I did one of those super-scientific quizzes on Facebook tonight….it
was “How well do you know Hymns?” Well,
I got 100% and it proudly told me, “You were probably born a Southern Baptist!” And they are almost correct. It got me to thinking about growing up in
church and how I came to be a believer and why I still believe today, some 40+
years later.
I was toted to church by my Mom and Dad, who were both
strong church attenders. My dad was a
deacon and usher and my Mom taught Sunday School and Vacation Bible School and
we went to Home-Comings and singings and did all the good church things families
did back in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.
Some of my first lucid memories are of vacation Bible School and the
beloved flannel-board characters that brought the Bible to life before my
pre-school aged eyes! Zacchaeus was a
Wee-Little Man, Deep and Wide, The B-I-B-L-E, Jesus Loves Me, Jesus Loves The
Little Children, This Little Light of Mine…….all of these dear songs were sung
at full-volume with utter delight to anyone who would listen to me sing!
My Dad left us when I was 6 years old and we kind of moved
in with my Grandparents then and my mom stopped going to church because she was having to work 2 jobs to support her two kids with no assistance. My
Grandmother was a old school Baptist believer and, she rode the Senior Citizen’s
Church bus to church every Sunday morning and I was brought along. I loved going to church! I loved the songs, the smell of the Sunday
School rooms (I can close my eyes and remember that magical smell! It smelled like paste, books, and grape
popsicles!), and I loved singing in church!
I loved Vacation Bible School best of all! I loved memorizing Bible Verses, learning
sign language, learning how to macramé (hey, it was the 70’s and macramé was
the craft-du-jour!) I loved lining up
and marching in to “Onward Christian Soldiers!”
and I loved the puppets and the stories
and songs!
I did learn sign language in church. My best friends at church were deaf and they
taught me. I also sang with the deaf and
hearing choir….but they asked me to sign with the deaf kids instead of singing
out loud. That might have given me a
complex, but I did sooo love using sign language to sing the songs. It was so expressive and felt like a form of
worship to me. It still does….I catch
myself signing along with songs all the time at church, even today. I have forgotten most of the sign language I
learned back then, but I still remember the good “churchy” words like God, Sin,
Jesus, Heaven, Angel, Sing, Cross, and the like. This was about the time when I really, truly
had 2 ambitions in life. One was to
become a Solid Gold Dancer……OR the other was to become the little lady in the circle
at the bottom of the screen on the Billy Graham Crusades on TV...the one interrupting all the sermons into sign language . Sadly, neither ambition came to
fruition. Thank goodness.
About the time I turned 11 or 12 years old, our Sunday
School class started having “testimony time”….and I dreaded it sooo badly! I was only a pre-teen and didn’t quite have
a grasp on theology yet….but I
faithfully read my Bible, not wholly understanding everything, but still
soaking it in. I remember being
particularly troubled by the verses that talked about “where there is much sin,
grace abounds” or something to that
effect……and in my mind, it kind of meant that I needed to have some kind of sin
that was worthy of being saved from……and I was deathly embarrassed because my
sheltered life afforded little room for sinning. My Mamaw saw to that. I was embarrassed to get up and give my testimony
that I was saved from “talking sassy to my Mamaw” or that I was saved from “staying
up past my bedtime to read” or “being mean to my little sister” or any one of the other multitude of boring sins
that I had to ask forgiveness for. I
felt like……well, I felt like Jesus’ sacrifice was too much for my petty little
sins…..that I needed to have bigger sins to be saved from…..and then I could
lead others to Jesus! But……the question
was……how to go about sinning some BIG sins???
Well, I knew I’d never have the opportunity to do anything that bad
without getting caught (and I really WAS an obedient child and breaking the
rules was not something I did on purpose usually)…..so I came up with a
compromise….I wouldn’t actually commit BIG SINS…..but I would make up a testimony
about big sins…..and I would share that testimony in Sunday School and people would
come from miles around to be saved because they would know that God had saved
me from BIG and BAD things….and He could forgive them too! Oh, I had it all worked out…I wasn't going to just be the lady in the little circle for sign language on YV...I going to
be a young-teenaged-girl version of Billy Graham himself! People would hear my testimony and weep and
walk the aisles just begging to repent! So I had to
make it good.
