A city of watersheds

This is one of those random moments... I seem to get a lot of those these days.  For people under thirty who may be reading, it happens a lot when one is over 45 years of age.  We get random.  Random may be be the precursor for doddering. 

I was thinking about when I was living in Calgary, Alberta.  We lived there from 1978-1981.  They weren't the best four years of my life, but they were four years of watersheds.  My mother always said that people change the most from 18-25 years of age, but I think I changed more during these years.  So many things that ultimately brought me to the place where I was ready to be converted to Christ happened there.

It was in those years I had my first job, liked the first boy I ever "liked," drove a car for the first time, and was finally allowed to wear make-up.  It was also a place where I had some of the most horrifying experiences with female friends, and felt the most lonely, isolated, and confused.  It was during those years that I was forced to confront the reality of evil in the world and to begin to ask how God fit into all of this.  This was the time when the Iranian Hostage Crisis was going on, and I felt uneasy as I became more aware of the bad stuff that was going on in the world.  This was also the time when Wayne Gretzky began his astounding career, but I was (and am) a Montreal Canadiens fan, so I didn't particularly care.  I did care about what went on in Iran.  It scared me that there was so much ugliness in the world.  I loved to walk even back then, and I would often walk through the city and see the foothills in the distance and wonder how a beautiful world could be so ugly.

This was the time I began looking for God, first inside St. Cecilia's Roman Catholic Church, which was conveniently located across the street from my high school.  It was the time I investigated the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  I was a very good Mormon; they loved me.  I found a "family" of sorts that wasn't like my own, that revered the God I wanted to know.  When it all fell apart and I knew I couldn't join that church, I was still standing in a position of curious ignorance.

I was bullied in 8th grade; that had kind of started much of the process of trying to understand the world and who I was in it.

I had my heart broken for the first time in that city.  Enough said.

When I look back at that city which I found so beautiful, and to which I have never returned, I wonder what it would be like to walk its streets again and see the ghosts of myself lurking around the corners where I traveled, the high school, my old house, the mall where I had my first job, the bank I worked at, that awful, horrible school field I ran through the day those awful girls chased me home.  When I think of those things from a distance, I can only see the sovereignty of God, putting each little piece into place so that on a day in May 1985, I could kneel beside my bed and ask for forgiveness for my sins and to beg the Father to give me the name "Christian."  What would it be like to see those places again?  I have often wondered.  Teenage angst, looking back, and gaining a healthy distance from such things are the stuff of good writing, and maybe some day, I will try to do that.

I don't consider thinking back necessarily dwelling on the past, but rather looking back to see God's faithfulness to me even when I rejected him.  I'm thankful for those horrid moments; I really am.  I wonder what the sorrowful times I have in this present time will feel twenty years from now.

Comments

[rosemary]

It's always so good to look at our past and see the hand of God working in our lives when we were so intent on going our own way. He so wonderfully leads us into His own way.