FARMINGTON — God reaches out to help us where we are, the Rev. Susan Crane says of her own experience with a faith crisis.
Crane grew up in church, but lost her faith during college.
“I couldn’t believe in God if I couldn’t prove that he existed,” she said. She didn’t want to be disingenuous, “so I stopped going to church. But I missed it.”
Although she gave up her faith, she went on to seminary to find God again, she said.
After the first year, she was called to serve as pastor of a church for the summer.
“It was a crisis of faith,” she said. “I didn’t think I could preach if I didn’t believe.”
In a dream, she failed at ministry. She saw Jesus and his disciples behind a glass wall. She was awed with the love they had for each other but she could not touch them.
Then, in the dream, her husband shot her and she died, she said.
It was a wake-up call, she said. Knowledgeable about dream symbols, she realized she had not been shot with a gun.
“It was an open cylinder of pure, unearthly metal,” she said. “I was shot with a gust of air, not a bullet. God was trying to give me the gift of His Holy Spirit so I could do the ministry.”
Although she could not prove He exists, she knew she was going to start to believe.
“I had turned my back on Him and created my own separation,” she said. “God came to me through the dream to help. He loved me enough to do that, though I did not deserve it.”
Crane had studied dream symbolism. She said God “knew it was the only way He could reach me, the only way I would listen.”
“Growing up in the church, God was a list of beliefs,” she said. “Now, He is so real to me, He could not be taken away from me.”
Crane is in her 40th year serving as an ordained minister for churches in New York state, Massachusetts and Maine. She has served as pastor of Henderson Memorial Baptist Church in Farmington for over 14 years.
The love of Christ spills out through her love and compassion in leading and helping the congregation, and through her work with programs to help others. These include ECU-Heat, which provides help with heating oil, the Western Maine Homeless Outreach, and other Farmington-area ecumenical ministries.
Crane and her husband, Gary Wolcott, live in Chesterville.
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