Frasier and Niles

June 27, 2009

I enjoyed the deliciousness of falling asleep last night without planning my slumber. I was tired. Jeremy and I were stretched out on the couches watching Frasier on DVD, and I felt the sleepiness curl up with me. I have a bedtime routine that I usually follow in order to ensure proper treatment of my ulcerative colitis. The routine includes doing my nightly enema and taking my sleeping meds now. But last night, I decided to just enjoy the relaxation I was feeling and I drifted off.

Around 11:45 p.m. I woke up on the couch and realized that I hadn't yet done my enema and I needed to, so I crept in the bedroom, careful not to wake Jeremy, and proceeded to medicate myself (aren't I being delicate?). Of course, after doing the enema, you can imagine that falling back to sleep did not come so easy. And so I lay awake in bed, alone with my thoughts. And this is where they took me:

I thought about all the thinking I've been doing about faith lately. And why, really does any of it matter? Would I be living my life any differently if I understood why it's necessary to have evil in the world in order to have good? And then I started thinking about my Psychology of Religion class I took my freshman year (I'm pretty sure it was my freshman year). Actually there were two classes I started thinking about: Psychology of Religion and Christianity 101. Both of those classes taught theory about faith. That was the first time I was introduced to there actually being theories about faith. And in both of those classes, they talked about the "born again" Christian faith as a theory.

I was thoroughly confused. I'm embarrassed to admit it now, because it just shows how naive or sheltered or something that I was, but I found myself feeling almost angry at the professors for talking about the faith I had been raised with like it was a theory. I remember trying to point out to the professor that what he meant to say was this one was the truth. And he kept answering me with explaining that it was a theory. It may have been a theory I believed in, but it was still a theory nonetheless.

So last night as I laid there trying to fight the urge to go to the bathroom and rid myself of the enema I had just used, I started thinking, As a child, did I feel like I had a choice? I don't think I did. The gospel was presented to me as the truth. And of course it would be, right? Don't most parents present their beliefs to their children as the truth? As a parent you want your child to follow what you believe. Of course.

The choice that I remember having the evening I said a prayer and asked Jesus into my heart was the choice of heaven or hell, not the choice of Christianity or some other faith. And last night I wondered, isn't freedom and choosing Christ an essential part of the faith? It wasn't till I was 17 that I even started understanding what the choices out there were.

I could remember pretty clearly the evening I "accepted Christ." I remember parts of the conversations that I had with my parents that evening. And last night I wondered, what were they thinking and feeling about their little daughter saying that prayer? I'm sure they were excited. What conversations did they have with each other afterward?

I realized that I was not going to be able to fall back asleep if I continued to think these thoughts, and my opportunity for night-time slumber was slipping away from me with each passing minute. So I went back to the living room to find that Jeremy had woken up and turned Frasier back on. I settled into my spot on the couch and fell back asleep, Frasier and Niles distracting my mind.

I'm sure I'll be pondering these thoughts for many nights to come . . .