Nathan Vonnahme
Reflective paper for The Christian Life class
Regent College
7 October 1998

          Growing up in Fairbanks, Alaska, didn’t seem unusual at the time. My parents, brought to Alaska in search of residual pipeline income around 1980, divorced shortly afterward. I was six. Alcoholism on my dad’s part accounted for a lot of the marital difficulty, but I don’t really remember strife between he and my mom, or even him drinking. The biggest factor behind the crumbling of the marriage, undoubtedly, was the lack of a foundation.

          My mom somehow managed to complete her teaching degree at the University of Alaska as a single mom, and though my brother and I lived mostly with her, most of my "Alaskan" memories are from living with my dad the year that mom was doing her first year of teaching year, in the Bush. Dad, a journeyman electrician, worked various jobs and was employed off and on. Because of this, he found time to take us fishing and hunting, and probably half of our daily calories were from moose, salmon or caribou. My dad would always say grace before dinner: "We give thanks, O Lord, for this food you have provided, for this moose who came to dinner, and for bringing us together at this time. Amen." I remember bringing a jar of pickled moose heart to "International Foods Day" in my seventh grade foreign language class. Some of the students liked it; I loved it. I also remember exploring the lanes and forests around our house with my brother, and the time our dog caught a fish in the river and we ate it, boiled in milk, for supper.

          At the end of that seventh grade year, I met Betsy Harris, who I would later marry. I fell in love with her nearly instantaneously, of course, and she spent several months secretly liking but resisting me, and when shortly after the last day of school in eighth grade I finally worked up the courage to call her, she told me, "I think it’s better if we don’t talk to each other for a while." I went silently back to my friends, drawing, role-playing games, books, and my summer job feeding someone’s dog team.

          For some reason, in the spring of my sophomore year in high school (that’s probably the reason!), I found the courage to start pursuing Betsy again. We studied together, rode our bikes together, and actually got to be good friends despite the pressure of the romantic love I still had for her. I suffered many times as she resisted me again and again, always with the explanation, "we’re just too different." But I knew enough and loved enough by then that I was content for friendship, even if she was not interested in love.

          My dad had a rich Catholic - to - Peace Corps hippie - to - AA monotheistic spirituality, and my mom the sort of childhood Presbyterian faith that seems common in mothers of her generation. But as I sat, knees knocking and heart trembling one spring day at the Elmer Rasmussen library, telling Betsy my theories about gods, an omnipresent Force, other dimensions, angels and Love, she began to actually explain what she meant when she said we were "too different."

          I was truly amazed at what she told me. She had obviously done a lot more thinking about such things, though not as imaginatively as I had. And she gave me her sister’s old Bible.

          My grandmother, my mom’s mother, a good Presbyterian, had given me a green Bible a few years earlier. I picked it up once or twice, but never got further than about Genesis 20. What a difference it made when Betsy told me to open at Matthew! Two things about that book stuck out to me like sore thumbs: it knew about love, and it did not seem like a product of human imagination.

          Through the discipline of being "just friends" with Betsy and dying to my desires for her, I had begun to realize this first thing: true love is not desire of another, but desire for another. I began to value Betsy’s welfare, wishes, and happiness more than my own, I began to prefer doing things for her over doing them for myself, I began, simply, to love her more than I loved myself. The amazing claim revealed in the Bible that God in Christ loves us just this way, even enough to come to earth and die for us, rang true in my heart-- this was true love, that one would give up his life for his beloved. I had already been praying to God for Betsy in my vague cosmic way, but now I began to understand who I was praying to, and praise him for his love for me.

          My other surprising discovery about the Bible was that it didn’t seem at all like what I thought it was. I had always assumed that it was a bunch of writings by religious people who made up stories to explain the world and tell us how to behave. But I found instead a story about Jesus, who was evidently considered a real person. And the words he spoke were astonishing to me. "Don’t worry about the speck in your neighbor’s eye until you’ve removed the plank in your own." His words were just too true, and too simple, to be fabricated by religious people. I decided that they were words of God if ever there were such things. I read the Bible voraciously.

          In January of my junior year, when Betsy invited me to come to an auditorium presentation by an evangelistic body builder who had come to our school, I took his invitation to look him in the eye to signify my decision to trust in and live for Jesus. I know I had made my decision by then, but I can’t pinpoint the day when it happened.

          High school ended in a blur and I found myself at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. Every freshman had to take an interdisciplinary class called "World Views." That year the focus was on Central and South America. In that class I found Christianity to be a constant target, and it made me examine everything harder-- wary of imbibing a sea of tepid relativism but forced to evaluate honestly the often discouraging actions of Christians in the New World.

          My final paper for that class was about the role of missionaries in the New World. Drawing on reading both from the class and outside of it, I tried to show how, despite their image as insensitive Europeanizers, missionaries have done more than anyone else in documenting and preserving indigenous culture and language. I found it especially interesting that in the accounts we read from the time of Columbus until the present, missionaries have provided an important buffer between the indigenous people and the relentless exploitation of the land developers, and have in many cases been the indigenous peoples’ only advocate against physical or economic slavery. I timidly handed it in, expecting scoffing-- I got an A+.

