1:58 p.m. - 2006-03-24
People are weird. God isn’t.*
Those of you who know me know that I come from a very religious family. I grew up in a non-denominational church, which used AG literature for Sunday School but was a bit more holy-roller than that esteemed group. Spirit-filled. That’s a good descriptor.
I just got off the phone with my mother, who’s been awake since 3 a.m. “battling demons”. In case the quote marks aren’t signal enough, those are her words – definitely not mine. She says she’s been dreaming about her ex-husband, and the negative thoughts about him (wanting to hurt him for all he put her through, et cetera) are driving her crazy: “I feel like I have demons with their claws in my brain.”
For her, that’s not a simile. For her, that’s like saying “I feel like I twisted my ankle” after having fallen down a flight of stairs.
I asked her if she still feels like the medication (paxil) is working. She said it was. She’s going to see her pastor’s wife sometime soon, for prayer and counseling and instruction. This is very important to her, very real for her. I can’t move past the last interaction I had with the pastor’s wife (who I will forever call Sister Rita, as that was how I knew her in my now-distant childhood).
*****
Scene: Wednesday night altar call. I’m fourteen or fifteen years old. I’m in tremendous emotional and mental pain – pain so bad that I’ve decided to slip out of my pew at church, braving the intense scrutiny of my peers (all better dressed, thinner, and therefore ultimately cooler than I ever will be) to get prayed for. Just the act of standing up and moving out of the pew takes an act of will. Everyone is looking at me. Everyone thinks I’m crazy. Everyone thinks I’ve sinned terribly. Everyone thinks there is something wrong with me. (Other than being fat and smart and dirt poor, that is.)
I kneel at the sedate, walnut-stained altar and try to close my mind from the wave of stares and jeers and whispers taking place (I’m sure) in the Youth Section just behind me. I’m supposed to cry. People who come to the altar cry. People who kneel and need things from God have some sort of emotional reaction. I’m not crying. I’m hurting, but I don’t know how to move into that space that others seem to find so easily. Something must be wrong with me. I must have done something wrong. Maybe I’ve committed an unforgivable sin, rebelled against God, laughed at someone who’s spoken in tongues, tried too hard to have the gift of tongues and spewed up gibberish to make people think I’ve been blessed in that way. Maybe God isn’t with me.
I’m not crying.
I feel the warm hands of the women of the church begin to touch my back, my arms, smoothing my hair. I keep thinking. Where is it? Where is the calm, the interaction? Where is God? Why am I here, at this altar, if not for peace? What is wrong with me?
Someone speaks into the microphone, over the strains of the church orchestra. I’m being urged to stand up. In addition to the laying on of hands which the women are providing, there will also be prayer and anointing with oil. I stand. I lift my hands as others do. I try to pray.
Sister Rita is praying with others at the altar, touching their foreheads with oil, leaning in and speaking to them, imparting God’s peace, his knowledge, his favor. She moves down the line. Some women fall, slain in the Spirit.
She approaches me, anoints me, prays for me. Her eyes are searching my face. The hands on my back, the hands holding up my arms, they’re starting to irritate me. Sister Rita is speaking to me, too loudly.
I see demons around you. Two demons. One on either shoulder. Oh, be careful. They’re black and shadowy. Be careful. Turn away from them. Don’t let them take hold of you.
The rest of the service is a blur. In the car on the way home with my sister and my mother, they are proud of me – happy that I went down for prayer. They’re curious: Have I been blessed? Surely now, I’ll stop being sarcastic, stop overeating, stop sulking? In a word, stop being me. I feel nothing but embarrassment. Stop talking about it. They think I should be nicer now that I’ve made peace with God. I’m in a foul mood that night when we get home. I’m not relieved. I’m not peaceful. But nor am I scared of the demons.
Instead, I’m disillusioned.
*****
This is the woman to whom my mother is turning for counseling. I suggested that she also talk with her doctor about other possible chemical or physical things that might be happening, other medications. I told her that the whirling feeling that she’s experiencing in her mind isn’t uncommon, that I have it, too, sometimes – but that I can usually treat it with medication or work past it with counseling. She says, offended and slightly alarmed, “It’s uncommon for me!”
I’ve told my sister and my mother in recent years about the two demons Sister Rita saw around me. My sister (an ordained minister who still attends that church) laughed, and then wistfully said she wishes I’d had a better experience at that church over the six years we went there. My mother, though, was appalled. I could see the wheels turning in her mind: my daughter is controlled by evil.**
*About three years ago, when my oldest nephew was heading to Children’s Church Camp for the first time, he was upset because my sister would not let him pack his Harry Potter underwear. He knew already that he wasn’t supposed to talk about magic (my sister is a nut for witchery and creepy things, absolutely loves the stuff!) or Harry Potter at church or around school friends who go to his church. “But Moooommmm,” he said, “No one is going to see my underwear at camp!” She replied that he’d be amazed at what everyone would see in the dormitory style atmosphere at church camp.
And then she said, “Remember, Seth. People are weird. God isn’t.”
**“Stealing is evil, and I want to be good.” (Lupita, the little girl in the Mexican movie Santa Claus, directed by René Cardona, 1959)
