I don’t know how it is with other denominations, but in the Lutheran church, confirmation for a youth is a big deal.  When I went to a Lutheran school (7-8 grades), confirmation classes took over our normal religion classes and we had to not just read every book in the Bible, but we also listened to them on cassette tape (tells you how old I am) as well as answer worksheets on each…and then after each book, we had to schedule a meeting with a pastor to discuss the chapter.  {gulp}  I was intimidated, to say the least, because I’d grown up in a semi-Catholic family and the Priest was one to be held on high and certainly not one to bother with discussions from the youngsters. 

At the same time that I was in that school, I changed foster homes…and although my new foster family was Lutheran, they went to a different church that was part of a different synod.  This meant I could choose which church I wanted to be confirmed in.  The decision was difficult for me, because if I’d continued with confirmation at my school, I would have been confirmed in the 8th grade…but, at my new church, I had to continue with another year of confirmation classes and not get confirmed until the end of 9th grade.

But, oh the DIFFERENCE in the two churches!  Church school was very conservative, life is to be lived by the Word alone…discussion or questions not really necessary or welcome, take it for what it is and live with it, etc.  My new church was of a now non-existent synod, and was so much different by way of discussion on the Bible chapters and how the topics really did have relevance in our lives and in the world we lived in. 

Of course, after finding all of this out, I chose to stay another year and get confirmed in my new church.

Just as I made this decision, we got a new pastor at my new church.  He had 4 children, about the ages of my own family, so he was very good in dealing with youth and knowing how to talk to them, to engage them in lively conversations and to educate us on the Bible without us really thinking we were being educated (the nerve!).  I loved him much, and felt a good connection with him as a pastor.

After a year of confirmation classes, Pastor Dave scheduled a weekend church lock-in retreat.  This was our final “exam” before we were confirmed.  It was the weekend of confirmation, and it started on Friday evening and the retreat was to last 24 hours.  We had to fast.  We had to journal, based on a set of questions Pastor Dave had prepared.  We had to find a Bible verse that was “ours” and recite it to the congregation on Confirmation Sunday (mine was Galatians 2:20).  We had to really live, breathe and find the love for our Savior – get in touch with our inner feelings about life and what our faith meant to us, and we had to have chapel time.  During this chapel time, we were sent to the chapel alone, and had to stay awake (no matter what time our allotted time was) and contemplate our spiritual journey with and through Him.

I will tell you that I found forgiveness that weekend.  Forgiveness for my mother, who had abandoned her five children two years previously and then committed suicide a year before.  It was the most profound and heart-warming feeling I’d ever experienced – and I can only attribute it to feeling like His loving arms were finally wrapped around me for all of the pain and suffering that I’d endured as a youth.  I got a God hug, and oh the joy that enveloped me has never left.  It was during my chapel time, at 3 am, that I came upon a journal question about writing about one person in your life that you needed to forgive and writing through your feelings in order to find that forgiveness.  I took my time writing to my dead mother – a letter that I still have today.  I wrote of all the things she’d missed as a mother, selfishly based on my own life.  And I wrote of all of the heartache that I’d endured, being abused and neglected in bad foster homes and how many in my extended family had pretty much left me for dead, because I looked like her.  Then, after the cleansing of my soul, my letter took a decidedly different turn – I started telling her of the good things that had been happening in my life…finding a good foster home, with loving foster parents.  My relationship with her parents, my grandparents, and how well they’d done in keeping in touch with me despite everything.  The happiness that I’d found in my new life.  I found that these changes in my letter depicted the changes in my heart – towards her actions and the choices she made concerning herself and her children.

It was at this point that I realized that I was willing and capable to forgive her.  Totally and without exception.  Because she had her reasons, and although I didn’t learn for many years later what those reasons were, I knew that God had His hand in her life, just as He’d had a hand in my life…and His way was the only way to my salvation.  He chose my mother to be his angel, and I was one lucky girl to have both of my parents be chosen at such a young age. 

I left the chapel with tears, but they were the most joyous and heaven-sent tears ever imagined…and I finally understood what my confirmation was about – it was an affirmation of my baptism, where I accepted Christ into my life forever.  It was also MY choice, one of the few that I’d ever been allowed to make for MYSELF without that extended family getting involved and making decisions based on what THEY thought best for me. 

We were to fast for 40 hours, so even though we were sent home after our retreat, we were still not to eat.  And I didn’t.  I went over to one of my foster grandma’s house and mowed her lawn.  I was starting to feel weak, but I made it through the task and then walked a few miles home.

The next day, Confirmation Sunday, all of the confirmands were part of the church service.  And because I have a commanding presence with my voice, I was chosen to stand beside Pastor Dave and deliver the parts of the service that are attended to behind the altar.  Wow, did I feel special!  I was still hungry and a tad weak, but I delivered my parts perfectly and took my first communion with a humbled heart and the knowledge that from that moment on, my life was going to be different, because it was led by Him.  No matter what others in my family did to me or in my name, His Word was final and He would lead me through future darknesses and into His light.  I had no doubt then and I continue to have no doubt today.

After church, my foster family had arranged for a small get-together with their family and a few friends to celebrate my “coming of age in the church.”  I finally got to eat!  And although my foster parents were going through a very tough time in their lives because their daughter (a year younger than I was) was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease and was in the middle of chemo treatments…they tried to put aside her illness, if just for a few moments, and help be bask in the glory of my confirmation day.

And just when I thought we were done celebrating and it was time to go on about our normal Sunday, my wonderful foster parents surprised me with a bus ticket…so I could go to Missouri (I lived in Iowa at the time) to visit my brothers.  I cried again!  I hugged their necks!  I was elated and overjoyed at the love that they showed to me – knowing how bad I missed my family, and giving me the opportunity to spend two weeks with the boys.  My own real-life brothers, who were taken away from me when Mom left us. 

There it was.  The love that I’d only ever felt from my Gramma from Tramma.  Love from my foster parents, even though they were dealing with their own pain, they were able to show me love in a way that touched me to the core. 

I will never forget that act of love and kindness.  Ever.  Because there were still rocky times ahead for me, but He saw to it that despite the sadness and sorrow, glimmers of hope and twinklings of love were always evident in my life.  I truly affirmed my baptism – and I truly found forgiveness – and I truly saw what love can do when you give it to others.

In 10 days my own daughter will be confirmed.  I can’t say whether or not she’s experienced what I did, but I do know that her life with Christ is pure and true, and whatever she does or doesn’t do, I want her to be able to find her own joy.  And to get her own God hug.