Silvia’s Faith Journey- Part 2
This is part two of many in my faith journey. It describes the time between two deep valleys that occurred earlier in my life.
Freshman year of college had begun, and I hit the ground running. Running away from the hurt of losing my dad only a month before. The thing is that you can never really run that far. Every night I would cry myself to sleep and then wake up, stuff everything down, and then go about the day acting as if I did not have a care in the world. I had pushed God out of my life and focused on what I viewed as one of my main missions, to become a scientist and specialize in cancer research. During my dad’s battle with cancer, he told me that he hoped I would become an oncologist. He thought my caring nature would enable me to be a great doctor for those battling cancer, but I did not have the heart to tell him that I could not do that. I could not face the thought that each patient would likely be a reminder of my dad’s battle with cancer. I did not feel strong enough to set that path into motion, so I decided that doing cancer research was close enough to fulfilling my dad’s wish while still preserving myself. I began to do research in immunology and decided that this was the path I would go.
Everything was moving along smoothly, and I had a typical college life, but it did not involve God. Unexpectedly, one afternoon I saw a poster at the student union that caught my eye. It was announcing a seminar about the scientific evidence for God. To say that I was intrigued would be an understatement. Honestly, I did not even realize I was interested in God, but if there was scientific proof, I wanted to hear it. I snuck into the back of the room at the beginning of seminar eager to hear something that would make me change my mind about shutting God out. Somewhere, deep down, I wanted to hear someone prove something undeniably great about Him. The speaker walked up to the front of the room and opened his lecture with this, “These scientists who do not believe in God are all going to hell.” Wow, what a warm and welcoming statement! Gosh, I think I will surrender to Christ now that you say that, is what no one said ever… well perhaps someone thought that, but it was certainly not me. I had come in open minded for the first time in years, but suddenly the door to my curiosity about God was slammed shut. I had no interest in hearing more and for the first and only time in my life, in which I have attended countless seminars, I got up and I walked out.
Years would pass and it was not until I was in graduate school that I would step anywhere near a church again. I had a college friend help me move to a new city for graduate school and it was around that transition period in my life I began to wonder about God again. My friend was a believer and he walked through life with a different attitude and resilience that most people did not have. He never tried to convince me about Jesus or extend the gospel, but I envied the peace that he had. I knew I wanted some close approximation of it and if it was because of God, then I was curious again. It just so happened, that there was a little church around the corner from where I lived and one day, I finally got the nerve to go check it out.
I walked up to the church by myself and decided to sit almost all the way in the back, the second to last pew to be exact. As I sat there, others came in, smiled, and sat nearby. The last two pews where I was sitting were packed! The service started and everything seemed to be like what I remembered from childhood, but then, suddenly, about ten minutes into the service the entire back two rows cleared out, except for me. It turned out that I had been sitting where the choir normally sits! I did not know because they were all in regular clothes and no one told me. I was so embarrassed that I never went back. Honestly, it was probably not a big deal, but it was enough to scare me away and when you are looking for excuses to not really meet God, they are easy to find.
Years later, I did find a church that I would go to on occasion with friends who had invited me there for Easter. That too would end because I graduated and headed off to sunny San Diego to do a postdoctoral fellowship. If you have ever had the chance to visit, you know how beautiful the weather and ocean is, and to me it was like paradise. It was there I met Jared. An easy going, intelligent, kind, and handsome Australian who had an ability to make everyone feel at ease almost instantly. We were both immunologists, enjoyed running, had similar humor, and to top it off, on our first date we discovered we lived only three houses away from each other. Everything clicked so easily. Things appeared to be coalescing in my life and so I started to think maybe God was not so bad after all. I distinctly remember thinking I had put together some of the pieces of the puzzle of what God was doing in my life. Maybe one of the reasons I experienced my dad’s death was to propel me to become an immunologist and to lead me to Jared. Have you ever tried to make sense of everything in your life like that? Maybe it is just me, but somehow it made me feel like I could perhaps open the door to trusting God a little bit again because I had “made sense” of God. It is kind of embarrassing to admit I have this tendency to try to “figure it out” when I cannot even remember the vast majority of what I learned in college. Sure, random, useless information sticks in my brain tightly but things that are of greater significance? Poof! Gone. So of course, I would be the one to figure out God’s plans. Ha! I do not think so.
Life with Jared was going very smoothly. It seemed everything was getting better and better each day until one morning at work when my boss dropped the bomb. He was moving the lab to the east coast. I could either try to start over in my postdoctoral training and stay in San Diego or follow my boss to finish my training and be separated from Jared. It was a difficult decision, but Jared and I decided we would do one year of long-distance. We each vowed to push as hard as possible to finish our training in our respective labs. After that, regardless of where we were in our careers, we would find a way to be back together.
Long-distance has a way of putting things into perspective. It can magnify problems and rip a couple apart or it can bring them closer together. For us, it did the latter. Although I did not realize it, I had placed Jared on a pedestal and to some degree he was an idol. He was my everything. God was not in my sight line except for the fact that I was less resentful to Him for my dad’s death because He brought me to Jared. I started to let God in a little bit, but it boiled down to this: I would pray every night one prayer, and that was simply for the safety and protection of my mom, sister, brother, and Jared. My “vending machine God” that delivers whatever button I push to receive my selected prayer request seemed to be working again because everyone was doing well.
Jared and I were close to finishing the one-year mark of long distance and Christmas was only a few weeks away. We both thought we were getting close to a point where we each could move forward to the next step in our careers. It was all planned out; Jared was going to come and visit me for a couple of weeks and we would start looking for job positions to apply to in Australia. We were going to map out how we would interview and move to Australia in the next couple of months. We were targeting to be together by February and we were both extremely excited. Our long year apart was almost over.
Life was coming together.
Then on Sunday night, a week before Jared was to come to visit, I had a dream… and the next day I would find myself in a nightmare.
My “vending machine” version of God had malfunctioned again.