Groping Along

“He said to them, ‘Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?’ and they said to him, ‘No, we have not even heard whether there is a Holy Spirit.’” Acts 19:2

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I knew Jesus was real.  He had taken my hands, and given me comfort.  There never was any doubt about it in my mind after that.  This sure knowledge has lasted my whole life.  The hugs I received from loving family members and friends at church also became significant in my adjustment to my new normal.  

As I mentioned, I was a loyal volunteer in the church nursery.  My parents were very active in church, so Sunday mornings began very early.  We attended both services, and the stuff in between, and afterwards.  With so many family members all needing to be at church at different times, we relied on my sister’s car, and another family friend’s car.  She attended the same church and lived nearby.  Being pinched into the back seat of her VW Bug is one of the fun, yet sometimes painful, memories my sisters and I share.  Mrs. Smith would pick us up and we would squeeze ourselves into the back seat, giggling or fighting, depending on the morning. The painful part was when we took a corner, or suddenly stopped, and our bodies collided, or got squished even tighter together. 

The first thing we heard when we arrived at the overly large double church doors was a hearty “good morning!”  The greeter was usually another friend of our family.  I remember being welcomed in a loud, happy voice, and wrapped in the warmest, most wonderful bear hugs, ever.  Those hugs always seemed to surround me in a way that felt so real.  “How are you today, Jenny?”  For many years, I was too shy to answer.  I gave my response by a nod of the head.  “That’s good!  That’s good!  Now you have a great rehearsal, ok?”  I would then be pushed along, so they could give the next person in line an equally welcoming hello.  

One particular thing I remember is my friend Elaine standing by the coat racks waiting for me most weeks.  “Are you ready for choir?  Let’s go!”  she would say.  I would turn and respond to her smile with one of my own, and we would walk toward the stairwell that would take us to the basement where the choir rooms were located.  Upstairs were the Sunday school rooms.  

“I have to fix a run.  Wanna come to the ladies’ room with me first?”  We were always fixing runs back then.

“Sure!” she’d say, changing directions, chatting constantly.  I admired Elaine.  First of all, she got to use my middle name; the one that disappeared.  Second of all, she could talk to anyone, anytime, about anything.  Thirdly, she had blonde hair and blue eyes.  We would have about 10 minutes until choir, if we were lucky.  I can picture us sitting on the red cushion in the ladies room, and lifting my skirt to find the beginning of the run.  Smearing the sticky liquid onto the top and bottom of it and along the one side where I was afraid it might take off next, I lamented that my stockings were always hand-me-downs.  All my clothes were, actually, except that Mom would take us shopping for new Easter clothes every year.  I loved those shopping trips, and Easter became extra special because of the new dress and shoes we received. 

After the run was dry, we would take off out of the bathroom and down the hall, flying down the stairs like we loved to do.  Speeding down the hall, we slowed as we got close to the door, walking politely into the choir room, trying to hide our racing hearts, and making it just in the nick of time for rehearsal.

Coping Mechanisms

One of the ways that I learned to cope with my inward anxiety was to daydream.  While I was daydreaming, other people would see me staring into space.  What they couldn’t see was all of the busyness going on inside my mind.  I did not realize I was staring, yet I can still visualize different faces that I studied as a child.  One face was my new mother’s as she sang in the adult choir.  She was a beautiful woman, and still is today.  Her dark hair framed her heart shaped face with a widow’s peak.  Her full, red lips opened to an “O” as she sang soprano, her high cheekbones becoming even more pronounced.  The way her beautiful brown eyes watched the director interested me.  I could see her response to the director’s cues.  My eyes would dart back and forth, watching and learning.  When I wasn’t watching her, I was watching my older sister, also in the choir.  She was equally beautiful, but in a quieter sort of way.  I would think things like: “This is my mother, but she is also my sister.  This is my sister, but also kind of my Aunt.  No, she’s not my Aunt at all, she is my sister.”  And so on and so forth.  My gaze would rest on one woman after another.  I would study their faces, and their movements, until my attention was brought back to earth by the announcement of a hymn or the doxology, at which point I would need to stand up and pay attention to the task at hand.  All of us girls sang in the choir, and many of our friends.  Our family was known for our beautiful voices, and this made me feel proud, and also gave me some confidence.  

Another way that I coped with the changes that perplexed me was to help in all ways that presented themselves in the church.  We were there for hours, and not only on Sunday, so I was quite familiar with my options.  Helping was way better than being bored, and there were plenty of interesting ways to lend a hand.  Dad was often an usher, so if we weren’t singing, we would sit with him in one of the front pews.  He would stand up and go forward when it was time for the collection.  My eyes would follow him as he went from pew to pew, his back straight, his smile kind, handing the flat gold dish down the aisles.  I was proud of him, too.

