Home Is Where My People Are: The Roads That Lead Us to Where We Belong (4 page)

After I’d (hopefully) grabbed some cookies and a Coke, I’d visit for a few minutes with Mama and Daddy’s friends, then find Chox so we could walk up to “big church.” Since Mama and Daddy both sang in the choir,
I sat with Chox and Joe every single Sunday
 
—unless I was an acolyte, in which case I had to sit in the front row. If we walked into the sanctuary the back way, we’d always stop to speak to my friend Beverly’s parents and the Williamsons on the way to our normal row. If we came in from the outside entrance, we’d get a bulletin from Mr. Fountain, who always made sure to count attendance and adjust the thermostat according to the weather.

Usually the service would pass without incident. Mrs. Bernice Nicholson would play the call to worship on the piano, and the choir would enter the sanctuary. We’d stand and sing the first hymn together, and then afterward we’d have a responsive reading. I’d read every word aloud because I knew my parents were watching from the choir loft even when they looked like they weren’t, but normally it all sounded sort of poetic and distant to me. The pastor would read the words in regular type, and we’d respond with the words in bold.

     
It is good to give thanks to the Lord,

          
to sing praises to your name, O Most High;

     
to declare your steadfast love in the morning,

          
and your faithfulness by night,

     
to the music of the lute and the harp,

          
to the melody of the lyre,

     
For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work;

          
at the works of your hands I sing for joy.

#811, UNITED METHODIST HYMNAL

After that we’d say the Apostles’ Creed. I’d memorized the whole thing by the time I was three, but I’ll be the first to admit that it took a good while longer for the meaning of those words to settle in. Sometimes my heart needs time to catch up to my head.

We’d sing another hymn, and if there was anyone with an even remotely operatic voice singing the offertory (or a solo during the anthem, for that matter), Chox would move between Paige and me. There was no worse church-service scenario than an operatic singer, simply because Paige and I couldn’t listen without laughing.

The only situation that rivaled a high-pitched rendition of “How Great Thou Art” in terms of our trying to maintain composure was if this really sweet lady named Ruth showed up to sing alto in the choir. Ruth didn’t sing as much as she bellowed, and when she’d chime in for the harmony on “Holy, Holy, Holy” or “Great Is Thy Faithfulness,” Paige and I would pretty much have to crawl underneath the pews. In fact, there were times I nearly bit my tongue in half just trying to make it through one of Miss Ruth’s impassioned choruses of “The Old Rugged Cross.” It would lay me right out
 
—and not because the Holy Spirit was having His way, either.

The pastor, who for most of my childhood was Dr. Pigott, would preach for twenty to twenty-five minutes, and if he went much past 11:45, people started getting antsy. If he preached long enough that the folks in the back row could hear the folks from the Baptist church across the street slamming car doors and driving past our sanctuary on the way to Sunday lunch, forget it. You have never seen an antsier bunch of congregants in your life.

(Sidenote: Now that I’m grown and have a pastor who regularly preaches for fifty-five to sixty minutes each week, I look back on those days of twenty-minute sermons and think,
BUCK UP, METHODISTS.
)

(However, my mother-in-law would want me to be sure to point out that if you’re not out of church and in your car by noon, “You have to wait forever in line at lunch! Just forever! You really just have no idea how difficult it makes things! You’ll wait forever!”)

(I like to tease her and remind her that sometimes the Lord will put her in situations where she has to suffer for the sake of the gospel.)

(She doesn’t find that nearly as funny as I do.)

After the sermon we’d sing another hymn, and then if new people were transferring membership or joining the church, we’d hear all about them from the pastor. Usually everybody would stay a little longer after the service to shake hands and make introductions and welcome the new members. By that point I was usually able to gauge Mama and Daddy’s reaction about how well I’d behaved in church that day
 
—and whether I’d be risking life and limb to ask about having a friend over that afternoon.

Then we’d all go home
 
—until we met again for Family Night Supper on Wednesday.

And here’s what strikes me about every bit of what I just told you.

That was my reality for the better part of ten years. Every single Sunday it was the same thing (barring an illness accompanied by fever or the occasional vacation). Every single Sunday I followed that same routine. And to this day, though I cannot recount the highlights from a single three-point sermon I heard at Mission Hill United Methodist Church
 
—and I heard aplenty, as Papaw Davis would put it
 
—I can say without hesitation that so much of what I know about mercy, about grace, about going to church and being the church . . . well, I learned it inside those walls.

I have to say: that’s the neatest feeling, y’all.

And I’ve also heard enough of other people’s stories about church to know that feeling is all too rare.

As I got older, I eased my way into Methodist Youth Fellowship and every possible junior high activity at church. We had a youth director who was THE MOST FUN (caps totally necessary), and he did the best job of making church a way of life, not just a destination on Sundays. He took us to every camp, every away football game, every “fellowship” weekend at the beach that he possibly could, and I know with everything in me that being part of that tight-knit group of guys and girls was a huge reason why junior high wasn’t a painful or icky time for me. I mean, don’t get me wrong: I WAS A GOOB. But I had plenty of equally goob-y friends, and I’m convinced that this is an oft-overlooked Key to Life: find other people who operate at your same level of nerdiness, and proceed with the rocking on.

