I realized in my quiet time with God yesterday that I partially blame God for a lot of my relationship failures. Starting at the age of eight with my parents’ divorce, relationships seemed doomed to failure. I was not worth my father staying around and my mother had to concentrate on my, then newborn, little sister. I was somewhat cast loose on the relationship ocean from that time on.
Because of my mother’s single parent status, we ended up moving a lot. I don’t really remember staying in one town longer than 2-3 years. I switched schools a lot. I have never been popular and have not had a single long-term friend in my life. Alongside the location shifting came church instability.
I grew up in the RLDS church which later changed its name to the Community of Christ. In the 1980’s the church decided to ordain women to the priesthood. My mother strongly objected to this change and removed us from the RLDS church to the Restoration Branch Movement, a fundamental split from the RLDS official church. At the time we were living in Northern California and Restoration branches were sparse. To attend church we travelled all day Saturday and had to spend the night in Chico, CA to attend church on Sunday. After church we would then travel back home.
In the upcoming years I would move back to Independence, MO to live with my father and choose to reinstate my membership in the RLDS church. My mother soon followed and took up residence in Independence as well, still attending the Restoration Branches movement. Independence being the center place of the RLDS church made the church density much different. Just in the Independence area, there were probably 10 different Restoration branches plus innumerable RLDS congregations. Even worse they didn’t always agree. In fact, one of the branches, shortly after my family quit attending, broke in two over whether the sanctuary should have pews or seats.
This religious and social chaos made up a good portion of my early growing up years. The constant change made relationships difficult, but the future was about to make things even rougher.
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