Wondering Around God

Elva Anson is a first rate storyteller and she knows just how much detail to give the reader to get you engaged. One incredible surprise for me was how well she navigated the strict church & home environment as a child to become such a curious and open-minded adult.

She packs in stories from every phase of her life and she really captures life in the Central Valley. You also sense her delight and excitement when she moves to San Diego and experiences freedom at Sea Ranch in Northern CA.

This is a story about an amazing woman who found love, a teaching career, counseling profession, as well as an unshakable faith and inner peace—in spite of living during tumultuous times World War 2 and Korean War. Her humility, humor and resilience are truly remarkable and life affirming. She ends with practical aphorisms but her narrative is not pedantic or preachy, just real and honest.

— Elisabeth Kersten, Director California Senate Office of Research, retired

Reading Elva’s story really got me to think about my own journey. I am not religious, so my central question is not worded as what is God’s will for me, but as what is my purpose on this earth? Why am I here? How do I now and how in the future will I define what is a worthwhile life? These are the questions that help us give our life meaning. I like Elva’s decision to “choose to believe in God and stay open to learning.” Again, my spirituality is not defined by God, but I like the idea of staying open to the powers and influence of the universe.

The one other aspect of this book that readers will find very interesting are the descriptions of an ordinary Californian life through the decades. Even though I grew up in California, my view of life in California in the 30s, 40s and 50s focused mostly around Hollywood. I have some sense of the lives of famous people, but it was fascinating to follow the life of someone who in many ways—teacher, mother, author—is like me. I highly recommend this thoughtful—and thought provoking—memoir.

— Elisabeth Stitt, Joyful Parenting coach

I just finished in one sitting the fascinating journey of a person who has known and loved Jesus from almost the beginning of her life. Yet she encountered the wondering most humans eventually reach as they search  for truth and real relationship with God. In the context of a genuine relationship, those seeking truth are not afraid to face the consequences of what that search may lead to in their personal lives.

During the 14 years I served as executive director of Assemblies of God World Missions, I visited more than 150 countries and discovered that the search for God is basically the same in most countries and cultures. There is a craving in humanity to know God–and to know Him in truth. I believe this book can lead us to that wonderful encounter with a God who is fair as well as loving. We are required to trust Him and be willing to lay our own beliefs aside to find the  reality of relationship with Him.

The author, by taking us on her life’s journey in honest “wondering”, has opened the way for the rest of us who have also yearned for this trust.

John Bueno, Executive Director, Assemblies of God World Missions, retired

I have been a licensed Marriage, Family Therapist for nearly fifty years and specialize in integrating Spiritual and psychological concepts and practice. Often I encounter clients who are adverse to anything of a spiritual nature due to spiritual wounding by well-intentioned parents or religious institutions. This limits the effectiveness of their treatment.

Elva was raised in a home in which God was the primary focus. Her father was the pastor of small churches in small towns. There was an on-going emphasis on obeying rules he believed were from God. The prohibitions on her behavior were severe. She developed a deep, intimate love for God, but had constant anxiety, fear and guilt regarding pleasing Him. Throughout her growing up and adult life she constantly “wondered about God” and courageously sought to discover for herself, the nature of God and her personal relationship with Him. Over time and much risk-taking, she increasingly experienced a significantly different God–one who is all-loving, gracious, forgiving–truly a Heavenly Father who wants His children experiencing and demonstrating who He is–LOVE.

Over time this freed Elva from her deep angst over adhering to countless rules of behavior. Elva is a gifted writer and has eloquently detailed her journey. Elva’s life now reflects God’s love. She is able to authentically love, accept and not judge other’s behavior. She has successfully done this with those individuals most close to her who have differing beliefs and life styles. They genuinely feel her love and have the highest respect for her.

I highly recommend this book to those who have incurred spiritual wounding and are open to being inspired by Elva’s life story.

Dr. Paul Jongeward, LMFT

Elva Anson was provided love, safety, protection and prayer during the first decade of her life. During that time and after, she saw and experienced miraculous interventions by God, whom she knew was too ominous to even imagine. At about the age of ten, God’s miraculous interventions still happened but Elva began realizing that, in this imperfect world, there was also lying, hurting people. There was sin.

Confused, she asked questions, avidly read the Bible, but saw that even the Word of God did not answer her questions. The Bible did not literally fit the time or circumstances of her life. She began her life of wondering. As I read Wondering Around God, I felt a kind of permission to also wonder. For many years, when I’ve experienced illness, loss, difficulties in the imperfect world, I’ve felt guilty about being angry with God. Wondering reminded me that, in the midst of whatever is going on, God actually intervenes in my tiny life. I wander and wonder, while God is loving and caring and is actually ministering to me.

Thank you, Elva. I know you will thank Elva also, as you read about her personal life through her 85 years of wondering.

