by Hannah Luce
In my Charismatic Theology class, we dissected the origins of indoctrinated symbols such as healing the sick, raising the dead, and demonic powers. The professor didn’t insist that the charismatic Christian interpretation of those things was necessarily correct. He assigned books, some of the same ones that Papa had taken away from me years earlier, and he encouraged us to question the core beliefs of our parents’ religion and support our own conclusions. It was okay to ask questions, my professor said, and he affirmed that critical thinking was healthy. Without questions, you remain blocked at the beginning of your spiritual journey. (I had always felt that blind belief in the literal interpretation of the scriptures was limiting and stood in the way of my walk with God, and here he was, validating that.)
I began spending all of my time with my church history friends. I started what I called “Cultural Nights” for our group at which, every week, we’d gather together and share ideas about all sorts of provocative things. One night the topic might be books or art; the next time, we’d be discussing world politics, racial issues, or Christian ethical dilemmas. We’d carry a cooler of Pabst Blue Ribbon down to the river, where we’d start a bonfire and talk into the wee hours of the morning. I could hardly believe that I could find that kind of freedom and independence at ORU.
This must be heaven, I said, chuckling to myself.
For me, it really was.
For the first time in my life, I felt as though I belonged. I wasn’t an alien in my own skin anymore. I began to feel comfortable getting to know myself and being myself, and I worked at not judging others and myself so harshly. I started to see that there was room for us and them in religion, whatever faith it was. By studying the history of evangelical faith and how it came to be, I began to understand that a lot of my father’s rhetoric came from what he had been taught, not from God Himself, and I started to let go of my paranoia about what I had always perceived as God’s rejection of me. I could finally stop watching for some extraterrestrial to come out of the trees to speak to me. I could stop looking for signs that God existed.
Papa had come to his own conclusions about God and the church, and I was forming my own. We didn’t have to agree. However it all shook out I would respect Papa’s beliefs, and I hoped that he would respect me for searching so long and hard to find mine. I realized that whatever the future brought, I didn’t have to focus on our differences. What I knew to be true was that Papa was a man of tremendous integrity. He truly cared about people, and his faith was genuine. I could support that.
• • •
Papa came to ORU to appear during the biannual campus Christian revival. My militant church history classmates had started a Twitter account they called #Twapel for tweets about chapel. People posted anonymously, so the comments could get pretty mean. All of our guest speakers were critiqued, and no one was spared. I remember this charismatic Christian evangelist couple who came to speak, and comments flew about her big helmet hair and his man boobs. The site became really big on campus, and students began sitting in chapel, secretly tweeting all during services. I tweeted myself occasionally and got a kick out of other people’s tweets. Until the criticisms turned to my Papa. Then it wasn’t funny anymore.
It happened during the night service on the first day of the fall revival week. Everyone on campus was required to attend chapel that night. Papa was the featured preacher. As I sat there watching him do his thing, I checked the Twapel site and saw the tweets were flying. “Whack job speaking,” one person wrote. “Boring!” someone else tweeted. On one hand, I agreed with some of the things people were saying. Papa was spewing his usual fundamentalist Christian rhetoric, and I opposed a lot of it. On the other hand, I loved my father and felt the need to defend him, even if it was to my church history buddies.
I was really torn and didn’t know what to do. I walked out of the service in tears that first night, but I was still facing a week’s worth of revival services, and Papa would be speaking at a lot of them. I couldn’t bear the idea of having to sit in chapel, knowing what the kids were tweeting. When I asked them if they could just go easy on Papa—because he was my father—they said they didn’t understand. Everyone was fair game. Why should Papa get special treatment? I felt betrayed.
Desperate, I went to Dr. Green and explained my dilemma. He always had answers, and he comforted me and assured me that everything would work out. The next morning in charismatic theology class, he confronted our group. “I don’t know who is playing into all this,” he said, “but I’m sure you know who you are.” His wisdom inspired me. “It’s okay to analyze things,” he said. “It’s not okay to criticize someone for their beliefs.” The tweets stopped after that. Another lesson learned.
11
Meeting Austin
We were very different, and we disagreed about a lot of things, but he was always so interesting, you know?
—JOHN GREEN, THE FAULT IN OUR STARS
It was the beginning of my last year at ORU when I started hearing about this incredible new guy on campus. I had taken on the role of a sort of chaplain on my dorm room floor the year before, and all of the younger girls came to me for counsel, which usually involved either talking about boys or solving a crisis of faith of some kind. I was a good listener and pretty levelheaded, and I thought it was sweet that the younger girls thought I had the answers they needed. Whenever they came knocking at my door, burdened with a problem, or just wanting to chatter about this and that, I’d make tea and we’d sit by the space heater in my dorm room, talking until the tea was gone or the problem was solved.
