Personal Essay

The Road to Discovery and Back Again

A road. What is it really? Just dirt, gravel or pavement making a way through mountains, valleys, heavily populated and nearly deserted areas. Roads have been used as a symbol for many things in literature, probably the most notable being a journey. A road has become in many ways, a cliché for the voyage that we call life. People speak of “the road less traveled,” of finding the road to truth, success, knowledge and wisdom. Are these sayings just clichés and nothing more? What about when a road becomes a part of your life in quite a literal way? Highway 138 runs from Medford, Oregon to Grants Pass, Oregon in the southern part of the state. It is roughly a 40-mile long stretch of road that winds through many small towns along the way. The stretch that underlies this story is about 20 miles long and goes from West Medford into a quaint little town called Ruch, Oregon. This stretch of road has been a cause of spiritual awakening, frustration, anger, confusion, immense sadness and overwhelming joy in my life.

            The first time I drove out towards Ruch on Highway 138, I was seven years old and in the first grade. My family and I, including my father, mother, older sister and younger brother had just moved to Medford, Oregon and thought that it would be a good idea to try out a new church. Although both of my parents grew up Catholic, they were not really church going people. They told us that they had the “fear” of the Lord beaten into them when they were younger and so we never did end up in a Catholic church. Although my father still tells very entertaining stories about the nuns and priests kicking the hell out of him in his private Catholic school. However, being new in town, they decided that going to the most popular non-denominational Christian church in the valley might be a good way to meet people – plus our neighbors attended church there and had invited us. So we took the 20-minute drive through the winding curves and beautiful trees out to Love Christian Fellowship. We sang songs, went to Sunday school, learned about Jesus, colored on paper crosses and went back home. I remember feeling happy and it was my first real experience with the idea of a God who loved me unconditionally no matter what I did. My parents got divorced a few months later and it would be many years before I would venture out that far on Highway 138 again.

            One of my childhood joys was playing soccer and I had played for as long as I could remember. In totality I played for eleven years, from kindergarten to my sophomore year in high school. The actual act of playing soccer was never as enjoyable or as important to me as the relationships that I made. It was my first year of “premier” soccer, which means that I had to try out as opposed to just being on the school team and I was in fifth grade. I made the “A” squad surprisingly and knew not one single girl on my team. I clearly remember one girl being especially nice to me on the very first day of practice – her name was Rebecca. Before long, Rebecca was inviting me over to her house to play and spend the night and we became very good friends. Her family was some of the nicest people I had ever met and they welcomed me in with open arms. This was something that few people on my soccer team did that year because I was from the west side of town and they were all from the east side of town, otherwise known as the “rich area.”  They were mostly upper class and I was a strong middle class with divorced parents, but Rebecca didn’t care. After about 2 months of that soccer season, Rebecca invited me out to church with her and I accepted her invitation – my family had not been to church since that day five years earlier. It just so happened that the church that she went to was the same one that my family and I had attended all of those years ago. And so began my next experience with Highway 138.

            After soccer practice that Wednesday night in November of 2000 we piled into Rebecca’s bright blue caravan with her mom, dad and two little sisters and cranked up the heat as we drove out to Love Christian Fellowship while they sang along to contemporary worship music. Once again I was riding along the winding curves of the highway, watching the silhouettes of trees pass by in the darkness of the cold night. These trees would later become a focal point for two major events in my life. We arrived out to church a little late that night because of practice and so Rebecca and I made our way directly to the “4-6 grade room.” When we got up there, everyone was smiling and laughing. I remember it being warm and I remember feeling love and happiness as soon as I walked in. We met up with some of Rebecca’s friends who I didn’t know and they were instantly interested in me and talked to me; I didn’t feel left out at all. Although I didn’t exactly understand everything that was going on through the service and I faked singing along to the songs that I didn’t know the words to – I was hooked.  Being a people pleaser of epic proportions, the middle child of three children and the product of divorced parents, I was amazed at the love and acceptance that I felt from not only complete strangers but also this God that they spoke of and loved.

