My Faith Journey by Nancy Goodhue

I grew up in a devout Baptist home in Huntsville, Alabama, the second of four daughters. I didn’t have any choice about going to church, as it was the religious and social center of my family’s life. My deepest and best teachers for the first two decades of my life were my parents. I made my profession of faith in Christ and was baptized at age nine. Later, I attended Samford University, a Baptist college in Birmingham.

At some time in my late teens it became apparent to me that it was not going to be enough for me to just carry on the faith I had been taught. I wanted my faith to be based on what is real, on real experience, on ­my experience, not the experience of others, not just what I’d been taught, and not just something that had happened to me in the past. My search for what Jesus called “living water” began in earnest.

In my early twenties, at a very low time in my life, I got on my knees and begged God to help me. At the time I was living in Asheville, North Carolina, surrounded by beautiful mountains I loved dearly, and working as a Headstart teacher. But the beauty of my surroundings and a job doing meaningful work and good friends were not enough. I was floundering. I did not know what to do with my life. I did not know if God were real, and the idea of living without God was tearing me apart. That Sunday morning as I prayed for help, I felt myself flooded with God’s light and love.

I supposed if I had been anything but a fairly sheltered Southern Baptist I would have gone off to an ashram in India, but I responded to the experience in the only way I could think of—I went to seminary to prepare for ministry.

As it turned out, I did not enter the ministry as my vocation. After finishing a degree at Southern Seminary and doing a chaplain internship in a hospital in North Carolina, I dropped out of church for several years, as I no longer felt I belonged and no longer found the living water I was looking for. I did not find it outside of the church either. But I did enjoy my long Sunday mornings!

I came back to the church, to this church, while Jim England was interim pastor, a year before Joe was called as pastor. I took small steps back into the church. I learned that the way to follow Christ on this faith journey is not to wait for the big spiritual experiences to wipe out my doubts and subdue my struggles but to say “yes” in some way every day, or as often as I could to what might be a part of the kingdom of God, no matter how small it was or how impossible a task it might seem.

One of the jobs in the church that has brought me joy is teaching Sunday school with our younger children. I have learned much from them. Several years ago when I was teaching four-year-olds, I was telling a story, I think about Moses, and said something to the effect that he saw God. Michael Connolly, who was in that class, blurted out, “I want to see God!” It was one of those moments for me, because his response touched something deep in me—I too wanted to see God. In that moment, Michael and I were seekers of God together. Age didn’t matter.

 And that is how I think of Highland. We are a group of people seeking God, seeking to be faithful, no matter what our age or any other distinguishing features. And this church and this faith walk are worth saying “yes” to.