When I didn’t have rehearsal in between services, I liked to go into the little room at the top of the stairs to the balcony and count the money with him.  Sometimes we got to open the little envelopes and stack the checks in one pile, the bills in another pile. If we got there late, we would help count coins into groups that equaled a dollar, then put the piles together so they would be able to be added easily, later.   Dad would laugh and joke with the other men, and once in a while I was embarrassed because he would tell a joke that I knew my mother wouldn’t approve of, but that was our Dad, and we secretly loved that mischievous part of him.  The previous week, after he had finished reading the new book “Jaws,” I asked if I could read it.  He had paused, thinking, before he said “yes” and I knew why.  I had gotten to the part where there was some kissing.  I loved to read, just like him.  We had that in common, and so he had given me the book, an unspoken pact between us. 

The basic bible stories that were taught in Sunday School were familiar to me.  The idea of God the Father was relatively easy for me to accept.  Singing hymns like “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands” helped me understand that the Father part of God was someone I could trust, even though I never got to know my own father.  It was ok, because he was in heaven with this wonderful God with big hands; big enough to hold the whole world in them.  “All Things Bright and Beautiful” touched my outdoor-loving heart and “Lord God” who “made it all” was known to me as someone who provided all this beauty, and the creatures that lived in it.  “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world…” was a song I loved to sing, and of course, the song goes “red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight.”  He loves us all.  This was readily accepted and easily understood.  “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the bible tells me so…” was one song I sang often to the little babies and toddlers as I rocked them to sleep in the nursery.  Jesus Christ was the man on the cross in the stained glass windows.  He was the man who went to the cross that I traced with my finger on the hymnal when I was bored with the sermon, and the part of the 3-in-1 God that seemed most real.  The trinity was explained often, and the Holy Ghost was spoken of as one of the parts of God.  It was easy to picture the Holy Ghost as Jiminy Cricket from Walt Disney’s Pinocchio; someone sitting unseen on my shoulder, who was my conscience.  That’s all the thought I gave to it for quite a few decades, despite being a regular church-goer.  I sang about Jacob’s ladder, and knew all the words by heart, but truly had no idea what they really meant.  Whether I was never taught, or I never caught what I was taught, I really missed out on knowing and accessing the power of what I call now, the Holy Spirit.  

Reverential fear was also OK back in the day.  “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”  Proverbs 9:10  NKJV  Fear was struck into our hearts as we listened to passages about eternal fire, being thrown into the pit, and other equally scary, yet very true, passages.  The Lord’s prayer taught us to ask forgiveness for our sins through prayer, and to forgive others who trespassed against us.  I mostly applied this to my parents and siblings, and remember thinking hard on my sins as I sat in the pew at church reciting The Lord’s Prayer.  The Father knew everything already, and I didn’t want to miss out on asking forgiveness for something and be forever doomed.  Worrying about it kept me from following my friends into trouble, but not always.  One Sunday, my friend suggested we sneak over to the drug store near the church between services and steal a candy bar.  I knew it was wrong, but I did it anyway.  The fear of the Lord caused a very heavy burden on me, and I was not quite sure I would be forgiven because the ten commandments said “You shall not steal.”  Exodus 20:15 NKJV   I never stole again.  And I confessed this sin multiple times, just to be sure I was ok.  Later, I lost some of this fear for a while with the “progress” of christianity that claimed a loving God could not be so unkind.  Because I was not reading or studying the bible at that time, I was easily duped.  It is sad to see how the lack of reverence for the LORD today has decimated society.  

Reading was another coping mechanism.  I read everything I could get my hands on, and re-read them when there was nothing new to read.  Which was most of the time.  Opening the gift of a book on my birthday, or at Christmas time, was an incredible treasure.  I almost couldn’t wait to get started on a new story that I could disappear into for a while.  Little Women was one of my favorites.

Around this time, I was offered the opportunity to go and stay with one of my Aunts at her time-worn, historic New England home near the Massachusetts coast.  I went for a week.  It was very strange at first to be there amongst her antiques and old, musty books.  She and my Uncle had so many books and antiques that there was only one trail through the house to follow to get from place to place.  Otherwise you had to scooch around, or step over, all kinds of stuff.  Most of it was dusty, and piled haphazardly.  Except for the bookcases, which were numerous, often used, and filled to the brim. Sometimes when I’m cleaning my house now, I think of her way of “housekeeping” and wish I could give up my propensity toward cleanliness.  Then, I remember that cleanliness is next to godliness and I keep on scrubbing.  

The house had a steep staircase, and at the top was the bedroom where I slept.  On the bedside table was the book Anne of Green Gables.  I was besotted.  After spending time in her yard sitting quietly watching for bunnies, or climbing the rickety ladder to pick a ripe, delicious pear off the pear tree, I would make my way to the daybed on the screened-in porch and slip into the role of Anne Shirley.   She was an orphan like me.  Her imagination sparked mine.  I wished the book would never end.  When I left that week, I was presented with the book, and another in the series.  The feeling of anticipation to begin the next story was strong within me.  I was given a few other antique books from that era, as well.  These books helped form my ideas of what love should look like, and act like.  It brings tears to my eyes to think how far from those ideals I would stray in the years to come.