the searching

My career as a writer was launched in 1980 when I sent an unsolicited article to Calvinist Contact – and it was accepted!

The impetus for my article was born on a gold-tinged Sunday afternoon in September: the golden leaves of autumn in the woods next door, the golden sunlight streaming over the hill behind us, and a few precious hours spent with our little family.

We’d been eating supper at the backyard picnic table in our acreage outside Edmonton, Alberta – my husband and I with our three sons aged six, three, and 18 months. On the spur of the moment, we abandoned the dirty dishes on the table, packed the baby into a back carrier and set off on a ramble, over the hill and into the woods. The two oldest children whooped it up, running wild and free. The baby and my husband walked ahead, and for a brief and lovely time, I was alone.

Being alone is an important part of who I am – it’s in solitude that I find rest for my restless mind. But trying to maintain a teaching career (the feminist message of the day) plus being a good stay-at-home mother (the conservative Christian message I got from the church community) had left so little time for that. So I had quit my teaching job, and yet, I wondered: What else could I do to satisfy that mind of mine that kept going places?

The walk so soothed my tired soul that I wrote a “slice of life” piece about it. I sent the article off to Calvinist Contact (as Christian Courier was known in those days). Where else? I’d grown up with this newspaper as a daughter of Christian Reformed immigrants who read it faithfully. Settling down with a cup of tea and CC was a Sunday after-church ritual. Checking out who was getting married, who’d had a baby, who had died was the first thing mom turned to in the back pages, while dad was more interested in church and kingdom issues in the earlier pages.

And, to my surprise and delight, the answer duly arrived in our mailbox: Keith Knight, the editor, agreed to publish it, but his acceptance came with a caveat. Since most readers would expect us to be in church on Sunday evening instead of rambling in a forest, we’d have to change that.

A writer’s journey

That article started me on a life-long journey. I wrote a few more pieces for CC, and then Bert Witvoet, who took the helm in 1982, asked me to submit news stories from “out west.” I branched out and began writing Sunday School curriculum and teacher’s handbooks for Christian Reformed Church Publications, became a regional correspondent for The Banner (the official publication of the CRCNA), and freelanced for other publications. Writing had been a life-long dream, and now it was my reality.

And it had all started with a walk. For me, reflecting on Christian Courier’s metamorphosis over the next four decades and the changes in my own life over that same time, makes the journey metaphor so very fitting. We may think we have a road map for our lives, but life surprises us.
My journey started in Holland where I was born. We immigrated to Canada in 1949, settling in southwestern Ontario. Church and immigrant community play a huge part in my earliest memories. After the first rough years, we settled into the well-defined parameters of what it meant to be a part of our church and our community of post-war migrants. It meant regular church attendance, daily Bible readings, and depending on other church members to stand in the place of family. It meant support for kingdom causes and service to others. It meant knowing the answers to all the questions about faith, because they were all written down in the Heidelberg Catechism. It meant subscribing to CC and other church publications which also supported the faith journey.

There is something beautiful about that life; the community that surrounds you shapes you, and, if you are a good eager-to-please girl (and I was!) you find a place for yourself that fits. You see the road ahead of you: for me, that was study at a Christian college, teach in a Christian school, marry a good man who grew up with you at church, and in due time have children. Become a supportive member of that community: teach Sunday School and Friendship, become a deacon or elder, attend Bible studies, work in the kitchen when it’s your turn. Work in a career that serves the church. Faith came easily to me in the community that I belonged to in Ontario, and later, again, when we moved to Edmonton. The church we joined there, full of young families with lots of children, became our surrogate family. And it was good.

Losing the path

But what do you do when it slowly dawns on you that the path has petered out and you no longer know where to go? What happens when your faith feels false and stifled? My restless mind had always had questions, but those questions had standard answers. It was an unwritten catechism preached to me: Q: What happens to the billions of earth’s inhabitants who have never heard the gospel? Are they all in hell now? A: We leave that up to God. Q: Some of these doctrines don’t make sense to me. How do I deal with that? A: Study the Bible. It’s quite clear. Q: I have so many questions and doubts. What do I do? A: Don’t ask. God’s in control. Have faith and walk on.

