EP52 - The Journey

[00:00:00] Hi, everyone. This is Dawn Klem, and you are on my podcast, Milkweed and Monarchs at this taping. We're in the middle of the Christmas season, and so I thought today I would share with you my religious and spiritual journey. [00:00:19] It is quite a journey, and I think it's one that you will enjoy, especially because it's this time of year. [00:00:28] So as many of you may already know, and I have talked about it previously on my podcast. [00:00:35] My parents got married. [00:00:39] My dad was 32 and my mom was 21. So my dad was 11 years older than my mom. [00:00:46] My dad had been previously married, and he had had two. Two daughters with his first wife. He ended up getting a divorce from her because she was. She had had an extramarital affair, so he got a divorce. [00:01:07] And my mom was raised in a family where her grandpa was actually a minister for the United Brethren Church, and five of six of his brothers were also ministers, and the seventh brother was an eye doctor. I love to tell that story because there's always one that goes off on their own pathway. And so I say to the eye doctor, good for you. [00:01:37] So they were really quite religious. And her. My mom making the decision to, number one, married a divorced man with children, was definitely frowned upon in my grandma's house. [00:01:53] And the second part, that he was Catholic, was even worse. So he was a divorced Catholic. My grandma was not a fan at all. [00:02:02] But they went ahead and got married right when my mom turned 21. She turned 21 in January 29th, and they got married on June 5th. They got married in somebody's house because they couldn't get married in the church. [00:02:15] And for the most part, they were happily married. [00:02:20] But what came out of that divide in religion is what my brother and I lived through. [00:02:28] So they made the decision when they got married that they were not going to get us baptized and they were not going to pick our religion for us. [00:02:36] They didn't like how my grandma had been so pushy, and they felt like the religious choice really should be up to us. I don't know how I feel about that as an adult now, but I do know. I don't think it was right that they did not baptize us. They. They could have baptized us as a Christian. [00:02:59] I just don't think that part was the right way to go. [00:03:04] But they did get us back, didn't get us baptized, and they gave us free religious freedom to figure out what we wanted to do. [00:03:13] My mom was adamant about us having some kind of religious training, and the religious training always Took the form of Bible school. [00:03:23] So I went to Bible school across the street at the three Ladies house. And then that was during the school year. And then in the summer, I. I went to my grandma's house for Bible school for about five years with my brother. [00:03:39] So when I went across the street and started Bible school, I was four years old. [00:03:45] And the three ladies that lived there were Mrs. Nan Curvis, Ms. Betts, her sister, and Mrs. Wilcox. [00:03:53] And the very first time I went, I was four, my mom walked me across the street and then she stood, came back and stood on the four floor front porch to listen to make sure that everything went okay for me. Well, the very first question Mrs. Nan Curves asked the group of kids was, does anyone know a Bible hymn? [00:04:17] And I raised my hand right away and she said, dawn, do you know a Bible hymn? I said, yes, I do. She said, would you like to sing it for us? I said, I would love to. [00:04:28] And I launched into I've been working on the railroad all the live long day. [00:04:37] I sang the whole entire song. [00:04:40] If any of you knew my mother, you would know that she was across the street on that front porch, hunched over, laughing hysterically at my song choice. [00:04:53] And I. It wasn't until years later that she told me that story and I was completely mortified. [00:05:00] Mrs. Nankervis Let me sing the whole song. And then she said, that was wonderful, dawn, but that's not exactly the hymn that we were looking for. [00:05:09] I'm like, oh boy. Just off to a good start. But at four years old, I really didn't know. I think I was the youngest one in the group. There are a lot of older kids there and I felt so proud that I could sing in front of a bunch of older kids. [00:05:25] In the meantime, during the summer, she started us at Bible school at my grandma's house, which my grandma was thrilled about. Okay, she wanted us to go. I was five when we went to my grandma's house and my brother was four. [00:05:42] And Bible school was one week long in the mornings. And then we would spend the second week there too. [00:05:49] In the afternoons after Bible school, we could come home and just hang out and kind of have fun on the farm. She lived on a 80 acre soybean farm. [00:05:58] So we would go to Bible school Monday through Friday. [00:06:04] Nick and I were in different age groups because I was older than him. [00:06:09] And on Friday after we had our last class, we would come back to the main part of the church, sit in the pews, and then the minister would get up in front of the church and tell us how wonderful we all were during the week and what a great Bible school we had. But he had one last thing to ask us. Does anybody here want to ask Jesus Christ into