I was a 9th grader when I first became involved in an amazing ministry called "Teens Encounter Christ," usually abbreviated as TEC (pronounced like "tech"). For anyone unfamiliar, TEC consists of a few weekend retreats each year that serve as an in-depth faith experience packed into a single weekend. First-time youth participants are considered weekenders who "go through" the weekend as they experience everything for the first time. After going through as a weekender (or if participating as an adult), you can work as a part of the team that puts together and serves on the weekend. (If you want further details, feel free to contact me or go to the
website for the Minnesota Metro Lutheran TEC that I have participated in - there are different TEC organizations all across the country).
My parents had been involved in the adult version for years, and I knew many older youth who had gone through a TEC weekend, so going through TEC was something I looked forward to for years. Going through as a weekender was one of the most amazing experiences of my life; I still pinpoint that weekend as the cause for my strong faith and great church involvement in my high school years. Through the weekends I worked on team over the years, I not only continued to strengthen my own faith through service and leadership but I gained three of the best friends I've ever had and developed great relationships with adults who have continually supported me through all my ups and downs for nearly a decade.
Almost 9 years after first going through TEC as a 9th grader, I just finished my second weekend working as an official "adult" team member, which has in many ways been very different from being a youth, but still much the same. The structure is essentially the same, many adult faces are the same, and a couple of TEC weekends in again (after my 4.5-year college hiatus), many youth faces are familiar as well. But some things change when you move to an adult role. For one, adults don't question me when I do something to I take care of myself (whereas, at least in my day, youth were generally assumed to be avoiding work); as a result, I am proud to say that this is the first TEC that I haven't had any major depression or anxiety issues either over the weekend or in the 24 hours after leaving. But the most amazing experience of being in an adult role is to watch some of "my" youth go through. For the first time that I'm aware of, two youth from my home church went through the same weekend (only ever one or two at a time before). Two of these are youth that I've gotten to know fairly well in the past year as I've returned from college and been more involved in youth activities at my home church, including being the sole leader of my church's youth group this school year. These two are youth that I care deeply about and who I've hoped to share the TEC experience of "encountering Christ" for a number of years now (in other words, I've been looking forward to having them go through TEC since long before they were ever old enough to go through TEC...) While both were initially hesitant, even upon arrival, they integrated into the experience of the weekend quickly. Furthermore, I was able to watch as they experienced God's love in new and deeper ways over the course of the weekend to a point that it brought me to tears more than once out of happiness for them. For possibly the first time on a TEC weekend, I truly encountered Christ by seeing others encounter Him, and I am still left amazed.
But as an adult, I fall off the mountaintop faster. It's back to work and stress and being pulled a million directions at once. And it's living in a world where all anyone ever seems to want to discuss is politics and how some aspect of religion is going to ruin the world. You see, tonight was the first time I spent a significant amount of time on Facebook since last Wednesday because I was either prepping for TEC, or I was actually at TEC where there is a strict no-technology policy (as there should be). Within a half-hour I had already run across two different groups of people attacking my faith (well, not mine personally, just beliefs that I align myself with). The first came from the secular world attacking anyone who would hold religious beliefs that would disagree with their own. The second came from Christian traditionalists who believe that people who express their beliefs in the way that I usually do will be responsible for tearing down Christianity. And here's the thing: I consider myself to be a faithful person and in my heart will forever stand by a set of beliefs that align with my faith; however, I am neither a liberal Christian nor a traditionalist Christian, leaving me almost no room to fit in, a concept that I have struggled with for the entirety of my young adult life. Being surrounded by extremely liberal peers for my college career, I have rarely been willing to discuss politics or religion with even my closest friends because my experience has been that if I say what I think about such things, I will be deemed among the most horrible people on the planet. If I have learned anything since I began high school, it is that to stand up for what I believe and give my faith as the reason for those beliefs means that I will be endlessly attacked as an ignorant, narrow-minded bigot who doesn't deserve to live. One, almost no one actually enjoys willing to walk into that situation. Two, my social anxiety dictates that to walk into that situation is to have a panic attack or two, and my depression dictates that for the following days and/or weeks I will feel super depressed because in my head I have no friends and will never fit in anywhere. So I am silent; somewhere along the line I lost my voice.
And suddenly I want nothing more than to once again be that 9th grade girl after experiencing her own TEC weekend. Back when I didn't care what anyone thought and my faith was readily apparent in all that I did. The day after my TEC weekend I showed up wearing all of my TEC stuff (including something no longer used called a "warm fuzzy" that was basically a bunch of yarn that you wore around your neck). And I didn't care. All I wanted to do was share my experience with others. You see, I had a strange junior high experience; those were probably the best 3 consecutive years of my educational career, and they were highlighted by high self-esteem, high self-confidence, and a complete lack of care about what absolutely
anyone thought about me. I had a solid group of friends, and we agreed on all of the important stuff, and that was all the acceptance I needed in life. I was a full-blown "Jesus Freak" and it was apparent in every aspect of my life (Seriously, I think I found a way to weave my faith into nearly every English writing assignment I had in junior high...) And I want nothing more to be that girl again.
These days, particularly as an adult, it's not socially acceptable to identify as Christian. It becomes even harder working in the extremely secular world of teaching where even mentioning my involvement in church to students is frowned upon. (Side note: I love what I do; working with high school students is a blast. But working on this last TEC weekend brought me more meaning and fulfillment than my job does. But don't tell me that I should go work in a church - I learned a while back that being in the midst of the inner workings of a church does serious damage to my own faith, and I'm not willing to make that sacrifice.) I spent half of this last TEC weekend thinking about students I have who I know are very involved in their own churches and who would absolutely
LOVE TEC, but I'm not even allowed to tell them that it exists (which is the most depressing thing ever). Because of societal restrictions, both official and unofficial, combined with my own social anxiety, I have drifted to a place where I have lost part of my identity. And I want it back.
This weekend was the first time I realized that second part: I want it back. Becoming an adult has been a balancing act of learning how to live in the world and not of the world, and young adult me has come to accept things that 9th grade me would be appalled at, and some of those things are okay. Others I think I'm ready to shed as a part of being "Jesus with skin on," as some say. I've avoided labeling myself as "just a Christian" because of the negative responses people have to that. But suddenly I'm coming to realize: isn't it our purpose in life to be seen as just that, or even more so, for people to look and see just Christ? And I'm beginning to realize: that's who I want to be. It's going to take some work on my end, particularly through the social anxiety challenges that I already face. But I've finally found a good counselor again, and now that I don't have to be in crisis-management mode like I was with my college counselor, I'm slowly but surely making good progress and finding new, more constructive, coping mechanisms that I think will be helpful in the long run.
So as the world around me keeps trying to pull me off the mountaintop of my weekend, I'm using every ounce of strength to cling to the mountain, not as a means of staying up there and avoiding the real world, but as a means of holding onto the strength that it gave me so that when I'm in the real world I can be the person who I want to be and was made to be when the world tries to pull me in the opposite direction.