Joan MacMillen, LMFT

Culture is an important influence on our identity of self. Wondering Around God is the author’s journey through the cultures of small farming communities in California’s southern San Joaquin Valley and the Evangelical churches her father led. Piety, religiosity, simplicity of dress, no smoking, card playing, dancing, or movies are some beliefs and practices of these congregations. This is what Elva was told and practiced both in church and home. She strove to be a good girl, fell in love with Jesus, and feared God.

Wondering Around God is Elva’s story of resolving this dichotomy and that of what she has been told and that of her own experience and intellect. The book also suggests a question we all might ask. What have we been told and what does our life experience tell us as we wonder around our concept of God?

Gary Jacinto, D.Min.

Responding to a memoir by Elva Anson in which she describes her long journey to a life that is free and filled with trust in God and love for the world:

Two questions arise for most self-reflecting people. How did I come to be the person I now am? Have I become my real self yet? Elva Anson’s memoir, Wondering Around God, is a thoughtful and candid exploration of her eighty-five years of life in which she seeks to answer these questions. She describes her childhood and coming of age in small communities in the South San Joaquin Valley near Fresno, California. Because her father was pastor of Assembly of God churches, much of the detail in her life was shaped by religious ideas and practices–intense religious experience and the sense of the immediacy of God and Jesus; conservative, Bible-based doctrinal system; and strict rules about behavior, including a social pattern in which the father is head of the household an very much in control.

Despite a deep love for her family, Anson struggled with this system. She was fully engaged in church and public school activities, often in leadership positions, and sometimes experiencing conflict between competing systems. When she was invited to play cymbals in the school marching band, her father would not consent because his understanding of the Bible would no allow her to wear pants.

This challenge was resolved at one  level when the band director decided that all the girls would wear white skirts while marching. At another level, however, the conflict remained. When she was visiting her grandpa’s farm, she was permitted to wear overalls when cleaning out the fox pens, and in the Bible men wore robes that looked like women’s clothing. How did these facts mesh with the rules her father laid down?

Anson’s struggles became more intense during her late teens as she focused attention on who she wanted to be. She knew that she did not want to be a missionary nor did she want to be a minister’s wife. “All of my wondering made thinking of the future confusing and difficult. What I knew I didn’t want to be made me reluctant to try to find out what God wanted me to be” {p.75}. The difficulties increased because of her father’s resistance to her hopes for college. He opposed her interest in schools like the University of California because they would be too expensive {even with a scholarship, he was convinced} and were places where agnostic professors were “turning young students into nonbelievers”{p.77}. The impasse was resolved when permission was granted for her to attend the Assembly of God college in Springfield, Missouri, for one year and then continue her education at a college near her home.

During her year at Central Bible Institute, Anson developed new friendships with people whose religious patterns were similar to hers and there were moments of strong and confirming experiences of worship and closeness to God. When she became engaged to marry a class mate who was preparing to be an Assembly of God minister, she felt trapped. She believed that marrying him was God’s will for her, but she knew that this was not what she wanted to do. Breaking the engagement brought her a great sense of relief.

While continuing her education at Fresno State College, she went against church rules by wearing lipstick, during the week on campus. Members of her father’s congregation learned of it and this became one more element in a conflict that was already building up in the congregation with seriously negative results. During this series of events, she writes, “I began to realize when people try to interpret scripture literally, it leads to confusion and dissensions (p.116). Some of her studies and campus experiences at Fresno State seemed to undercut her lifelong patterns of belief and religious practice. She writes that while nothing could shake her faith in God she “felt more and more like we were being pushed out of our nests with no safe place to go. Even God had become remote, and too far away to reach”(p.117).

Despite these challenges, Anson completed her studies and began teaching school, initially near San Diego. She attended different churches, but after Christmas break, didn’t go very often. Near the end of the school year, she met Everett Anson, a sailor stationed nearby. They dated frequently and despite major differences in religious backgrounds fell in love. Everett was deployed to fight in the Korean War. Upon his return in 1955, they were married.

During Everett’s deployment, Elva’s religious journey came to the fore once again. She read more widely. Harry Emerson Fosdick’s Guide to Understanding the Bible led her to realize “that there is more than  one way to interpret the Bible. I also began to realize how much fear I had about interpreting it incorrectly” (p.135). She quotes a statement by Rousseau: “Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains.” “When we are young”, she writes, “we have to please our caretakers. Even though they can be loving and kind, we may still be in chains. We must grow up and begin our journey of discovering who God created us to be.”

Then comes a short paragraph that summarizes the story of her first twenty-five years and states the theme of the last quarter of the book in which Anson gives a brief account of the sixty years that have followed. “I had started on my own long journey of discovery. I began to appreciate the Bible more and more. Wondering around God became a passion. I began down the road toward freedom from chains” (p.135).

