Living a Better Story Seminar from All Things Converge Podcast on Vimeo.
On the morning of June 14th, 2010, I left behind my beloved city of Santa Cruz, California for a lone road trip across the entire United States. I left the perfect apartment, the perfect friends, a free college education, and the perfect job. I had never believed in God and especially didn’t at this point. I felt hopeless, I was lost and I was at the end of my rope. I had no idea what was in store but I had really lost the capability to care.
Last October I met a guy. Long story short by January we were dating. Ryan is the first man that I’ve met that I thought about seriously. I’ve never, ever, ever thought about having someone’s children or marriage or anything like that, it has always completely terrified me. But when I met him something weird clicked; one morning we were staying at a friend’s house in Portland, Oregon and we were woken up by their three huge dogs jumping in the bed and licking us and we were laughing and all the sudden I thought about how I would love to have his children and wake up to him every morning in a life we created, and I had this strange fantasy about making waffles together on Sundays. And it didn’t even scare me. I mean it makes me a little embarrassed to admit it, but its how I suddenly felt. He decided to leave one morning and move to Boulder, Colorado. No explanation, no warning, just a tear-filled goodbye. I felt like someone had punched a hole in my chest. After that I decided that it was impossible to hold onto something or count on something or trust someone as always being there.
I got to my Grandma’s house outside of Sacramento, California at around two in the afternoon with a car stuffed full of all of my worldly possessions. I’ve always thought she is the greatest; she opened the door with open arms and had already made me some kind of weird tuna casserole for lunch. She talked to me about faith and how our lives here on earth are meant to teach us to have faith because in our next lives and next steps everything will be revealed and therefore faith will be too easy. No one has ever really said that idea to me and I really liked it. This idea that our purpose here on earth is to discover our faith and what faith in something is all about because when we die we will have the truth and faith will be easy. I had never heard my Grandma say something like that, I didn’t think she was religious or anything and she changed the subject right after she said that but I think that comment foreshadowed my entire journey.
I ended up working on a farm in Southern Oregon. Taklima, Oregon to be exact which is not technically a town but rather just a big, hippie community with some of the biggest pot plants I have ever seen in my life and some of the most interesting people I’ve ever met. I lived there for a few weeks working hard all day for food and a place to sleep and playing hard all night on my guitar with all the neighbors who would bring over food and instruments and some great songs. I started feeling happy again, this was the true definition of community and was something I felt I had been craving all my life. These people did not know how to judge, they just knew how to work, they knew how to have fun and they knew how to love you with no questions asked. I almost stayed forever. Almost.
Fast forward to a few weeks later and I’m a wreck. I have been driving alone through Wyoming for two days straight. Not the nice part of Wyoming either, the terrible bottom half of Wyoming on the dreaded Highway 80. Hundreds and hundreds of miles of absolutely nothing, no cell phone reception and at eleven o’clock at night my engine light starts flashing. I managed to get to a hotel and spent the night not having a clue about where I was or what the engine light would mean for my future. I didn’t know anyone who lived close or even in the surrounding states. The next morning I got to a mechanic in Laramie, Wyoming. If you’ve ever been to Laramie, I think you will fully understand how terrible this situation was. The mechanic came in and had me sit me down, brought over the owner and then told me that he really, really hoped I would get where I was going. Something was wrong in the middle of my engine and they would have to take apart the entire thing to find out what was wrong with it, this would cost thousands of dollars. It could completely break down at any moment. However, they weren’t Subaru specialists. The nearest Subaru specialist was in, of course, places of all places, Boulder, Colorado. The only person I knew for states and miles away was of course Ryan, who had left me in Santa Cruz without a second look, and who now resided in Boulder, Colorado. I had 200 miles of free towing on my AAA card, Boulder was 160 miles away. I was crying in a parking lot when I called Ryan and told him what had happened. I rode 4 hours with Steven the tow truck driver who listened to loud music, smoked a lot of cigarettes and drove a steady eighty miles per hour. He was pretty cool. Ryan told me I could stay with him and that everything would be okay. I thought that this was the worst situation that could possibly happen to me.
