Of course, I kept this stuff to myself, considering every Christian in my family was (and still is) a literal creationist. But, that definitely took a toll on my faith. I didn't like being such an outsider, and not having anyone to really discuss science and theology with. I didn't even know anyone else, other than a handful of people from the internet, who believed the same things about God and science as I did. To be fair, I didn't go around asking people at church either.

But, every church I ever went to was pretty open about their creationism, and nearly every one of my family's Christian friends also agreed with creationism as far as I knew. I felt very alone and afraid to speak up about where I was, faith-wise anyway. If my grandparents or Mom asked how my relationship with God was going, I was purposefully vague. I told them it was fine and I was satisfied with my relationship with God, even though I really didn't have a relationship with God. I rarely prayed. I never read the bible anymore. Whenever Mom forced me to go to church, my mind would wander rather than focus on what the preacher was preaching (especially since the sermons were so vague, repetitive, and vapid that I just couldn't pay attention no matter how hard I tried). I was honestly bored with most of my life, upset that I was pretty sick with Pseudomonas, and frustrated that I had no one to discuss my faith with face-to-face that had anything valuable to tell me. 

I remained in this limbo for a few months. I decided the best way I was going to cope with my problems was to immerse myself into school as much as possible, and ignore my problems the best I could. There wasn't much else I could do about anything at that point. I couldn't change other people's minds no matter how hard I tried. I was already doing every treatment possible to kick Pseudomonas's ass again. My relationship with my mom was spiraling the drain because of her obsession with her boyfriend, Matthew, and with the house that got me sick with Pseudomonas in the first place. And, God seemed to be pleading the fifth every time I asked Him to help out with something. But, I was enjoying school for the most part. I hoped that if I just focused on that, maybe all of my problems would eventually go away. 

A couple weeks before Christmas, my health took a pretty big blow. I kept having low blood sugar problems, so I was called into the Barbara Davis center in Denver to discuss Cystic-Fibrosis-Related-Diabetes. While at the doctor, they decided it would be best to stick a week-long monitoring device into my arm to see what my blood sugar was doing that entire week. I was pissed, but what could I really do? I knew ignoring CFRD was a terrible idea that had potentially deadly consequences. So, I reluctantly let a couple of fussy, overly dramatic nurses stick a monitor into my arm. They told me to brace for pain that never actually came. After that, I was sent home and told to log my meals, recalibrate the monitor twice a day (which involved sticking myself with a needle and taking a blood sugar reading from my blood sample), and make sure to not remove the monitor or let it fall out until the week was over. 

That week was one of the most irritating weeks I'd ever endured. Matthew's entire family was staying with us, so I never got any real silence. On top of that, the little monitor stuck out of my arm and I kept bumping it into things. It didn't stick out further than an inch, but being someone who was used to having that extra inch, I had a hard time navigating through life. Each time I ran that damn monitor into something, the tape on my skin would pull, causing a pinching pain. I tried to protect it the best I could. I used medical tape to keep it from moving and wore extra layers of clothes to keep it protected. But, none of those things really helped make things easier when I rammed it into the side of a doorway or brushed up against something. 

During this, my mom was extra fussy. Now, Mom has always been the fussy, over-dramatic, touchy-feely, controlling type, especially with me. But, while I had that damn CFRD monitor in my arm, which had the same effect on my patience as a flank rope has on a rodeo bull, my mom was extra fussy. We had arguments over the dumbest shit constantly.

Mom wanted to make me feel better, but she didn't really know how. She assumed that the things that made her feel better would make me feel better, even though that was never the case. Mom and I have always been on opposite sides of the spectrum on literally everything. While my mom thought giving me lots of hugs and playing with my hair would make me feel better, because that's what always made her feel better when she was feeling down, the opposite was true. When I feel like shit, I need my space, and I made sure to let her know that almost immediately every time she tried to get all touchy-feely with me.

I ended up barricading myself in my bedroom, really only coming out to eat and occasionally go somewhere. I was actually content once I was away from everyone else. But, I did feel pretty lonely at times, especially when I was around everyone else. Nobody understood what I was going through, and nobody really bothered to step into my shoes for awhile. Matthew's dad was a pastor, and he was pretty adamant that everyone took their hats off, bowed their heads, and said "amen" after prayer. Personally, I didn't do that. While Matthew's dad didn't really say or do anything, I definitely sensed he was a little angry that I did not take my hat off, bow my head, or say "amen" after prayer. 

