The Journey is Long

This month marks 15 years since my husband and I knew we were finished with Adventism. The year we had just left behind had been a whirlwind of job uncertainty (I was a conference employee), tearful goodbyes to the students I had come to love, an inter-province move, several trips over the Rockies for commitments we had made before we knew we were moving, settling in in a town where we knew not one person (no exaggeration), and starting new jobs in an unfamiliar (public school) setting. 

That fall, I had realized I had a lot of questions about Adventism. The resigning of my conference job as a teacher had not gone smoothly, and after spending 13 years since I had been born again (see story here, see video here) trying to “be the change”—trying to, as I see now, fit the round peg of the Gospel I had learned and accepted into the square hole of Adventism, I could no longer reconcile Adventism’s claim as “the remnant church” with the living out of this “faith” that I was seeing from the highest ranking conference officials.  

Leaving that job was painful in many ways, and while the situation caused pain and confusion, it was not the pain and confusion that drove me from the church. Rather, seeing clearly the reality of the fruit of the tree of Adventism ultimately led to a lot of theological and scriptural digging on my part. Thanks to the relatively new inventions of high speed internet and online forums, I was able to find places to ask my questions. While I was working only casually and had quite a bit of free time on my hands for these things, my husband was up to his ears in his first year of teaching and really had little time to dig into these things with me. 

When Christmas came, the school break was welcome, and while he had two weeks away from work, my husband received a new Bible from my sister, and my dad gifted us two of Dale Ratzlaff’s books, Sabbath in Christ and The Cultic Doctrine of the Seventh-day Adventism. Even though he was not a reader at that time in his life, my husband made quick work of the Cultic Doctrine book and also managed to read through the entire New Testament during the school holidays. Sabbath in Christ took him a little longer to work through, but by the end of January, there was no denying that we could no longer be Seventh-day Adventists. 

While I hear many stories of former Adventists struggling to find a church upon their exit from Adventism, I admit I felt relieved and blessed to have walked into a fantastic church family even before we officially left Adventism. Being burnt out from our position at an Adventist school, we had decided to visit a church closer to home in our new town, as the nearest Adventist church was a fair drive away. 

I had grown up attending non-denominational Christian schools, so this wasn’t much of a stretch for me, but I remember my husband being quite uncomfortable, especially at first. It didn’t take long, however, for us to be welcomed in to the congregation, and we found that they had quite a group of young couples our age. The preaching and teaching were solid and became even more Gospel-based as time went on. We were learning so much and felt grateful to have found a place to call “home.” It was during this time, as well, that we further discovered Life Assurance Ministries, Former Adventist Fellowship, and Proclamation! magazine. 

While we had only planned to stay in that area for a few years to establish my husband’s teaching experience before moving closer to family, fifteen years and three kids later, we are still there! 

I don’t know if it was Adventism or just my simple humanity that has planted this ideal in my head, and please promise not to laugh too loudly, but I find that my default is to expect that life will, overall, improve, or get better or easier. Sometimes I think that it is tied to the fact that I was taught, as you likely were, too, that as Adventists, we must be constantly improving, so that our character could reflect Christ’s. This was to accomplish 2 things, according to Ellen White:

“Christ is waiting with longing desire for the manifestation of Himself in His church. When the character of Christ shall be perfectly reproduced in His people, then He will come to claim them as His own” (COL 69, emphasis mine).

“Those who are living upon the earth when the intercession of Christ shall cease in the sanctuary above are to stand in the sight of a holy God without a mediator. Their robes must be spotless, their characters must be purified from sin by the blood of sprinkling. Through the grace of God and their own diligent effort they must be conquerors in the battle with evil” (GC 425, emphasis mine).

This character perfection and reproduction, of course, is referring to something that, as Adventists, we innately knew was impossible, yet at the same time KNEW to be necessary in order for us to gain heaven. I suppose that somehow I have linked this character perfection in my head with the notion that life will somehow get easier, smoother, as we iron out the wrinkles in our deformed characters. It made sense to me that if I was continually becoming perfect, then I would be able to handle things with increasing perfection, and the benefits of this would naturally spill over into my life becoming more calm, ordered and….perfect! 

Devastation rooted in Adventism

Just as I knew as an Adventist that I could NOT be perfect yet still believed that I MUST be perfect, I now know that increasing perfection is not synonymous with an easier earthly life. Nevertheless, I still find myself needing fairly regular reminders of this fact, and usually they surprise me.

I wrote my faith story for the print edition of Proclamation! in 2015, having just walked through cancer surgery and recovery. In 2016, I shared my faith story from another angle as part of the FAF conference. Both of these tellings of my story recounted God’s faithfulness through the storms I had encountered that far in my life, but I will be honest and admit that, internally, I felt that I had faced these storms, had my faith tested and strengthened, and was now ready to move “onward and upward!” (I will forgive you for chuckling, or outright laughing, at this point.)  

