My story pt. 4 - And the walls came uh-tumbling down...

Note: For those of you who didn't quite get my two column idea - this should flesh it out a bit more. That's the trouble with posting in pieces! Please, read and respond. I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences! - Jamie

I entered college full of life and a desire to serve God. I filled my course schedule with ministry classes and spent most of my time serving in youth groups. Academics took second place to practice and my grades were only so-so. I did well putting into practice the things I was learning, but not so well at reproducing them in papers and tests.

As I made my way through the years of school, my fervor for ministry began to dim, my energy levels dropped and my grades slipped further. I spent much of my alone time with feelings of isolation, sadness and depression. I was undergoing a change I could not understand, and chalked it up to metabolism change or homesickness. By the time I reached my senior year, I couldn’t get up for 8:00 a.m. classes, regularly had uncontrolled nose bleeds and had gained 85 pounds.

If everything had gone according to “Gods’ plan,” by the time I reached my senior year I was supposed to be doing well in school, leading my fellow students, making a difference in my world. Instead, I was floundering. I was depressed, tired, sick all the time and fat. The words of those prophecies (mentioned in the last post!) only magnified these feelings as I struggled with the gulf between a happy vision and reality.

I managed to graduate with the help of friends and the good will of professors who worked with me to produce papers of acceptable quality and to pass tests, because they saw in me something that I was increasingly unable to see. In the end, I completed my course work, but in less than stellar style. I had my degree and I could now do what I was called to do, be a pastor, and I thought, perhaps, the prophecies will be fulfilled later.

And so I began my glorious career as a youth pastor in a large non-denominational church. I worked hard to prove myself, putting on airs of knowledge and having it all together inside. But, there was a great disconnect between the façade I was creating and the inner reality. A skunk can’t hide its stink forever, and from time to time my true odor arose. Those who knew me best (roommates and youth staff) started to see me as lazy, always making them do the hard work while I sat back and took the glory.

It was four months after my graduation, just 16 weeks into my “calling,” that the façade came crashing down. I walked into a doctor’s office with a cyst on my neck and walked out with cancer. All the years of sickness, weight gain, nosebleeds and lethargy were diagnosed as, “Hodgkin’s Lymphoma located in the left neck.”

One moment. So much can happen in one solitary moment. Two people can discover love. Buildings can come crumbling down. A life can be brought into the world. Faith can be shaken to its very foundations. For me, this one moment, these three words – “you have cancer” – were like an earthquake that moved the ground beneath my feet, rattled my core beliefs, sent a shiver through all my theological formation and left my faith swaying.

Now remember my column analogy? Suddenly I realized that, rather than getting the items in column 1, I was experiencing everything from column 2! I was doing the right things. I didn’t drink, smoke or cuss. I was a pastor for heaven’s sake! I’d given up my personal dreams and aspirations (note to reader - I really wanted to be an astronaut!) to devote my life to God’s work, and cancer is my thanks?

My faith began collapsing in light of this complete incongruity. Overwhelmed by thousands of different emotions, all my thoughts and theological presuppositions were moving about like pool balls scattering around the table. I was groping about, unable to hold all the pieces together in their proper places. Once again, column 2 reared its ugly head and I was plunged into hell on earth.

Question for you: Have you experienced a collapse of faith? How has the two column, black and white, right and wrong system played a role in your life? In your experience has the world really worked this way?