God Used the Guy Who Drove Me Crazy

New to the story? Start with Part 1, I Was Angry With God, Part 2, God Got to My Husband First, and Part 3, When Church Made Me Want to Walk Away Again.

My Faith Story, Part 4

After everything we had been through with churches, Scott and I had made a vow.

We were never going back.

Not taking a break. Not looking for a better church. Never.

And we meant it.

About a year after we moved to Arizona, we joined Mopars Unlimited of Arizona. We didn’t have kids in school anymore, we didn’t belong to a church, and we really didn’t know many people. The car club gave us a way to meet people.

That’s where we met David.

Let’s just say David and I did not exactly hit it off. 😂

He had two pristine Mopars and, at least to me, came across like he thought he was a little better than everyone else. Scott saw good qualities in him. I mostly saw someone who got on my nerves.

Then I became the newsletter editor.

Every month I put together a 30 to 40 page newsletter for the club. David would send me stories about road trips he and his wife took in their Mopar, and I would edit them.

Because, you know, I was the editor.

Apparently David did not always appreciate my editing. 😂 He would get upset when I cut out parts I thought were fluff, and I would remind him that editing was literally my job.

Then one of our club members passed away in Sierra Vista. A few people had planned to make the trip, but one by one they backed out. Scott couldn’t go because of work.

Somehow, I ended up driving with David.

Just the two of us.

For hours.

It was awkward, and David never really knew how to be quiet. 😂

Not far into the drive, I realized he had K LOVE playing on the radio.

I didn’t say a word.

But I sat there trying to hide the tears running down my face.

I don’t think David noticed.

Something about that music reached a place in me I hadn’t expected. I had spent years saying I was done with church, and here I was sitting beside the man who drove me crazy, quietly crying while Christian music played.

On the way home, David mentioned that he was going to invite Scott to the men’s group at his church, Calvary.

I remember thinking David had a better chance of seeing God tomorrow than getting Scott to go to church.

We had made a vow.

A week or two later, Scott casually told me he was going with David.

My response was pretty much:

WHAT??? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? We said we would never go to church again!

But he went.

For about three months, Scott mainly attended the men’s Sunday school group. Then David’s wife, Penny, called me and asked if I would go with her.

I liked Penny a lot.

So eventually, I went.

One of the things that caught my attention early on was Pastor Mark. Someone had told me they thought he was a former Mormon pastor, but during one service he used a phrase I immediately recognized.

I don’t remember the phrase now, but I knew one thing.

He had been Seventh-day Adventist.

I had grown up SDA, and there are certain things you just recognize.

That made me curious.

Mark and his wife, Leslie, sometimes talked about leaving the Adventist church. Leslie once shared that the first time she vacuumed on the Sabbath after leaving, she cried while doing it.

If you didn’t grow up with those kinds of rules, that may sound strange.

I understood it completely.

A few weeks after I started attending, Penny and I heard about something called the “Married’s Class.”

We thought it sounded like a class about marriage.

It wasn’t. 😂

It was basically a Sunday school class for couples who wanted to attend together.

The problem was that joining meant Scott and David would have to give up their men’s group. It took Penny and me a couple of weeks to convince them to try it.

Scott loved it.

The class had around 80 couples and was very active. Potlucks, game nights, family activities, friendships.

Pretty quickly, Calvary started to feel like our church.

Another thing that helped me was the coffee shop.

Calvary encouraged people to bring their Bibles, follow along, and take notes. I loved that, but trying to balance a Bible and notebook in a regular church seat was frustrating.

In the coffee shop, we could sit at a table, have something to eat, watch the service, open our Bibles, and take notes comfortably.

Usually eight or ten of us from the Married’s Class sat together, and afterward we would talk about the service.

That helped a lot.

And somewhere along the way, I kept hearing the same message both in church and in class.

Relationship with God.

Not just rules.

Not just checking boxes.

Relationship.

I can’t tell you the exact moment that idea clicked for me. It happened over time.

The friendships. The teaching. The music. Opening my Bible. Taking notes. Talking about what we had heard.

It all started working together.

And here’s the part that still makes me laugh.

Scott and I had vowed we would never go to church again.

Before long, we rarely missed.

We went Sunday mornings, Wednesday nights, and sometimes even Sunday nights.

We became very involved. Scott went on men’s retreats and cooked for a father-son camping trip with around 400 guys. I went on women’s retreats, attended women’s Bible study when I could, and organized weekend trips for the women in our Married’s Class.

We built friendships and made some amazing memories.

Calvary became a huge part of our lives for more than ten years.

And none of it started the way I would have expected.

It started with a car club.

A man who drove me absolutely crazy.

A long, awkward drive.

And a Christian radio station playing while I quietly tried to hide my tears.

Apparently God has a sense of humor. ❤️

Because somehow, He used the last person I ever would have expected to lead us back through the doors of a church.

This version is roughly 1,000 words, and I think it moves much better without losing the heart of it.