Fields of Grace Read online

  I thought Papa would be mad at me, but he wasn’t at all. He took it all in for a moment, then sat me down on the bed. His eyes were kind and concerned. “What are you doing up so late?” he asked.

  I was shaking so hard I couldn’t answer. I just sobbed.

  “You don’t need to be reading these,” Papa said, kneeling on the floor and closing each of my books.

  He gathered up my books—my treasures—and tucked them under his arm. “Tonight, go to sleep,” he said gently, walking toward the door, “and we’ll talk about this in the morning.”

  “Wait,” I said boldly, if sheepishly.

  Papa stopped and turned toward me. I could see the concern on his face. I knew I had disappointed him.

  “What are you going to do with my books?” I asked.

  “It’s only for a night,” Papa said, reassuring me. “It’s time to go to bed now.”

  So I obeyed. I put my head on the pillow and I went to sleep, exhausted from my angst.

  The next morning, early, Papa came into my room and woke me up for school. I was still wiping sleep from my eyes when he handed me a book. “This is for you,” he said, smiling.

  I looked at the cover of the book: I Am Not But I Know I Am: Welcome to the Story of God. I cracked it open and skimmed the first few pages.

  “ . . . this book is not about you and making your story better, but about waking up to the infinitely bigger God Story happening all around you, and God’s invitation to you to join Him in it.”

  I closed the book and looked at Papa, who was looking at me expectantly. What did he want me to say?

  “You don’t need to be reading any of those other books,” Papa said, looking down at me, his smile reassuring. “It will only confuse you. When you have questions, ask me.”

  “Yes sir,” I said, my heart sinking.

  I didn’t ask about the books he had taken from me the night before. I knew I’d never see them again.

  6

  Bible Boot Camp

  Belief compelled through fear is not belief, it is blind and forced obedience.

  —CARLTON D. PEARSON, GOD IS NOT A CHRISTIAN, NOR A JEW, MUSLIM, HINDU. . . . GOD DWELLS WITH US, IN US, AROUND US, AS US

  It was that summer, as I was about to turn fourteen, that Papa sent me to Bible Boot Camp in Chattanooga. I’m certain the reason was that he thought I needed fixing. It’s not like I objected to going to boot camp. In fact, when he said he thought it would be a good idea for me to go, I said I thought he was probably right. Maybe if I made an extra effort, and went willingly, God would reward me with his voice.

  “When do I go?” I asked.

  I knew I was broken even better than Papa did. How could I not? I was still borrowing books from the silent rebels, only I was hiding them better now. Not only that, I’d even begun pulling forbidden titles off the shelves of the local library and stealing away to a quiet corner to read them. Whenever the librarian came by, I covered whatever I was reading with one of my schoolbooks. When I was finished, I’d tuck whatever book it was back on the shelf so no one would ever know. The more I read, the more questions I had, the more confused I became, the more I felt like a foreigner in my own body. Something was obviously terribly wrong with me. There had to be. I prayed harder than ever for something from God, some word, some sound, acknowledgment of my struggle, but nothing came. I strained so hard to hear my ears throbbed and my head ached. I began to fear that maybe it wasn’t my hearing after all. Maybe my hearing was perfectly okay—tiptop—but God just wasn’t talking to me. The thought of that was even more troubling. It was devastating. Why didn’t He like me? He clearly didn’t have any problem with anyone else I knew. Mom and Papa had conversations with Him all the time, as did my siblings and our friends and literally thousands of kids I’d met (and some I’d even evangelized to) through Teen Mania—except, of course, that small group of silent rebels. Papa would have worried for their souls had he known they were seeking answers in places other than the scriptures. Their secret was safe with me. No way I was going to out any of them.