One day, on vacation, I read a book by a woman whose previous works had been quite evangelical, but this book, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter by Sue Monk Kidd, rocked my world. She wrote about her own faith journey as she emerged from a patriarchal Southern Baptist background. I felt as if my life had been contained within a comfortable egg but now the shell had cracked. Once that happens, if you are trying to live an authentic life, you cannot put the shell back together again.

If you are part of a community, pursuing answers to these questions is not easy. Your friends and family may not understand or approve. You may lose something that is precious to you. At this point, reading church publications only pushed me further away – arguing about doctrines and church policies was not where I was at. The only thing I was sure of was that the older I got, the less I knew for sure. Oh, and one more thing: I was still sure that God loved me, even though I had questions. Maybe our loving God was even cheering me on.

After 33 years on the prairies, we contemplated a move to Vancouver Island to be closer to our children and grandchildren. We’d be leaving our community and friends, and I prayed, “Lord, if we make this move, please let it be a safe place for us to ask questions.” I say “us,” because my husband and I were on this path together.

Change is scary

Leaving something safe and secure is scary business. Change and growth are scary business. But if we look at nature, we see that those things that do not grow are either dormant or dead. Although I was not a reader of Christian Courier through these years, this newspaper also faced questions about growth and change which it had to accommodate. The immigrant church that I had grown up in also had to change as its youth grew up and became more integrated in society. We often want to hang on to the things that are dear to us, not believing that we might move on to something even better.

In 2007 we moved. There was no Christian Reformed Church in Courtenay, so we spent a year church shopping – a very enlightening experience which I recommend everyone try for a while. On the Sunday after Easter, we ended up in a church where the pastor preached about doubting Thomas, and he said, “The church needs doubters.” Al and I nudged each other. We had found a safe place to ask questions and grow in our spiritual lives.

Not the only heretic

The next years were an intense time of learning. Our local community college offered classes at Elder College, and I took whatever sounded good: World Religions, A Woman’s Wisdom, Mystical Traditions, and one on the connection between nature and the divine. There were other people in our church who were like-minded, and so we started a Heretics Group to ask questions and explore answers. It included two pastors and their wives. We read all kinds of books, many of which might be banned from some church libraries. I certainly did not agree with everything I read, but it was all food for thought. I joined a memoir-writing group that included an atheist professor and a Wiccan community worker, through whom I experienced much encouragement as I wrote about my life’s journey.

Sometimes I missed that safe life I’d grown up in. I missed the surety I used to have. But something else quite lovely happened. Although we’d been married for many years, I had always known that the faith that came so easily to me did not come as easily to my husband, but when we started sharing these questions and exploring together, it was like embarking on a new path where we were fellow travel mates. We didn’t know where the road would lead, but we walked it together.

FINDING GOD

Perhaps you are wondering how this story ends. We have been involved members of Comox Valley Presbyterian Church for 16 years. Along the way, we learned that when you go searching, you don’t lose God. Instead, you find an even greater and more wonderful God. As St. Augustine said, “If you understand God, what you understand isn’t God.” The journey will continue until we meet God face to face. Opportunities to learn and grow are all around us, as God’s beloved people (and they are all loved) show up in the most surprising and unexpected places.

About a year ago, I subscribed to Christian Courier’s newsletters, and I took another look at the paper where it all began. Oh, my, CC, how you’ve grown and changed! How delighted I was to read stories about climate change, quantum physics, art, and parenting, and a book review on becoming “undone,” instead of reading about worship wars and the role of women. As the church we grew up in tears itself apart, it’s good to read reporting that is sensitive and careful.
I discovered the journey is still tinged with gold – even when the road is not readily visible. I pray that we all continue to stretch and grow as welcome questions and search for answers. May God’s love lead us all to be all that we can be on this journey of life.