their heart? [00:06:36] Every single year for five years we went, my brother raised his hand. [00:06:43] Every single time he raised his hand, I would say to myself, I oh, no, I gotta raise my hand. He can't go down there without me going down there. [00:06:54] My mom's gonna wonder why I didn't go if my brother went. So I would raise my hand too. [00:07:01] We'd march all the way down to the front of the church, and we would stand there with the minister. [00:07:08] Sometimes there would be a group of six or seven kids. [00:07:12] Sometimes there'd be a group of four. Four kids, I think. Once it was just me and my brother. [00:07:19] And he would say, let's all pray and let's ask Jesus to come into our hearts. [00:07:27] And so we would go through the same ritual every year. [00:07:32] Finally, on the fifth year, and I figured it was getting to be pretty close to quitting time for me going to Bible school. [00:07:41] I said to my grandma at home, grandma, how many times are you supposed to ask Jesus to come into your heart? She says, you only need to do it one time, honey. I go one time. Every time we come every year, Nick wants to ask Jesus into his heart. She says, well, your brother likes a lot of attention, honey. [00:08:03] I just burst out laughing. [00:08:06] But that was the last time I went in front of the church and asked Jesus Christ into my heart. [00:08:13] Still haven't been baptized. Don't forget that during the school year, we made it through, you know, fifth grade, and I did, and now I'm going into sixth grade. [00:08:29] This is the time when all of the elementary students got to converge into one school. [00:08:37] So we had four elementary schools there. We had Asio, Paul, Bailey, Geer, and Mock. [00:08:45] And I went to Mock. And so I got to meet a whole bunch of new kids when I got into the sixth grade, and that's when the sleepover started. [00:08:58] So a lot of my new friends would ask me to stay overnight on a Saturday night, which meant on Sunday morning I. I was going to church. [00:09:09] This is how I really got started, into a lot of different churches there. I've been to a lot of churches in Hillsdale, and it was really based on my friends and how most of my friends were raised. [00:09:22] So I've been to the First Methodist Church. [00:09:25] My cousins and one of my really good friends went to the First Methodist Church. [00:09:31] I went to the Presbyterian Church. One of our neighbors and her mother was actually the organist at the Presbyterian church. [00:09:39] I went to the College Baptist Church. My neighbor's father was the minister there. [00:09:47] I went to the Nazarene Church because one of my friends went there. [00:09:52] I went to the Episcopal Church, another friend went there and I went to the Catholic church. I went to the Catholic church a lot. [00:10:01] When I got into high school. My boyfriend was Catholic and also his sister was one of my best friends, so I went there a lot. [00:10:13] Previous to me dating him, I had gone with another friend whose family was Italian and they are devout Catholics. So I had gone with her a couple times as well. [00:10:23] I have to say, out of all the churches, I always felt felt the most comfortable in a Catholic church. I think it's just the formal presentation of that church. [00:10:35] I just like the rituals and how it's the same every time. I felt so good about being in that church. [00:10:48] So that was my favorite church. And I did go to a lot of churches and I went to church quite often. [00:10:55] So I just didn't get baptized and I didn't make a decision on which church I was going to join. [00:11:05] Then I ended up going into the Navy. When I joined the Navy at boot camp, everyone went to church on Sunday. [00:11:15] And the church was non denominational because we had so many people from so many different walks of life. [00:11:23] And I went to church every single Sunday there. And it was fantastic. [00:11:27] When I got stationed in San Diego, that stretched my spiritual and religious journey even further because out there there were so many different cultures. Many, many, many, many, many cultures. I had come from from predominantly Christian background. [00:11:54] There were lots of different denominations, but they were all Christian. [00:11:59] I had heard of Jewish people before and I knew a Jewish family because he was a physician at the hospital where my mom worked and also because they were neighbors to my cousins and the daughter hung out with my cousin's family all the time. [00:12:18] So I did know of Jewish people, but I didn't really understand the difference at that point. [00:12:24] So you get out to San Diego and there's everything out there, everything besides Christianity. [00:12:34] One of the first things when I. I did, when I got there was go to a Hare Krishna rally in Balboa Naval park in the urban Balboa Park. Not the Navel, but Balboa Park. I didn't even know what a Hari Krishna was. I had no real understanding of that, but I knew it was some kind of religious group. [00:13:00] They would. They all had their heads shaved, the men, and they would wear white robes and they would put big posters up that said Hare Krishna rally tonight. Bring your own salt and pepper. [00:13:15] Well, I have since learned that Hare Krishna is a member of the Islam culture. [00:13:22] And so that part of their culture is to