          Encouraged by this, I continued pursuing my integrated Studio Art and Art History major, and a Computer Science minor, and looking for ways that my faith could be applied to my studies. But though I was interested in my classes, especially ones that encouraged dialog between my faith and the liberal philosophy of the university, what challenged, nurtured and changed me the most was the campus Christian fellowship. The experiences of worship, fellowship and mutual encouragement in that community have been the greatest I’ve ever known. The quality that sticks out to me the most about that fellowship is that we were brought together in the midst of spiritual darkness. When our roommates and neighbors were destroying themselves with alcohol, selfish relationships, and hollow living, when every professor seemed to be hostile to Christianity, it was an incredible privilege, joy and wonder to gather together in worship of our beautiful Lord. Because we were so acutely aware that we were far more similar to each other than we were to the world around us, it was always a relief to see each other, to be understood, and to hear the good news of what God was doing in our lives. I pray that as we seek the experience of community at Regent, God will give us all appreciation for the light we have and the darkness of the world around us, so that we may recognize our profound commonality and not be distracted by our interesting but petty cultural differences.

          The most memorable and rewarding part of the fellowship at Willamette was by far the mentoring relationships I had. During my time there, two different older students, both named Andrew, met with me weekly to pray and to talk about what God was teaching us, a book we were reading together, or something we were struggling with. I also met with a few different younger students throughout my time there. I will forever be in debt to these two men who influenced and changed me not so much by what they said but in how they lived.

          One night toward the end of my freshman year at Willamette, I was practicing for lacrosse. I practiced as the coach had mandated-- throwing my ball against the brick wall of the gym and catching it again, hopefully, before it bounced and rolled off into some dark soggy corner of the grass and became one with the mud. As I practiced, I listened on my walkman to a tape that my mentor Andrew had given me. Tony Campolo was speaking about missions.

          "Think about it-- you go to college to be a doctor, a teacher, or a pastor-- then you graduate and you can’t find a job. But if you go to Africa, or Asia, you may be the only doctor or teacher or pastor for hundreds of miles, for thousands of people."

          I found myself then, for many accumulated reasons, promising God that I would serve him somewhere where I could make a difference in this way, where I could share his grace and goodness with people who have never heard, rather than staying in North America where there are so many who think they’ve heard and do not want to listen. I decided to head in the direction of missions from that point on and wait on God to clarify or refute the call that I had heard. Later I would find that Betsy had come to very much the same conclusion independently of me.

          During my years at Willamette, my relationship with Betsy was stretched and tempered by the 3,000 miles between us. We learned to communicate by e-mail and letters, and how to express love by making and giving gifts to each other. We learned the importance of praying for each other, and we especially learned the difference between physical and vocal affection. The prolonged distance made a single embrace priceless, and yet it showed us how physical affection can so easily distract us from true communication by creating a false sense of intimacy.

          During this time my love for Betsy continually taught me of the Father’s great love for me and what my response should be to him. But it was also a constant struggle not to allow Betsy, her love for me or my love for her to eclipse God in my life. A few lines in a poem I wrote for Betsy my sophomore year describe this tension well for me [by my best recollection]:

And O! the honor of your brimming love,
          Whose resonation stirs my heart to fly,
          Brute stupid grace and senseless blessing-- why?
Why can the gift its Giver rise above?

          Thanks be to the God who is still teaching me what love is!

          Two days after I graduated from Willamette I started my first Real Job designing web sites for an Internet service provider in Fairbanks, and six weeks after that I was married. Betsy and I had a beautiful wedding and a beautiful honeymoon in Alaska. We both expected that marriage would be really blissful and exciting at first, but would soon grow a little boring, and we’d shortly become an "old married couple," with bickerings and disagreements our unmarried ardor had previously shielded us from. We have both been happily surprised-- it just keeps getting better and better.

          The thing I remember most about getting married is how many people prayed that God would bless us and our marriage. We have been suffering the preposterous results of those prayers for two years now, and God shows no signs of easing up. Our concept of his love for us has been extended again and again as we see how he cares for us so extravagantly, patiently, and graciously. He provides for us abundantly in every way, he enriches our lives with so many good friends and beloved family, and he keeps us growing in love and sweetness with each other. We are brought repeatedly to the point of mute thankfulness over his "brute stupid grace and senseless blessing" toward us, despite anything we’ve done to earn it.

          One of the greatest privileges God has given us in the last two years is the opportunity to work with the junior high and high school students at our church. It is amazing to see him at work in the lives of these students, and to be so conscious of our weaknesses and inadequacies, yet to see him, somehow, work through us.

          In this ministry we’ve seen a bit why Paul advised that it is better not to marry because "An unmarried man [or woman] is concerned about the Lord's affairs--how he can please the Lord. But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world-- how he can please his wife-- and his interests are divided" (1Cor 7:32-34). Neither one of us were used to spending much time at home, and it was hard at first to not be able to devote ourselves entirely to ministry as we had both done in college. But God gave us grace in this, too, enabling us to serve together effectively, to reveal his love and mercy to each other, and to love the students as a couple.

          We have enjoyed many wonderful opportunities at our small church in the last two years too-- and sometimes the responsibility of so many opportunities was heavy. But we treasure and value what we’ve learned through hands-on experience teaching Sunday school, leading worship music, sitting on the board and building committee, being part of the bell choir, leading youth group, and even preaching. I cannot praise God enough for the extraordinary things we have seen him do around us since we’ve been married-- though we have been so awkward, failing and unfaithful in so many ways, he has brought forth fruit in lives around us, and has even somehow used a few of our words and actions to do it.

          Now Betsy and I are at Regent, planning to both attain Master of Christian Studies degrees, in preparation for work as missionaries, tentatively as Bible translators with Wycliffe or New Tribes. We are adjusting to life in Canada, and are really enjoying being students together for the first time since high school. I am still working part-time for an Internet service provider in Alaska. We are enjoying a brief rest from church responsibilities and are also enjoying the plentiful opportunities to be ministered to by our brothers and sisters. God has done marvelous things in bringing us to this place, and we are learning to be more and more thankful to him as he takes us further.