  I had begun collecting my own secrets. Plenty of them. Some seemed pretty silly. Why couldn’t I admit I had begun smudging on lip gloss when I wasn’t home? Some were serious secrets. What would Papa have said if he knew I was secretly questioning whether my life here was even worth living? I had been raised with the very Gnostic philosophy that I was only living in this evil, materialistic world to be able to share my knowledge of the word of God with the many lost souls on this earth. My job as God’s servant was to save as many of them as I could from a forbidding fiery Hell, the place of eternal suffering, where everyone spent their days in misery. (So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just, And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Matthew 13:49–50.) I was taught my body was nothing more than a temporary cover (not to mention a hindrance, because it exposed me to ungodly temptations) while I was here, working as the bearer of God’s word. The spirit is divine and good. The body is earthly and evil. What then, I wondered, was the point of the battle I was in with myself? Was this place even worth my time? If I were an alien from God and not of this earth, why not just commit what I called “Christian suicide”—kill off my body to free up my soul to go to Heaven now? I was already saved, so I didn’t have to worry that suicide was a quick ticket to Hell. Did I?

  I decided to try boot camp before I took such drastic action.

  Papa took me to Tennessee, which meant I got to spend hours of alone time with him. I loved traveling with Papa; it was one of my favorite things to do. When it was just him and me, we’d talk about everything under the sun, and he always made time for us to do something special when we were in a new city—a trip to an amusement park, or a late-night comedy show, or a great burger joint. Driving in the car together was always so much fun. We’d listen to music from Papa’s day, and he’d imitate the artists, albeit badly. Between songs, he’d ask me what God had been teaching me lately. I knew I had to have something ready to tell him, and I always did. For instance, I’d say, “God is teaching me to have peace and understanding.” Then Papa would ask, “What does that mean to you?” I’d say something like, “Well, I was reading this Bible verse and it really came alive to me because I realized I was being impatient with my sister, Charity, and I need to have peace and trust that God will work all things out for the good.” Papa would be satisfied with that answer and go back to singing his songs. I never wanted our car rides to end, and this one was no different.

  Once we got to Chattanooga I started getting excited for the new experience I was about to have. Papa was excited for me. I could tell. I made sure I looked my best in my favorite whitewashed flare jeans and blue Hollister hoodie, to impress the other kids. I pulled my hair up in a messy ponytail, which I thought looked really cool. I tucked my lip gloss in my pocket for later, after Papa dropped me off. I was ready to meet the challenge.

  I don’t know what I was expecting, besides getting to meet Kay Arthur, the evangelical superstar, whose ministry hosted the Bible Boot Camp, but I wasn’t prepared for what I found when we got there. As we drove into the campground, I looked around and felt a lump in my throat to match the lump in my stomach. It looked like every other summer camp, not a place where I might get to hear God. I saw cabins on one side for the girls, and cabins on the other side for the boys, and a small, common building in the center. That was where we would spend the majority of our time every day, in that nondescript building. It was where our meals were served and our classes were held. Papa thought it was all just fine, but I hated the setup. I tried to hide my disappointment and hoped for the best.

  Papa left, and I went to my bunk to settle in. I unpacked my things and began leafing through a pack of information on my bed. The top page was a mission statement for the boot camp. “To train Christlike leaders for a generation,” it said. Students were guaranteed to leave with “1) an und
erstanding of how to study the Bible for themselves, and, 2) intense worship and challenging messages conveying the power of the Gospel to this generation and God’s call on their lives.” Our daily activities were to include “Bible study, worship, prayer, sports, and fellowship with teens from around the world,” the pamphlet said.

  Well, that was sort of true.

  As it turned out, there wasn’t much else going on besides scripture lessons and exercises, as well as worship and prayer. I couldn’t help but think I could have gone across the road from my house in Garden Valley to the Teen Mania campus for that. In fact, I had done that for most of my life. If I couldn’t hear God in my hometown in Texas, I certainly wasn’t going to hear him at camp in Chattanooga. I wouldn’t even get to hear Kay Arthur. She was away on a mission trip. So much for positive thinking.

  We had somewhere between fifty and a hundred students at camp. That first day set the tone for the entire two weeks: we woke up at eight, grabbed a quick breakfast from a buffet of cereals and juices, then sat at the banquet tables and listened to an hour of what I’d call “ranting scripture” from an angry-sounding manly-looking woman who was supposed to motivate us. We were all given copies of Kay’s newest biblical novel, Israel, My Beloved, as well as a workbook that turned out to be the heart of the program.