            Within a month I had asked my parents if I could go to a church camp with Rebecca over the second week of Christmas break – they willingly agreed. So again, we ventured out to the meandering roads of Highway 138 and made our way out to Camp Bradley in Bandon, Oregon- a venue that must have cost the church a couple million dollars. It was one of the greatest experiences of my early life and I left with new friends, a new mindset and the new acceptance of Jesus as my Lord and Savior – I was on cloud nine. From this point on, I decided that I would dedicate everything - my whole life - to the Lord.

            Over the next 4 years I continued to go to church out on Highway 138 with Rebecca and her family. However, not without attempting to convince my dad that he needed to come with me – a feat that I finally accomplished in eighth grade. It was the summer after my seventh grade year and I had gone to summer camp again with Rebecca and I came back to a proud and gleaming father who confessed to me that while I was away he had gone to church with Rebecca’s mom and dad and had been baptized. He would be coming to church with me from now on. I couldn’t be happier as I stood smiling at the pictures of his baptism under our refrigerator magnets. This was also the same year that I met the 7 people who would shape my life immensely over the next 4 years. They would become my very best friends and they were also all 3 to 4 years older than me. They had been going to church at Applegate for almost their whole lives and they were the epitome of what I thought “Christian teenagers” were supposed to be like. In my eyes, they could do no wrong and I was completely enamored with them.

            Flash forward to my freshman year in high school. I had left almost all of my other friends behind and spent time outside of school with no one but Katie, Alex, Lauren, Zack, Bryson, Nano and Nick. I had never been happier. I hung out with them all of the time and the trips out to church that I had been making with my father became less and less as I found the new freedom of having friends with cars. However, my dad and I would still make the trek out together on many Sundays.

This went on for about a year or so and then one summer night I would experience my first bout with the realization that my friends were not the invincible superheroes that they had become in my mind. It was late summer and the 8 of us were preparing to go back to school and had decided that a great way to end the summer would be to make our way out the curving highway and up to a butte called Woodrat Mountain which is only about a mile from our church.  We had a grand plan to watch a movie up on the butte in the back of Nick and Bryson’s trucks. It was a great time. We drove up and watched “Secret Window,” scared the hell out of ourselves and were ready to leave. However, on the way down the mountain I was riding with my buddy Zack, while Bryson and his sister Alex were in a little red Datson truck – affectionately called “Eleanor” and Nick followed behind them, alone in his Chevy. As with many teenage boys, Zack was known for driving especially fast and I was constantly nagging him to slow down (he liked me, so most of the time he listened). However, that night was different. The entire way down the mountain I felt a lump in my chest and the feeling of impending doom was closing in. I kept scolding Zack and told him, I’m serious this time, SLOW DOWN!” He did so for the rest of the way down the mountain. However, as soon as we pulled onto the curves of Highway 138, it was as if nothing I had said meant anything. All three of the cars took off. We were in front, Bryson behind and Nick in the back. We were blazing through the roads that were known for killing people at 90 miles an hour. As we zoomed down the road I began to yell at Zack, “Slow down, seriously…” and then I was shut up by the slamming and screeching of breaks as we slid out around a curve and in slow motion I glanced into the passenger side window in just enough time to see Bryson’s red truck fish tale and sling itself over the edge of the road in an end-over flip. My heart stopped as I watched the horrendous scene unfold before my eyes. I couldn’t blink and it felt like it was an eternity before the car finally stopped and I’ve never felt more eerie than when we walked towards the car that was flipped into the ditch; the dust and fog was barely parting and Nick’s silhouette came into view. I was sure that Bryson and Alex were dead or at the very least completely mutilated. As we approached the car we heard talking and Bryson had already crawled out and was encouraging Alex to do the same. Amazingly, they were completely fine (physically) and Bryson only had a small gash on his right forearm from crawling out of the window. This was one of the first lessons that Highway 138 taught me. I think that this was the first time that I became truly aware that life was not permanent and that I was not invincible but that I really did believe that there was someone greater than me watching over Bryson and Alex that night – over all of us.

