How it happened- Part 1

It's Christmas 2008 and my wife is mourning the lack of Christmas cartoons on TV. She grew up with them and it was one of the things she really loved about Christmas time. Exactly 10 years ago, I felt rather differently.

Christmas 1998, and I am standing in the middle of my lounge room by myself, shaking, paralyzed and engulfed in euphoric love- taken totally by surprise. I wonder how I might have looked from the outside because only I knew what was happening on the inside. I had just gotten up to walk away from the TV. There was one of those Jesus cartoons on.

'Oh no! Just go away would you?' was about the gist of my thoughts, so up I went. And that's when it happened. I had just turned 17.

Rewind to my childhood.

I believed in God. I knew He was always watching. I lived with my Grandparents for a significant portion of my childhood. My Grandfather was not committed to religion, but was Anglican by name. I lived with three (later two) out of five uncles. The oldest had become a 'born-again Christian' a number of years before. He didn't live with us, but I knew he was the butt of many jokes in the family, and fit the sandal-wearing, bearded, nerd-zealot, bible basher model of the 80's Australian Christian (sorry Greg if you're reading this :) ). My Mum despised much about him and didn't appreciate some of his comments towards her.

My Nanna was (and still is) a traditional, mass-attending Roman Catholic. I never saw her as particularly pious or as expressing any real open affection for God. But she tried to do the right thing, always attended Mass, attempted to bring up her children as Catholics (not very successfully unfortunately) and obeyed the statutes of the Catholic Church. She was very affectionate towards me and we spent a lot of time together. My actual mother would get upset when I accidentally called my Nanna "Mum". It would rub salt in my mother's wounds as she would be working shift work a lot of the time to try and make a life for us. Nanna was mostly lovely but she did have a passionate streak in her about some things. One was the Australian Labor party. Another was getting to mass. Come rain, hail or shine we would get to mass.

So, part of the deal of my mother and I living with my Grandparents was that I had to go to Mass. Mum had well and truly pulled herself out of the grip of the Great Mother Church by now, bitter and twisted by the memories of cold Nuns striking her at school for being left-handed. She still considered herself a Catholic though- one of the masses of Australians who live the normal life, often criticize church in general, yet still feel an unexplainable link; an inexplicable identification with being Roman Catholic. Mum agreed to the deal despite my protests.

I hated church and I feared God- sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a bad way. It would not be unusual to see a young boy screaming, crying and running down the street, being chased by a young fit uncle, on any given Sunday morning trying to somehow get out of the mind numbingly boring and guilt inducing Roman Catholic service.

However, I had a soft spot for God. I knew he was good, and I wasn't. My uncle once joked that at my first confession I'd be in that little room all day. I burst into tears as I thought he was probably right. When I got to that room I told the priest I had never sinned.

'Surely you've done something?' he asked. 'Oh, I guess I ran away once' I replied, squirming in my chair, my eyes darting around the room, refusing to make contact with his. I lied to the priest.

In fact, I was actually a pretty good kid, with a sensitive conscience. I was intensely, and sometimes painfully, compassionate for the suffering of others. I would cry when I saw those World Vision ads. I would cry if I accidentally hurt someone while playing. I couldn't stand to see anyone get bullied and wouldn't retaliate if anyone bullied me. I just couldn't. It was like I had empathy on hyperdrive. And it wore me out, as little as I was. Of course this wasn't always consistent, I could be a brat too, especially to my Nanna. But in general, this is how I was.

I was also a deep, complex little kid. My mother tells me that in my first days of school, the teacher asked the children what their favourite colour was, and why. I answered 'Red....because it's the colour of life'. 5 year olds don't generally say that. Anyway, more on that another time...

As I went through my first years of school, a combination of an enquiring mind and guilt fatigue drove me towards a sort of intellectual atheism. I equated the idea of the God of the Bible with Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and fairy tales. I can't quite pick the age I came to this conclusion, I may have been about 7, but at some stage I found it difficult to reasonably believe in the existence of a personal God. And the relief from the constant guilt was nice too.

Fast forward 10 years.

I stand in the middle of my lounge room with a tear streaming down my eye. Shaking and totally transformed.

To be continued..