Church: Through the Eyes of a Child

When I was a child I learned about God, Noah, the animals, the flood, Satan, and most often about God's wrath.

My family went to a Seventh-Day-Adventist church in a town with a population of about 500 people and just about everyone I knew got to play on Saturdays.

After a long, hard week of school most kids looked forward to staying up late Friday night, sleeping in on Saturday morning, and waking up to watch cartoons. I always felt like I was missing out because for me it was lights out at 10:00pm on Friday and up by 7:00am on Saturday morning for church. To make things worse, we weren't allowed to watch TV between sun-down on Friday until sun-down on Saturday. Kids at school thought I was weird. Heck, I sometimes thought I was weird too.

What I understood of my misfortune was that Saturday was the Lord's Day. The seventh day was the Sabbath Day, a Holy Day, a day of rest. In which God had created the heavens and the earth in six days and on the seventh day He rested. God had set this day aside for us to rest too. His commandment told us to rest but the church told us to rest or else. As a kid however, I wasn't tired and I really didn't feel like resting. I wanted to do something fun like play hide-and-seek in the woods, hopscotch, or something other than going to church.

Saturday mornings were always a blur of insanity. I come from a large family of nine and trying to get all nine of us ready for something we really didn't want to do in the first place was like trying to pull teeth from a salamander. We either couldn't find clean clothes to wear, or the brush was missing, someone wouldn't take a bath, someone was too grumpy, or someone wouldn't stop arguing. I could continue on forever about the things that would go wrong on a Saturday morning.

In all of it however, even as we fought on the way to church the outcome was always the same. We would all march in with big smiles, well combed hair, clean faces, clean clothes, (most often) and a church appearance that would make even the Pope jealous.

We sat in the very first pew on the right hand side of the church. As a kid it seemed like such a long walk to get to the front pew as we would pass all those people with a built-in “perma grin.”

Without it really being explained to you, even as a kid you knew better than to cut up, act up, or act out in the house of God. Besides not only was God watching, so was everyone else, especially mom and dad. I was taught about God's wrath as a child but I knew and felt mom's and dad's wrath most often.

People at the edges of the pews closest to the isle would shake dad's hand as they smiled at all of us kids saying things like, “Good morning.” “Oh, aren't you precious.” or “So glad to see you.” Like I said, it seemed to take forever to get to the front pew. As I would walk pass all those people I would think, “I can make it, just keep smiling, I'm almost there.” I knew that once we all got to our pew and settled down I could hide between my sisters and fall asleep.

I was the second-youngest so I could often get away with sleeping in church. Sometimes however, I would get caught and my sisters would have to wake me up. I would look at mom and she would have that disappointing, disapproving look on her face.

I always felt bad and guilty for falling asleep in God's house. It was boring though, I didn't understand most of it anyway, and what I did understand scared the crap out of me.

Sometimes my sisters wouldn't even have to wake me up. Sometimes the pastor would yell out something in the lines of his sermon and I would jolt to an instant upright position. I was pretty sure he did that on purpose to wake up all the sleepers in the church. Although I never looked back at other people I was sure I wasn't the only one catching some Z's on a Saturday morning.

When I was a kid it was all about the don'ts. Don't adorn yourself with gold and precious stones. (No jewelry) Don't eat meat, it's considered unclean. Don't wear make-up or jeans. (Men should dress like men and women should dress like women) Don't let the sun go down on your anger. (That was one of my personal favorite don'ts as it saved me from getting killed in my sleep many times.) Don't steal. (That was an easy don't as a kid, but proved to be much harder as I got older.) Don't lie. (I broke that don't many times.) Don't kill. (That was the furthest from my mind at that time.) There were many other don'ts as a kid but the biggest was, don't go to church on Sunday. Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy. The don'ts in my life were so overpowering at times that even if I did a right do, it was followed by, “that's great, but don't…..”

I had heard it said many times that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. I thought, “I must be pretty smart then because I am terrified of God.”

I always felt like God was this gigantic man in the sky who held an enormous hammer that He would use to bonk you over the head with if you stepped out of line. Really though, His hammer was more like lightening bolts, tornadoes, hurricanes, and things of natural forces. Naturally, because of this thinking I was afraid of any kind of storm.

My first memory was that of a storm when I was only three years old. The sky was black as night in the middle of the day and the trees were swaying so hard I thought they would snap right off their trunks. I saw my mom talking on the phone in the kitchen when a loud crash shook the house. I heard my mom scream as she slammed down the phone. She called for all her kids to go down to the basement for shelter. Mom picked my younger brother and me up in her arms and rushed us downstairs. I was terrified, not knowing what was really going on but somehow sensing the possible danger that lay ahead. Even in the basement you could hear the rain beating down on the roof, and every other second a bright light would enter the room from the single window in our basement, followed by a screeching crash. My mom, trying to keep us all from fear would shout out, “God just got a strike!” She would explain that God was just bowling with the angels. Mom told us the loud noise was all the pins crashing down, and the rain was the angels crying for joy. As my first memory, even as terrified as I was, I thought, “God is an excellent bowler.”