He did attempt to connect with me a little bit, to his credit. One afternoon, I decided to crawl out of my hibernation den and get to know him. We met on the back porch in the backyard, where we sat in green lawn chairs across from each other. Matthew's dad told me he was a pastor on the weekends, but a part-time substitute science teacher for middle and high school. That got me excited. Finally, I thought, there was somebody who could verify that I could reconcile the Christian faith with modern science. So, as soon as I could, I asked what he thought about modern science and God, and if those two could be reconciled. 

"Yes, of course!" Matthew's dad nodded, "God is the author of science after all! God and science can and do work together! However..."

I felt my heart drop when he said that dreaded word. I braced myself for what came next. 

"Man doesn't have it all right. Man's science is not God's science. Man's science is faulty in some places. So, while we are right about some things, such as a created and expanding universe, we are wrong about other things..."

He paused. He noticed that I was nervously sucking air through my teeth. But, I urged him to keep going. 

"For instance, man says that the universe is billions of years old. However, the bible says that it was created in six days. So, who should you trust? God or man? The bible says God is perfect and infallible, but man is very imperfect and fallible. So, it only makes sense to trust God's science, and not man's science." Matthew's dad explained like he said those exact words a million times. 

Meanwhile, I sat stiffly in my chair, grinding my teeth out of frustration and disappointment, debating on if I should just walk out of the conversation right then and there, debate the guy, or just let him continue to tell me why creationism was true, which went against everything I had learned in science class over the years. I felt like I'd just received an uppercut kick to the jaw. I thought I finally found someone who was scientifically literate and wiling to reassure me that being a theistic evolutionist was perfectly logical and okay. Instead, I got a substitute science teacher who was just as entrenched in literal creationism as almost every other Christian I knew. That really, really sucked. 

As far as I knew, the universe was not only 6,000 years old. It was billions of years old. I learned all about the age of the universe and the earth in Physics, and the methods and equations scientists used to prove that the universe was around 13.8 billion years old and the earth was a little over 4 billion years old. Not only that, I also knew evolution was true. The fossil record proved it. DNA proved it. Anatomy proved it. Hell, my battle against Pseudomonas was proof of evolution right there, because Pseudomonas was constantly evolving into entirely different species as it desperately tried to thwart the phages (which also evolved) from killing it.

If I really had to choose between God and science, I was totally going with science! After all, science was easily observable and provable, while I kept getting absolute silence from God. If creationism really was the correct interpretation of the bible, which, after listening to Matthew's dad who went to school to be a pastor, sounded like that was the case, then I was an atheist. God was dead! End of story! I should've given up Christianity years before, instead of wasting all that time stressing over and trying to justify obvious bullshit!

Of course, I kept all these thoughts to myself. To be polite, I sat there and listened to what Matthew's dad had to say in order to justify literal creationism. He mentioned a book called Darwin's Black Box, talked about how flawed carbon dating was (even though I'd learned in Physics that carbon-dating was anything but flawed), completely shat all over the fact that scientists use light years to verify and measure the age and size of the universe, and came up with some interesting conspiracy theories about how real scientists knew a lot of their methods and theories were wrong, but because Christianity was apparently under attack, scientists had to keep their mouths shut about "the truth" unless they wanted to be stripped of their credentials and kicked to the curb. Apparently, it was illegal for scientists to believe in a personal God and be open about it. Somebody forgot about Werner Heisenberg and Dr. Francis Collins!

I was honestly speechless. I lost the desire to debate that guy about how wrong he was. I could prove creationism was wrong using the notes I took for Physics, or by picking up a fossil out of my collection and showing just how different it was compared to the skeletons of living creatures, or by asking Matthew's dad the last time a living raptor bit at his ankles. But I knew that he was so convinced of his beliefs that there was no reaching him. I wasn't going to waste any energy trying to show him he was wrong, because I already knew he was gonna pull out the "God's knowledge trumps man's knowledge" card every time. So, I just remained seated under the mostly barren trees in my backyard, listening to Matthew's dad ramble on, completely and utterly baffled by what I was hearing. It was like witnessing a bad car wreck. I really didn't enjoy it, but I couldn't look away.

I remained there just to be sure I wasn't hearing shit wrong. Matthew's dad repeated many points, showing that he did, in fact, fully believe that most of modern science was satanic, and was being purposefully used to steer people away from the faith. I was baffled that a grown man who was well into his 60's, who claimed to be a man of knowledge and science, believed in that stuff. I just didn't know how to respond. It's been almost a year, and I'm still just as baffled as I was that late afternoon into the night.

Yeah. I sat through about three hours of that crap. I don't know how I managed to pull that off.