Tacoma, WA 98465
During the last FOB Hope dinner, I had a chat with another veteran about our spiritual histories. We’d both grown up in the church but had drifted away and returned later as adults. During the conversation, he asked me a question that stuck with me: “when did you get serious about it?”
In the context of the conversation, I think it was more a question of when I made the decision to attend church regularly again as an adult. Beyond the conversation, however, the question of what it means to “get serious” is one that I’ve wrestled with for a long time, especially during seasons of Lent when we focus on the similar idea of “turning.” I’ve had very few moments in my spiritual life that I could isolate as pivotal decision points in which I changed in any dramatic way. My spiritual growth and conversion, for the most part, has been slow and almost imperceptible day to day, revealing itself over time like the tiny new leaf buds that’ll soon dapple our trees.
As frustrating as this can be for me at times, I’ve come to a working understanding that my relationship with God isn’t defined by emotional altar calls leading to sudden bursts of compassionate inspiration and unshakable disci- pline, but by the steady knowledge that God is present and constant no matter what I’m feeling. God is present in the painfully slow growth and the small, deliberate adjustments just as much as God is in the grandiose.