Saturday was always the same at church and you could almost set your watch to the exact time of each occurrence. We would sing two songs, kneel down on the floor to say our silent prayer, then softly sing a song called Hear our prayer O Lord.

While everyone was saying their prayers in their heads my sisters and I were picking, poking, and making faces at each other. When the silence was broken as everyone would start to softly sing the song, we would chime in as if we had really been praying.

After the prayer song was over we would all sit back up in our pews and the pastor would begin his sermon. Once his sermon was over we would then sing two more songs and everyone was free to go.

One of my favorite songs we would sing at church was Just As I am. The church would sing it with such meaning I almost felt like I could come to church in my nightgown and still be accepted.

The best part of church for me was when everyone would stand and we would begin the first of the last two songs. I knew at that point it was almost over and my real smile would creep across my face.

As a child, that church was all I knew and we never missed a day until my parents got divorced. Have you ever walked into a place and felt the heaviness in the air?

In a town of only five hundred people everyone knew everything, what they didn't know they made up, and what they made up, everyone else believed.

Mom and dad never really sat me down to explain why they had to get divorced. From them I would only hear things like, “Your dad would never talk to me.” or “Your mom just needs time away and then she'll come back.” From the kids at school however, I would hear all sorts of horrible things about why my parents got divorced.

Divorce, how could this be? A divorce is always sad and it always seems to be about who failed who. Did mom fail dad? Did dad fail mom? Did the church fail mom and dad? Did we fail the church? Did we as kids fail mom and dad? So on and so forth.

In any case, no matter who failed whom, mom and dad's divorce was the turning point in my life. I saw and experienced things that I won't even write about, but what I can tell you is that people change in a church when things aren't so proper.

My parents divorce was not a cut and dry, pay a lawyer a couple thousand bucks, sign on the dotted line, and start over type of divorce. No, it was a brutal, long, painful, and seeming like it would never end type of divorce.

For me, as a child, I had my own problems to deal with but I was sure I was alone in my problems and they didn't ever affect mom and dad. How could they? I never told them about what I had to go through and I always kept them deep within me.

My parent's divorce happened without warning. To this day I am baffled at how I never saw it coming. I never saw a fight, an argument, a disagreement, or even one harsh word between mom and dad. If it was there, it must have been well hidden from my eyes and ears. To me, as a child, all I could see was a large family that seemed to have it all together, with love, happiness, honesty, and devotion.

My mom piled all of us kids in the back of her van and drove off with dad trying to keep up with her in effort to beg her to stay. As my mom continued driving down our driveway to leave dad standing in the dust, I looked back, and watched him cry for the first time in my life. Somehow, I knew at that point things would never be the same again for our family.

That image of my dad standing in the middle of our dirt road alone with his tears will probably stay with me for the rest of my life.

I spent the first couple of months living with my mom and my brothers and sisters. Things were changing drastically in my life and I began to learn what the face of poor really looked like.

Mom was unable to support the remaining six kids on a waitress's income; often we would go to bed hungry. Sometimes dad would show up like a knight in shining armor with a trunk load of groceries begging mom to come back home.

One time my dad brought my mom a record and begged her to listen to the words. I didn't know the title or the artist for many years to come, but as I lay silently in my room, I listened intently to the words, as they echoed throughout our house.

“We had the right love at the wrong time. It doesn't matter if you're gone. I'll still believe in us a long time. Those dreams of yours are shining on distant shores. And if they're calling you away, I have no right to make you stay. But somewhere down the road our roads are gonna cross again. It doesn't really matter when. And somewhere down the road, I know that heart of yours will come to see, that you belong with me.”

Through those words, I guess I found a brief sense of hope that one day mom and dad would find love in each other all over again. That evening almost as soon as it began, that sense of hope was shattered when that beautiful music was halted by the sound of the needle being scratched purposely across the record. I peeked out of my room to look down from the loft to see what my mom was doing. Mom snatched the record off the player and broke it in two pieces. She opened the front door and whipped that broken record right out of our house. I quietly went back to my bed and lay there wiping away my tears.

Many years later I heard that song playing on the radio. I called the radio station to ask them the name and they said it was Somewhere down the Road by Barry Manilow.

It was obvious that mom wanted nothing to do with my dad and all of his attempts to get her back were just a waste of his time. Every attempt my dad would make would only reassure my sorrow for him as mom would always send him away, breaking his heart all over again.

I began to experience all sorts of confusing emotions against my mom. I loved her with all my heart but I couldn't understand why she would put my dad through so much pain. I felt sorry for my dad and couldn't stand the thought of him living alone any longer. I decided to leave my mom and go back to live with my dad.

Though I tried to get some of my sisters to come with me, their final decision was to stay with mom. I said my goodbyes to my brother's and sister's as I waited for my dad to come and pick me up.

Things were tough with just me and dad. The house was quiet all the time. I would sit in my bed at night and look at the hopscotch board we had drawn on the unfinished plywood floor of our bedroom.

I would look out my window into the fields, visualizing all of us kids running through them playing our games, and picking the wild strawberries that grew in them. I would think about the trails we had formed through the woods and all the games we played on them. My mind was flooded with a two-story home, and a hundred and twenty acres of memories, of what used to be.

