Part 1 Basic Background
I have always been an outsider and solitary, with a tendency to have unusual mystical experiences. When I was small, my parents frequently tried to coax me out of hibernation as they called it. However, I enjoyed solitude and exploring. I talked to myself alot, looked at ditchwater under a microscope my parents had bought for me, tried to grow sea monkeys, walked in the woods behind my house, watched Star Trek and Lost In Space, and read mystery books.I wore a back brace for several years as a teenager, got a job, bought my parents' old car, married my high school boyfriend following graduation from high school, and started to raise a family. My ex-husband was physically and emotionally abusive. The marriage dissolved after 10 years of trying to fix it. During the first 5 years of this marriage, I was a homemaker, raising my children. During the latter part, I went to nursing school, became a registered professional nurse (R.N.) and worked in the ICU (intensive-critical care unit) at the local hospital. While working in ICU, I became interested in the microphysiology of adult respiratory distress syndrome (with multi-system organ failure) and decided that I was more a scientist-type with a burning desire to discover, so by the time the marriage ended a few years following graduation from nursing school, I was attending the State University, working on a Biochemistry degree, working weekends as an ICU nurse, and trying to raise my kids. I was blessed to have a mother willing to help me. If she hadn't been, I would have been stuck, in that awful life, in that awful place, with an unfulfilled desire to discover. I thank G-d for the mother I was blessed to have.
Following graduation from the University, Biochemistry degree in tow, I went into research, to Michigan with my children, to discover. In Michigan, discovering, all hell broke loose in my life and it has been that way ever since.
Part 2 Religious Background
As a child, after finding the dead mouse, I decided to find out what really happened after something died. I put the dead mouse into a sealed jar and hid it in my dresser drawer for a long time, peeking at it every so often until it was mush. I needed to know the truth.
My parents did not practice any religion themselves when I was growing up (they practice Christianity now), although they told my brother and I we were Protestant Christians, and sent us to church with an aunt on my father's side. I was not antagonistic towards Christianity, nor did I have any remarkably traumatic experience with it - I learned it, heard the Bible stories and stuff, but for the most part, I just ignored it, not willfully really. My connection to G-d was more in the woods, in my closet, when I was alone, hibernating.
I remembered G-d from before... and the tangible feeling remained even as it dimmed as I grew up.
Though I had to go to church as a child, as a teenager I did not, so I did not. Again, it was not because of any antagonism. Rather, there was just no substance for me there, and I never could manage to align it sufficiently with my experience. Not that I didn't try. I just gave up. And then I was an adult.
And a woman with a son. After my first son was born, believing myself a Christian, I tried again going to church, trying to be a Good Parent. I tried several church organizations, fellowships and denominations of Christianity. But nothing fit. So, I dropped out of religion again.
During a particularly abusive time in my ex-marriage, I joined a nearby church and stayed there about a year while my ex-husband and I were counseled by the minister. I knew by now that something was terribly wrong with my life, but I could not put my finger on it. The minister at this church sincerely and compassionately tried to help, but I was left empty, smothered, the what is this in me more restless than ever. The answers there were not working for me. I quit religion, more from this and not from anger. I got divorced.
Years later, divorced and in Michigan discovering, crisis was a neverending companion. Not knowing what else to do, or where else to turn, I tried going to church again. I tried several churches, still looking for the one that would fit me, still looking for the one where I could find that tangible intimacy I had had with G-d as a child, in the woods, in my closet, hibernating. But, there was still nothing. This time, that there was still nothing, cut me to my core. It was at this time that I experienced Light Breathing, dreamt I was Jewish, and dreamt of the Angel of Death.
I did not have any positive or negative ideas about Judaism at this point. I had not thought about Judaism in the past. Even after the above experiences (and particularly even after the dream about being Jewish), the political situation at the pharmaceutical company where I was working was becoming traumatic for me - my life was unraveling. Consequently, I did not attempt to analyze my dreams or experiences. A scientist now, they were unreasonable in my thinking. And I was confused spiritually. I became a confused rationalist. I was angry now at G-d. Fullblown pissed off. My life was a horrible mess - just where was this brightening and brilliance I had been promised anyway?
So, incredibly angry, struggling to find some meaning in what I had been taught, being a confused rationalist, I girded my loins and went on the attack. I applied logic to debate creationism against evolution, trying to find something, clinging like a shipwrecked sailor to a tattered lifeboat. I knew I desperately needed to fix myself and I didn't know what else to do.
The holes in my understanding of Christianity got bigger. A Jewish scientist in the lab down the hall that was collaborating with the lab I worked in got fired. My boss quit. Two exceptional scientists, in my opinion. I had learned so much from them. I was appropriated by the Executive Director of Discovery Research to work in his laboratory. He subsequently fired me, when I failed to cease questioning and failed to tow the line.
Leaving Michigan, I went back to my home state with little more than my integrity. My car had blown up the same week I lost my job. My life was in total chaos. My children stayed with their father while I found a job and a place to live. A friend encouraged me to go with her and her family to their charismatic church. I went and was comforted during this crisis by the kind people there. Even so, my experiences were not congruent with the spiritual experiences many of the people there seemed to have. I pleaded with G-d to "touch me too"! But, it was not to be. Nothing. Everyone in my little study group was having wonderful spiritual experiences. But me - nothing. I felt abandoned abandoned abandoned abandoned to silence - a silence I could not understand. An old white car I had bought upon return from Michigan and getting a job at the University totally died and could not be resurrected. I bought a red car.
And decided I didn't like my job as a laboratory manager at the University. I didn't like my life, in fact. I started perusing the job classifieds. A small nonprofit healthcare center for poor people like me was having funding and grant problems. I was a professional nurse. I had also been allowed to evaluate some grant submissions to the NIH by my bosses at the pharmaceutical company. I had done scientific writing. I thought, gee, maybe I can do a good deed. I am miserable anyway. Why not? So, I quit my job at the University and went to save the world! by being a clinic coordinator of a struggling nonprofit.
And I thought I had known misery before. Well, now I learned m-i-s-e-r-y. My struggling psychological equilibrium busted apart.
The Interim Executive Director of the facility loaned me the book The Quark and the Jaguar by physicist Murray Gell-Mann. In the book was a chapter called A Moral Equivalent of Belief which discussed mythical belief versus mystical experience. Given that the lender of the book was Jewish, and that the author was Jewish, I figured that the idea might be Jewish as well.
This idea, mixing around in my brain with my dream about being Jewish (while in Michigan), and my mystical experiences, made me seriously think about Judaism. My friend who had brought me to her family's church, knowing my spiritual discontent, told me about a Just Looking, An Introduction to Judaism class that was being offered by the synagogue in the town where I was working. I went to this class, curious, skeptical, searching.
My life has never been the same since. One of the books on the reading list for the class was Lawrence Kushner's The Book of Words. In it was a short commentary on The Name with Hebrew letters in it. I understood this. I knew this.
That is the beginning of my Teshuvah Story. And this website continues it...
