The Search

"But they that wait upon the Lord..."



Our family went to the county fair and while there,
a young girl came up to me and asked if I had ever
heard of the Four Spiritual Laws..
.she read a little pamplet to me and as I listened,
something stirred within me...I prayed with her
and asked for more information...she gave me
her address and as I walked away, I felt a peace
come over that I hadn't felt before.

I was so excited, that Sunday went to church
but everything there was the same...the same tired choir,
the same dry sermon..and as the weeks went past.....
.the peace and excitement I felt died away...
I wrote to the girl who had spoken to me
and she wrote back that I just needed to
get into a good church...but at 14, not driving
and no one to really talk to about the change in my life
......the little spark just slowly died away.....

Soon after my dad was stationed again,
at the Camp Pendleton Marine Corp base
and we moved to Oceanside California...
this was the time of the Vietnam War.
My dad got orders to go overseas for deployment....
he was in his late 40s by this time and became a agent in
( then) Da Nang buying supplies for the troops...
he had an office downtown, lived in a government
apartment and would walk to work every morning.
He told us about the Agent Orange the government
had sprayed on all the trees downtown and
how he had to walk through the spraying...
.we didn't know it but the exposure would
eventually lead to his death some years later...

We started going to the South Oceanside Methodist church
....the pastor was an older man, and his wife was ill...
they lived in the parsonage behind the church.....
he was a good man at the end of his ministry and
nursing his wife took up much of his time......
I prayed so often that I would be led to people who
were really serious about God but the time wasn't
yet right...I taught 3rd
grade Sunday School and got involved in the youth group...
spent the next two years or so, completely high school,
going to church, working as a nanny summers for a mom
with two girls. Always liked children and worked them
not only at church but by doing baby sitting and the nanny thing...

Dad came home the year I graduated from high school...
he wasn't there for the graduation
but soon afterwards. He was a changed man, from being
outgoing and involved with his
children, he was quiet, and withdrawn from his family...
.there was no counseling or help
then like there is today...he would talk for hours about
Vietnam, until we could hardly stand
it and then shut down and sit in the living room staring
at the walls...it was a hard time.

I started going to the local community college
(it was called a junior college then)
started experimenting with a spirituality that was
not familiar to my family...the occult.
This was the time of Woodstock, the Age of
Aquarius, etc. I learned how to palm read,
read Tarot cards, astrology, etc. Got to church
on Sunday and do astrology readings
on Monday...it seemed to fill the void at the time
but there was an emptyness still in
the still small moments.
I started experimenting with smoking also and
bought little sweet tasting cigars that
I smoked in the student lounge...this didn't last too
long as I got tired of smelling like
a cigar.....one of my professors commented on it
so I quit...think I did that about 3 or
4 months is all. There was a lot of pot smoking
around campus...but I knew if I got
involved in it, my parents would have been
disappointed and didn't want to disappoint
them.
I didn't date much...I had the same boyfriend
through high school but we broke up before
graduation....was asked out a lot but was very
picky about who I went out with...a good
thing looking back on it..
AND THEN....
our pastor retired and a new pastor came to
our church....
.Reverend Harold Kingsley and his
wife Barbara.....they were different.....
..really different.