It's Been Awhile...

It's been awhile since I discussed my walk with Jesus, the whole reason for the name change on my blog. March, actually. Quite a while indeed.

I was thinking about it last night and started to write about it, but then I my husband came home and I started watching a movie and totally forgot that I was writing. But, here I am now, with a few minutes free before we head to Home Depot (big "project" weekend at the house this weekend), and I wanted to give this a shot again.

As I said in my March post, choosing to follow Jesus has been a great decision for me. It's freeing. I am now a much better "praise-er," and I actually understand what praising God is. I understand what I was missing in my former religion, the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. No, it's not the Mormon church, but an offshoot of it. I know you won't believe me; everyone I tell this to can't believe there's a difference. But there is. I won't go into all the differences now, because I want to say that it's also been a fairly difficult thing for me to leave my "religion."

When I was born, my family were members of the RLDS church. I went to the church on Sundays and made very good friends there. Close friends. When I was old enough, I went to church camps with my very good friends I'd made, and in many ways, church camp was the happiest part of my life. I met more good friends there, and I went there every summer, from the summer after I finished 3rd grade until the summer after I graduated high school. It was a beautiful campground called Park of the Pines in northern Michigan. It had three terraces (it was in kind of hilly terrain), and there was the lower level where the campground met up with Lake Charlevoix and where our campfire circle was, the middle level where most of the camp buildings were located, and the upper level that was used mostly for "Reunion," a kind of family camp also in the summer. There was a bathroom up there, and a kickin' swing set (I still love to swing on swings!), and lots and lots of spaces for RVs to hook up to. The baseball diamond was up there, too, but I didn't care much about sports.

I can remember being in the Primary arts & crafts class when I was a little kid. I remember the smell of paste and old, weathered wood that made up the building. I remember the smell of the dining hall, and the clean-but-sticky-from-humidity vinyl tablecloths, the little white plastic butter dishes with yellow daisies on the side that held peanut butter (in case you didn't like what they were serving for dinner, PB & J were always available. This was WAY before peanut allergies!). My friend Lorie and I would sing as we washed dishes when it was our turn for KP (Kitchen Patrol-essentially, doing dishes), and I remember Fred and Michelle playing with the water squirter. Michelle would squirt at Fred's feet, and yell "Dance! Dance!" It was fun. Some old ladies crabbed about the "chain gang" singing in the dish room, so we made fun of them (quietly, of course), and kept singing, but quieter.

At campfire time, it felt almost magical to be there. We were all seated around the fire on blankets, if we brought them, or logs; the water was lapping quietly, and every once in awhile a wave would hit the roller raft just right, and it would make a hollow sound. We'd sing the fun songs first, lots of them. Then we'd move on to rounds and quieter songs, and then we'd sing the really spiritual, worshipful songs. The coals would be glowing by this time, but the fire would have mostly died down. It truly was magical, and I felt very spiritual and connected with God there.

As we got older, of course, we had more free rein as to where we wanted to be on the campground at a given time. The Senior High camp had a lot of free time, and pretty much had the run of the place so long as we let someone know where we were and were back in time for the next scheduled activity. We'd talk, and play board games on the picnic tables outside the dining hall, and play volleyball, and laugh and talk some more.

And then I moved to Arizona. There are, of course, RLDS churches here. Now they're called Community of Christ. But when I got here, in 1986, we were still RLDS. My first summer here I worked as a counselor at a Senior High camp here. And it was awful. There were way fewer kids, yes; but the real problem was that they didn't seem like the kids in Michigan. They were different. They didn't hang around the center part of camp, they wanted to go off in the woods in boy-girl pairs. And yes, there was some of that in Michigan. But not all day long.

Church here was different, too. The congregation here was much larger than the one back home, but I didn't seem to fit in. I tried for years and years, from 1986 until 2002. And I just didn't fit in. Everyone tried to be nice, too; it wasn't that they were mean or unconcerned. But I didn't fit.

So, that's when I accepted an invitation from my friend to go to choir practice with her. And that's why, when I felt God leading me, I left my church. And took my kids with me. I left my life-long religion. And decided to walk with Jesus and accept the fact that I do not have to earn my way to heaven. That Jesus' death provided that for me. That I could stop feeling like I'd never measure up, because I no longer had to measure up.

I miss it terribly, sometimes. Oddly, not the church here in Arizona; the one in Michigan. I miss my friend, who, like me, eventually got married and had kids and we lost touch. I miss Park of the Pines. I miss the roller raft and the dock and the swings, but I especially miss the campfire.