Every October our church’s eighth and ninth graders went to a place called Camp Wesley Pines for a weekend retreat. That eighth-grade trip marked the first time that I’d spent a weekend away from my parents, so clearly that was all kinds of major. I also had a big crush on one of the ninth-grade boys, but since I was way too shy around guys to flirt, I spent most of the weekend secretly giving Cute Boy the side eye while I mouthed the words to “El-Shaddai” and tried to make sure my hair looked good.

Clearly I had my priorities straight.

But in ninth grade, something about the weekend was different. I had just turned fourteen, after all, so there was the obvious wisdom that went along with that (just so you know, I’m rolling my eyes straight out of my head right now). But more than anything else, I found myself really listening to the speakers and worship leaders. I met a sweet friend named Mary Helen, and during the breaks we’d have long, rambling conversations about our hometowns, our churches, our families, and our schools. I wasn’t focused on boys or drama or whether or not I sounded like Amy Grant when I’d try to imitate her raspy alto on “Sing Your Praise to the Lord.” And for the first time in my life, I think, I made a choice that weekend to sit before the Lord and see what He had to say to me.

That Saturday night the worship leader presented the gospel. I can’t say for sure that I understood all the ins and outs and whys and wherefores, but here’s the part that I heard for sure:

     
You are a sinner.

     
God loves you anyway.

     
God sent His Son, Jesus, to bear the weight of your sins and die in your place.

     
Are you willing to lay down your life, take up your cross, and follow Him?

Somehow, in the midst of the off-key singing and the back-row giggling and the junior high fidgeting, I knew that my answer was yes.

Honestly, if I’d known how messy and broken and confused my heart would prove itself to be over the next ten or so years, I might have second-guessed my decision and said, “You know what, Lord? I don’t think you want to fool with the likes of me.”

But the call of the Lord was irresistible. That’s kind of His deal, I reckon. And even though I was barely fourteen years old, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that something in my heart had shifted
 
—even if I couldn’t fully explain it. Jesus had met me right where I was, and while, oh have mercy, there were years of sifting and sanctification and surrender ahead of me, Camp Wesley Pines was the official starting point in my personal relationship with the Lord.

I’m still just as tickled as I can be that He wasn’t put off by the fact that I was wearing a matching light-blue tracksuit and some pretty sweet white leather Converse tennis shoes.

He’s obviously a smidge more holy than I am.

I spent most of my elementary school years singing in the Mission Hill children’s choir under the direction of a lady named Miss Kitty Morris. Even though there were only about eight of us who regularly attended Sunday afternoon rehearsals, Miss Kitty was faithful to lead us. Her advancing years had left her stooped and wrestling with a mild case of palsy, but that didn’t stop her from teaching us her favorites from a Methodist songbook that was ever present on top of the piano in the choir room. She’d sing along as we tried to learn the rhythm of “Pass It On,” and whenever we’d get to the chorus of “Ten Thousand Angels,” Miss Kitty would play the chords so loudly that we had to strain to hear ourselves sing the words:

     
He could have called ten thousand angels

     
To destroy the world and set Him free.

     
He could have called ten thousand angels,

     
But He died alone for you and me.

When I was around eight or nine years old, I thought Miss Kitty must like for that part to sound really dramatic. I couldn’t see the significance in the way that she’d close her eyes and how she’d almost whisper those last two lines. I didn’t know that Miss Kitty was leading us in
worship
, overcome by the gospel again and again.

There’s something about the awareness of your own salvation that prompts you to see things with new eyes, and suddenly I was able to see a deeper layer to this place I already loved. And all the days when I walked the halls of the church, when I watched Miss Kitty lead us, when I showed up for Sunday school, when I listened to Bible stories, when I read the responsive readings, when I recited the creeds, when I listened to the choir, when I sang the hymns, and when I avoided Jell-O in all its forms at Family Night
Supper
 
—well, after I put my trust in Jesus, I started to understand what all the fuss was about. By and large, people weren’t showing up at church week after week because they didn’t have anything better to do and because they got a kick out of seeing what everybody was wearing.

(I’ll go ahead and confess right now that that Sunday Morning Fashion Watch is what carried me through the majority of church services during the first fourteen years of my life.)

(Okay. It has carried me through a few years since then too.)

But what I came to understand is that there was one reason and one reason alone that explained the faithfulness, the generosity, the compassion, the sincerity of the folks I had grown to love at Mission Hill.

Jesus.

It had been Him all along.

Only He could take a building filled with folding chairs and an old Coke machine and turn it into a kind of spiritual home. And only He could take a bunch of quirky people who otherwise might have only nodded hello to each other in the Winn-Dixie and turn them into brothers and sisters.

That just beats all, doesn’t it?