I hadn’t planned on becoming a Christian. I’d simply agreed to attend the film that Pauline’s church was screening that Friday night. Having hardly laid eyes on her since our Sunday School days, she was suddenly cropping up everywhere—at the shops, on the bus—and forever inviting me to some Christian event or another.
Arriving late I found a seat in the dark hall and watched a film featuring an Anti-Christ who controlled the whole world by requiring people to have the “mark of the beast.” If they didn’t get a chip implanted in their right hand or forehead, they wouldn’t be able to buy or sell. Those who refused to succumb to this Satanic agenda were hunted and persecuted until they all disappeared in the “rapture.” Following this, the world was in chaos. It certainly made an impression.
At the close of the movie the pastor asked people to stand if they wanted to give their life to Jesus. Thinking, I’ll try anything once, I stood, little expecting what was to follow. Wave upon wave of liquid love poured over me. I’d never felt so clean, so happy, so forgiven. The eyes of those around me shone with recognition and understanding but the pastor’s words, in attempting to explain this strange, new phenomenon, went straight over my head. Caught up in the glory of Heaven, I couldn’t pay attention.
Driving home in my Volkswagen Beetle, I had to give vent to the joy bubbling up inside me, but the boppiest song I knew, “Highway to Hell,” just didn’t seem right. I ended up singing, “la, la, la.” The euphoria lasted till I was struck by a lightning bolt—I was twenty years old! At fourteen I’d told God that I didn’t want to be a Christian anymore; that I wanted to sin and have fun. Not wanting to go to Hell, I’d promised to come back when I was twenty—twenty being over the hill. The realization that God had remembered, although I had completely forgotten, was sobering indeed. Sobering, too, was the idea that I’d left God to have fun. Ha!
The heady whirlwind of parties and popularity soon died down once I was caught gossiping about my friends. Not meaning to be malicious, I simply enjoyed being the center of attention and—well—sensationalizing the truth.
Ostracized at school, my homelife was upended when mum and dad announced that they were leaving. Having paid off their hobby farm, they wanted to take early retirement. Even though my sister was boarding in the hospital where she was training as a nurse, my brother Jerry and I were still at school. Abandoned by our parents, that didn’t last long.
We seldom got up before midday. Squabbling over chores, the dirty dishes piled up. Then to cap it off, our parents rented out the empty rooms to strangers. Sliding into drink, dope, and hallucinogens with our seedier friends, we were often perpetually stoned.
Although funded by Centrelink payments, I was obliged to accept the occasional unskilled job. For three weeks I worked as an invoice clerk, sifting through columns of figures with no idea what they meant, and reading my colleagues’ palms. Sometimes the line, extending from my desk, stretched the full length of the office. A job, folding knitwear, lasted longer. Befriending the only other English-speaking girl in the factory, Rebecca and I frequented nightclubs together. The night we mixed “mandrakes” with alcohol, she ended up in hospital while I had no recollection of how I’d got home.
Any accidental encounter with my old school friends left me feeling ashamed and inferior. Here they were, preparing for university to pursue proper careers, while I had become a no-hoper drop out. I did attempt to finish my education at night school, but when the evenings grew cold, I preferred to stay home.
Eventually, unnerved by carousing and drug taking, I latched on to Michael. At first, his predictable routine was a soothing balm. Bingo on Thursdays, unless we took his widowed mother out for dinner; Friday nights to the Leagues club. After his soccer match on Saturdays, it was off to the pub and back to the club again on Sundays. Many an evening was spent watching him and his friends pour money into poker machines and rejoice at the end of the night if they happened to win it all back again.
Despite being thoroughly bored, I let the relationship drag on for four years. Alcohol helped numb the pain of monotony to such an extent, that I was nicknamed “the dead”—admittedly by a girl who had her sights set on Michael.
But having become a Christian, inconvenient as it was, the experience was way too real to deny. Michael said he was cool with it so long as I didn’t go overboard. My parents were supportive. Dad’s terminal cancer diagnosis had brought them back from the country. But big sister, Wilma, attacked me for being weak and gullible. “You’re just the type to need a religious crutch,” she accused.
Playing cards with her and Jerry, around a dinner plate that overflowed with butt-ends and ash, I held up my cigarette in one hand and can of beer in the other. “I’d give up these before I’d give up Jesus.” Drunk as I was, I meant it.
All the same, church sermons while hungover were not much fun. Neither was smoking all alone on the windy verandah. My usual opening line of what star sign are you? didn’t go down too well either. But for all that, I dared not sever the only tenuous connection I had with other believers.
Then one day the preacher said, “If you haven’t changed since coming to the Lord, it’s because you haven’t let God change you.”
“Well, I haven’t changed,” I thought.
Already feeling convicted about drunkenness, I checked with several Christians as to whether the Bible said anything about sleeping with your boyfriend. They assured me it did. So now I was in for it. Sex would have to go, as would the haunting of pubs and clubs. A yawning chasm stretched out before me. How to fill the void?
Once again, I’d re-enrolled in technical college at the start of the year, but with final exams looming, my usual poor attendance bode little hope of passing. Committing the situation to God, I gave it my best shot. Amazingly, every paper featured questions on the very subject matter I’d managed to cram into my last-minute studies. When results were posted, I’d actually matriculated, albeit with low marks.
Now the question was, what to do with the rest of my life? If God had a purpose for me, what was it? Giving it serious thought, I vaguely recalled wanting to be a primary school teacher, but me, a teacher, seemed ludicrous. The last time I saw Michael, he scoffed at the idea. Wilma, who had previously applied to Teacher’s College, had been turned down with higher marks than I’d achieved. Nevertheless, I applied, but by that time there was a substantial late fee to be paid. With limited funds, I submitted only one application and made it to the very best college, trusting that if God wanted me in, He would make a way. Sadly, my father passed away before learning I’d been accepted.
At twenty-two, I was older than the students fresh out of high school and after years of sloppy living, the halls of academia felt alien. On top of that, God had recently prompted me to give up smoking. Feeling vulnerable and shaky, I prayed, “Lord, I need a Christian friend.”
The very next day I spotted her. I’d chosen “Religion” as an elective subject, naively expecting it to be Christian. The class was packed. The speaker, dressed in a long black robe with an ecclesiastical collar, looked creepy. Claiming that all religions are essentially the same, he discounted the need of a Savior. Seeing the look of disgust on the face of a fellow student, I made a beeline for her during the break and learned that Christina had made the same mistake.
As like-minded believers, we were a comfort and support to each other throughout the long course. And hard going as it was for me, it brought the deep satisfaction of finally finding my niche. God is so good.
As a retired schoolteacher, Kim Furst has been indulging her dual passions of writing and painting. Living in a holiday resort on the south coast of NSW offers plenty of scope for inspiration. Kim and her husband enjoy bike riding and swimming. The Christian City Church she attends is only a short walk away.
Heart of Flesh Literary Journal 