Moving from Unchallenged Belief to Faith

I was born into a family of Presbyterian ministers, missionaries, and lay people active in the church with strong English and Scotch-Irish influences. Being a Presbyterian was a given. Embracing the ethics of Calvin was a given. Attending The College of Wooster was a given. Adolescence was not a time of questioning; this was before the era of adolescent rebellion. I moved blithely forward into adulthood with everything-and nothing-figured out. On the one hand I had strong beliefs. On the other hand I had beliefs unchallenged, unquestioned and therefore under valued. When I belatedly embraced the task of adolescent questioning I was a married, thirty-two year old mother of two working in my chosen profession. In the process of questioning who I was and what was important I became a single mother of two working in my chosen profession. Then I began my real journey, a journey from unchallenged belief to faith, a journey that continues today.

There was a period of time when I was a Christian on the outside, without a truly personal relationship with God and I floundered a lot on the road to Damascus. A second marriage did not move me closer to God; serious illness did not move me closer to God. Weekly church attendance, after a period of less faithful attendance, held me steady but did not move me closer to God. Like Paul, blindness did. Literally. At the same time I was losing my physical sight (which was happily restored over a period of months), I participated in a church mission trip to St. Louis in 1993. Those two things juxtaposed and brought me to my knees in supplication, in gratitude and in awe.

Several things have sustained me throughout the years, both before and after 1993, and kept me growing. My involvement at the Gerholz Center, surrounded by people dedicated to doing Christ's work, by people intent on good, has provided the grounding and the challenge of discipleship. I believed and continue to believe that God gave me gifts, allowed and expected me to develop them and provided a place to use them. That place was mostly in the field of mental health, where "church and state" did not cross paths. But, because of the invitation to be part of the Gerholz ministry and through working at the Gerholz Center, I was challenged by clients to combine church and state - sometimes by requests for prayer, sometimes by their examples of faith in the midst of darkness. At first I was unable to pray with clients, and was stuck when asked by them to do so. God led me to a two-year participation in the Formation for Healing Ministry and to a comfort level with shared prayer and worship that has benefited me as much if not more than my clients. In addition to the Center and the Healing Ministry is the sure knowledge that when my parents were alive they never stopped praying for me-and probably still are. And friendships based on shared faith and worship have also been a blessing.

Today I am privileged to witness God's work in the lives of clients, of supplicants for healing, in the health and wonder of grandchildren, in a church alive with God's expectation and love. With these and so many other things comes the continued invitation to grow in God's love and my belief in His patience and acceptance of a work in progress.

Barbara Horcha