Home

Home. I had not seen it in 6 months and all through the holidays of 1982-83. It was a couple weeks shy of Easter, and while it was still considered winter, it was beginning to warm just a bit as the sun shone longer.

The bus I boarded in NYC was the New York-Los Angeles Express. And I did see a woman and her 2 children who were, indeed, going to LA from NYC via Greyhound. I had made the 30+ hour bus ride to D.C. with Keith but was now returning alone.

Not quite alone. The Holy Spirit still rested strongly upon me. I was glad to be going back home, but I was also nervous. Things had changed. There were changes that had happened in the country while I was gone. Music had changed, as the techno 80’s took a firm hold. The economy was generally improving but farmers still struggled. I had changed.

My Dad picked me up at the nearest bus station and I could tell he wasn’t sure what to make of his long haired son. We talked a bit about the trip and the struggles involved in actually getting out of NYC. My parents had suffered considerable anxiety about the whole deal and were just glad I had made it home safely. The next day, Mom gave me a haircut, so there are no pictures that I know of from those days of me with hippie hair.

The hardest part of adjusting was that while some things in the world had changed, many things had not. And spiritually this was definitely true. My family were Christian, but were not radical about it. I was radical. I began getting on them about some of their bad habits and things they did and said. Whoever said living with a saint is harder than being one was probably thinking of me in early 1983. I was insufferable. I was also someone with nothing to do. I had no job and no school to go to.

Now that I think of it, I’m not sure what I did. I did know that I was withering off the vine, spiritually speaking. The Presbyterian church I grew up in was entirely too sleepy for me. It goes without saying that no one else was speaking in tongues.

Micky and Mary admonished me that I needed to find a charismatic church when I got back. I didn’t know of any. In fact, it was hard getting into any real active Christian community. Before going to Germany, I was a bit of a partier and a hell raiser. I was a known quantity and fit in with those of similar mind. But now I fit no where. My old friends wanted to go out and get wasted, expecting me to be the same as when I left.

The Christian community wanted nothing to do with me and were suspicious of me. And rightfully so.

I was trying to fit in these two worlds and struggled mightily. After all the excitement and engagement of the past 6 months, I felt like I was languishing in a new desert.

I knew of one fellow in my hometown who had the reputation of being a strong Christian. I decided to look him up. He must have been in his 40’s, a prominent businessman from a respected family and totally single. But he always made time for young people in town. He had all sorts of computer games and video games and back then even had a modem and was plugged to what would eventually become known as the internet. For a guy running a feed store, Robert was surprisingly geeky.

He finally invited me to a meeting of the Full Gospel Businessmen’s Fellowship International. These meetings had many of the region’s high rollers but it was a Christian group. It was also a Charismatic group. And so it was that I went for several months to these meetings and obtained what amounted to a small fix of the Holy Spirit. However, I began to question the whole business of speaking in tongues. I was writing to my old pastor, Roger, who advised me to read the whole of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians in one sitting. And sure enough, Paul was making a clear case that tongues was not the be all and end all of being a Christian. Over time I would speak less and less. I can not tell you when I quit speaking in tongues, but I eventually did. Paul admonishes us to put childish things behind us and to seek the higher gifts. Tongues served an important function for me at a pivotal time in my life. I will not speak against it accept when pressure is put on a person that everyone should do it.

That fall, I would begin college. At first I commuted to a nearby private college and then transferred to Iowa State in January ‘84. There I would eventually join the fundamentalist movement when it was in its prime.

Oh, I also did something else in January ‘84; I joined the Army Reserves. I no longer had to worry about what I was going to be doing during my summers!