            That year went by about the same way; I was continually focused on doing everything that I could do in order to make God “happy.” Well, on June 20^th, 2004, disaster struck on Highway 138. It was exactly one week past graduation and the town was settling into it’s summer mode, content that there were no fatalities that night (which is a feat with 10 or 11 high schools in a 30 mile radius). Saturday night a group of friends were hanging out by the Applegate River and they were camping and throwing a bit of a party to kick off the summer. My brother had been invited by his best friend Jonathan and two of his other buddies, to come and hang out. However, my father – usually a very lenient man – held firm ground when telling my brother “no.” That morning I woke up to my phone ringing. It was my friend Andrea who asked if I had heard the news about the boys. I asked what boys she was talking about. Three of the boys who were out at the river the night before had been in a fatal car accident on highway 138 and they wrapped the car around a tree. It was Jonathan, David and Kyle – the three friends that my brother was supposed to have gone out with. My heart instantly dropped to my feet and I hung up the phone as fast as was humanly possible in order to call my brother. The next moments were some of the worst of my entire life. I called my brother and he sleepily picked up the phone. I asked him if he’d seen the news yet and he said no. I began to cry and I told him that his best friend Jonathan had been killed in a car accident – this was the beginning to a year of deep, deep depression for my kid brother who was only 15 at the time.

            He caught a ride out to the site of the accident with one of his friends immediately and there he stayed and camped, on the side of highway 138 for four days. He would not eat, he barely slept and after Jonathan’s funeral on that fourth day, I finally convinced him to come home with me. He looked like a ragged zombie. His hair was wild and unruly, his clothes dirty and tattered from days of wear, and I had never seen eyes with circles that dark or big. I woke up that night to the sound of him wailing and yelling out Jonathan’s name. He kept groaning in anguish and asking, “why, why, why!” All I knew was that I believed that the reason why my brother wasn’t allowed to go that night is that someone higher than us knew that he would’ve been in that car and it was not time for him to go yet. This was the second lesson that highway 138 taught me – there will be pain and suffering in life, it is how you deal with it that allows the experiences to shape your being. It also further confirmed my belief in an Almighty God.

            The third lesson that highway 138 would teach me however, would be much different. The teaching started one week after the horrific tragedy when the up-and-coming pastor (the 18-year-old son of the current pastor) held a service for the death of the boys and their family and friends. Although he did talk about the terrible accident, he used the experience to encourage people to come forward and be baptized. This was my first real experience with Nick Smith. He was charismatic, charming and outspoken – not to mention attractive. The service pissed off many of the boys’ friends, because they lamented that the boys would not have enjoyed or wanted a service of this format. However, for those of us who were Christians, it seemed like an answer to prayer that so many would dedicate their lives to the God that we believed in.

            A month or so later, I had my first personal encounter with Nick Smith because we ended up being at the same dinner with a bunch of friends. He later asked me for a ride home because he didn’t have his car with him, I should’ve known that I was doomed from the start. In any event, I gave him a ride home. We headed out on the winding roads of Highway 138 that I knew so well and had traveled so often by then and he told me that I was pretty and asked if he could see me again. I was pretty hesitant, as I usually am when I am asked out, but decided to go out on a limb and say yes – possibly one of the biggest mistakes of my life.

            I dated him for about a month before I really started to see some things that I didn’t agree with. He had started a new service for young adults from about the ages of 15 to 25 or so. At first I was extremely excited and I wanted to do everything that I could to help him make it a success. As with many people who are extremely goal-oriented and driven, he required an immense amount of solitude. It also became clear to me that he really only wanted me around when it was convenient and that he was completely consumed about how the public perceived him – as with any person who is well known by the public eye. It was undeniable that he marched to the beat of his own drum but I didn’t realize how much so until a few months later. At this point though, we would often drive out to church together along the highway and we would get into the most interesting and sometimes, looking back, off the wall conversations. However, it was becoming more and more apparent that he was not the person that I thought he was and that he did not accept me for who I was. I am a fairly plain girl, nothing extremely special in the way of looks and on top of that I play sports and so I did not often dress up. However, he was constantly asking and urging me to dress up and wear dresses and heels and to wear lots of makeup – which is something that I do not usually do.  This was the beginning of a very steep and slippery slope to the end of our relationship and ultimately the major questioning of my faith.