When mom and dad were together there was never a dull moment around the house. We didn't have many toys at all, but we always found ways to amuse ourselves with the property we lived on, and the company of each other.

Our games as children were innocent and resourceful. We would climb to the top of the Poplar trees and let our feet dangle from their trunks causing the trees to bend in half. In doing this, it would bring us safely back down to the ground, lowering us slowly and gently, without physically having to climb back down the trees.

Though I didn't have friends at school, I could always count on the friends I had in my brother's and sister's. They protected me, looked out for me, and comforted me when I was down. We had a bond with each other that was strong, heartfelt, and deep.

If any of us were getting punished for something we did wrong, the others were watching close by with tears in their eyes. Once the form of punishment was over; be it spankings with dad's belt, standing in the corner, or spankings with the paddle, we would all go upstairs together. While we sat upstairs, we would comfort whoever received the punishment.

As I sat upstairs alone, I was wishing my brother's and sister's were with me again to comfort me from the pain I was feeling.

Dad and I would wake up early every Saturday morning and head to church in silence. We would walk down the isle to the front pew quietly. People would just stare at us. I thought, maybe my clothes were dirty, or maybe there was mud on my face, or something. Even my fake “perma grin” no longer worked. Nobody shook dad's hand and nobody said I was precious. Were they afraid? Were they judging us? Maybe they just didn't know what to say, but to say nothing caused something to die in me.

Dad would say, “Honey, they're all just people, they are not the reason we come here.” Somehow, my favorite song, Just As I Am had lost all meaning and no longer sounded so inviting.

I would cry myself to sleep at night. I missed my family, I missed the games we would play, and I missed the laughter that once filled our home. I missed the smell of fresh baked bread my mom would make. I even missed fighting with my brothers and sisters. To think of all that I missed would only hurt me more and make me cry longer.

This is about the time I discovered true anger. You know the kind that gets deep inside your soul? I was angry! I too wanted to know who failed. How could the church be so cold to me and dad? How could mom leave dad taking his kids away from him? How could I be so stupid? But worse than that, this was also the first time I got angry at God. How could God do this to us?

I used to have a recurring nightmare when I was a kid. It always woke me up in the night, lying in a pool of my own sweat, and unable to breathe.

Directly behind our house was a very large oak tree that hovered way above our rooftop. In my nightmare the sky was black and I could hear that tree crackling. Then it would come crashing down on our house breaking it in half. All of us would turn into witches and fall into the cracks of our broken house.

The divorce, what don't did we do to make God so angry? The tree did not come down on our house like a large hammer; there was no storm, no tornado, and no hurricane. How could this be?

People have a tendency to treat you as if your sin was much greater than theirs. Because of this, I felt my parents divorce had become my greater sin. After getting mad at everyone else including God, I then got mad at myself.

The Bible says there is no greater sin than the other except for blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. (Mark 3: 28-29) Why do we separate them then? Mom left dad and sister so and so at church told a lie. Why is mom's sin greater than sister so and so's sin?

My anger took my tears away and I didn't cry myself to sleep as much anymore. Anger is like a drug, you dance one night with it and feel its power. You feel strong in anger as if rocks could just bounce right off of you. In your dance with a night of strength, you wake up and feel weak, so you want more to take away the weakness and pain. Anger has a way of becoming so big in ones soul that all the good gets buried beneath the brick wall it creates.

I got to where I would only think of the bad things because they didn't make me hurt and cry near as much. Anger was the first drug I took when I was only nine years old.

I couldn't stand to see my dad in so much loneliness, sadness, and pain. There was nothing I could do to help him. I couldn't make things better for him and I couldn't wake him up from this nightmare. I could no longer deal with my helplessness so I went back to live with mom.

Mom had changed so much that I hardly knew her and it became rare to catch a glimpse of the mom I once knew. We didn't go to church at all, she drank, she was using cuss words, and she went back to smoking cigarettes after being smoke free for years. All of this in “new mom” only fused the anger I learned at dad's house.

We would go with mom to the courthouse and sit in the lobby while mom and dad would hash out what was so bad about each other. Sometimes dad would win temporary custody and sometimes mom would win us back. One time while dad had temporary custody my mom came and stole us right from school, hitting the principal on her way out. One time mom had us and dad showed up out of no where and took us right back home with him.

Back and forth to mom's, dad's, court, and schools took a serious toll on my sanity. We moved twenty-two times in only two years and my parent's divorce took over three years to be finalized.

I really wasn't taught much about Jesus when I was a kid but at church we would sing this song called What A Friend We Have In Jesus. I didn't really know about Jesus, or even how to go about being His friend. I figured with all this moving and no signs of friends, I'd better get to know Him quick!

Whenever dad would get custody of us we would have to go to church every Saturday. It became more of a humiliation than that of a release. I often wondered if people at church knew about the secrets I had held deep within me.

Each time I would walk by the adults I could see them look at me and whisper amongst themselves. When I would get closer, they would stop their whispering, and act as if they were talking about the sermon, as their voices would rise to a normal tone. Once I made it pass them, they would begin to lower their voices again, and whisper amongst each other.