Читать книгу My Walk To Jesus - Leah Hannan - Страница 4

Throughout my forty plus years, I have never been able to form a bond with any church or any religion that has not led to disappointment. After many failures, I finally realized it wasn’t the message, it was the people involved in many of the churches.

My first contact with a church happened when I was a small child. My family did not actually attend any church on a regular basis, but I had been inside a few of them for ceremonies. The usual things, a couple of funerals, some baptisms, but the two times I remember with fondest memories were when I was the flower girl in two of my aunts’ weddings. They were married within a short time of each other. One of my aunts was on my father’s side of the family. The other aunt was my mother’s sister. I remember that I heard a lot of words from the preacher that I didn’t understand. It sounded kind of funny to me at the time. I honestly paid it no mind and spent most of the ceremony playing with the flowers that remained in my basket and feeling impressed that all of the audiences’ eyes were on the ten or so of us that stood at the front of the room. Although the churches were different from any building which I had been inside, they didn’t seem like scary places, but then again, I had always been with a member of my family whenever I was in a church. There had never been any reason for me to be left alone in a church as a child, until one summer.

I am the result of a 1968 high school love affair. My mother was 15 when she became pregnant with me, and marriage was the next step for them. My mother barely made it to the age of 16 before I was born and my father was only 17. The marriage, bound to fail by any standards, began to come apart at the seams within about 8 months. My father joined the Army and was out of the picture by my second birthday. Not long after that, my mother left for what must have been better and brighter things in New Orleans. I was raised by my mother’s parents after the age of 3. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t call my grandparents Mom and Dad. My grandmother did not return to work until my mother left and financial necessity became an issue. I don’t remember my mother leaving, but I do remember my aunt, who was 13 years older, telling me how it would be the two of us as roommates from then forward. She would tell me stories every night before I fell asleep.

My aunt planned on spending the summer working as a life guard while both my grandparents worked. During the school year it wasn’t terribly difficult, I was allowed to ride the school bus to the laundry where my grandmother was a seamstress, but something had to be decided for the long summer break.

I must have been about 5 years old when I was told that I was to start spending my days in the daycare program at a local church. I was immediately terrified. I had so much that I didn’t know about a church, any church, that I had no idea what kinds of questions ask. My grandmother became irritated with me when I said I was scared of the church because I didn’t know the things that people who regularly went to church knew. She brushed my fears aside with a comment of, ‘Well, there’s nothing else we can do. You’ll have to go, so we can work.” I remember that I did not sleep at all the night before I was to go to the church. To this day, I can remember the numbers slowly turning on the clock radio that lit up the nightstand next to my bed. The night seemed to pass quickly and crept by at the same time. I had always been shy and insecure, and I was scared and did not want to go to this daycare.

I cried all the way to the church. We drove in silence. I was surprised that my grandmother didn’t reprimand me. She dropped me off in front of the church and said she would return for me later in the afternoon. I opened the front door of the church and was met by an extremely nice woman who showed me the area that was to be mine. Still on my guard, I did admit to myself that it seemed to be going better than I thought. I began to feel better. Everyone was pleasant to me, and I loved hearing the stories about Jesus and learning lessons from the Bible. I was especially proud of a coloring job I had done on a picture of Noah’s ark and was extremely excited for my grandmother and grandfather to see it. The morning had been a success, and I didn’t feel any different from the other children. That was until lunch arrived and we all sat down at the lunch table and my world began to unravel.

We sat there with our sandwiches and little cartons of milk, and the teacher asked us to bow our heads. Bowing her head, she cut her eyes my way and said, “Leah, will you say the blessing?” My heart stopped. I had no idea what she meant. I’d heard a few blessings, but the preacher said the words. I only had to look at the ground like everyone else. I felt so embarrassed and confused that I just sat in silence while everyone in the room sat with his or her head bowed. My teacher spoke again, “Please, Leah, say the blessing.” All I could manage to say was, “I’m thinking!” Eventually the teacher either figured out what was going on or grew tired of waiting for me and asked another child to say the blessing. I felt humiliated when the child immediately began, what must have been an appropriate prayer. The shame of my ignorance about praying stayed with me the rest of the day and when my grandmother returned to pick me up, I cried and begged her not to make me return to the church because it was awful and explained my lunch prayer problem. She was angry with me, telling me that it was stupid to be upset about praying. However, she agreed and set me up in an area in the backroom of the store where she worked, and I watched television on a small black and white set all of my summer vacation that year.

