Stories of Transformation

Destination Unknown
by Tara McAdams

Some journeys begin with a destination in mind.  Not mine.

My faith journey has been full of detours. Although I’ve been a member of St. Andrew’s for more than 13 years, I’m a late-in-life Lutheran who never thought she would be writing about her faith.

I grew up unchurched in the Chicago suburbs. Faith wasn’t a dinner table topic. My family worshipped at the altar of modern living, political discourse and classical culture. Don’t get me wrong – I had a loving upbringing, but religion wasn’t in the picture. When looking for a college, I wanted a place I could sing, study languages and meet smart people. A representative from St. Olaf came to my high school, I visited the campus and I was hooked.

The fact that St. Olaf was a college of the Lutheran Church didn’t mean a thing to me. In my primarily Italian-Polish neighborhood in Chicago, almost everyone was Catholic. Lutherans were considered exotic. At St. Olaf, I felt like a foreign student. I met lots of Lutherans, kids who actually went to chapel services on a regular basis. My roommate’s family was chock-full of Lutheran pastors. When people asked me what religion I was, I had a standard answer: “I’m a free agent.”

In retrospect, I know that God was in my life even then. He was putting people in my path who could bring me closer to him. But I wasn’t ready to go there.

After graduation, I lived my life: built a career, traveled, made friends, and spent Sunday mornings reading the paper.

Then something happened.  I walked through the doors of St. Andrew’s. I had just moved to the neighborhood with my new husband, Nile, a Norwegian Lutheran from Iowa, who thought it would be a good idea to find a nearby church. I was ambivalent about it, but I decided it wouldn’t kill me to sit through a church service a couple times a year.

We came on a warm Sunday in early September and sat in the back of the crowded Great Hall. Suddenly a big choir filed in, leading the congregation in a hymn I recognized from my St. Olaf days. A few minutes later they launched into a Bach classic that was the perfect segue into the Scripture reading. I took a deep breath.  I looked at my husband, my new neighbors sitting around me, choir director Jan Gilbertson unifying the singers into a final chord, and for the first time, I felt a part of something much bigger than my own life. God is here, in this room, and wants me to be here, too, I thought.

So I joined the choir and my faith journey began. Connecting with a big church like St. Andrew’s through a smaller group like the choir has allowed me to get to know God at my own pace.  Going to Slovakia in 1998 opened my eyes and was truly a transformational experience. I met people who had endured decades of a communist regime who now were rediscovering God and the teachings of Jesus. Their hope and optimism energized me and made me feel part of a group of global believers. 

As with any new experience, there’s a learning curve and it’s easy to be intimidated by what you don’t understand. I still lack a lot of Lutheran basics. I don’t know the Bible very well, and I have to peek at the words of the Apostles’ Creed.  It took me a long time (with prodding from my husband) to finally take communion because I felt I wasn’t “good enough.” But now I realize that no one is good enough. And that’s the whole point. We are all on a journey of grace.

But I do know that St. Andrew’s has connected me with God through many experiences. Sitting upfront on the choir risers, feeling the low notes of the organ reverberate through my body. Holding the candle at my grandson’s baptism. Hearing a phrase in a sermon that helps me solve a problem. Making new friends, people I would have never known without St. Andrew’s. Not only taking communion, but also serving it to my fellow choir members.   

In my faith journey, I have not had an ‘aha moment,’ or a moment of being saved.  It has been a gradual realization that everything in my life has been given to me by God.  Births, deaths, laughs, tragedies – all of it.  That is the joy of the Christian journey and I am so blessed to be on it.