Saved

My parents always told me that I went to church for the first time when I was just a few days old.  Of course I don't recall that day but I do recall many Sundays there in a little white cinder-block building that still sits in the middle of where the road forks, almost metaphorically in two different directions.  I recall how far apart the steps used to seem as I tromped up them in my white patent leather Sunday shoes, the sound of my feet scrubbing across the red carpet in the aisle, and the way my legs would stick to the shiny wooden pew when my dress would ride up underneath me.

I was a trusting, happy little girl.  I was the girl who loved her daddy and Sunday school and singing in the car.  I was the girl who wanted to make friends with all the new kids at church.  I admired the pianist at church the way some little girls admire pop stars or Disney princesses.  I wanted to BE her, with her long, flowing dark hair.  I watched her in complete awe as she played, her pretty slim fingers flowing across the keys as, once in a while, she would raise a hand to flip her long hair back over her shoulder.

My Sunday school teacher was a robust older lady who wore glasses and got a wash-n-set every Saturday.  She spoke in a sweet but excited timbre, her voice rising above the chatter of six year-old kids in their Sunday best, anxious for time to color and sing Sunday School songs.  She told stories from the Bible with paper cut out characters of Jesus and the disciples and somehow the inanimate figures came to life on the felt board as she revealed the miracles of Christ to us.  We never questioned whether those stories were true.  We believed because we trusted our parents, we trusted Mrs. Sarah, we felt their love for us and knew that God's love was surely as real.  We had no understanding of atonement or redemption, but we heard the word "Saved" a whole lot.  Somewhere along the way, we all came to understand that "Saved" was something we all wanted to be.

Saved. It seemed like life's ultimate goal for me when I was a child.  I knew nothing more about that word than what I heard at church, and from all I learned, being Saved was something miraculous.  It made life completely new, different, better.  Saved meant Heaven instead of Hell.

 The opposite of Saved was Lost, and Lost was the last thing anyone should ever be.  I learned that once a person was Saved, they were safe forever, from the threat of Hell.  I learned that Saved meant forgiven, that your sins were all forgotten and that from that day forward all you had to do was be good and ask God to forgive you for sinning every single day.  No matter what you did after you were Saved, you were good with God.

Armed with the fear of knowing then, at the age of about 12 that I was surely "Lost" I began to live in fear.  I would lie in my bed at night and feel my heart pounding in my chest, I would sweat and feel nauseated as I worried myself to sleep, anxious that perhaps I might not wake up in this world and instead wake up in the dark fiery pits of Hell.  One Sunday morning I could take the anxiety no longer and I made my way to the front of the church at altar call.  I whispered in my pastor's ear, "I want to get Saved."

A kind lady knelt and prayed with me, told me what to say and I said it.  I stood up feeling relieved to no longer be on the path to Hell, but otherwise a little disappointed in the lack of "newness" I thought I was supposed to feel inside.  Other than alleviating my fear, getting Saved seemed to have not really worked very well for me.

There were people though throughout the years, for whom getting Saved worked very well.  One of them was a relative of mine.  During the summer of 1982 he walked with me to the corner store to buy a Coke, just before dark.  On the way home he suggested a detour, "Let's walk through this neighborhood" he persuaded.  "I like to look at the houses on this street."

I agreed to walk with him sipping my Coke, believing that our little detour was innocent, a way to extend our walk a little longer and enjoy the cool evening breeze.  It did start out that way.  We talked about family, made comments about the houses we saw.  He teased me about my freckles and I called him four-eyes.  He was a grown man, I was barely 12, awkwardly growing into a body that was becoming unfamiliar to me.  I wore a baggy t-shirt and blue jean shorts that were too big.  I hid my skinny frame, my growing breasts a source of both embarrassment and strange pride to me.

As the darkness fell around us he began to walk closer to me.  He made me feel safe on that unfamiliar street in the dark with only scant traces of light from front porches and back lawns.  Eventually his arm was around my shoulders, and still I trusted him because he was family.  We were pals.  Another street over and I had no idea where I was in relation to home.  It seemed as though we had been walking forever and I was getting tired.  We had stopped talking and a heavy, weary silence filled the air around us.  I wanted to go home.  "Are we almost home?" I asked.
"Almost." He answered, as he slid his arm around me further, pulling me closer to him.  We were walking so close that in order to keep my balance I had to put my arm around his back to steady myself.  He was wearing overalls.

Another few blocks and his hand was creeping over my shoulder, his fingertips just barely beneath the neckline of my t-shirt.  I was beginning to feel uncomfortable and I tried to pull away.  "I'm hot!" I said as I dropped my arm from around him and tried to step to the side.

"It's okay." he said, and kept his grip on me, smiling.  I didn't try to pull away again.

By the time we got within a block of home his hands had roamed my body underneath my clothes. He had tried to make me touch him as well, but in that moment fear gripped me so tightly that I yanked my hand away, and knowing by then, the way home, I took off in a sprint.

Later that evening, he apologized.  "I don't know what got into me." he said.  "Please don't tell anyone. We will never be able to hang out together again if you tell."  It felt a lot more like a threat than an apology.

I never wanted to hang out with him again after that night, and I never did.  But I didn't tell either, not for several years anyway.  The years went by and I tolerated him at family gatherings.  I heard stories about him from other people that sounded all to familiar to me, but I kept silent. I stayed quiet when he got Saved.  I kept silent when he announced the call to be a preacher.  Kept silent as he read scripture and raged from the pulpit about sin.  I obediently stood beside him in church to sing duets.  I kept silent to spare my family the pain of knowing and to spare myself the shame of being known.