A week later, I ended up walking into Pathway Fellowship, a church that Ryan had started going to. Let me remind you, I do not go to church and everyone who has ever talked to me about it has made me uncomfortable. Except I have a habit of attracting believers. Ryan did not hide the fact that he loved God and read a worn out bible. Anyways, I walk into Pathway and instantly sensed a difference. They were a small group of cool looking young people who met in the basement of some big brick building. The sermon started and Steve, the leader of the church, spoke about how God had a plan for each of us and often His plan took us crazy and unexpected places. Basically it was a sermon that spoke so specifically to me that it scared me. The worship band started to play and suddenly I was in tears and praying for the first time in my life. And a clear, loud voice said, “this is where you’re supposed to be, I brought you here”. I would’ve thought that I finally had gone insane if I had not have felt so calm and peaceful. A few days later I ended up talking with two boys from Pathway over coffee. All day. And then I ended up praying with them in a small park and actually asking Jesus to break down my door and come on in because I was finally ready to listen to him. I then ended up having coffee with the leader of Pathway Fellowship, Steve. Lately, I have been learning how to drink a lot of coffee. Steve cut to the core of me within 3 minutes. All these issues that I tried to say I didn’t have, all these past problems that I said didn’t effect me, all these people that I said were good for me. This all changed in one conversation. And it made me so hungry for more. “God wants you and He will fight for you” , Steve told me. He made me say "God wants me because I'm worth it" several times, out loud, in a very public place. I think I'm also learning that I'm going to be really embarrassed over and over again. I have never felt wanted in my life. I had never felt able to fully trust anyone, I had never been able to truly love someone. I had never felt what it was like to be able to be loved or to feel safe and secure in a relationship. I wanted that. I wanted all of that. I had been a serial relationship-ist. Jumping from bed to bed hoping to find what I was looking for from another human being. But the thing is I was looking for something that I could never get from another human being. I was trying to fill a hole in my heart but the thing is that hole had a specific shape.
The thing with me is, I don’t want to feel scared of God. I don’t want to feel scared to tell people about God or about living with the Holy Spirit. I don’t want people to call me crazy or hypocrite or insane. I don’t want to feel insane. But I do want to pursue Jesus. I think what scares people the most about Christianity is the language associated with it. Whenever people start saying, “she was saved” or “the Holy Spirit comes into you” I immediately freak. The biggest part I worry about when telling people what has happened to me is that I’ll communicate the wrong thing. I don’t want them thinking I’ve gone off the deep end because suddenly I sound like one of those weird “Jesus freaks” who hate gay people and picket outside Planned Parenthood. That is not who I am or who I will ever be. This is about letting the light that only comes from God shine through you. In less scary terms it’s about love. All this is about love. In reading the bible it is surprising to me how many people have misinterpreted just about everything. Religion is weird. Loving Jesus and letting Him shine through you so that your life somewhat begins to look like His? That’s not that scary or that weird. Our biggest qualms about religion are that it alienates people, it segregates, it discriminates, it puts things in a box, it hates. My biggest fear and problem with religion and with “Christians” was that they were just so hateful to anyone who wasn’t “good”, “normal”, or fellow “Christians”. What I have learned from Pathway Fellowship is that you could walk in and be the most outrageous person, you could be the most broken person, you could probably be stumbling drunk and they would still love you. They would still try to help you, not because it’s the “right” way, not because its following some sort of weird set of rules that guarantees that you will get to heaven but just because they can. Because they have decided to live their lives according too what Jesus preached and lived by…love. These people have decided to put their trust and their faith in God. And I realize that sentence still sounds weird, it still makes you want to cringe and imagine all the weirdo’s who have tried to throw bibles at you in the past because religion and all the crazies in religion have so deeply affected how we see God, how we hear the name Jesus. I’m still trying to get used to it. But the point is, the people at Pathway do not live in fear of judgment by others, they do not view every outsider as a person who “needs to get saved”, they do not fear death; they live in happiness, they are free from stress, worry, anxiety, I mean probably not completely but they are a hell of a lot healthier and happier then any other people I’ve ever met. They have been through really tough shit. They are real people and they are brutally honest. And that’s what I love because I thought “Christians” were supposed to be judgmental, I thought they were supposed to be fake, I did not think they were real or people I should spend my time with. But these people were more similar to the hippies I lived with in Oregon, then to any religious people I had ever met.