This woman had just secured my attitude toward the whole church. Although this happened in the daycare, in my mind this woman was my treatment by the church, and I knew that this was a club to which I didn‘t belong. I didn’t know when to say “Amen” or what part of a prayer I was supposed to repeat with the other children, and I didn’t know the songs they sang. I felt like such an outsider. I believed that a church was a place where I did not belong, and it made a deep impression. It was a scary place. It was a place to be humiliated and embarrassed.

My next experience with a church came when I attended a Christian junior high school. I had always attended public school, and when eighth grade began, I didn‘t expect anything to be any different. My best friend since the third grade, John, lived directly across the street from my house. My grandmother was not working at the time, and John’s father had a series of heart attacks, and he was no longer able to work, so we were at each other’s houses almost every day. Although we attended the same schools throughout the six years we had known each other, we were never assigned to any of the same classes. I knew why. John was in more advanced classes than me. I always dreamed of being in the gifted program, so I could at least have one class with John. Eighth grade began, and we all reported to our different classes, and began getting familiar with our schedules. One particular Monday morning started like most when announcements began to be heard in the different classrooms that were on our hall. Very slowly at first, students were being asked to report to the office to go home. The announcements continued throughout the morning, and I was sure that although it was strange, it certainly had nothing to do with me and my name would never be announced over the speaker. I was in the lunch room when I was instructed to collect my belongings and report to the office to go home. This was the moment that I knew something out of the ordinary had to have taken place.

I collected my belongings and made my way to the office. By the time I got there, I could see my grandmother as well as John’s mother, Mrs. Richardson who was taking John home. “What is going on?“ I whispered to my grandmother while she filled out the early release information required on a clipboard which had to be 20 pages thick on this particular day. “We’ll talk later,“ she stated. She said goodbye to John’s mom, and I waved to John as he rounded the corner heading to the office.

To my surprise, as soon as the car pulled out of the school parking lot, my grandmother began explaining the events that had led to most of the children being picked up by their parents. The junior high school that I attended was directly across the street from the high school. Never to be one that particularly paid attention to social events such as this, I can only guess that some Homecoming game was played on the previous Friday, and the Homecoming Queen was crowned. A bonfire was apparently part of the celebration. Some sort of argument began among different students about the girl who had been selected as Homecoming Queen. Some must have been mad at the selection, and these students threw gunshot shells into the bonfire. As the shells exploded out of the flames, a cheerleader was shot. My grandmother told me that I would not be returning to the school, and I do not believe that the high school has ever had a bonfire since. “What school am I going to go to now?“ I asked, irritated. She said that she and Mrs. Richardson had an appointment with the principal at a private Christian school the next day. It seemed like a big deal to me for my grandmother to be going with John’s mother. My grandparents were never the social type. They didn’t usually have many friends outside of the family. We didn’t have or attend parties or cookouts, and we didn’t have company often.

My grandmother came back with a packet of paperwork which indicated to me that this private school thing was going to happen. My grandmother and I then went out to purchase dresses, skirts and blouses, and Bibles. The terror began to return. I knew I had no more knowledge about a church than I did when I fled from the church daycare at the age of 5. What shame awaited me now? My fear was offset a little by the fact that since the school was so small, for the first time John would be in my class. I knew that John had attended church, not on a regular basis, but he certainly knew more than me.

It was decided that our parents would alternate driving us to school and picking us up. Mrs. Richardson was the one who drove us to school on our first Monday morning. We walked into the classroom, and everyone seemed to be expecting us. To my dismay, our teacher directed John and me to desks on the opposite sides of the room. I’d made it into the same classroom with John, but that was it. Once again the morning went smoothly. We were given our history and English books, and we would go to other classes for science and math, but I knew that there was a reason that a Bible was on my school supply list, and I wouldn’t be totally comfortable until I was finished displaying my ignorance when it came to the Bible.

The same teacher we had spent the morning with announced that we would have Bible study and then lunch. She removed her Bible from her desk drawer and stated what we would be studying that day. She announced a place in the Bible that she wanted everyone to turn to and as long as I live I will never forget that it was a chapter in the book of Kings. Students quickly flipped through their Bibles and seemed satisfied with their stopping points as the teacher began to read. I had never looked up a passage in a Bible, and quickly tried to gauge where Kings was by how far in the Bible the others had turned. I couldn’t find the book of Kings, and I turned pages frantically, but tried to do it quietly. Without a word, the girl sitting next to me, smiled and took over turning the pages in my Bible. She located the correct book and placed her finger on the passage the teacher was reading. “Oh, there it is.” I remember thinking while she looked at me and smiled. “Thanks”, I mouthed silently. She nodded back in acknowledgement, and a friendship was created. At lunch, I found out that my new friend was named Laura. She was the daughter of the chief of police. She used a Bible and showed me how to look up any passage that the teacher threw my way. It seemed any problem I could have had with this church school was certainly gone. Through spending days with my classmates, we all genuinely began to bond. We were taught the church’s interpretation of the Bible, and I remember accepting what I was told as the undisputed truth. We were told that although Jesus drank wine, it in no way had any alcohol in it. Our teacher explained that wine was used so quickly, that it never had time to ferment and was merely grape juice. She said it, so we believed it.