It turned out I didn't really need to tell.  He was arrested, eventually for public exhibitionism along the side of a highway.  My father bailed him out of jail.  He came back to church and again, claimed that he needed to be Saved.  So down to the alter he went, and down on his knees.  He stood up, a new man, or so he said, and his sins were all forgiven.  They were all forgotten and he was restored to good fellowship with everyone.  The first time he got Saved was a fluke, he said.  He wasn't sincere the first time.  It was all for show the first time.  This time, it was real.

Being Saved was his ticket out of trouble at least four more times that I recall.  To this day he sits on the same pew in that same little white church in the fork of the road, nodding and saying A-men loudly at every pause in the pastor's sermon.  He passes an offering plate, sings in the choir.

Through the years our family gatherings have become fewer and farther between.  It has been a long time since I had to spend a Christmas dinner in his presence or hear his obnoxious laugh at Thanksgiving.

It has also been years since I warmed the seat of a church pew.  There simply came a time in my life that I could no longer share space, spiritually or otherwise, with people who preyed upon other people.  I could no longer, with a clear conscience sit in a congregation with them, knowing who they were and what their proclivities were, and pretend not to know.  I could not forgive.  Could not forget. Eventually I realized that I didn't have to forgive or forget.  I realized that keeping quiet was just as bad as condoning his behavior and the behaviors of various other men who dotted those church pews.

By the time I told my family what happened to me, I was married with two children.  My husband was shocked when I revealed this story to him. He was angry and confused about why I had never told anyone before.  I felt like he thought I was just as guilty as the man who victimized me.  My family nearly crumbled under the weight of it, not because they were shocked, they already knew his character; but because I spoke.  We were a family of the great Southern tradition: What we did not acknowledge did not exist.  By merely telling someone about this scandalous, sinful, humiliating event, I made it real and no one knew how to cope with something so horrible and so absolute.

We all drifted apart after my revelation.  Year after year we spoke less, had fewer family gatherings, spoke of one another with fading affection.  Today we barely speak and when we do it is in a superficial disconnected way.  This man who time and time again claimed he was Saved, managed to undermine the foundation of an entire family--an entire church.

My faith suffered as well.  Although I never stopped believing in God, I completely lost all faith in mankind for a while.  I was confused, angry, frustrated.  I believed I had done all the things that were required of me to be a good Christian.  After all, I was Saved.  I went to church, I did work in the church, I prayed daily, read my Bible daily.  I wore all the right clothes, and listened to all the right music and I was obedient to my husband.  I did all those things that being Saved was supposed to make you want to do, and yet I could not feel the presence of God.  I stood in church, altar call after another and begged God to show me what I was doing wrong, but the answers weren't forthcoming.  The answers weren't in sermons or Sunday school lessons.  The answers weren't in the Bible or in my husband's instruction.  Eventually I hit a wall.

I looked around me one Sunday morning at all the faces of people I had known all my life.  I knew them all well.  I knew about their lives inside church and outside church.  I sat there searching their faces for something authentic.  I wanted to feel connected to these people, but I could not.  I knew their imperfections, just as they knew mine, but I knew that they sat in judgment of me and of everyone else in that sanctuary.  I knew that too many of them based their closeness to God on every one else's distance from God.  I realized, for the first time in my life, that nothing about this brand of religion encouraged an intimate, real, personal relationship with God.  It was all for show.  Even getting Saved was a cry for attention from fellow church-goers.  It was an easy way out of a sticky situation.  It was a way to alleviate your inner anxiety about your future life and your after life.
At least once or twice a week someone asks me what church I attend or if I attend church.  I get invited to church on a regular basis. I'm told, "Our church is different."  People who love me see me as a spiritually wounded soul in need of a loving bunch of Christians to embrace me and show me the way back to God.  I know they mean well, and I know that for them Church is a refuge.  For many it is a place where they can feel closer to God, where they feel spiritually nourished and recharged.  I don't expect them to understand how I feel about it.  I don't judge them because they are church goers, ministers, Sunday school teachers, or Missionaries.  I admire them, for they are not the church goers of my youth who spoke of one God but lived a life that was void of any god.  My friends are not people who victimize others or condone such.  I don't believe they sit in judgment of me or anyone else.  I'm happy for those who find church a comforting place of belonging and fellowship.

For me though, it is a suffocating memory of trauma, and of being traumatized over and over again by the perpetrator of my abuse.  It's a place where victims are forgotten and abusers are lauded for their willingness to confess and profess that they've been Saved.  They are Saved, their misdeeds washed away and forgotten as if they never committed them. It's a place where everyone seemed to forget about the people who really needed to be Saved the most.

Don't feel bad for me.  I am doing just fine these days.  I have lived and learned from my mistakes and failures.  I have reconciled myself with my past and I have worked hard to put all those things away in their proper places.  No, I do not forgive people who victimize others.  I do not forget who they are or of what evil they are capable of committing.

Perhaps I have wandered from the Christianity of my youth.  I don't sit on a church pew every Sunday morning with my Bible on my lap, my mind wandering off to what I'm going to cook for dinner.  I don't sing in a choir or play the piano in church like my long lost childhood idol. I don't hold offices or join committees or raise money for missions.  If you do those things and they keep you spiritually satisfied, I am glad for you.  But please don't expect that my relationship with God has to match yours in order to be valid.

God walks with me and in me.  I know this is true.  God feeds me and watches over me.  He teaches me and I try with all my might to learn what he wants me to know.  I love others as best I can, and I have vowed to always stand up for the ones who get forgotten.  I know I could have never forged this kind of relationship with God from a church pew.

Please understand that it was in leaving church that I finally found my Salvation.  Don't ask me to surrender my peace for a seat on your pew.