Second Simplicity (sharing my story at Amy Peterson’s blog)
Amy Peterson is a kindred soul out here in the internet, and I’m grateful she invited me to be part of a series of guest posts she’s hosting on the growing up of faith. I was invited to share a moment in my life when my confident answers turned to questions, when I moved from naive faith to something richer. Here’s a little of what I’m sharing over at her place today:
Nineteen sounds so young now. But by the time I finished sophomore year I was old in the ways of late-adolescence. In college-time, when seasons move slow and every night is a different adventure, two years is equal to five in real life. Friends everywhere, events to plan, meetings to attend, pranks to play. I breathed deep the reckless joy of my own freedom then. I wanted to do everything so I did everything (and got by with as little sleep as possible.)
Relationships felt so complicated then and my college’s culture of fiery evangelical faith made everything more intense. We were all charged electric, so of course we scorched one another and carried our burns with us into adulthood.
My sophomore year I got to know a boy who ran with a crowd that prayed a lot, evangelized a lot, and didn’t date—only courted. He visited me some mornings in the campus bowling alley where I worked spraying shoes. He sat on the counter beside the plexiglass sliding window, while I signed out billiard balls and controlled the music. One morning, sitting on that counter, he whispered: “Micha, I’ve been praying about this a lot. I’m interested in you. I’d like to court you.”
I fumbled the notebook in front of me and stared around the room for a friend to say hello to or a student who needed my assistance. “Will you pray about it?” he asked.