My Spiritual Journey - Part 2: From Passion to the Pit
Part 2 chronicles my descent from my spiritual mountaintop to a miserable place
The following is an adaptation of my story, Growing Up Baptist - Part 2: From Passion to the Pit, published on 3/6/2024 in The Dove on Medium.
One day in early 1978, while driving past Texas Stadium (where the Dallas Cowboys used to play football) on my way to work, I screamed at God,
“Okay! I’ll come back if You put me with people who really know You and aren’t simply playing church. Otherwise, forget it. I’ll just keep living the miserable life I’ve been living. ’Cause I’m done with church like what I left!”
Maybe it was because it was the first time I had spoken to Him in over three years, and He was glad to hear from me that, despite my irreverence, I arrived safely at work a few minutes later. No lightning strikes occurred.
How did I get to this miserable moment?
That’s what this chapter — Part 2 of my spiritual journey — is about.
If you’ve not read Part 1, now would be a good time because each part builds upon the previous.
I ended part 1 by describing how passionate I had become about my relationship with the Lord after being baptized with the Holy Spirit when I was 12. That passion continued from 1970 through much of 1973.
But along with all that was newly energized and growing in my life spiritually during those four years was an awareness that few people I knew shared my passion and love for Him.
It's one thing to say you believe in Jesus; it's another altogether to connect with and follow Him daily as the Lord of your life.
So what happens when a teenager feels alone, confused, and frustrated — when she can’t reconcile what she sees in the Bible (and is experiencing personally) with what she’s seeing in her church and home life?
👇This:
1973 — a pivotal year
In early 1973, I began walking to lose the 45 pounds I had gained in late 1972 while sidelined from sports and almost all physical activities due to back problems. My doctor told me that if I lost weight, I might be able to play basketball the next year.
That's all I needed to hear because basketball was my life!
With Mom busy at the country store we owned and the post office where she was Postmaster, my job was to cook supper. My younger sister helped some, but this was mostly my gig since I was the oldest.
I was ahead of my time when I came up with the idea that I’d walk 3 miles each morning before school, and then after putting the food on the table each night, instead of eating, I would walk again. Without knowing it, I was fasting intermittently with an eating window of 9 hours from 5 AM until 2 PM.
How effective was it? I walked off 30 pounds that May — just in time for summer camp!
My passion-fueled frustration emerged
Without a doubt, the most important event for all of the youth in our church each year was summer camp. Held in June at the Heart of Texas Baptist Camp and Retreat Center on Lake Brownwood, we stayed in dormitories, swam, and did activities designed to foster spiritual growth, including attending nightly evangelistic services.
Many young people’s lives were affected immeasurably while there, and some came back saying they had given their hearts to Jesus and were saved.
Knowing this, I began to pray earnestly for a school friend and basketball teammate who was not a Christian. She and her family lived just off the dirt road near our property where our dairy was, and often, she and I would meet and walk together.
I wanted to talk to her about Jesus, but I didn't know how to share my faith. So, I pleaded with God to please cause her dad to let her go to camp because, if she went, I was sure she would get saved.
God answered both prayers because not only did her dad let her go, but she went forward one night (with me by her side) and accepted Jesus as her Savior.
I was ecstatic. My friend had gotten saved, hallelujah!
But my enthusiasm quickly turned into frustration when I asked her about being baptized (in water). She had learned that if she were baptized at our church, she would automatically become a member — something that would never fly with her dad. So she said no.
I was livid!
What? Who cares if she becomes a member of our church or not? She’s a member of the Church — the Body of Christ. Why can’t we baptize her in water without adding her name to the membership roll if that’s what she wants?
How stupid is that?
If it sounds to you like I had become a rebellious teenager, you would be correct.
But note what I was rebelling against: church practices that seemed nothing more than man-made “add-ons.”
Remember: I was a teenager who read her Bible, and I had never seen anything in the New Testament saying people’s names were added to a church membership roll when they were baptized.
So my question was, Why do we complicate things by adding stuff that isn’t there?
I’m still asking that question, by the way.
A recipe for ruin
Growing up on a dairy farm, I had many privileges, but none more valuable than being able to work and earn money from a young age.
When I was eight, I began helping Dad in the dairy after school and on weekends. He paid me .50 per milking and an extra .25 if I cleaned up, so, of course, I cleaned up.
