I've decided I want to write more... seems like blogging may be a dying fad, but this is where I'm gonna do it for now. There's just something about publishing my thoughts publicly that holds me more accountable to my conviction... maybe that's shallow, I don't know. And at the moment I don't really care.
My first re-entry to the blogosphere is a bit of a cop-out, though. I'm actually just going to copy and paste an e-mail I sent to the pastor of a church in Greenville back in August of 2011. It more or less chronicles my story over the past few years, and I think this is a good launching point for me. I've needed to make this story public for a while now. Not that I'm guaranteed anyone at all will read it... but for my sake.
If you make it through the whole thing... thanks for reading. And I hope you are encouraged.
If not... you have an attention span as good as mine :)
"Hey brother,
I'm just going to warn you and let you know this may be a long e-mail, so sorry about that. I know they can be tedious to read. But I wanted to share with you what happened to me last night at Radius and how the Lord worked through you guys. I do have to back up a bit to give you the proper context, but I'll try not to get carried away.
Let me start off by saying it is a miracle that you opened up to John 9 last night.
I graduated from AU with a degree in Christian Ministries early May 2009. I had planned on staying in Anderson with my band, get a random job to pay bills, and enroll in a Masters of Social Work program within the year... but a week before graduation God called me to serve as worship pastor at a new church plant in Conway/Myrtle Beach, SC. I was surprisingly at peace with it (how I was confident it was God leading), because over the last 2 years of my college career I went through a heavy bout of depression and anxiety and thought it was certainly a bad idea to rip myself from the support system I'd grown to love and appreciate in my friends from AU.
But He called and I had no problem going. I would stay in Anderson with my band for three months to finish up our tour dates, then move to the low country & the dirty Myrtle in August.
After graduation I began to enjoy scripture for the first time in a long time... I don't know how much you know/have heard about the CM program at AU, but there's a lot of debate involved and by the end of four years I was quite drained. I read John 1 over and over and over again for 2 weeks after graduation, amazed at the incarnation and the beauty of it, grateful to have a refound love of the Word...
And then I was out taking engagement pictures of one of my old roommates and his bride-to-be when I got a call that one of my best friends had finally lost his 14 month battle with leukemia. I was shattered.
My last few years at AU I began to fall more in the reformed/sovereignty of God camp. Not in the annoying arrogant way where I professed to know all and totally get how the Spirit works and all, just in the "holy crap have you read Romans 9 and Ephesians 1 and John 11 and like... the whole Old Testament?!" But when this happened... I was not OK with God. My friend, Will... he was a man of God, dude. He loved the Lord deep and hard, and when he was diagnosed with cancer his response to the physician was "My whole life I've wanted to lead someone to Christ... if it takes dying, so be it." Who even talks like that? But that was Will.
Wills death was one of a few benchmarks for what would be a trying 2 years for me. I lost interest in Scripture again, frustrated that God would take someone so willing to serve Him and to allow Will to endure such suffering before it was over. What I hated more than anything, though, was that I had one weekend I could have gone to see Will a month before he passed... and I didn't. In hindsight, I don't even know why. So stupid.
Anyway I moved down to the dirty Myrtle in August and began serving alongside a soon-to-be very dear friend of mine to plant what would become Providence Church. As I'm sure you're aware new church plants don't pay the bills, and as a recent college grad with little work experience outside of ministry it was very difficult to acquire a job. Three months passed, I was down to my last couple hundred bucks (soon to be rent), and I finally landed a job in retail at the Tanger Outlets in NMB. Working at Nautica... which if you knew me would be funny, I'm pretty much a t-shirt and cargo shorts kinda guy.
My time at MB was tough, though. It was hard to meet new people and make the connections I wanted to... such an interesting city. I'm not sure if it was the tourism that made it difficult or what, but time passed and I became very lonely. Demons I thought I buried midway through college came to the surface again as I had a lot of downtime, but quite honestly it didn't bother me a whole lot because to me, God was a deal-breaker. Will never should have died, and I wasn't ok with how He let things happen.
Fast forward several months and I switched jobs, began working at a boy's home in Conway. Loved my boys there... all african american teenage males. It took quite a while to earn their respect... in their defense, I totally understand being hesitant to listen to some young white prick coming in and telling me to clean my room or pick up after myself at dinner. I wasn't much older than some of them. Though I loved my boys, some issues and concerns came to the surface that greatly impeded my ability to do my job well there. Details aren't necessary, I don't think... it was just tough. I have the utmost respect for the people who remain there and will forever treasure my time with them... but at that point in my life, I was struggling.
Long story short, my last 8 months or so in Horry County were characterized by bitterness for people who weren't what I had initially thought, frustration as our leadership fell out of contact and got busy with our full-time jobs (which were initially purposed mainly to pay the bills) and growth seemed so difficult, continuing to wrestle with those aforementioned demons, discouragement from a couple failed relationships with women who I thought were among the select few who could ever accept me WITH those demons and help me with them, and overall isolation as my work schedule shifted to 6 nights a week and my personal life was reduced to working out and watching TV series' on Netflix because everyone was at work when I wasn't, and vice-versa. I had to get out of there.