            Our trips out to church became increasingly more tense and the roads of highway 138, already ridden with so many different emotions and experiences and these trips were tipping the balance to where there were becoming many more negative than positive feelings about the road. Undeniably, the biggest thing that came between us was when he began to ask me about the “success” of his sermons on Saturday nights. At first I would just tell him what I thought. That people seemed to enjoy it and that it was a great atmosphere. But then he would just look at me and say, “Well, like how many people do you think were there? More or less than last week?” I didn’t really think too much about it in the beginning but then I realized that this was not really normal. I was under the impression that he thought exactly like he preached and that it didn’t matter how many people got baptized or came but that the ones who were there were important. But it turned out that his main focus was having the most people possible know about him and get “saved” so that people would think well of him and think he was being extremely effective. Now, don’t get me wrong, it is not a crime to want to be successful and do well. However, I had always been under the impression that what a pastor said in his sermon was what he truly felt and believed. So one could imagine my surprise in realizing that what this boy really seemed to care about was how many people heard him and came to the service. Now, this is not inherently a bad thing – to want people to appreciate the work you do and be moved by it; but I was quite honestly appalled at the thought of that being the motivation for a church service. I can clearly recall the moment he said this because it was the moment that I consequently began to doubt the religion that had, quite literally at times, carried me through the last seven or so years of my life. It rose the questions – “Do I really believe what I say and believe?” and more importantly, “Why do I believe what I say that I believe?”

            The first question had always been a no brainer. Of course I believed in Christianity! It is true, I had felt the truth of it hundreds of times, God heard my prayers – I just knew it. Unfortunately, when it came to the question of why, the only answer I had was that pastors had told me that it was true and I had read about it in the Holy Bible. This had always been perfectly fine with me until I realized that perhaps over the years my pastors had been off base. Maybe they thought like Nick as well. This was a crushing blow to my entire being. I held on to my faith for a few short months after that in an attempt to find the answer to why I believed in my chosen religion. It was a short-lived period that led into a short period of depression and then into haziness and confusion. This was the last thing that Highway 138 taught me before I left for college. I left in sadness and confusion with a suppressing feeling of aimless all of the time. It rose it me a very ethical issue – “would I teach people something that I did not whole heartedly believe in?” This has become an immensely important question in my life because I plan on going into the field of education and if so, I never want my students to look back and realize that I gave them information that wasn’t true. I understand that I am just a lowly human being and that it is in my nature to make mistakes, but what about when I “make a mistake knowingly” is that still a mistake? I think not my friend. The only thing I can describe it as is a false action, a lie, a fabrication of truth and a wrongdoing. This is something that I am unwilling to do.

            Although it may seem that the story of Highway 138 and how it shaped my life ends in a tragedy of sorts, I have come to understand (after some time) that it was an unexpected opportunity for growth and open-mindedness and a greater capacity for love. I cannot tell you how the story of Highway 138 and I end because it is not over. Every single day I think about the lessons that I have learned on that old, winding, and hauntingly beautiful road. At the time, I was unable to understand why I would want to be taught any of these lessons, but it is as Anatole France said, “Suffering! We owe to it all that is good in us, all that gives value to life; we owe to it pity, we owe to it courage, we owe to it all the virtues.” Without the sufferings and heartaches that I experienced along and as a result of that road I would not be the person that I am today. If even for that reason alone, I am thankful. Even though I am still on my journey to finding out who I am and what I believe, I have full faith that one day I will know. So for now, I plan on enjoying the beautiful ride that will take me down other roads and maybe teach me a thing or two more about growth, love, and suffering and that these things can in fact go together: you just have to be willing to go down that old road and, if necessary, come back again.