A Quest to Discover the Essence of Faith: Coming out of the Darkness, on My Life's Journey, to Find Faith

By Evangelia VanPatten

In 'A Quest to Find the Essence of Faith,' a gripping memoir, the author courageously unveils the tumultuous journey of her life, navigating through the darkest storms to ultimately find solace and redemption. Struggling with a husband ensnared by addiction and infidelity, she grapples with the heart-wrenching pain of infertility and contemplate

• Language: English
• Publisher: View Finder Arts and Publishing
• Release date: Jun 1, 2024
• ISBN: 9798218417062

Evangelia VanPatten

Evangelia (Lisa) VanPatten is not your typical author; she's an accountant by trade, but her journey into the world of writing has been one of the most rewarding experiences. As she embarks on this new chapter of her life as an author, Lisa's aspiration is that her book will serve as a source of hope, renewal, and unwavering faith for all who journey through its pages.Born in New York and raised in New Jersey, Lisa and her husband Michael, now live in Georgia which they call home. They enjoy exploring the scenic mountains of Northern Georgia and taking part in all the rich activities that the city of Atlanta has to offer.

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Introduction

When I was young, I really disliked my first name. Whenever I told anyone my name, they would always give me a strange look. Perhaps because it was different and not easy to pronounce. It was even worse if someone tried to say my name when they saw it in writing. I could see them struggling and before they really attempted, I would just save them the trouble and tell them my name. One of the most humiliating moments was when I was assigned a gym locker in the boy’s room instead of a locker in the girl’s room. The faculty read my name and couldn’t determine the sex, so they simply guessed. Unfortunately for my sake, they guessed incorrectly. Most everyone presumed it was a foreign name. Once someone determines that you’re not from around here, they tend to treat you differently. Your traditions and the foods you eat are not considered normal. Occasionally, I was treated and felt like an outsider when all I really wanted was to belong.

I am the first generation in my family to be born in the United States of Greek descent and am very proud of my Greek American heritage.

It is a Greek tradition to name the first-born child after the father’s parents. Therefore, as the first-born female in my family, I was bestowed the name Evangelia after my grandmother on my father’s side. Sure, you might think it’s a pretty name now, but back then no one thought so. As a result, I began to use my American nickname the neighborhood kids gave me since they too could not say Evangelia. So, for most of my life I have simply gone by my nickname which happens to be Lisa.

The name Evangelia means bearer of good news. In many European countries, traditional names will be given after a Christian saint or martyr, which is then celebrated each year in memory of that saint. In Greek tradition, we call that day our Name Day. In my case, however, the name Evangelia is not a celebration of a saint but rather of a religious event referred to as the Annunciation of Virgin Mary. This is the day that Mary learns from an angel that she will conceive a son and shall name him Jesus.

When I was young and learned the meaning of my name I didn’t think much of it. In fact, I was a bit disappointed that I was not named after a saint who might have had an interesting history. Now as I reflect upon my life, both the Virgin Mary and her learning—from an angel—that she will become a mother, are so correlated and central to the accounts that I have written in this book.

What is also interesting is the meaning of bearer of good news—that is, a person who brings forth or shares information that is positive and true. As it happens, I find in writing this book, I’m fulfilling a purpose that is associated with the name I was given that I had once so desperately wanted to change.

In the following chapters, you will read memories and accounts of my life that have shaped my belief and relationship to God and how that transformed my faith.

The purpose of these accounts is not to convince you that God exists, but it’s to share my journey through the darkest period of my life when I had little faith.  That journey eventually led me to discover a lighted path where I found purpose and meaning.

The good news I hope to bring through these accounts is hope and inspiration.

If you are struggling with faith, I hope through these stories you will find that you are not alone and simply on a journey as I was. If you are struggling with unanswered prayers, I hope you gain trust that they will be answered in time, as mine were. And through these accounts, I hope you will find that God was present and did provide—as he does and will for you—which you can see when you have faith.

1

The Early Years

The Definition of Faith

According to Dictionary.com, faith means to have complete trust or confidence in a person or a thing.¹ In the context of religion, it means strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.