I loved my classmates. We joked, and there bonuses such as field trips, tennis and basketball courts and a recreation room with table tennis. During recreational time, students in the class could do anything they wanted. One particular day, recess was called and everyone piled out of the classroom leaving Laura, John, a girl named Jackie, a boy named Mike and myself. I knew that Laura and Jackie would soon have their noses buried in the latest novel in which they were enthralled. Mike was an excellent artist and would be spending his time working on a comic book that he was writing and illustrating. This left John and me. Our teacher excused herself and said that she was going to the teacher’s lounge and would return. Once she left the room, John moved to a desk close to Laura and me. “What do you want to do?“ John whispered to me. “I don’t know”, I replied. We sat quietly for a few minutes, then John motioned to the recreation room sign in sheet, “Nobody signed up to play ping pong. Do you want to play?“ he asked. “Sure, why not?” I said, shrugging my shoulders. John filled in his name and mine on the ping pong list and removed the door key so we would have access. Without another thought, we walked four rooms down, unlocked the door and began playing ping pong. After about thirty minutes of play, our principal, with our teacher close behind, rushed into the room and began scolding us. John explained that he didn’t understand why we were in trouble. He had filled out the information as required and would return the key just like all the other students had done in the past. We were escorted to the principal’s office.

We eventually were told that our infraction of the perceived rules was that a boy and girl should never be alone in a room, and we would have to be punished. I tried to explain that John was my best friend, and we had no romantic interest in each other. The principal would hear none of our defense and would be sending punishment forms home with John and me. I read the form, and it had the infraction listed as improper use of the recreation room. The form also listed my punishment as cleaning the lunchroom for two weeks, and writing a sentence acknowledging my wrong doing fifty times to be turned in the next day as well as a form for my grandparents to sign acknowledging that they would discuss my improper behavior with me and pledge that I would not misbehave again. I finished out the day with total confusion about what we had done that had upset everyone so badly.

I arrived home, and my grandmother was watching television in the living room. I immediately told her that I had gotten into trouble that day, and her face immediately changed to a look of anger. “What did you do?” she asked me sternly. I removed the yellow and pink papers from my backpack and handed them to her. She read over them, looked at me and asked, “What did you do that was improper in the recreation room?” she asked. “John and I were in the room alone, and we are of the opposite sex.” I answered. “What?!” she almost shouted. “You didn’t do anything else? Are you sure?” she asked me, cocking her head to one side. “No, I promise. We signed out on the clipboard like we are required to do, and that’s how they knew we were in the room”, I explained. My grandfather arrived home, and my grandmother went over my discipline forms with him while I showered. When I returned to the living room, my grandmother said flatly, “You will not be doing any of this punishment, and I will take you to school tomorrow.”

The next morning as John and Mrs. Richardson were pulling out of their driveway, my grandmother waved them down. Without any contact between our parents at all, Mr. and Mrs Richardson decided that John was not going to be punished either. “I guess nobody will be getting pages of handwriting today,” I commented to John.

My grandmother parked her car, and we walked to the principal’s office, and my grandmother told his secretary that she wanted to speak to him. We were escorted to his office, and he invited both of us to be seated. My grandmother stated that he had a lewd mind because he was able to accuse two children of doing something wrong that never crossed their minds. We were not even caught acting inappropriately, she complained, and stated that I would not be completing the punishment that he had set for me. The principal agreed, and I was returned to the classroom, but things were never the same after the incident. All the teachers and the staff whispered behind my back, and were usually less than friendly when they were forced to interact with me. It became miserable. I finished the year at the school, but apparently my grandparents had no intentions of me returning for another year and bought a house located in a rural county about 45 miles from where we had lived, and I was back in public school. John stayed in the same county but moved to a different private school.

The influence of a church wouldn’t cross my life again until about two years later when my biological mother and her three children moved in with my grandparents. My mother’s children all had different fathers, and she had just left my two year old sister’s father. My brothers were seven and ten. I was fifteen and actually didn’t know my mother.