One day, just after the fall semester began, a couple of the girls, one a freshman, the other a sophomore, came to me wanting to discuss the kinds of qualities they thought they should be looking for in a husband. The girls said they were bored with their lives. The only thing worth thinking about was that one day in the not too distant future they would be planning elaborate weddings with all of the trimmings and shopping for frilly white bridal gowns. They were typical ORU girls in that they were there as much, and probably more, for the opportunity to find good Christian husbands than to study or prepare for careers. One of them said her parents told her if she couldn’t find a husband meeting all of her requirements at ORU, she wouldn’t find one anywhere. That didn’t surprise me. It’s what all good evangelical parents wanted for their daughters: a nice, clean-cut evangelical boy.
For me, listening to the girls talk was almost like listening to a foreign language. I just didn’t understand someone who was eighteen or nineteen wanting so much to be married when there were so many other interesting things to do, like traveling and meeting people and changing the world. But listen I did as they described what they considered to be perfect husband material. This hot new guy that was walking around campus was it.
It turned out to be Austin.
Austin Anderson was new to the university. He had come there straight from serving two tours in Iraq, and he was creating quite a stir. He was a little bit older than most of the rest of us, twenty-five at the time. He was tall and strapping, with a smile to die for, and he had that rare presence that made him a magnet for girls, who wanted to date him, and boys, who wanted to be him.
That day in my dorm room was the first time I’d ever heard of him. “This new guy named Austin” was all the two girls could talk about. How cute he was. What a kidder he was. He was a Marine. He drove a big, black pickup truck and rode a motorcycle. On and on. I humored them and pretended to be interested but, honestly, I was barely paying attention. I was much more interested in discussing the kinds of things I talked about with my small group of church history classmates. Besides, I was dating someone at the time and wasn’t looking for a boyfriend for myself. And even if I had been looking, this guy didn’t fit the description of what I found appealing in a boy. I liked the intellectual types, the ones who always had their head in big, brainy books.
I didn’t have a lot of friends at ORU besides my church history friends, and that wa
s by design, but I think the younger girls felt kind of protective of me. They didn’t know that I had a life outside of school and that, in my spare time, I really enjoyed being by myself and poking around the city, doing things like talking to homeless people about their stories, or rummaging through the books on the dollar table at the occult bookshop, or grabbing a smoke with a stranger at the Star Avenue Hookah Lounge. The girls who told me about Austin were always trying to get me to socialize more with their friends on campus, and they constantly invited me to join them in whatever they were doing.
That day, they asked if I’d join them for lunch in the cafeteria the following afternoon. “C’mon, Hannah! So you can meet everyone!” they said. I agreed, reluctantly. I knew they wanted to show off their “older” friend. “What can it hurt?” I said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I almost didn’t go. Spending my time with a bunch of giggling teenaged girls, talking about boys, which was bound to be the topic of conversation, wasn’t my idea of a productive afternoon. But that morning I had been assigned to write some pretty heavy stuff for one of my theology classes, and I’d decided I needed a break. So I walked over to the dining hall to meet my young friends.
I was irritated almost from the moment I got there. I met the girls, we got our lunches, and I followed them with my tray to a table where a bunch of students I didn’t recognize were talking and joking around. All of them were girls except for the boy they were fussing over. He wore a golf shirt and ball cap over his razor cut. When I tell you he was huge, I mean he was so tall and muscular that his frame literally took up a chair and a half. And he had a big voice to match. He didn’t talk. He bellowed. And he oozed charisma and energy. I didn’t know who he was, nor did I care. I thought he was arrogant, and I instantly disliked him.
I purposely sat on the edge of the group, rather than with the group, and picked at my lunch, paying little attention to Mr. Popularity, because he was getting plenty from everyone else. Those girls were drooling over him. I’m sure he was trying to catch my eye just because I was ignoring him. I could tell he was used to being the center of attention, and there was no way I was going to make a contribution to his already inflated ego. I was about half finished with my salad when one of the girls turned to me, all giddy and excited, and said, “What do you think?” “Of what?” I asked. “Of him?” she responded, tipping her head toward the boy. “What do you think of Austin? Isn’t he hot?” So this was our evangelical heartthrob. I should have known. I just smiled. I didn’t want to be associated with a group of girls who were smitten with this bigheaded, oversized jock, so I quickly wrapped up the rest of my lunch and left, walking back to my room to study for a class I had early the following morning.
Later that day, I was rushing from my dorm to my car in the parking lot, with my arms overloaded with books, late for my job at a local coffee house, when I heard someone shouting my name. “Hannah! Hey, Hannah!” I turned quickly, and the books spilled out of my arms. A boy was walking quickly toward me. What does he want? I wondered, annoyed with the intrusion. I couldn’t place the face at first. “Hey,” I said, looking up as he bent down to help me pick up my books. I’m sure I couldn’t have sounded less enthusiastic. Then it registered who he was. “Oh, you’re the one who was at the table today, the ones my dorm mates were talking to.”
When I say that boy was grinning ear to ear, that is not an exaggeration. His teeth were dazzling white, and his eyes literally sparkled, like glitter. I didn’t understand why he was so intent on talking to me. I know your kind, I thought. “Yeah!” he said. “I’m Austin. Austin Anderson. So, I’ve wanted to meet you for a while.” If it wouldn’t have been so rude, I would have rolled my eyes. He’d wanted to meet me for a while? I’d never seen him before a few hours ago. “Why?” I asked. Austin seemed unfazed by my lack of interest and proceeded to tell me a story about how he’d seen me a few times in chapel, sitting in the back with my headphones on, reading one of my theology textbooks.