The concept of faith is also cleverly weaved into one of my favorite holiday movies, Miracle on 34th Street. This is a story about a man who calls himself Kris Kringle and believes he’s Santa Claus. He ends up in court at a hearing, where his attorney, Fred Gaily, attempts to prove that Kris Kringle, the man he’s defending, is the one and only Santa Claus. In one of the scenes, Fred Gaily tells Doris Walker, a woman he’s been courting and who is also friendly with Kris Kringle, that faith is believing in things when common sense tells you not to.² He states this to help her understand why she should trust him for representing Mr. Kringle and for taking on this case. But in her mind, Santa Claus did not really exist, so thinking logically, this made no sense. Having faith means having trust, but Fred Gailey suggests, its more than that. It’s absolute trust, not to doubt or question but to believe. However, Doris wonders, if common sense tells you not to believe, how do you go forward?

According to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase,³ implying that moving forward requires a leap of faith. This is exactly what Doris, the character in the movie Miracle on 34th Street, and I had in common. We both want to believe and have faith but struggle to understand how to achieve it when our brains are telling us otherwise.

As I think back to my younger self, when I was in grammar school, my understanding of having faith was very simple. During that time, I recall being told that it was important to believe that God existed, and to show that you believed, it was essential to attend church every Sunday. We were also taught that to communicate with God—given he was not a physically being—we should pray every night as that is what allowed us to speak to God. Therefore, to show I believed, I attended church every Sunday, and in my attempt to connect, I would pray. I didn’t pray every night, but when I did, I would pray for things I wanted, like passing a test or having the means to buy something I wanted or for my team to win a game for a sport I played. I hoped to get these things, but I never really expected to receive them. If I did, I never correlated it to God answering my prayers. Quite honestly, I wasn’t keeping score and began to wonder if anyone was even listening since the communication during prayer seemed to go only one way. Eventually, I didn’t see the purpose of praying and so I stopped. By the time I reached high school and college, the only time I found myself praying was if someone was sick and my mother advised me to do so.

As I attended church each week and prayed on occasion, I did however experience certain events in my childhood and in my early adult life that aroused my curiosity about what it meant to believe in God and have faith. I began to feel that there must be something more to it than what I had understood up to this point. This led me to further question why we were all here and what was the true purpose of life. These were obviously complex questions, and finding an answer was not going to be as easy as simply reading a book or asking a person. I was certainly not the first person to ask or ponder such questions, which was evident by the countless books I found written on the subject.

That said, as I look back on my life, certain memories and experiences from my youth had a meaningful impact on my life and what began to shape my beliefs. These moments are what intensified my interest to learn more about religion and the meaning of life and what started my quest to seek the meaning of faith.

Raised Greek Orthodox

I was baptized in the Greek Orthodox Church, and like most first generation children born of Greek parents, the church was central in our life. Not only was it a place for our spiritual development, but it was also a place for my parents to connect with other Greek Americans. In a small way, this connected them to Greece and all the wonderful traditions and memories of their homeland. Going to church each Sunday and attending Sunday school was the extent of my religious education. Back then, I felt I had to go to church. It was not an option; it was understood that this would be our Sunday routine. If I or my sisters even hinted that we didn’t want to go, any one of us would get an earful. This was so painful that in the end it was just best to bite our lips and go. Also, if we didn’t go to church, this could disgrace the family, as it could imply that we didn’t believe in God.

My mom’s unquestionable faith and devotion to the church is why I believed there must be a God. Going to Sunday school taught me about the Old and New Testament, which was a detailed history lesson on how the world began and how different religions were formed. Reading and discussing the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John helped to develop what I believed was right & wrong and the meaning of compassion & kindness. However, it was my mother’s strong belief and her insistence on having faith in God that was hard to ignore. When someone was sick, she would go to the church to light a candle and pray for them to get better. She knew all the important religious holidays—and there are many—which she honored by attending church services during the week. She passed down traditions associated with various celebrations like Easter and Christmas to my sisters and me. In fact, Easter in the Greek Orthodox Church is the biggest religious holiday, ahead of Christmas. My mother would attend church every day during holy week, no matter how tired she was.

Her influence and her behavior not only reinforced the existence of God for me but instilled a thought that there must be something more to believing in God than just his existence. In the meantime, I watched and learned what I could from my mother, hoping to find the answers that she seemed to know.

Aside from my mother’s deep devotion to the church, I was also becoming more aware of my mother’s uncanny premonitions where she sensed something that would then come true. As time passed, she would have these unusual dreams that on occasion would also come to pass. These dreams would soon have a profound impact on my life.

Seeing the Virgin Mary for the First Time

I was