I Took the One Less Traveled By

I remember as a young girl being really stubborn...actually, I still am, but I have mellowed. My childhood is a whole 'nother blog. As a friend of mine put it when she saw a video of our family, “You have a very colorful family!” Indeed, she was right! My parents, lik yours, did their best. Just as I have done with my children, my parents tried their best to raise me correctly so that I will be happy, healthy and relatively independent. Perhaps “best” isn't good enough, but it was and is for me. Mom and Dad were artist in their own right. In any case, it was interesting because on top of all that, I was raised in the 1950's when no one talked about anything; when counselling was taboo and only for the mentally ill, where white people ruled and where everyone had families like the family on “Leave it to Beaver.”

My elementary years were pretty tragic.   

I had to go to Catholic school as my mother was Catholic.  (Did I mention that Dad was a Jew?  Yep, great mix right?) There, starting at the fresh young age of six, I would be sent to the coat room to sit in the corner for kissing Jimmy Lee.  At an early age, the nuns defined me with the scarlet letter.  

To make matters worse, I had this Jewish father and I was a total Daddy's girl.  

When I had my first communion, I distinctly remember him sitting in the pew, shoulders a little slumped, looking dejected and very uncomfortable.  He was there, in that uncomfortable place, just for me.  At six I felt uncomfortable for him too.  Maybe that's why I never felt like I fit in anywhere.  

As time passed the nuns continued to show no sort of compassion or love for any child that I knew of.  They did, however, love the kiss ups....the perfect ones whose parents were totally involved in the church....Okay, enough blame.  I'll just say when I hit ninth grade, I was so relieved to leave that school.  Public School was a wide open field to freedom and non judgments.  

Boys loved me.  I was this exotic girl with breasts the size of a playboy bunny and I wasn't even 16 yet.  

When I turned 15, I found my true love.  He was there for me and he was everything I ever wanted.  

What did I want for my future?  To be a rich, country club mom.  I felt like I would marry him by the time I was 18 and my life would be set.  We dated for almost two years and things were not all coming up roses by the time of his tragedy.  He was  driving around in his friend's jeep when they hit a corner too fast and his friend lost control.  There was not a seat belt law then, so they were both thrown from the jeep and killed instantly. 

Death made me rethink life! 

Thus began my hippy days.  

My whole life changed from that moment on.  I didn't want to just get married.  As a matter of fact I didn't want to get married at all.  

I figured God was cruel and took lives at random and could care less about our feelings or our losses.  I decided to literally take the money my father had saved for my wedding, and use it to go discover the meaning of  life. 

 I packed up all of my belongings and headed for Colorado, one of the few places of hippy heaven.  I sat by the beautiful stream in Boulder and contemplated life, love, and the purpose of living,............ while inhaling.  

To make a long, long story short, I gave up western religion as it was a huge disappointment  for me and actually failed to help me during my huge time of grief and crisis.

  

So many things happened in those few years.  Then, in August of 1972, my friend turned Jesus Freak and told me she had found something that she had been looking for, something she had wanted all her life and didn't know what it was until "now".  I went to church with her and wow..it was nothing like the Catholic Church, that's for sure!  People seemed happy, the music was great, and there were all sorts of people there that were just like me.  

Something happened to me that night. It is so difficult to explain, but I had this experience that has stayed with me all these years.  

People kept telling me to "let Jesus in my heart"......Even in my pious, seriously intense Catholic upbringing, I had heard all about Jesus, and his life and his said purpose in this life.  So I knew about him, but just didn't think much about him as a real person. To me, he had always been a gory statue of blood and pain, or a tiny baby in the arms of a woman who seemed a little prettier and better dressed than the nuns ...Anyway, I knew about him.  But that night, I had this crazy experience which I won't go into, and I have never, ever been the same since.

A lot of years have passed between then and now.  As I was thinking about my life this morning, and about how it took a totally different turn from country club mom (Who probably would have been a pitiful divorcee by now.)  to who I am today, it never ceases to amaze me.  I truly believe that if it weren't for my choice of making a leap of faith, my life would have been a total waste.  

My faith is somewhat unorthodox .  One of them is that the dead, if God allows, can communicate to us.  Usually what they say is a consistent message of "I'm okay"  or "I'm sorry".  There were people who the dead spoke to in the bible...Jesus spoke to the dead and showed Peter guys who had died hundreds of years before.  

A lot of Christians may not want to claim me for my 'wanderings' ; drinking alcoholic beverages, and sometimes, my unsavory vocabulary.

  

But there are many who relate and see that my love for my God, and of course, his love for me, is real, is genuine.  Although my love for him is terribly imperfect.  

There are so many people in life whom I have loved, lost and remember.  

They all are an intricate part of the person who I am now.  I will always remember them and love them.  And the ones who are not in this world anymore, I believe they see me, and are cheering me on in my life, in my faith. 

Well, it's a Saturday and I love this blog, where I can write, reminisce, and vent.  I know my life could have been so different.  I'm not exactly sure how, but I do know that I wanted truth all those years ago.   God in his mercy, compassion, and crazy expanse of never ending love, rescued me from myself and proved to me he does, indeed, exist.  Even more so, he is personal.  Yep, this is and was and will continue to be a leap of faith.  This is what I choose  to believe.

Robert Frost writes so eloquently about choice....and this is how I feel about my decision to believe in a God called Jesus:  

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.