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by Sandra M. Crouch I was raised in a Roman Catholic family in New Orleans, and attended Catholic schools from kindergarten through high school. My family always attended church on Sunday, and I had religion class in school every day. Even though "religion" was something my family practiced on Sunday and was the foundation for our family's very high moral and ethical standards, faith was certainly not something we regularly discussed, or something which overtly entered into day-to-day activities and decisions. However, I grew up with a strong faith in God, and as a preteen, considered entering a convent and becoming a nun after high school. Because my religious instruction was liturgically based rather than biblically based, I learned some Bible stories but knew very little about the Bible itself, especially the Old Testament. As a teenager, I began questioning my faith in more depth, as most normal teenagers do. Although all the questions I asked are clearly answered in the Bible, unfortunately, my religious instructors did not point to those answers. Instead, I was criticized for asking too many questions. I became very discouraged spiritually, and slowly turned away from the Catholic Church. My disillusionment increased when I met and fell in love with Gary, my husband. Because Gary was a Protestant and previously divorced, I was told in no uncertain terms that dating him was a sin, and marrying him could result in excommunication. Given the circumstances surrounding Gary's divorce, this seemed unreasonably harsh, unfeeling, and just plain wrong. My spiritual confusion grew, because my heart told me that a loving Creator would not intend this for His children. Gary magnanimously submitted to the process of a Catholic annulment of his first marriage, so we could be married in the Catholic Church. Though I was moving further from God and closer to agnosticism, my Catholic roots still made it important in my mind to be married in the Catholic Church. The annulment process was brutal for both of us, and again made me question if this was how a Father in heaven would want his children to represent Him on earth. My wedding day was my last day in the Catholic Church. I had been taught that the Catholic Church is God's teaching magisterium and authority on this earth, and that the Catholic Church was the only mediator available for men to reach God. Therefore, by walking away from the Catholic Church, I thought I also had to walk away from God, though by this time I wasn't even sure He existed. For twelve years, I removed myself totally from God, and searched in vain for "Truth" in philosophy, psychology and other secular disciplines. By the grace of God, I became pregnant with our precious son, Garrison, in the spring of 1991. We encountered some difficulties during the pregnancy, and as most people do, I cried out to God for help (though I was still not sure He was there). After Garrison's birth in October of 1991, we needed childcare arrangements while I worked. I read books and articles on selecting the best childcare providers, interviewed potential nannies, and talked with women who provided care in their homes. But over and over again, different people kept telling us to look into the preschool at South Coast Community Church. We visited the school and were impressed with the care provided. We decided that South Coast Early Childhood Center (SCECC) was the place for our child. Almost immediately after Garrison started attending SCECC at three months of age, an unfortunate (but not serious) accident in a classroom caused an over-protective mother to cause quite an uproar in the school, which culminated in an emotional meeting of all 300 sets of parents and the preschool Board of Directors. As a result of that meeting, the parents requested that a parent be added to the Board of Directors. The Board asked the parents to recommend 3 or 4 candidates for the Board to interview. The parents said that they wanted "the blonde with the big mouth," so I was interviewed for the Board. Don Groth was Chairman of the preschool Board of Directors, and Chairman of SCCC Board of Elders. He came to my home to meet Gary and me, and interviewed me for several hours. At the end of the interview he asked, "Are you a Christian?" I answered, "I was raised Catholic," thinking I had answered his question, since Catholicism is a Christian faith. He said, "That's not what I mean. Are you born again?" I said, "I have no idea what you're talking about." He asked, "Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?" "I have no idea what you're talking about." We talked more, and Don made it clear that the preschool was considered a ministry of the Church, and that the religious teachings of the school would increase in the future. He told me that in order to serve on the Board, I would have to be comfortable with what South Coast Community Church taught, because that was the only aspect of the school which was nonnegotiable. By this time I was scared. He was using terms like "born again," and "having a relationship with Jesus" which I thought were reserved for religious fanatics. I feared I had gotten my poor, innocent child involved in some cult which would end up feeding him Kool-Aid or waging war with ATF. I even spoke with a psychologist to learn the warning signs of a cult, so I would be better informed and more capable of evaluating the situation. I went to the 10:45 service at SCCC the next Sunday (around June of 1992), to see what we had gotten into. As a Cajun girl from New Orleans, I grew up with French. Since moving to California, however, I had heard only Spanish as a second language. But as I walked down the center isle of South Coast for the first time, Fernando Ortega looked up from his piano (seemingly right into my eyes) and said into the microphone, "Bonjour! Comment ça-va?" It was the first French I had heard in this state, and I felt like he was talking just to me. What a "coincidence." Bob Shank was beginning a series that day on what the Bible says about finances -- another strange "coincidence," since I am a CPA. He spoke about God and the Bible in a way I had never heard before, as though God had some relevance in daily life and the Bible was more than an ancient history book with old legends in it. And he was entertaining, too! Every word kept my interest, and I was intrigued enough to return the next week, . . . and the next, . . . and the next . . . Bob's teaching from the Bible made me curious about this Book which had always been in my family's house, but had never been really used. My father was the only Catholic I ever knew who actually read the Bible from cover to cover, but he never discussed it with us. My husband and I had a Bible in our home because his mother thought we should have one and gave us one as a gift. On August 18, 1992, my curiosity got the better of me. I opened it up to, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. . ." and started reading. My interest became a hunger, but I still didn't "feel" like I really believed in God or this story about His Son. On November 15, 1992, Bob's message included an extremely important point for me. Faith is not a feeling. Faith is a decision. It is a conscious act of free will to believe in God and trust His Son for salvation from the consequences of my sins. Bob offered an invitation at the end of the service to privately accept Christ as Savior that day. I accepted. The "feeling" of belief gradually came later. Thankfully, my life has never been the same. |