I made it good alright.
When it came my turn to give my testimony….I stood up, swished my Laura
Ingalls braids behind my back and just went for it! I started out telling about how I had sold
myself into prostitution to pay for my Heroin addiction… about how I was homeless
and hungry and stole food from the grocery store because I was too poor to buy
food. I laid it on thick!! (As thick as an 11 year old with very limited
understanding of what Heroin actually was could lay it on!) But then, with tears streaming down my
earnest, freckled face….I shared how I had been saved! SAVED!!
From such a horrible life and now I don’t do drugs any more and I go to
school like a normal kid and eat food that we buy at the grocery store! I didn’t get the reaction I thought I would. The kids just stared at me and it likely confirmed the fact that I was really weird…..and honestly, I
don’t even remember what my teacher said at the time. Thinking back, it dawns on me that it should
have occurred to me that my Sunday School teacher’s mother lived RIGHT NEXT
DOOR to my Mamaw and she had known me my whole life and watched me grow up….so she knew that
NONE of my “testimony” was true.
Hahahaha!! Oh, how I wish I could
go back and ask her what on earth she thought of my testimony back then!! Hahahahaha!!
Goodness! I now understand that
making up a testimony is not the way to go....and that telling lies is indeed a BIG sin. Since then,
I have had plenty of sin to be saved from…..and thankfully none of it
had to do with prostitution or heroin or stealing groceries.
I loved going to the Golden Agers dinners…and I went to all of them......let me tell you
this…..Church Ladies KNOW how to cook a casserole!! Nobody dared bring in a store-bought cake or cookies. No ma’am!
There was banana pudding! REAL banana
pudding – not made with some box of mix.
Real cakes, real pies, real food!
And plenty of it! Being the only
child in a group of about 40 senior citizens was pretty sweet! And I was quiet and well-behaved….so I was
like their pet or mascot of the group. After
every meal, they would have “the sangin”
(singing for those not from the south) and there would be a whole
afternoon of good old Gospel songs…..some fast and snappy, some slow and
mournful….but all wonderful and rich with the Good News! There would be groups sometimes….in the
style of the Gaither Home Coming…..and there would be special singers who would
do solos. I loved them all.
Once I became a teenager, I moved on to a different church
and became even more involved in church life.
Church played a Huge part of my teenaged years. Looking back, I can see that I was struggling
with depression even back then…..but church was my safe place…it was indeed my
refuge. By the time I was about 16, I started
teaching Sunday School classes and GA’s (Girls in Action – a missions group for
young Baptist girls) and I sang in the choir and I played piano a little bit
(but was never really good enough to play in Sunday Morning services….I was a
work-in-progress!hahaha!) We put on
Christmas Plays, Easter Pageants, Cantatas and so forth….oh how I loved, loved,
LOVED those times!
I was introduced to contemporary Christian Music by my
friend, Cheryl when I was a junior in high school and we went to a Petra Concert and Leslie Phillips was the opening
act. And my eyes were opened to
Christian music with a BEAT!!! Oh what
joy! To quote a favorite group of mine, “Why
Should the Devil Get All The Good Music?”
Why indeed?? I started listening
to Leslie Phillips, Amy Grant, Michael W Smith, Dallas Holm, Petra, Twila
Paris, The Imperials......and just fell in LOVE with Christian music. To this day, it’s all that plays in my
car. I need the positive focus and
positive energy! Every now and then, I will
go back and play those old albums from the early 80’s and it takes me right
back to my teenage years!
I do love Contemporary Christian music; I love old Gospel music; I love Praise and Worship music…..but there
will always be a soft-spot in my heart for those poetic old hymnal songs….sung
from a dusty hymnbook with a heart full of joy.
And I’m not making ANY of that testimony up! J