Overall, God and I weren't really on speaking terms. Which is ridiculous because I was leading worship via music on a weekly basis and praying corporately, but my personal walk was non-existant. Looking back now I figure its because I felt like God screwed me over. I willingly gave up my friends, proximity to my family, my life savings, and my dream to move to MB, and my reward was... what? Frustration, rejection, isolation, stagnation, exploitation? I mean I never set out to MB with the intention of receiving some sort of "reward" for my obedience, but I certainly wasn't expecting what DID come of it.
At the beginning of May I reached the final stages of an interview process with AU as a Residence Director for one of the dorm areas on campus, and was offered the job. I quickly accepted, promptly put in my notice where necessary, and moved back to Anderson within a month. In case the timeline isn't exactly clear... this was a month and a half ago.
Since I've been back to AU, my spiritual starvation has been increasingly apparent. I'm surrounded by people who have been living/working in the Baptistland for years now, and the darkness that had grown inside of me was very clear as I measured myself against their Jesus-friendly outlooks and dispositions. I was working with a lot of the same people I worked with/for as a student, but I was a few shades darker than I used to be. And I don't mean a tan. I tried several churches in the area but nothing seemed worth going back to... I didn't mean the words I sang (and it didn't seem like many others did either) and the messages I heard were flat and seemed more geared towards a high school youth group. I came to Radius Greenville my senior year at AU and loved it, but now I feel that I should plug in locally to a church somewhere closer and serve in my geographic context. So I didn't visit Radius the first bit after I moved here and continued to church hop around Anderson.
Well, last night I decided to visit you guys. When I moved to Myrtle I had touched base with Jeremiah to talk to him as a man of God with a bit more experience in church planting and, specifically, leading worship in a church plant. He and I have kept in touch over the past few years and he's been a great source of encouragement and challenge to me. So I figured it would be good to catch up with him and see some of my friends that still attend Radius.
Now you need to understand why John 9 is a big deal. I'm trying to land the proverbial plane here, I promise.
The year Will died (2009) I worked as a summer RA while finishing up stuff with my band before the move to Myrtle Beach. My responsibilities actually ended a week earlier than I'd planned which landed me moving temporarily to my parents' house the first week in August, a full week before I had anticipated leaving. Two years ago today, I moved back to my parent's house. That Wednesday I attended my home church's evening service where I sat between my mom and Will's parents.
My friend Sarah was actually giving her testimony... the cool thing is, Sarah and I worked at a summer camp together where Will attended the year after his diagnosis. Sarah suffered from Crohn's disease and Will's particular brand of Leukemia functioned similarly in its debilitation of the immune system. And during that week we were all together, I specifically asked Sarah if she would take some time to share her story with Will and pray with him to encourage him, as I felt Will would feel kinship with her. I loved him dearly.
So Sarah was there, at my home church, giving her testimony as I sat between my mom and Will's parents. I wasn't even supposed to be there for another week, it was totally unexpected. And I definitely didn't know Sarah would be there... I didn't even know if I would be, seeing how I had a shouting match with God earlier that afternoon about why He wouldn't give me some answers. He didn't shout back, thankfully... I probably would have died. And deserved it.
As Sarah prepared to share the story of her battle with Crohn's disease and how God worked through it, she asked us all to open up to chapter 9.
And there she read Jesus' answer, "That the glory of God may be made known."
And so I reflected on Will's life, how he lived it for the glory of God. I thought about his funeral, the most incredible celebration of life I've ever been a part of. I thought about the nurses and doctors that came to know Christ more deeply through Will's testimony, his faith through suffering at such a young age.
I've been in a similar place, this warring internally with God about unfavorable circumstances and undesired outcomes. And I didn't expect anything from Him last night as I walked into Radius. Quite honestly I mostly just came to catch up with old friends.
You said we were going to be in John 9, and that didn't register. But when I read the opening verse and remembered... almost 2 years ago, man. Almost 2 years ago exactly. It was August 5th, 2009, and God spoke in the same way through the same scripture... and my heart was broken.
I pretty much began crying then and didn't stop until after the last song of the service. When you prayed over those of us who had experienced suffering/were experiencing it currently... I haven't wept that hard in a long time.
To know God still loves me, would speak to me, after my attitude the past 2 years... what a breaking, humbling, freeing reality.
So I know this has been really long and I'm sure some of the substance has been lost in written format, but man I just wanted to say thank you."
That's it for now. A lot has happened since then... and man has the Lord proven Himself faithful, loving, patient, and wise. I'm convinced that I am the product of many saints' fervent prayers. More to come...