“Yeah, I’ve seen you there several times,” he said. “The last time you were sleeping.” Now he had my attention. “I was sleeping?” I asked. “I’m sorry, but I don’t remember that,” I replied, but I knew he was telling the truth because I was guilty of nodding off in chapel sometimes, usually after pulling all-nighters before tests. I just thought I’d been really good at covering it up. “Oh, yeah!” he said. “It was you all right. There you were, with your head back, sleeping on the chair in chapel. I thought it was pretty cool.”
I pulled my car keys out of my bag, hoping he’d take the hint, but he kept talking. “I hate this place,” he said. “All of the girls around here are Daddy’s girls. They don’t work for anything. Them and their expensive handbags. And they all drive yellow Mustangs. All they want to do is get married.” Boy, he was blunt. He sounded like me.
I was late for work. “Right now really isn’t a good time,” I said finally. “I’ve really got to go. It was nice talking to you.” I turned to unlock my car door, my books heavy in my arms. “Wait,” he said. “Just for a minute. Please.” I was really getting annoyed. I was certain my boss at the coffee bar was getting angrier each moment that I still wasn’t there. “Listen,” he said. “I just got back from Iraq. Just got back! And this place is crazy! It’s nothing like I thought it would be.
“Could we hang out sometime?” he asked.
Despite my efforts to dislike Austin, there was something about him that was different from the lugheads I’d compared him to and prejudged him to be. It was something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. He was a bit full of himself, but in a sweet kind of way, and he was sort of rude, but he had this vulnerability about him that surprised me and that I liked.
I could tell he just needed to talk. That he wanted to get some things off his chest. “What do you say?” he asked. “Oh, I don’t know,” I said, wondering how the boy I was dating would take to the idea of my spending time with the campus hunk. “No, really, Hannah,” he said. “I’d really like that.”
I put my book on the hood of my car, grabbed a pen and paper from my (secondhand) purse, and scribbled down my number. “Here,” I said, pushing the paper at him. “But I’m warning you. I’m really, really busy.” He nodded and smiled, and I jumped in my car and drove off.
And I was right about my boss. When I got to the coffee house, he was behind the bar, steaming milk and steaming mad.
12
Best Friends
Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends.
—VIRGINIA WOOLF, THE WAVES
I didn’t give Austin another thought until he texted me a few days later. “Want to hang out?” he asked. My body tensed up when I read it. He seemed nice enough, but I really didn’t need another friend, and I had too much work to be “hanging out.” What does this guy want with me? Whatever it is, I’m not interested, but I don’t want to be rude, and I’m sure I’ll be seeing him around campus. “Sure,” I texted back.
We drove to a park along the river and sat in my car. We settled in, and I lit a cigarette, and he pulled out a cigar. I burned incense from India, and he began talking about his workouts (he worked out twice a day) and poking fun at my freak folk music by the girl band CocoRosie. I turned down the music. “So what’s your story?” I asked.
Austin was all country boy. He came from a small town in Oklahoma that was less than a square mile and had 425 people living there. He told me his father was a preacher with his own church but had died tragically in a car crash when Austin was fourteen. His mom was so frail and grief stricken that he had to arrange the funeral. After that, he played both brother and father to his younger brother and sister, he said.
His grandpa was his role model, and even though he was extremely close to his grandparents and spent a lot of time tending to the cattle and fixing fences on their ranch, he was bitter about not having had his father around for very long. He had missed a lot as a teenager because of all the responsibility he had, and he resented that. When h
e was a junior in high school, he decided there was more to life than anything his small town had to offer. He wanted to do something bigger and more significant with his life than he could do living there. When a Marine recruiter came to town, looking for volunteers, he saw an out and signed up.
I was surprised at how open Austin was being. He seemed really comfortable with me, and that made me feel at ease. The more he told me, the more I wanted to hear, and the more he talked. The words spilled out of his mouth like water from a breached dam. Austin said he found a lot of satisfaction in being a Marine. I got the feeling he liked bossing people around. He had served for seven years and had risen to the rank of sergeant before being honorably discharged.
“You just came out of the Marines,” I said. “It can’t be easy for you to be here.”
Austin got mad. He said he’d dreamed of coming to ORU since his father brought him to the campus with their church when he was a little kid, but he was in Iraq when he made the decision to apply. He had prayed over it, telling God, “If this is what I think it is, I need it, Lord.”
War had done a job on Austin. He told me he had nightmares a lot. “You wouldn’t like them,” he said, spitting the tip of his cigar out the car window. “They’re all filled with blood and people dying.” He said he often woke up thinking he’d killed someone, although he never did. On the day after the nightmares, he always had a hard time functioning. Sometimes he didn’t sleep for days for fear he would awaken to those gruesome images. The terrible things he saw in war had made him less spiritual, less Christian, Austin said.