I never had a happy promise of heaven to calm me down. 

I grew up in a pseudo-Christian household. We had Christmas dinners and Easter egg hunts and that was that. I was aware that there was a guy called Jesus who wanted to be my friend, but I didn’t know anything about him and I was raised not to talk to strangers. I had a Bible, but it became a coloring book, with scribbly pink horses running across the pages of Genesis and Exodus. 

So when I’d ask and ask what would happen to me when my time’s up, it was a sigh and a shrug and a shake of the head. 

When I was sixteen, I started dating a boy whose dad was a pastor, which naturally made me nervous. At this point in my life, I had decided religion was a scam that I would not allow myself to fall for. Each week, I’d get the invitation to church and each week I’d stutter through some excuse as to why I couldn’t make it. Quite amazing how many birthdays my grandparents could have within a calendar year. 

If the high school sophomore version of myself saw the college sophomore version of myself, I think she would be a little confused. I went from actively avoiding the church to going twice a week. For sixteen-year-old me, the only explanation for something like that would have been brainwashing. What happened to me?

I don’t write this as an act of evangelism. I don’t aim to bring faith to the unbeliever. I simply write it as a testament to my college experience. 

The phrase “college experience,” while we’re on it, is not one usually tied to religious discovery. I receive a lot of surprised reactions when I share that I did not grow up “this way” and only recently became “this way.” A friend and I were sitting on the couch at a house party a few weeks ago as she, a true journalist, interviewed me about my turn to Christianity, what caused it and why. Multiple episodes of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” flew by on the TV before all, or at least most, bases were covered, but I think I can boil it down to one thing: compassion. 

After a year of being with the aforementioned pastor’s son, I ran out of “ums,” “wells” and “buts,” so I caved and said they’d see me on Sunday morning. I remember being initially distracted by my excitement to text my friends a joke about being wasted off the communion wine, but I would soon become totally focused on the guest pastor and his sermon on loving others above yourself. Apparently, that’s what the whole Christianity thing was about. 

I don’t really know why his words hit me as hard as they did, but as he told his story of dedicating himself to struggling children in Texas, I had to keep my tongue pressed to the roof of my mouth to stop myself from crying. This sure was the sweetest scam I’d ever heard of. Gosh, look what you people did to me. I’m going to have to come back next Sunday for research purposes. 

To make a really long and convoluted story short and simple, my eyes were opened and filled with tears and I eventually had that moment where you fall to your knees and decide your life will be different. And what better time and place to make that decision than when you go to college? 

In all honesty, I am a bit haunted by the person I was during my teen years. Like, who isn’t? But still. A friend and I recently rehashed our shared horrors of high school and I could not help but feel like the product of some metamorphosis. Whatever slinky, slimy, innocent creature I grew up as had been encased in a blind-like cocoon, but I know now that things like that are necessary to learn and grow from. 

I thought about the sob seshes in ex-boyfriends’ cars, the messy melees with tennis teammates and the overall prison that is female adolescence. I was a hopeless, knotted-up girl with no anchor in anything. Being exposed to a pocket of goodness and an avenue for softening myself made me come all unraveled in that pew. 

I spent my teen years searching for a safe haven in people and things that did not have the capacity to do what I needed. To no fault of their own, of course; in the unfamiliar darkness, I was trying to cling to the first sign of light, no matter how dim or flickery. 

Since I learned the hard truth of my impermanence, I had an insatiable hunger for an answer to my existential dilemma. I don’t think that we give our lows and our moments of questioning enough credit, because how do you know who you are without them? It is through those times that you are discovered and strengthened. Tribulations are inevitable, but it is absolutely vital to find a path of hope to guide you out. 

Like the slinky, slimy, innocent caterpillar, it takes seasons of darkness to be sculpted into something greater.

Melody Meyer is a sophomore studying Journalism with a concentration in sports broadcasting and is a columnist at The State News. The views in this article are her own and independent of The State News.