preach to the masses and to have a feast. So that's what they were doing in Balboa Park. [00:13:35] I loved going. [00:13:37] I don't know, there were so many different people there and they chanted the. They didn't really preach to you, they just chanted Hare Krishna. Hare Krishna. [00:13:48] So it was fascinating to me. [00:13:53] There were lots of other different cultures and there were many Jewish physicians that I worked with at that time. So I was more exposed to the Jewish culture at that time. [00:14:04] Then I got stationed at Balboa Naval Hospital. [00:14:10] No, excuse me. Then I got stationed at Iceland, Keflavik, Iceland. [00:14:15] And I went up there and again, they had a non denominational church there. But some of my friends, one of the charge nurses I worked with actually went into Keplic and went to the Baha' I Church. [00:14:33] Never heard of the Baha' I faith before in my life and never have really heard about it much since. [00:14:41] She convinced me to go because she felt like the religion was more pro women. [00:14:48] So, you know, this is like 1981 and you know, life is starting to change now in the United States. [00:14:57] Women are starting to come into their own. They've already burned their bras, right? [00:15:02] So she really liked that religion for that reason. [00:15:07] I didn't really hear much about it being pro women. I really don't know where she came up with that. But when I looked and I have a prayer book and when I actually looked up, I realized that's also part of the Islamic faith, though it is not a Christian religion. [00:15:27] So Jewish, Hare Krishna, Baha' I faith, none of them are Christians, but I did expose myself to them and it was, I think it was really good for me. It's good to hear from other people and what their beliefs are. [00:15:44] So flash forward, I go back to San Diego and I'm going to marry my ex husband. My ex husband was a Catholic. [00:15:53] We got married in the Catholic church in Hillsdale and I went to the Pre Cana classes to get religious training. [00:16:06] Still didn't get baptized, still not a member of the Catholic Church. I didn't get confirmed or anything like that, but we got married in the Catholic Church. [00:16:19] And then as most of you know, that marriage did not work out. I was living. I had come back from the west coast and was now living in Cape Cod when our marriage dissolved. [00:16:36] And I worked in the hospital there and the priest would come to our floor quite often. [00:16:45] Father Murphy, he was probably right around my age, in his 30s at the time that I met him. I absolutely adored him so much. [00:16:55] And I told him all about my situation with my ex husband. [00:17:00] And he's like, don, God, you would not be married in the eyes of God. If this is the kind of life that you're living and you need to have your marriage annulled, you can get your marriage adult. You can become a Catholic. Your life is going to be so much better. [00:17:17] You know, I. And I wanted to. I don't know why I didn't. I really felt like, yeah, this is. This is my calling. [00:17:25] I think what really happened, though, is I knew I couldn't stay there, be divorced and stay there with him. [00:17:33] He was never going to let me go. [00:17:35] I had to leave there. [00:17:39] So I left and I moved to Maine. [00:17:44] And after being in Maine a couple years, I ended up moving in with my current husband, Craig, whom I've been married to now for 30 years. [00:17:53] Craig was baptized, and he went all the way through Catholic training until it was time for him to be confirmed. And then his mom didn't want him to be confirmed as a Catholic because she wanted him to be able to make his own decision when he became an adult. [00:18:16] So we did have that similar experience, although he did get baptized. Kudos to his mother, by the way. [00:18:27] And so we, we decided, well, we're going to get married. We're going to get married. And you've heard that story from both of us. [00:18:37] So the Congregational Church was just down the street from us. [00:18:42] And I said, craig, I got to get baptized. The time has come. This is ridiculous. Why am I not baptized? You know what I mean? [00:18:51] So we joined the church. I got baptized. I was 35 years old when I finally got baptized. You know, for those of you who don't know, I'm sure most of you do know. I didn't really know, but being baptized as a Christian is like your passport into heaven. [00:19:10] So if you're not baptized, you don't have a passport. I don't know if that means you're on standby. [00:19:17] I really don't. But I want to go there, so I'm so glad I finally got baptized. [00:19:24] So anyhow, we joined that church and it was. I was working at the hospital and we got married there. We went to church all the time. We were really happy when we adopted the girls. We took them to that church. Things were going along pretty well. [00:19:44] And then one day I had. I was working on the weekends, of course, Every other weekend I'm a nurse, an oncology nurse. And they were going to do a bottle drive for the church and I couldn't be part of the bottle drive. I had to work. That's how it was. [00:20:03] Well, one of the higher up ladies in the church really ostracized me for not participating in the bottle drive. She told me actually that I should be ashamed of myself that my husband had participated