At this point, the Ansons’ path and mine crossed briefly in Sanger, a town east of Fresno, where Elva was teaching first grade. After trying several churches they attended the Christian Church where I, a recent seminary graduate, was pastor. My wife and I were the same ages as the Ansons. Elva and I had been reading some of the same books and she responded favorably to my theological focus. They joined the church and became youth group leaders. The Ansons continued their schooling and moved to a community near Sacramento where Elva became a marriage and family therapist. That ministry has broadened into a career that includes writing and publishing. They have three adult children and in the later part the book, Elva includes materials from this larger framework of family experience.

Throughout her life her wondering around God has been shaped by three primary interests: (1)teaching her own children about God; (2) questioning where God is when she face life’s hard experiences such as serious illness; and (3) figuring out what God intends her to be. She closes the book with a strong testimony of faith.

After describing a retreat she had enjoyed at a beach retreat center in California, she writes, “I felt wild, reckless, free, and very much at peace with the world….I feel like a bird that has been let out of its cage. Strange! I don’t feel chained by anyone any more.” The reason for this freedom seems to be that she has “let go of trying to be good or to please God.” She wants to show Christ’s love wherever she goes and never stop (p.187).

The journey Elva Anson describes in such a personal way is similar to those made by a great many people who started life in a religious system that emphasizes control of beliefs and patterns of life. Although details will differ widely, the experience of moving from chains to freedom is one of the most common modes of growing up in America. This book can help people understand their own struggles and lead them toward a peaceful resolution.

One reason why Anson’s journey has been strong and life-affirming is her sense of God’s presence has been distinct from the doctrinal systems her church had used to connect God and God’s people. Elva Anson’s memoir is a testimony to the experience, which has been shared by many others, that the immediacy of the divine presence can transcend these chains so that people can become the people they were created to be.

Keith Watkins, Th.D, now retired, was professor of worship at Christian Theological Seminary, Indianapolis. His most recent book is The American Church that Might Have Been: A History of the Consultation on Church Union (Pickwick Publications, 2014). He writes on American religion, bicyclig, and the environment. He blogs at keithwalkinshistorian@wordpress.com

Amazing book! I read the whole thing in a day and a half. It was awesome. I am taking a writing course about writing our life histories. Your book inspired me to continue to write more about my life and the people and memories that have shaped me. You are an inspiration and I am honored to know you.

Nanci Townsend, retired teacher

I finished reading your very interesting book, Wondering Around God. I must say you are a very gifted writer. Once I got into the book, I found it difficult to put down. Needless to say, I could never write a book like you did. However I coauthored an Algebra I textbook published by Ginn and Co. back in 1970-71. Writing about math I was teaching at the time is a whole lot different than recalling all the dynamics of events in your life. Thank you for all of the months and years it took for you to write the book. I will treasure it. I am sure the other books you have written are equally as interesting. I am proud to be your classmate.

Henry Rogalsky, classmate and retired teacher (partial part of a letter)

Elva Anson tells the story of her life as if she was speaking to a friend. She generously shares her innermost thoughts and feelings. Starting from her early childhood, she describes those moments that would lead to the development of a thoughtful and caring adult. Again and again she shows her courage in asking hard questions about her relationship to God and the many challenges of life. All of this is done with some outstanding story-telling skills. I recommend reading Elva’s book, “Wondering Around God”.

Linda Champion, Author, Fairy Tales for Life San Francisco book festival winner

I wasn’t going to read your book. The title didn’t have anything that indicated it was in the thriller or sci-fi military genre I’m currently obsessed with. For some reason at lunch I picked it up and started reading from the point you met Everett, and I kept going. Then yesterday I wanted to know the rest and just finished it today. I left thinking despite a very strict upbringing, where everything was defined clearly (almost black and white), you were a thinker. Somebody who questioned everything, even as a little kid. You made sense of a world that is far different than what we take for granted today, but your conclusions appeared quite modern. Or were they just practical?

The lipstick thing blew my mind. Not so much because it was frowned upon, but that the act could have so many consequences. Yet you balanced life and faith. You appeared to be able to understand through the lens of religion what made sense and what didn’t. You boiled scripture down and came to some very practical conclusions on substantive issues. Am I on the right track? Do you still do that?

You described a little girl who wondered why God let things happen to good people regardless of what they look like. Did you consider yourself to be particularly progressive as you left childhood behind? Do you now? Also: When you said, “I felt wild, reckless, free and very much at peace with the world,” are you talking about now or how you felt most of your life?  Oh, and Darlene sounds pretty cool.

I’m your kids’ age. Born in 1960. I spent a lot of time with my grandmother, who was very proper but told me a lot of stories. When she and my grandfather were young in the 30’s, he was a reporter in New York. She organized coal miners in Virginia and got arrested a bunch of times. I learned all that later, of course. They were wealthy when I knew them, owned Wakefield Seafoods in Alaska. (My dad was an immigrant who worked on one of their ships.) She was very much somebody who didn’t let anything stop her. You reminded me of that.

I dog-eared your book. Thank you.

Mike Nemeth, Editor, Sanger Herald