  Six hours of classes a day consisted of Bible readings followed by exercises in the workbook. Each of the exercises included reading an assigned scripture and completing an accompanying assignment that reminded me of tick-tack-toe except that it wasn’t as stimulating or as much fun. One assignment, for instance, was to read a passage of scripture from the Book of John, then go through the passage and circle all of John’s words to Jesus and all of Jesus’ words to John and cross-reference them. That was one of the more interesting exercises, and I was so bored that in order to keep from falling asleep I had to talk to my neighbor, a nice girl who had traveled all the way from Japan to be there. I had grown up reading the Bible. I got myself out of bed every day at 5:00 a.m. to make sure I got my scripture readings in. I didn’t need to be circling dialogue like some Christian novice.

  After a couple of days of those endless classes, I began to feel like a slave to God. “Is this what I have to look forward to for the rest of my life?” I wondered. By the third day, when everyone else was circling whatever it was the workbook instructed us to do, I just drew circles. Endless circles. Tiny, tiny circles, all over the page. Thousands of them, each one connected to the next. When one page was full, I turned to the next and did the same thing. I’m sure my scribbling would have amused Freud, but I felt I was creating more with those circles than the other campers were with their class assignment.

  It was a lonely time for me. During “Team Time,” when everyone got together to talk, I waited for others to come to me. No one did. I felt awkward with people my own age because I had always interacted with the older teens who attended Teen Mania. I didn’t know what to talk about with kids my age. Besides, if my fellow Christians were drawn only to the God in me, which is what I believed to be true, well, no wonder I was alone. He was missing in action.

  I didn’t understand. What more could I do? Surely He could see how hard I was trying. Bible Boot Camp was the last place I wanted to be, but I was there for Him. Working for Him. What did He want from me anyway? Just like at home, all of the kids at camp seemed to get along with Him just fine. I was the leper. What had I done to deserve being forsaken? Deserted? Scorned?

  That’s when I started getting mad.

  After two weeks, I returned home to Texas, more confused than ever. My parents are such true believers—there’s no bull about their faith—that I’m sure they were disappointed in me. But I felt utterly disappointed in God. I scrolled back through my memory to a time when I was nine years old. I was playing with my dolls in the dollhouse I built with Papa and my sister, Charity, when I began to wonder about what happened to us after we die. I left my dolls and found Papa hanging shirts in his walk-in closet. “What happens after we die, Papa?” I asked. “Well, what happens is that we go to Heaven,” he said. “How do you know?” I asked. “Have you been there?” Papa hesitated, but only for a moment. “I know because the Bible says so,” he said. I needed to know more. “Why does the Bible say so?” I asked. “Because it just does,” Papa said. Now, Papa could have had his mind on something else, or maybe he was in a rush to get somewhere and didn’t have the time to go into such a deep discussion, I don’t know. But what I took from that conversation was that it was wrong for me to ask questions, that it was bad asking such questions. I just had to have faith. Frustrated, I had meandered back to my room and resumed playing with my dolls when I thought to myself, Is this what God does, just plays with us like little dolls? Is that why we’re not allowed to ask questions? Suddenly I felt like God was patronizing me, playing with me, that we were all just toys in His dollhouse. I didn’t want it to be true.

  I had forgotten about that conversation with myself years earlier. But now I thought, Were my suspicions back then true? What else could it be?

  “God,” I prayed. “Is that what is happening here? Are You taunting me? Playing with me, like I’m a little doll? Are we all just toys? Are You playing with all of us? If You’re not playing a game, why can’t I feel the Holy Spirit? Why do I still not have answers?”

  Silence.

  I began splitting into two Hannahs after that. The one I pretended to be for Papa and my mother: the faithful evangelical girl who thrived on blind faith and lived to do the work of God, as they had done for all of their lives. And then there was the girl I was secretly becoming: a lonely skeptic who was headed for a serious crisis of faith.