and done such a great job and I was not there to support him. [00:20:26] Whoa. [00:20:28] That was eye opening to me. Okay. [00:20:32] I just could not believe someone was going to pass judgment on me like that. I didn't get it. I really didn't get it because I've always believed that being a nurse is kind of like God's work. [00:20:43] I am doing God's work, what God would want me to do. I'm helping people. [00:20:48] So when she passed judgment on me like that, I was like, I don't know if I can go back to that church. And I actually struggled. [00:20:59] It all worked out though, because then we didn't stay in that town. After the girls came and my mom came to live with us, my mom was unhappy with the schools there for the girls, although their schools were not that bad. My mom was just fussy. [00:21:17] So we started to look for a better place to live. And ultimately we ended up moving to Cape Elizabeth. Beautiful community. [00:21:26] And when we got there, we all decided we're going to look for a church together. That was one of the missions that we had agreed upon is my mom wanted the girls to have religious training. [00:21:38] So I think they were Greek Orthodox. We were trying to figure that out. They have been baptized, but I'm not sure. [00:21:47] I'm fairly certain that they came from a Greek Orthodox situation though, in Romania. [00:21:53] So we were trying to. [00:21:56] We decided that we would look at all the churches in the Cape Elizabeth area and try to figure out the best fit for our family. [00:22:04] And so we found a congregational church. We drove by it. My mom liked the looks of it. [00:22:11] Don't get me started. But anything. Anyhow, we're going to go to this church on Sunday. We're all excited. Everybody gets dressed up. We get there. The minister greeted us at the door. My mom liked him immediately. [00:22:25] We get sat down in the pew and I'm thinking, oh, thank you, Lord. This is going to be awesome. [00:22:32] Yeah. No, not really. [00:22:35] Because when the church got started, a young woman got up to the podium and started to tell all of us that this week, this month actually was diversity month at the church. [00:22:52] And so they were going to be sharing a film with us today from Kermit the Frog of Sesame street about what it's like to be green. [00:23:06] Because they wanted us to be able to accept anybody that came to the church, no matter what they looked like. And this was their kickoff message with Kermit the Frog. [00:23:20] So they played the song that got done. [00:23:23] Then we got the sermon closing. [00:23:28] We get up, we're leaving the church. The minister's there to watch us leave, you know, hopes he's gonna hear back from us. We get in the car, and I'm thinking, okay, that didn't go so bad. I think my mom is gonna like this church. You know, that's what I'm thinking. We get in the car, close the doors. My mom goes, that was the most disgusting thing I've ever seen in my life. I'm like. I'm looking at Craig go, oh. [00:23:55] She says, of course we're Christian. We accept people for exactly. For who they are. This was nothing more than a marketing message to get people into the church. She says, I think it's disgusting. Kermit the Frog should not be delivering a message in church. It should be more serious than that. Well, that was the end of that. Okay. [00:24:20] And we did try a couple other churches, but she didn't like any of them. [00:24:25] And we stayed there for a couple of years, not long. [00:24:31] And my mom really wanted to come back to Michigan, and she wanted us to come back, and it was time. She had helped us out so much, the least we could do was come back. Craig was struggling with employment there, and we felt like. Like his options were maybe going to be a little bit better in Michigan also. I had gotten my master's degree while I was in Maine, and so I thought maybe I could try my hand in leadership and go back to Michigan. And she was happy about it because we could go to church at the Presbyterian church where she was going. [00:25:12] We didn't go there all the time, obviously, because we. We didn't live there, but we went for all the major holidays. We went a lot of times in the summer, the girls would go down and stay with my mom, and they always went to church with her. [00:25:29] And she was happy about the whole thing. She was very happy. [00:25:34] So it was. It was better than it had been. [00:25:41] But one of the things that happened when I started working at Maine Med and also when I came back here to Grand Rapids, in the healthcare community, there are. So There's a lot of diversity. I mean, we have Muslims, we have Buddhists, we have Hindus, we have many Many a large population of Jewish people that work in the healthcare industry, and we're all on a health care team working together as partners to take care of the patients. [00:26:21] You don't really pass judgment on these people. [00:26:26] You know, I remember 9, 11 happened, and I. When I got to Grand Rapids, a lot of the people that I worked with in my clinical hallway were Muslim physicians. [00:26:43] If you would have told me, you know, 15 years prior, this is what's going to happen, I never would have believed it. [00:26:52] But you don't think about that religious culture when you're trying to take care of patients. [00:26:59] All of those boundaries go away because we're