The story is broken into Adam's story, my story, and our story. Our story is written by Adam with my commentary on the side so it of course has his humor tied in. Feel free to ask any questions if you want to hear any part of our side through my eyes.
Adam’s Side of the Story
I wasn’t
born into a Christian family or raised Christian until it was the summer
between fourth and fifth grade. My parents had gone on a marriage encounter and
the Lord spoke to both of them at separate times, when they came back we didn’t
have a choice it was “You are going to church.” Surprisingly I was ok with
this. I attended Sunday School, went to service weekly and slowly, surely I started
to let Jesus into my life. I was
baptized by my own choice, and confirmed through the church. In high school I was active in the youth
group went on the trips, the lock-ins, even met my two best friends in youth
group.
One of the most moving things that I got to experience
was a youth gathering in Orlando, FL. It was something about 35,000+ Christian
high schoolers all worshiping, learning and growing that made things just
really click. Unfortunately I also think this is where the start of my falling
away happened. It was not the gathering that did it, it was the church. The group of chaperones asked to go on the
trip to Orlando with us was not the best combination. Of the chaperones there
was a Mom and one of her older daughters, and a pastor to be (we’ll talk more
about him later.) Also in the youth were the mom’s two youngest daughters, and
one of their boyfriend’s. Needless to say I watched the two daughters
practically get away with everything while the rest of us were held to strict
standards and often scolded for being typical high schoolers. After we got back from the trip four of us on
the trip had a meeting with the pastor about how we were wrong, unruly, impolite,
and disrespectful without being able to share our side of the story. After this
it seemed as if going to church was a struggle and a fight of will, as if I was
judged and already sentenced to my fate.
Once I
left for the Navy my downhill battle began to pick up speed. It was hard to
practice a religion when in the middle of the ocean there wasn’t a service, a
chaplain, or much time for yourself. The little free time that was offered was
spent on sleeping for a few hours before the next day started. It was also hard
being stationed in a country where Christianity is almost unheard of. I would say that after about a year in Japan
I hadn’t stopped believing in Jesus, but was not a practicing Christian. Alcohol and cigarettes crept in and made
itself almost a way of life for me. I
was spending over $700 a pay check on alcohol and cigarettes, and the only time
I would be sober on the weekend was Sunday, and it wasn’t to go to church, it
was so I could be sober to call my Parents after they came home from
church. As soon as the phone was hung up
it was back to the alcohol.
I
finally started to come back to God prior to me going to Iraq. The same pastor
to be helped me through this struggle. Ryan is his name and he is only about 6
years older than me so it was easy to relate to him. Ryan basically answered
numerous amounts of questions and battles that I had. The hardest was how can I
fight a war and be asked to kill someone that is fighting a war for his
God. Ryan was able to explain that war
is not always right, but God commands us to follow your government’s rules and
law, and if war is needed then war it is. A tough pill to swallow but off I
went. While my bible went with me, it maybe only got opened twice while I was
in Iraq. Once when I first got there, and second when I dropped it and it
opened accidently.
Soon
after my return Aubrey and I got married, and I’ll allow Aubrey to share her
story up until our marriage.
Aubrey’s Side of the Story
I went
to church when I was little and I even went to a Christian preschool. Shortly
after second grade we just stopped going to church. As I got older I always
felt like something was missing and I couldn’t really explain what was missing.
After Adam and I started dating I would go to his church every now and then. It
was then that I came to realize that what was missing in my life was a
relationship with God. I had no idea how to go about starting this relationship
and it was just something that fell at the way side.
Adam and
I had discussed more and more how we wanted something more for us and how we
knew that a vital part was missing. We came up with excuses and kept on the
paths we were going.
In
January 2010 Adam and I were married. Our first year of marriage was difficult
beyond belief! Our relationship had always been not a normal relationship. I
married into the Navy, I knew what that meant; long hours, weird schedules, ups
and downs of possible moves among other things. I was not only married to Adam,
I was married to the Navy. Now add on top of that I was a full-time college
student living down in Macomb, Illinois 4 hours away from here Monday through
Thursday driving home Thursday evenings and spending the weekend to get some
time in with my husband. I basically lived on the road and looking back at my
college journey there is no way that I could have made it through all of the
struggles without God looking out for me, I just had to realize he was there the
whole time. Adam and I moved from our apartment into our current home in Zion
and knew that once we were settled we were going to fill that gap in our lives
that had been missing the whole time.