After a few months, my grandparents purchased and set up a mobile home on their property for my mother and her children. We lived close to each other, and we began to speak, but there was hesitation on my part. Maybe it was because I felt that she wouldn’t even be in my life if her marriage had not fallen apart. I always kind of felt like plan B in my mother’s life. I believe she knew that I felt this way, even though the topic was never discussed between the two of us.

We lived in a small town with one convenience store, a post office and a caution light. Anytime any of us would go to the post office, the Postmaster would invite to attend her church that was just a few yards away from the post office. My mother became interested in the invitation. She said that she hadn’t been in a church for a long time, and she wanted to try to get her family back together. We were not familiar with the denomination of the church, but my mother was still seriously interested in attending. My mother asked my grandparents if they would like to attend, but they declined. I agreed to attend because she seemed so sincere, and she said that she was happy to have all of her children attending with her.

The church was large enough to seat about 150 people. We attended the first week, and everyone seemed truly happy to welcome us to their church. We settled in to attending the church, for Sunday school, Sunday service and Wednesday evening service.

We arrived one Sunday as usual and went to our assigned Sunday school classes. I couldn’t have been in class for more than about ten minutes when my mother appeared at the door. She held my sister’s hand and my two brothers were standing beside her. She did not acknowledge anyone else in the room, but she looked directly at me and said flatly, “We need to leave.” I could tell by the look on her face that she wasn’t ready to explain why at that moment, so I decided to skip that question and got up from my chair and walked toward the door. We silently walked out of the church and headed towards my mother’s 17 year old car with the faded paint. We drove home without anyone saying a word.

Once we arrived home, we all went to separate rooms to change out of our church clothes. I finished changing and went to the living room to wait for my mother because I was ready for an explanation of why we had to leave the church. Apparently, my grandparents were okay or my mother would have plainly said something on the way home. Soon my brothers appeared and sat down on the couch. My mother, however, did not come out of her bedroom in a timely manner. I felt it best if we left the situation alone until she was ready to talk, and we reluctantly turned the television on to pass the time. After a few hours, my mother finally walked in and sat down in her recliner. After a period of silence, I decided that I would have to be the one to initiate the conversation. “Well, what happened that we had to leave the church?“ My mother began to cry, “I’m not going to tell you what happened, but I’m not going back to that church, and I want you to promise me that you won’t go back there either.’’ I was speechless. I could not image what had taken place at the church that had upset her so much, but I nodded my head in agreement that I wouldn’t go back to the church. Although, I was confused, I could not believe that she would be behaving like this for no reason.

The days passed, and she never offered a reason why we were never returning to the church again. I decided that she, for whatever reason, was not comfortable talking to me about the situation and although I still had the question in the back of my mind, I had accepted that I may never know the reason why. I mentioned to my grandmother several months later that I would like to know why we quit attending church so abruptly. To my surprise, my grandmother had an answer for me.

Like most everyone else in the community in which we lived, my mother didn’t have much money. She usually held jobs with convenience stores, construction, and hotels. I know that she didn’t receive child support from any of the children’s fathers, two of them were incarcerated, and there was only so much help that my grandparents could give her. She tried her best to stretch her money, and she was usually searching thrift stores for nice clothes that she could wear in different situations. Sometimes she would find dresses, sometimes pantsuits, and she would also clothe her children out of the thrift stores. She was proud of the nice clothes that she could find at a bargain, but apparently it was not to church standards. My mother always ensured that her dresses came to her knee, but the church wanted them to hit at least the middle of a woman’s calf, and she was asked not to wear pantsuits again. I understood perfectly well. That’s when I learned that an invitation to visit a church doesn’t necessarily mean that you will be welcomed as you are, changes to you might be expected immediately. I often think about what Jesus would say about how my mother was treated.

My last attempt at trying to attend a church came about seven years later when my first husband announced that he no longer wanted to be married after just two years of marriage. I was crushed, and felt as if I needed help. I chose a different religion once again, and began attending regularly. I enjoyed attending, and before I knew it, I was smiling again. I was holding doors open for people and letting cars merge in front of me. I loved it, but then it happened. I was sitting in the pew, and the reverend asked us to bow our heads for a prayer. Everything was going according to plan, until the reverend singled out a group of people for us to keep in our prayers. He declared this group sinful and stated we should pray for these people to turn away from the dirty sins they continue to commit. Did this guy have any idea of the kind of sins that were sitting in the same church with him? A lot of those sins were probably his own. Therefore, that was more than enough for me. I left another church with no intention of returning. My experiences have given me a desire to suggest a church that we can all build together, in cities, towns and countries near and far. I was sure there were others who have similar stories to tell. The thing we have to remember is that we should never feel as if we are not worthy to study the Lord’s word.