partnered as a care team to take care of patients. [00:27:08] And it was good for me. You know, I would talk to everyone about their religion. You know, what's your religion? Even if you were a Christian? Like, I had a physician that I worked with that was a Seventh Day Adventist, completely different from the traditional religion that I'm used to. I had a patient that was a Jehovah Witness, and I had Jehovah Witnesses come to my house, both in Maine and in Michigan, much to my husband's dismay. I would always have them come in the house. I love to hear about their culture. What's the difference. What's the difference between your religion and my religion? That's how I always wanted to know, and it was really good for me. [00:27:56] The hard part about Jehovah Witness is that they won't accept blood transfusions. So as a healthcare provider, that can be iffy. I remember one time I was bone marrow transplant coordinator in Maine, and the patient's red blood cell count got down so low, and they were not. He was not going to take blood transfusion. He could have died, but he would have been okay with that. But we could save him. So, you see, there are some cultural things that's really hard to do. [00:28:29] Another thing is I had a patient that was a Muslim, a Somali woman, and she. They thought she had ovarian cancer, and they were going to be performing surgery on her the next day. We had a translator present, and we also had her children there. But the children refused for us to tell her the truth. [00:28:55] They wanted us to tell her that she was going to have an appendectomy. And I said, this is an ethical issue, but it is their culture. [00:29:05] They said, she can't know what it is, otherwise she'll die because she'll just let herself die. [00:29:11] I'm like, oh, boy. Then if we had people die, like, we would have a Native American dye We would have to turn the bed facing towards the window so the soul could go out. [00:29:26] We also had Hindus that were on the floor that needed to pray to Allah, and they would bring their carpets with them. And then we'd make a little space for them, like in a solarium so that they would be able to pray when they needed to pray. [00:29:45] There's so many different religious cultures. If someone of the Jewish faith dies, you have to have the body out of there quickly because it has to be buried, I think, within five days. [00:29:57] So there's. There's a lot of challenges with different religious cultures as far as health care goes. [00:30:06] But the point is that we need to honor everybody's culture. [00:30:12] Now. What does that mean for me? [00:30:15] Well, here I am. [00:30:17] I'm retired now. [00:30:19] I have not found a church that I really feel extremely comfortable in. [00:30:25] But I've done other things now. [00:30:28] Like, I listen to the Bible in a Year podcast. [00:30:32] I'm on day 275. [00:30:36] It's been one of the most phenomenal experiences that I've ever done. I listen to it every morning. [00:30:43] And Father Mike from Minnesota, he's a Catholic, and he is spectacular. [00:30:53] The other thing I've done is go on the Daily Wire and I listen to, like, Jordan Peterson. He's done a panel on Exodus, Genesis, and right now I'm doing the Gospels. [00:31:06] I think, you know, I try to honor the Christian practices to the best of my ability, and I'm going to continue on the same journey and hope that I do make it up to heaven. [00:31:24] I think the biggest thing that you can say is be a good person, be kind, be generous, be caring, and try to do the right thing. Honor God, honor Jesus, because he did die to save all of us. [00:31:45] In all the cultures and all the religions that I've been exposed to, and I'm sure I'm missing some. [00:31:54] There's one God. I think the Hindu is the only one that has multiple gods. [00:32:02] But there is one God out there. [00:32:06] And we all lived or were born and raised in different cultures, and we should all honor other cultures, but we should know that there is one God and Jesus came to save us from our sins. [00:32:29] That's what I believe, and it's been an honor. Oh, one last thing. [00:32:35] If you ever want to or have not ever seen the Passion of Christ, I would highly recommend that movie. I think I cried through the whole entire thing. For me, that definitely put into perspective the whole, whole story of Jesus and how he died for us. I thought it was one of the most amazing movies that I've ever seen and I felt changed after I saw that movie. [00:33:09] So that's my journey. It's still ongoing and I hope you enjoyed my story. [00:33:20] If you're interested in sharing a story with me, please go on my website, milkmon.com M I L K-M-O-N.com and you can either send me an email, it'll come directly to me, or you can call me directly on my cell phone. 616-843-1392 I would love to hear from you. [00:33:46] I think next year I already have some people lined up. They're going to speak directly, but I also have at least three months of taped episodes now, so they're going to be coming out regularly once a week now trying to shoot for Saturday, but if it's not Saturday, it'll definitely be on Sunday. [00:34:08] Thank you so much for listening to my podcast. It really does mean the world to me and I feel so grateful that my friends and family have taken the time to listen to some of my stories. [00:34:27] Until the next time.