I had been raised in the church, or kind of raised in the church, I mean we were forced to go to church as children. My Dad didn’t go, he was an agnostic that became a believer when he was sick with cancer when I was 27, 10 years prior to my “salvation experience”.
My mom was a very worldy Christian, the wife of a super cool not wanting to hear about God, Madison Ave advertising executive. Mad Man LONG before Mad Men was a show. I was raised going to a very legalistic, weird little Orthodox Church on the side of town we didn’t live in, with a bunch of people who I never saw anywhere else but church. Except for my Sunday School teacher, Miss Landry, who worked at the bank. We never hung out or socialized with anyone from “my church”; most of my friends didn’t even believe there was such a place in our affluent suburban town.
I knew the Bible Stories, had invited Jesus “into my heart” at age seven, and never gave more than a cursory thought to God except when I was agreeing with the common thought of the me-Generation that He didn’t really care about all the stuff I did that hurt me.
So flash back to the chair in my kid’s bedroom (from a previous blog), and my mom eventually telling me that I should go to Bible Study, and wondering what the hell Bible Study was. I had started talking to some friends about spiritual things and thinking that now that we had children I should probably be taking them to church. The truth was that it was far more likely I would need to check myself into the hospital for a “nervous breakdown” than get us all gussied up and ready for Sunday worship.
I remember my little kids kind of crawling all over me and me kind of losing it and shaking my fist up in the air and yelling at God, “You can have it!”, meaning my life and their lives and all that was worth.
I think I’ve added a swear word later in the telling. It well punctuates the story and makes my testimony sound a little bit edgier. I’m not quite sure of the truth anymore. It was pathetic either way. In God’s infinite grace and wisdom and because he thinks I’m funny and this would make a cool story, he decided that was the perfect moment to rock my world. He didn’t need me to clean up, straighten up, sober up and get this mom thing down. He needed to help me and however you want to say it, save me. That moment, that day, with or without the “f-bomb”, he changed my life. He gave me hope and a future. He did the most miraculous of miracles. He made me his own, and I truly feel that he is delighted with his awkward, twisty, Lucy Ricardoish, aging hippie chick daughter.
Amen!