  Papa always told us kids we didn’t need to party because we had the party going on inside us, which was Jesus.

  Now I wondered, Why don’t I feel the party?

  7

  Speaking in Tongues

  Why should all believers receive and exercise the gift of tongues? . . . When we speak in tongues we are saying things in a spiritual language our enemy Satan cannot understand . . . when we pray in tongues, we are assured that we are praying as we should because the Holy Spirit is praying through us.

  —JOYCE MEYER, FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT: UNDERSTANDING GOD’S POWER IN YOUR LIFE

  When I was fifteen, I accepted an internship at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs. The internationally known mega-church was on the verge of a colossal scandal in which its founder, Ted Haggard, a family friend, would be forced to resign in disgrace after admitting to homosexual trysts and illicit drug use. The married pastor was “outed” by a paid male escort who went public with the allegations in response to Ted’s vocal support for a Colorado referendum banning gay marriage. The referendum passed, but Ted was ruined, confessing to his flock of fourteen thousand members, “I am a deceiver and a liar. There’s a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I have been warring against it for all of my adult life.” We were as shocked as everyone else.

  My internship took place a few months before the scandal broke, while Ted was still at the helm of the New Life Church. Papa encouraged me to accept an invitation to intern at the ministry’s Desperation Leadership Academy (Desperate for Jesus). He said it was a great opportunity to continue to feed my hunger for religious knowledge. Only one hundred of the coveted internships were given, and no one turned them down. I wasn’t about to be the first. I never passed up a chance to learn more about faith and religion and why people believed what they did. Not only that, I welcomed any social opportunity that Papa approved of. Growing up, I wasn’t allowed to just “hang out” or spend the night at a friend’s house, the way other kids were, so I never passed up a chance to be around other people.

  Not surprisingly, the academy was challenging, and I found that I really enjoyed learning the skills of a leader. We interns were required to wake up at five in the morning to work out, attend classes all day, and then go to a separate worship service for us each evening. After each
of those evening services, the worship leader invited anyone who wanted to receive the Holy Spirit to come forward.

  I was raised to believe that, when you’re good with God, you’re able to speak in tongues, which is supposedly the language of the Holy Spirit, and comes out sounding like a kind of gibberish unique to each person who experiences it. The practice has roots in the Old and New Testaments and is thought to have been popularized by Pentecostal churches in the early 1900s. Saint Paul called it “speaking in the tongues of angels,” and for many conservative Christians it’s the penultimate earthly experience, a gift from Heaven given only to those who are imbued with the Spirit. At least in this world, it doesn’t get any better than reaching the point in your walk with God where he speaks through you. In spite of my lingering doubts about evangelical doctrine, I wanted my Christianity to be real, and I thought maybe this was a way to find out where exactly I stood with God. “And when you are filled with the Holy Spirit, you speak in tongues,” said Saint Paul.

  So, one night, at the conclusion of the evening service, as everyone was praying and worship music was playing, I whispered to my spiritual leader that I wanted to be prayed over to speak in tongues. “I don’t know that I ever really have, and I want it to be real,” I admitted.

  I’d heard people speak in tongues before, plenty of times. They always sounded like cackling chickens to me. I’d heard it from my own mother and from teenagers who were saved by Papa at his youth rallies. I’d even tried it a few times myself, but it never came naturally. I was pretty sure I was just pretending.

  That night, after my request, everyone started laying their hands on me, on my head and my shoulders and my back and my arms. I felt overwhelmed and anxious. Was it performance anxiety that was causing my underarms to sweat and my heart to skip? What if it didn’t happen? I wondered. What if the Holy Spirit really wasn’t somewhere inside me, and I couldn’t receive the gift of speaking in tongues? Would they all wonder if I was really saved? That would be really bad. Everyone knew I was a preacher’s kid, and Papa was a popular guest preacher at the ministry’s annual Desperation Conference. The last thing I wanted was whispers in the community that Hannah Luce was lost. I really, really wanted this to work.