The summers, however, were when the real cash flowed because there was always lots of work to do on the farm. My favorite jobs were helping bail and haul the hay, moving irrigation pipes, caring for the baby calves, and shooting those pesky armadillos with my 22-caliber rifle.
By the summer of 1973, I was depositing as much as $400 each month into my bank account — the one I had opened when I was ten.
I also enjoyed another privilege that year: I got my driver's license.
So, what does a teenager do with that much money and a driver's license? You buy a car, of course! With my parents' approval, I marched down to the Oldsmobile dealership and drove home in a new 1973 Cutlass. My monthly payments were around $120.
Did I need to buy a new car? Of course not! I already had a motorcycle and access to several family vehicles.
Another thing I didn’t need was free reign to roam around the county at will. My Dad’s attitude was that they had raised me right (so far), and I had never gotten into trouble. So why tether me with unnecessary restrictions and boundaries?
Mom wasn't quite as receptive to all of this, but she went along with it. Mostly because Dad ruled. It was his way or the highway — and in my case, I got both.
When I turned 16 in October, I was a teenager with a car, money, freedom, and a growing disgruntlement with the church.
What could possibly go wrong?
Best friends sometimes aren't
I met Linda in late 1974 through a mutual friend. We didn’t see each other much until I transferred to Stephenville High School for my senior year in the fall of 1975. After that, we were practically inseparable, which didn't sit well with her overprotective mom.
You see, Linda was an insulin-dependent type 1 diabetic with a younger brother who was deaf and mentally and physically handicapped. They were also members of an ultra-religiously fundamentalist Church of Christ. So, her home life was far from typical, and her parents were quite strict.
The contrast between the resources and privileges I enjoyed compared to Linda’s was stark.
To her parents, I was a problem. To Linda, I was her ticket to the freedom and independence she craved.
So, with little forethought to the long-lasting impact the decision would have on either of our lives, when Linda turned 18 in March, she moved in with us.
But that's what teenagers do. They make emotional decisions that they often woefully regret later.
Intense drama ensued, especially on the night we both graduated high school. But Linda would not be dissuaded. She was not going back.
Three weeks later, we moved to Dallas so I could attend a tech school that offered training in the emerging field of computers.
The plan was simple: I would go to school, and she would get a job. Once I had completed the 26-week course, I’d get a job, and she would then go to school to become a dental assistant.
Only, she didn’t get a job, and the money I had banked from selling the cattle I had raised on my grandparents' ranch — money we were both living on — ran out too soon, forcing me to quit halfway through the curriculum.
Thankfully, however, before I withdrew, I completed the Computer Operations portion of the course and, with the school’s help, got a job as a night shift computer operator for a company in North Dallas.
Thus, on November 1, 1976 — despite the nonstop drama, broken promises, and short-circuited plans — I began what became a 32-year career in computers.
Conclusion
It should have been the best time of my life. Instead, it was the worst — not only because of the problems with Linda (and later, Craig, her live-in boyfriend, whom I introduced her to at a company Christmas party).
No, my life was a disaster because I had walked away from God three years earlier. Never mind the reasons and excuses, in my quest for love and friendship, I had left my first love. And it cost me dearly in more ways than just my bank account.
I had never lived apart from God's peace and favor over my life. Up until then, I had always walked and lived in His Light.
Then Jesus spoke out again, “I am the light of the world! The one who follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12, NET)
Now, however, I was in the darkest place of my life — a pit of my own making (along with some help from my best friend).
So, on that morning in early 1978, much like Jonah in the belly of the whale, out of my desperation and torment, I called out to God with the prayer I shared in the introduction.
What happened after that? Did God answer my prayer?
He sure did! Although I wouldn’t realize it as such until much later, He set in motion quite a rescue plan for this little one who had wandered off.
Click below to continue with Part 3:
Thanks for reading my story.
Have you ever had a time when you walked away from the Lord? Tell me about it. I’m all ears. And remember: this is a no-judgment zone. You’re safe here.
Thanks for sharing Sharon. Good writing and know He’s working in every season.
I would really love the premier of the next episode Sharon. I enjoy learning from amazing, moraled and cultured women like you and this is inspiring on a different level.
This is how to keep an article simple but 100% meaningful.