I had never read a bible. That might be the biggest problem; we are all judging what we have never even looked at for ourselves. Newsflash, the bible is interesting! Jesus is sassy! And He is funny, and He hangs with prostitutes and lepers and He loves them and tells them kind words and heals them. He is a really nice guy. And he gets mad sometimes and frustrated, but he never stops loving people and he never stops loving his Father even though he has to go through hell and people really suck and are so rude to him. I want to be that person, you know? I want to be able to change people’s lives just by loving them; I want to give people hope when they look at my life that they can be really happy and satisfied. I don’t want to ask people if they have “been saved”. That term has really struck a chord with me. I used to cringe when I heard it; I used to mark off whoever said it as crazy or judgmental or an extremely weird home-schooled kid. But when I prayed in that park and I felt it, when I began to understand what people were trying to say when they said that, that preconception started to change a little. It suddenly meant to me, saved, saved from feeling hopeless, saved from making choices that physically and emotionally hurt like hell, saved from believing that life is about getting more and more stuff, saved from having to live in this world knowing that I would be unhappy with relationships and family members. Saved from self-destruction, saved from more pain, saved from panic attacks, saved from anxiety, saved from feeling used, ignored, taken advantage of, stupid, not worthy, not good enough, saved from feeling like my soul was going extinct because it was so trapped. Whoa. Suddenly “being saved” sounds like a good thing, like something not scary, like something I actually want and can believe in.
A few days after I met with Steve I moved in with some of the girls at Pathway and picked up a bible. As I was reading, one of the daily thunderstorms started and I walked outside to watch the rain come down. My bible dropped to the ground as I stepped out into the rain, letting it wash over me until I was soaked. My face raised to the sky I said, “God, I am now in your hands…. finally”, out loud, I’m pretty sure a neighbor was watching me and was more then a little worried but I didn’t care. The thunder roared back at me and for the first time in a very long time I felt happy. I felt myself. And I felt more grounded then I ever had in my life. The biggest fear I had about Christianity was losing myself. That seemed so silly now. I hadn’t even begun my journey to find myself….
We think its weird when strange things change our plans and force us somewhere. We say, “everything happens for a reason” but then don’t take the time to think about that reason. We believe in the wind and the stars and the waves but we have so much trouble believing that someone created them. We all have the capacity to let God in. We all have the power to let go. We all have a specifically shaped hole in our hearts and we all have a certain potential.
The story I want to live kind of just fell into my lap. It started without me having to do a thing. I have been in Boulder for about a month now and feel like I am growing massively as a person every single day. I am building real relationships for the first time in my life. I am having real conversations. I want to keep living this story, this new way of life and I want to pursue Jesus. I want to have a real, personal relationship with God and I want to feel that hole in my heart slowly start to fill.
So, how does this seminar fit in and what am I actually trying to accomplish? Two main points: before all of this happened I read, “Through Painted Deserts”, I just finished “Blue Like Jazz” and am about to start, “Searching For God Knows What”. “Through Painted Deserts” was what piqued my interest in realizing that I could maybe have a relationship with God and that that concept was radically different from religion. I had never heard of this idea before. So reason number one is that I’m a huge Donald Miller fan and attribute a lot of my reasons for even stepping foot in Pathway Fellowship to his writing. Before I left school I was a film major and was interested specifically in screenwriting, so reason number two and what I want to accomplish is writing a screen play and then actually producing and directing it. Oddly enough, a lot of people who go to Pathway fellowship are film people and can help me accomplish this once I have actually written the thing, but I am unsure of how to even start writing, what to write about, and funds for once I do write it. So I am hoping that this seminar will be able to give me the skills I need to create and write my story.
I hope that you managed to get all the way to the end of this and apologize for it being so long, believe it or not this is a very short version of the events that led me to Boulder and to God. I still haven’t found a job here in Boulder and am still couch hopping and so I also hope that you consider picking my entry because I am running extremely low on funds but will spend the last of them to get to this seminar. Thank you for considering me and thank you for reading.
Amy Roseberry
