The Youth Sponsor

A prequel to "making different choices"

Part One is Part Two

When we lived in New Jersey I had a Supervisor for my training in Clinical Pastoral Education who told me that my conversion to Christianity was my rebellion against my parents. I don’t think so - I think it was part of my path. I had a dream; I saw a symbol. I had been befriended by several evangelical kids at my high school. But I don’t think I would have been open to either if it hadn’t been for Michael. I met him at a low-key bible study/Friday fun event that was hosted by the Youth Pastor would would marry us when I wasn’t yet old enough to purchase liquor. He was there with his fiance. I was a senior in High School. He was a Senior in College. He spoke to me rationally about Christianity and was open and intellectual and witty. I felt that it might be possible to be a Christian and be smart, something that hadn’t felt possible before. We both used similar vocabulary, which wasn’t excessively large, but was wordier than the people around us in church, who usually just looked at me blankly when I opened my mouth to express something that came naturally from me. He would stop by the High School from time to time on breaks to play volleyball and hang out with the Christian youth. Sometime during that year he broke up with his fiance, I decided I was a Christian, although I really didn’t *feel* anything after I had the dream and made the decision and said the little prayer lots of times to make sure I was saved. The important thing was I had some cool new friends to hang out with, since most, if not all the people I was close to my Sophomore year were Seniors that year - and most were exchange students, including two very nice French guys. The one I liked, didn’t like me in that way. Or if he did, he didn’t do anything about it and chose to date two girls in the foreign exchange program. The one who liked me, I almost liked, but not as much as the other one, and I was very innocent, so in the end we were all just friends. I went to a dance with the one who liked me more and he was very respectful. I went skiing with the one who didn’t like me in that way, and I was very respectful. The following summer I went to Costa Rica and dated the one local boy who didn’t stare at me up and down when our group was introduced to the local teenagers. I got myself kissed. I went a little farther than I really wanted to, but I made sure nothing major happened, but I had a little bit of a story to tell my friends. After joining Faith Evangelical Free church in Acton, MA, I began to see Mike regularly at events. I enjoyed talking at the level he was able to do with me, but my focus was on High School. I attended public school part time and homeschooled part time for Junior year, and went to public school full time when I started Senior Year. I got together with me Senior Pastor’s son at Junior Prom and broke up with him the following Prom. I told he couldn’t touch my boobs and he’d slipped up a few times…I was feeling guilty about the low key fooling around that happened from time to time, and weirdly, he the pastor’s son did not…he felt as long as it wasn’t intercourse, no big deal. Well, I told him if he did it again, I would break up with him. The truth is, he wanted to give me the chance to date other people in college even before that, and I was already developing a crush on Michael, for inexplicable reasons other than a vague kindship of word choice vengram overlap.. When my senior Pastor’s son violated our agreement on the dance floor, I broke up with him. It was silent in the Rolls Royce his dad drove us home in. And oh so awkward. That kid was a good person, but we wouldn’t have been happy together long term in ters of marriageable suitability - so it is all for the best.

That summer Michael and I hung out at but nothing happened. My mother was not able to suspend her disbelief that I could hang out at an older male’s house late at night and not have sex, but literally nothing happened. His roommate was there most of the time, occasionally other friends. When we eventually had “the conversation” after my first semester of college and became “officially an item,” I was excited, but it didn’t last long. I was a second semestere Freshment at a Brethren in Christ University. I chose that school in Grantham, PA mostly because two of my friends had started at the previous year. I pretty much went because they were there and because I liked the worship band that played a rocking-it-out kind of passionate worship on Thursday nights. As soon my former youth sponsor and I started dating, I should have realized it was a mistake. Although he had told me he’d struggled with pornography in the past, I understood it to be something done other than an occasional temptation for which he sought help from his men’s group. When he started talking about his interest in polyamory, and moving away from his faith, he simultaneously started getting angry about the church - feeling that it had repressed him and was therefore to blame for his sexual addiction to pornography. Whereas my growth away from patriarchal evangelical Christianity was relatively gentle - although I lost all of my evangelical closest friends and a good mentor when I acted on my sovereign choice to divorce my first husband, and on top of that, have the audicity to fall in love with my now husband before I was even fully divorced in Uncle Sam’s eyes - I simultaneously learned from intelligent, thoughtful, warm-hearted professors who kept their faith without holding onto a fundmentalist view of scripture being word for word absolutely the word of God without error, and I had a supportive online community for Christians questioning what they’d been taught. His journey of leaving the church was different: it was filled with absolute rage, even hate.