Church

So I have this memory of me as a little girl. I guess I was about 7 or 8. We lived in the trailer park then and I had this friend who lived across the street, Amy. She was my frienenemy, before the phrase even came into being. We fought and eventually always made up. The main reason being, there was no one else to play with; unless you counted the teenage boy, "Sweat" (I swear, that's what everyone called him), who made questionable "dealings" on the playground basketball court. All Amy and I had was each other. I remember we would run back and forth, to and from each other's trailers, laughing, playing, and fighting. Our moms were friends so we often played together.
Well, one day Amy's mom invited me, mom, and my step-dad to church for Easter Sunday. My mom and step-dad weren't interested, but thought it was important for me to go. I remember my mom taking me to K-mart and picking out this Easter dress for me. I remember thinking it was absolutely beautiful (later when I wore the same dress for my third grade pictures and I noticed all my other friends in cute little corduroy jumpers and pink turtlenecks I changed my opinion entirely and thought the dress was hideous.)...It was white with a beautiful polyester pink polka-dotted overlay, big puffy sleeves...a definite Easter Sunday church dress, or at least my mom's vision of what that dress should be. She had me convinced I would fit right in at Amy's church in this fantastic K-Mart special and I believed her. Well, Easter Sunday finally comes and after days of looking at the gorgeous Easter dress in my closet, I was finally able to take it off the hanger and wear it!! I was so excited. I put the dress on..a little itchy....I looked in the mirror and I felt an awkward combination of swelling admiration and deep regret. Would I fit in with all the other church kids?...Mom said I looked pretty, and I wanted to believe her, but I had my doubts.
I went to church with Amy and I remember it being a rainy day...My black patent leather shoes were soaked and my new white tights were wet inside those cheap shiny shoes. Amy and I were sent off to children's church and I vaguely remember singing a few songs (or, not, in my case, since I had no clue what those kids were singing) and then came communion. I had no earthy (or spiritual) idea what communion was. I thought it was snack time. So when the plate with the bread came around, I grabbed a piece like I saw all the other kids doing and ate it. The tray with the grape juice quickly followed and I washed down my paltry morsel of bread ("Come on," I thought to myself....It's Easter, isn't the snack supposed to be better than THIS??") I glanced over @ Amy who sat staring @ me, mouth ajar in complete and utter terror! "You can't do THAT," she furiously whispered.
"What?" I asked...I had no clue what she was referring to...I was just doing what the other kids were doing!
"You can't do that because you haven't been Baptized!!!"
Silence and a strange swooshing sound flowed through my head...It seemed like the room got ridiculously quiet. Everyone was staring at me now with the same look of shock that Amy had on her face!
"Yes I have," I said very quickly, when in fact, I had no idea what she was talking about. HAD I been baptized? What in the world was THAT? Did it have anything to do with snack time? Obviously I had said the right thing, though, because Amy smiled in a relieved kind of way and the rest of children's church went on without incident. I came home...mom hung my dress back on it's hanger (I'm pretty sure it didn't get washed between Easter Sunday and Picture Day. '80s K-Mart polyester probably didn't fare well in the wash). Life went on as usual. I never went back to church with Amy. A few years later we moved out of the trailer park and I never saw her again. That memory stays with me though and is poetic in many ways because for years following, whenever, I visited church, I remember feeling the same way I did on Easter Sunday with my friend Amy: excited, hopeful, and then disappointingly itchy and uncomfortable.
I've always considered myself extremely spiritual, but I was never able to find a church that made me feel like I had come home. This surely, had to be a feeling that was only obtained by the mindless and obviously Baptized. So, I decided that I would go to church when and where I could and save the feelings of "home" for well; home. None of the churches I visited ever seemed to pan out. I always seemed to have a very valid reason for ceasing to attend a newly chosen church: too conservative, too big, too weird, but the truth is I never felt like I belonged in a church. I always saw it as a place for other people, not for me. I convinced myself that organized religion was ridiculous, I mean, with so many different beliefs, ideas, passions, how could one group of people possibly decide on one set of values and worship together? It was a sham I thought. I did have one deep-seated feeling though, that drove me to continue to try and find a church. That being, I didn't want my kids to grow up feeling as uncomfortable as I did in church.
So, I plodded along, and in between kids skeptically and nervously, picked yet another church to "try." Some we liked, some not so much. Quinn had FINALLY started sleeping through the night and stopped nursing when I started to get that old familiar guilty feeling in the pit of my stomach that I just HAD to find a church for my family. So I sat Jay down and told him it was time to start looking AGAIN for a new church. He agreed, but was skeptical. He had pretty much given up on me finding a church that I LOVED and had for months (years?) been telling me to just GO to church. Well, dear friends; as many of you know, I can't do ANYTHING half-heartedly. I was either going to find a church I LOVED and felt fantastically wonderfully attending or I wasn't going to go AT ALL and deal with the consequences of that @ a later date and time. One thing is for sure, I never gave up. I may have found the most minute reason for not liking a church, but I NEVER stopped trying to find one, but I was exhausted.
Which brings me to Real Life....I picked this church off the Internet (certainly a sign of the times, no?) and I chose to go because I was tired. I was tired of looking...and this church was right up the street. I was tired of picking churches that fit my idea of church only to realize, yet again, this was not the church for me, and Real Life was completely different from any church I had ever gone to. You could wear what you wanted to wear (K-mart polyester dress, or jeans take your pick). They played contemporary music (I wasn't used to pop christian music, but, hey I was desperate). The pastor was young and single (wasn't the pastor in my dream church older and fatherly?). I was tired of calling my mother-in-law to come baby-sit the kids while Jason and I checked out another new church and Real Life seemed to have an adequate children's program in place.
And so we showed up one Sunday in June. My last ditch effort. I had decided in my mind that unless Jay thought this was a weird and or unacceptable church then this was going to be OUR church. I had decided to stop whining, complaining, and making excuses and just go somewhere. I was tired. Any decent church, I thought to myself, would fit the bill of making my children feel comfortable in a religious setting. I had given up on finding something for me. I was going for my kids, my husband; certainly not for myself.
And a funny thing happened...I found a home away from home. I found a church where I belong. Where I can get dressed up after a long week of wearing kid-stained jeans and sweats, OR I can wear my kid-stained jeans and sweats if I don't feeling like getting "fancy" as Stella calls it. I can go and listen to some decent music (every now and then they play a little Coldplay and for the past couple of Sundays they've had this cute guitar player in the band....). And that young, single pastor actually is kind of wise and says some stuff that really touches my heart and stays with me days after I walk out the church doors. Real Life is everything I could have hoped for in a church and maybe the journey to get here was worth all the effort. I might not have appreciated what a fantastic place I have found, otherwise.