Prior to
our arrival at CCC there were some struggles and mountains we had to
overcome. I was keeping a rather large
and quite harmful secret from Aubrey.
Was I cheating, was I racking up debt, or was I being abusive? I wasn’t
being any of those. I was going through a huge battle inside my head with Post Traumatic
Stress Disorder or PTSD. What I wasn’t
telling Aubrey is that I was battling the war still in my brain. This had been
going on shortly after we got married and only progressively got worse. The
first time I had an issue was in the winter of 2010. There was an earthquake in
the early morning hours, well in the midst of sleep I was getting bombed and
ambushed. Not even thinking I dropped to the floor starting looking for my
rifle, which wasn’t next to my bed like it had been for the past 9 months, and
ran outside, in the snow, in my pajamas.
After calming down and calling Aubrey who was at school, we agreed I
needed help. After going to few counseling sessions it was agreed to keep
pepper spray by the bed as my security blanket. All was well for the next year.
Still no church, but we were well. Then
on weekend in the spring of 2011 I went to visit Aubrey at school for a charity
bar crawl. Leave it up to college students to figure out how to drink alcohol
and raise money at the same time. The bar crawl started out great until we went
from a sports bar to night club. At the
night club Aubrey left to go to the bathroom, leaving me alone. Normally any
guy would be ok with this, but given the low lighting, loud music, and over
crowdedness. Aubrey came out of the bathroom to see me in a Hulk like rage
about to beat some punk kid for bumping in to me. It was soon after I started
going to counseling again, this time with medicine involved. It wasn’t until I
was going to counseling once a week for an hour, and some serious doses of
medicine did I realize it was our marriage that was affecting my PTSD. Now it wasn’t Aubrey dressing up like a
terrorist and running around the house, it was that I couldn’t be perfectly
honest with her. Aubrey had little or no gray area when it came to us. It was
either perfectly happy or crazy mad, upset, or violent. It’s hard to be happy
internally if you can’t tell your spouse that their hair doesn’t look good.
Finally
after going to counseling for about 6 weeks, and not telling Aubrey what was
going on so I could heal, I broke the news to her one Thursday night after she
came home from school. After spending
nearly 6 hours, talking, yelling, crying, laughing, screaming, and a little bit
of silent treatment, our marriage was about to be over. From almost every angle
we looked at it there was no way we could resolve the issues. Aubrey felt bad
for making me have PTSD, I felt bad for hiding it from her. Well we did one thing right that weekend. We
agreed to go church on Sunday.
So now it’s Mother’s Day 2011, and our marriage is about
to be over, and we walk into CCC. Not even having found our seats we are
greeted by an overjoyed woman full of smiles and Christ, with a baby on her
hip. Heather introduced herself asked us
how long we’ve been coming to CCC and informed us about what was to become
Elevate. Not so sure how to handle this meeting, we sat quietly and marinated
about it at church. While I can’t tell you what Pastor Ken preached about that
day, I can tell you he reached deep into our hearts, with the power of the
Spirit, and brought us both to Christ that day.
The next day Aubrey and I were talking and I discovered that she did not
own a Bible. No sooner did we discover this we were in the car going to Vernon
Hills Barnes and Noble to get a Bible. After about an hour of pulling every
make, model, translation, and style I bought Aubrey her first bible. Now buying
a book is one thing, but seeing the new life in Aubrey and I was well worth the
price. From there on we kept coming to CCC, Aubrey got baptized, or as I call
it controlled drowning at Lake Michigan, and we joined CCC.
Ever since that Mother’s day at CCC to now, our marriage
has grown stronger, tighter, and better than we could ever imagine. Christ has
always been there for us, we just never realized that he was, and boy are we
glad he sent Pastor Ken, Heather and John, and Mike and Beth, and now Elevate
into our lives to help us with this journey.
