Blessed Disillusionment

by Camerin Courtney

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I was misled. In fact, many of us were as we grew up in our mainline churches, listening intently to the flannel-graph stories of Moses, the little boy with the loaves and the fishes, and the wavy-haired Jesus who smiled through it all. It was all so nice and tidy and happy.

As we sat Indian-style sipping juice and nibbling on graham crackers, well-meaning adults told us all about life and God and how if we were good boys and girls and didn't kill anyone or disobey our parents, life would be happy. If we read our Bibles and prayed enough, life would be good. And we believed.

And then we grew up.

As grown-ups, some of us began to notice a few inconsistencies between the flannel-graph picture of life and the real thing. Bad things happened, sometimes even when we prayed and read our Bibles and didn't kill anyone. So we prayed and read more. Obeyed and tried harder. Sometimes this changed things. Sometimes it didn't.

In the latter situations, little niggling questions began to creep into our minds. What gives, we wondered. Where's the smiling, wavy-haired Jesus now? we questioned. Was it all just a nice story? we dared to whisper in quiet moments of desperation.

For me those moments occurred when I suffered a season of depression. And when I reached 30 and no traveling companion had yet shown up to journey through life with me. This isn't the happy life I was assured of, I observed with confusion. When this part of the story of life proved not to be true for me, I wondered what else had been inaccurate.

I didn't go through a crisis of faith at this point, though I watched a friend or two on parallel journeys endure serious doubts and wanderings. I almost wish I would have joined them. Perhaps the conclusion would have been more dramatic and life changing. Instead it was more like a big disillusioning pothole in my faith journey. Or a wrong turn that led me, like Dorothy on her trip to Oz, to a field of poppies where I stopped and took a long, lazy nap. Sleepwalking through life for a bit, if you will.

I never really questioned if God existed, just if he really cared for me and loved me as I'd sung so many times as a young girl. Jesus loves me, this I know. Well, based on the picture I'd had painted for me, I didn't know. I'd been doing everything I thought I was supposed to, and Jesus wasn't providing the happy endings I'd been told about.

So where do you go from this spot at the side of the road, lost and looking at your map with dubious distrust? From what I've seen, people at this crossroads take one of two routes: abandoning God altogether or digging deeper and finding a broader, more accurate picture of him. Personally, I knew I couldn't abandon God. Part of my soul still resonated with the psalmist, "Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?" (139:7).

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Originally published in: Christian Singles Today

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