I trusted that the Lord Jesus was faithful to bring me through whatever He had for me, but deep down, I was thinking, “I’ve left Adventism and faced infertility and cancer. I’m part of a thriving, Gospel preaching church body…what could go wrong!?” Famous last words.

In late 2017, things began changing and crumbling in ways that I could never have imagined. The church that had been our family, our spiritual safe haven and home—the place we had assumed would always be our safe haven—revealed itself as no longer so. 

Furthermore, what we had always assumed to be “normal” struggles in our marriage clearly showed themselves to be very serious issues that now needed immediate and intense attention, for each of us as individuals as well as for us as a couple. We spent 2018 living apart, and in April of that year we also had to make the difficult decision to leave our church home. 

I share these things because, while they happened when we were already 13 years removed from our exit from Adventism, the root causes were directly linked to our roots and upbringing in the Adventist church. I’ve said many times over the years that, even though I have worked through the major doctrinal issues and false teachings of the Adventist church, I feel sure I will be forever “picking out the splinters” of Adventism, and as things came to a head in 2018 with my marriage and my church, it became apparent that there were some pretty big splinters coming to the surface. 

The journey is long. While the last two years have probably been the most difficult, emotionally painful years of my relatively short life, I was able to look back—just as I was able to do when I have told my story from in the past—and I can still clearly trace the hand of God. He did lead us to a church home that was safe and loving for the season we needed it as we left the familiarity of Adventism. I believe that He led us there in order to allow us to process through the doctrine and false teaching that was part of who we were, having been raised in the Adventist church. He had allowed us to put down spiritual roots, to become firm in the faith that we would need to sustain us during the things to come, and for that I am grateful. 

Through the pain and difficulty of this recent season of devastation and uncertainty, I have often cried out to Him, wondering what He is doing, not looking forward to walking through the change and loss I saw in front of me as I wondered what the future would hold. Nevertheless, because of the years He had spent preparing us and grounding us in faith, I have been able to know without a doubt that He is not surprised and that He is working all things together for my good and for the good of my family. 

New Beginnings

As we begin 2020, our marriage is in the process of being repaired, but the loss of our church family is perhaps the most difficult and painful thing I have experienced in my life to this point. The trust and love that those relationships represent is a deep loss, and while we are still looking, we have yet to find a church home.  Sometimes it feels like two years is a long time to be “in the wilderness,” but we are grateful for all that this time has taught us and for the assurance that the Lord has not left us. We are trusting Him to lead us to where He wants us to be, and we are waiting eagerly to see what He has in store.   

While I admit that at times I feel a little foolish for being so surprised by this difficult period, it has taught me that we are in a marathon, not a sprint. It was easy to look at the significance of leaving Adventism coupled with the health issues I had encountered and think that the most difficult times were behind me. After all, I thought, I had the important parts of theology and faith nailed down. But, alas, I am human, and while dealing with the spiritual and theological aspects of my life were of huge importance, I neglected to account for how much I had been affected emotionally and psychologically by Adventism and subsequent experiences in my life. I confess that I am frustrated, and at times downright impatient, with this process of picking out the splinters of Adventism, but it is necessary, nonetheless.  

The journey we are on is long. There will be seasons of pain, seasons of sorrow and hardship. In learning the truth that pain will be inevitable, I have also been reminded that, because of Jesus, we have peace, joy, and full assurance IN the pain, sorrow and hardship. I’m sure there will be seasons where the peace and joy will be more prevalent than they are in these hard times, and I look forward to them with great anticipation! 

Meanwhile, I can continue to put my faith in the Lord Jesus, not because of my own ability to be faithful, but because He is incapable of being anything BUT faithful to me. I am so thankful for where He has brought me so far, for how He has taught me, kept me, and loved me. Without His perfect provision, I would not have the spiritual foundation and roots that have kept me anchored over the past two years. There are times that I wish that the journey wasn’t quite so long, but as I am reminded daily, no matter where I am reading in Scripture, it is HE who is doing this work in me, and it is HE who will continue it, and it is HE who will complete it.

Thanks be to the Lord Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith (Philippians 1, Hebrews 12)!

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Kelsie Petersen

Kelsie Petersen lives in central Alberta, Canada. She and her husband Aaron have three boys, Matthew, Tyler and Colby. Kelsie was born and raised in an Adventist home and received her elementary education degree from Canadian University College (formerly Canadian Union College, now Burman University). She is a life-long lover of music and spends her few spare moments at the piano with favorite praise songs and hymns.

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