Unearthing My Christian Roots

I've been thinking about my faith a lot lately and grieving the fact that I was not raised in a richly Christian home.  There was no mention of Christ in my childhood home, no mention of God, no bible there -- and yet I knew to pray at the age of 4 during a time of physical trauma and suffering.  God spent the next 38 years preparing me for a place in His family -- but how different would I be if I had been blessed with a Christian family from birth?  Perhaps I would take God for granted instead of the zeal I have for Him now ... I will never know for sure.

One of our family members traced a branch of our ancestry back to a descendant who came to America on the Mayflower.  I don't know of any God-fearing relatives from the last few generations and so I have been wondering if a strong Christian faith was ever part of my family's make-up -- and what might have happened over the last 300+ years to seperate my family from the kind of faith that leads them to another continent to avoid religious persecution.

Stephen Hopkins is my Mayflower ancestor and a simple Google search turned up so much information ... well, I could hardly sleep last night.  My mind was spinning with excitement and lots of questions.
Stephen Hopkins (ancestry page)

Some decisions God calls me to make obedience seem easy -- and sometimes the decision to be obedient takes me a while.  I learned that many of the first American settlers were Puritans or Separitsts.  Stephen was neither, but he was a man of God and God was calling him to America.  He left his wife and children behind on his trip to America ... perhaps he wanted to set up a home first, I'm not certain ... but his ship wrecked and he was stranded on a Bermudan island for almost a year.  As I read on, I could sense Stephen's frustration ... being led to another continent and then suffering shipwreck, but I could see God working the more I read and it was so exciting to me!

The details of the shipwreck were remarkable.  The castaways gave up saving the sinking ship at just the right time that they were able to land on a reef and row to an island with an agreeable climate and plentiful food.  So many amazing facts that only God could have orchestrated.  He was their Mighty Protector.

Stephen was to be hanged after trying to start a mutiny, but people showed him mercy when he pleaded with them and I have no doubt God had a hand in that as well.  And Stephen's role on the ship?  He served as a minister's clerk; he was well versed in scripture and had a love of the psalms.

They built new ships and made it to their destination in Jamestown a year later.  They found only 50 of the original 500 settlers living; a hard winter led to starvation and some resorted to cannibalism to survive.  Meanwhile, Stephen and the other castaways had lived in relative comfort with plentiful food while stranded on a beautiful island.  God sheltered them from the worst.

Stephen eventually returned to England to collect his wife and children only to find his wife had died from the plague and his children were being raised by the state church.  I missed part of the story here, but I think he must have remarried, as he set out with wife and children in tow on a new expedition on the Mayflower.

The next part of the story seemed shocking to me.  So determined were they to escape religious persecution and follow God's calling, they came not as free men, but basically entered into a life of indentured servitude.  For they would be required to work 7 days a week for the next 7 years in the colonies and at the end of those 7 years they would own a piece of land and nothing more.  They would have no personal belongings and they would not be homeowners.  7 years for freedom to express their faith and to own a piece of land to start their life anew.  Any passion I feel for my faith pales in comparison to that kind of sacrifice.

Melancholy Birthday

Tomorrow (October 4) is my spiritual birthday and it should be such a day of celebration and joy ... and it felt that way the day I was born again ... but I don't have that joy right now.  I've grown so much and changed so much in the last year -- some huge things -- but every day feels like a testament to how much I have to learn.

God has proven so faithful to me in the past year.  Lately my Christian walk just feels too difficult.  Everything about it is hard and God keeps calling me to difficult things.  Just once I wish He would call me to something I am already prepared for.  I can see so clearly He has worked hard to give me the right experiences to enable me to do hard things; it is still hard to trust that He knows me better than me.

Prayer Page

Time seems to have gotten away from me.  I suppose that's what happens with a full-time job, a lot of spiritual learning needed, and college.  While my prayer list has gotten quite large these days, I thought I would post an example of one of my prayer pages I did about a year ago.  I never got all my prayers documented on the spread, but perhaps I will return one day to that page and continue ...

Spiritual Birthday

Wow ... that was a long hiatus.  I've been busy between school, work, and church.  I kind of lost my zeal for posting without a camera -- but I have a new one finally.  I have a few pages in my prayer art journal complete and a few more started I need to get back to.

This is a set of pages centered around the day I became a born-again Christian.  My spiritual birthday is October 4th and a whole lot has happened since then.  Some things have come clearly into focus and some out of focus.  I am still sorting through quite a lot.  I still have a lot of learn about the character of God.

The Back Story

Note: Everything I am posting here is past tense, as a number of steps along my journey have occurred already. I am giving myself some time to process before documenting the path God has laid before me.

I am going to college part time in the evenings working toward an Information Technology degree in an effort to transition into a new field with my agency. Some of the personal reflective writing assignments started breaking me down emotionally. By the end of the term, I felt like I had been run through a blender. I felt raw and it became clear there were unresolved hurts and feelings from a childhood riddled with trauma – and drama.

I never dared to commit my past to an art journal page before, but it seemed like a natural expression – a way to process things and a way for me to connect with God’s role in this drama.

Without a clear definition of what my past looked like, I just started the page … I knew God would lead me if I dared to follow. I placed strips of painters tape down the length of the page. I’ve never done vertical stripes, but it seemed important to have harsh vertical lines. The color ended up being quite important. Anyone who really knows me -- knows red is not my color. Red represents blood … anger … hatred … vengeance … and not necessarily my own – but it is the color of my past.

It took a few days for the layout to gel, but it seemed we were victims of a terrible puppet master – with the puppet master being a 17-year old girl. She was filled with anger, hatred, and most of all … malice; malice toward my father. She used anything and anyone (including her own family) to seek revenge against my father for an act he never committed. The rest of us were all puppets -- meant to inspire suffering upon suffering.

Where was God in all this? I can’t say exactly how he worked in my family’s life, but He protected me … and eventually He delivered a justice that only He had the power to orchestrate. There was no talk of God in our household --- most of us had never even set foot in a church and yet, as a 5-year old girl, I knew instinctively that only God could save me and that I must pray.

In recent months I have come to realize what a masterful hand He had – knowing each of us, how much we could bear, and how best to protect us while providing us life experience. And for me personally – my childhood suffering has yielded opportunity for a lifetime of growth. Accepting Christ into my life has meant at last, the puppet master strings of my past have been severed.

These are a few lines of a personal psalm I wrote, so to God I must say:

I exalt Your Majesty
For renewal and healing
     Emancipating me from the shackles of the shadows

Begnning of a Prayer Art Journal

Welcome to my new blog.  I also have a blog where I post my regular mixed media work at Karen's Altered Dreamz.  I haven't been posting much there, as I have been on an emotional journey that is just beginning.

A few months ago I started attending a church not far from the college I attend in the evening and I am now entering my first baby steps into Christianity.  My second week attending, our pastor and his family lost a child to anencephaly.  They shared their journey with us through an amazing video at their daughter's service.  You can read more about their journey and see the video at Baby Emily: A Family's Journey with Anencephaly.  

The service and video were incredibly emotional, so I created a couple art journal pages in honor of this experience.