Cold

Jeff

Cold. That's how I felt my first year of college. I knew the Bible. I knew about Jesus. I even knew the words of truth that were supposed to bring life and love into my own personal faith journey. But it all just seemed like cold, hard facts. Like rocks sinking into an icy pond, burying themselves deep in the mud over time. No one saw my faith - not in my everyday life, not in my private life. It just, somehow, inexplicably was. That's what I said any way. No wonder that when I went to college, I felt a need to reinvent myself.

My first night of college, I ended up taking shots of hard alcohol on some random person's couch. I had wandered in and out of little parties until I found someone who accepted me. I would continue this wandering process most of the year. In fact, it had begun well before I left home.

The last two years of high school were a frenzied blur of events and emotions. Junior year, a classmate had collapsed on the gym floor and died of heart failure. Senior year, I started going to an Assemblies of God youth group and felt an interesting mix of both awkwardness and conviction. Jake, the friend that had originally invited me to the group once asked me, anxiously, "So, are you, like, saved or whatever?" I squeamishly answered in a vague affirmative, "I think so." Although, there was something eating at me, and it often came late at night, when I was left to the darkness of my own thoughts.

"Do you think you're going to heaven?" I asked my girlfriend at the time. She was Catholic. I was desperate for answers.

"Hell yeah!" she laughed. I was not convinced.

I wanted more than that, more than the out-of-tune organ with half-hearted voices to accompany the hymns at church, more than a cheap invitation to be "saved or whatever," more than the hopelessness of a Saturday night kegger, more than having sex in the janitor's closet (as some of my classmates had experienced), more than the emptiness I was exploring in other religions and philosophies, more than the contradictory faith of my parents. More.

Our small Presbyterian church was complete with wailing, elderly ladies and a handful of middle-aged people who ran our small farming community's dying businesses and sometimes mouthed the words to the praises we "sang." I was an acolyte. It was cool to be in the spotlight, but also a drag to have responsibility. I spent most of the service, trying not to think of cusswords and to at least look like I was listening to the pastor. My thoughts wandered, and so did my soul.

I found more of an expression of the soul in the little songs that I would write late at night. With my cheap, Fender Stratocaster rip-off electric guitar, I would softly strum bizarre chords I found in a Beatles songbook, inventing words and melodies to be sung at a whisper quiet enough to evade the sensitive sleep radar of my mom. I sang about finding true love and condemning the pervasive superficiality of high school.

I quit going to the youth group eventually. It was not the answer I was seeking. Church disappointed me as well, and though I had maintained a fairly admirable church-going ethic for a young man who was not forced by his parents to attend, this discipline eventually waned. I filled my weekend schedule with starting a band, camping out with a handful of friends and a couple cases of beer, and going out with my new girlfriend. This new life was fun and seemed almost purposeful, but it only lasted a few months.

I said goodbye to my band, left for college, and broke up with my girlfriend. I continued to wander. One night, I wandered into an old alumni house that had been converted into a meeting place for the campus Christian fellowship. There was only about ten to fifteen of them, but they were nice people. Out of curiosity, I went back several times and started to become friends with a handful of them. Eventually, they asked me to be part of their praise band. At the time, I was not exactly sure what a praise band was, but I obliged.