“In other words, disillusionment befriended me at an early age and maybe my experiences of God in the disillusionment saved my faith.”
Maybe this isn’t exactly true. I had one defining experience of God, of Spirit, when I prayed, as certain branches of Christianity say, “for Jesus to come into my heart.” I sat on the kitchen table while my Mother prayed the “sinner’s prayer” with me. I distinctly remember a sensation of being filled with a newness and lifeforce which was not my own. I did not begin speaking in tongues nor did I fall out as if dead. But I knew something changed within me, filled me, that moment.
I can’t say I had any other similar experiences of God throughout my childhood and adolescence. One night in my early teens, in a dream, I began writing something akin to poetry and woke up sensing an imperative to write it down. I transcribed the poem as faithfully as I could and I continued to write other poems and reflections, but was that God?
I mainly clung to the Psalms and felt the moans and cries of the psalmists deeply. I appreciated the authors’ honesty in pain and suffering. The constant questioning of God - from motives to presence to care. I followed suit with my own sadness, frustration and worry, and like the Psalmists, overall, I had a sense of what I called God’s presence at the end of my diatribes and rants.
A truer statement than the one initially given might be I found other disillusioned souls in the Bible and mainly in the Psalms. They taught me the freedom I had to bring my disillusionment to God along with any disillusionment I had with God. Both were worship – the honest offering of my life. God could handle all of it and God would remain present. I was not alone.
*I imagine some of the psalmists like Lt. Dan - angry, passionate and engaging God directly.
2/19/26
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