Dirty Little Secret
I am going to write something I almost never, ever talk about- particularly in mixed company.
On this day in 1971 I became a Christian. There, I’ve said it. And in those words. And these: I accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior. No, seriously.
Those were pretty much the words I prayed along with the minister who helped save not just my soul (f you believe it works like that) but my life (I know it worked like that).
Yow! Therapy moment- glimmer of illumination: the week before I was “born again” my mother had the first of her “spells”- not a heart attack but the beginning of the long road to congestive heart failure, from which she now suffers quite literally. We were Christmas shopping at Britt’s. I’d either just eaten one of my favorite butter brickle cookies from their Bakery or was obsessing on when I could break away to go eat one. Anyway, I remember a longing for butter brickle in my mouth and then my mother slumping and saying she didn’t feel right and she sure as hell didn’t look right and she was very stern about us not making a scene and we would die first anyway so we just politely asked a clerk if he could call the ambulance for us and he took one look and then HE made the scene getting water, sitting her down, people gathering, expressing concern and even in her terror I could see my mother wanted to just disappear and not be the center of all the humiliating attention. I just knew it had finally happened: she was finally going to die. I’d been waiting for this for as long as I could remember. I knew she was heart broken and I’d known without knowing in the way that children do, that she was dying from the inside out. Her nervous breakdown several years before was not the first clue- certainly wasn’t the last. Since then I‘d been vigilant. More than vigilant. I tracked her, monitored her well-being, emotionally checking her pulse ever few minutes, doing what I knew to do to keep her ticking along as best she could. And then, goddamn, right there in Britts right before Christmas I think I was so busy trying to maneuver a way to the Bakery that I forgot to be watching. Because one minute she was my mother shopping to make Christmas as nice as possible for us- though it was no secret that it was excruciatingly painful for her- and then she was slipping away quite literally- turning pale and cool and not speaking in her regular voice.
We followed the ambulance to the hospital and from the hospital I remember calling our new minister- a young man my mother and I couldn’t stand. He was the quintessential 70’s Jesus Freak and let’s just say we were not and not amused either. I didn’t call my father. I wouldn’t have known how. There were no cell phones and he worked out of his car and now that I think of it I wouldn’t have known how to get in touch with him if my whole family had been wiped off the map. And in truth, it wouldn’t have occured to me to call him for help. My father doesn’t handle stress well. That is what you call understatement. Before I knew how to tie my shoes I knew how to keep all manner of secrets and to read his face when he got out of his car after work- checking the barometer to know how much to reveal of what had really gone on that day. So, I know he came to the hospital eventually but I didn’t call him and I don’t know who did. I called Dick- the reviled minister. And for the first time in my life I felt comforted, safe. He talked a bit, he listened a bit, he joked a lot. He didn’t assure me that my mother would be all right, but he assured me that I would be, that God loved me and would not leave me. I remember getting really pissed and spewing out something like “actually God hasn’t done such a great job of taking care of me up to now” and I remember how soft and sad Dick’s face became and he looked me right in the eyes- no one ever had done that- and he said. “If you have been hurt-it has not been God hurting you. God came to heal us, to heal our wounds.” And although I’m sure I gave him a load of crap in response to that- I felt like I’d just won the lottery, been handed the golden goose, found the Holy Grail. God was not the author of hurt but of healing. Everything that had happened to me in my life had not been planned by a sadistic creator but could be made new, healed- redeemed- by a life-giving creator. I remember Dick quoting Scripture I didn’t know: abundant life, come that you might have life, never thirst, bread of life, knock and the door shall be opened, knows the very hairs on your head. I knew many, many scriptures myself then- turn the other cheek, if a man asks for your shirt give him your cloak also, the good Samaritan, the Sermon on the Mt., do unto the least of these. My mother was my best social work professor long before i got to college. For her being a Christian meant loving others, giving to them, putting them first, yourself last, forgiving and forgiving and forgiving and then forgiving some more. It was all about the other person. I knew God loved others and that He would best love them through my loving them but I had never heard that God loved ME. That I was beloved, that there was a plan for those God loved to be made whole and free. Free from all the burdens and secrets and shame. I knew then that this was the best news I would ever hear and though I fought it and fought it the way I would fight things when I was 14 and it was 1971 and I was braless with black armbands and all. I’d been headed for a nice hippy life of free love on a commune somewhere protesting when I wasn’t planting a garden and singing alone with Joan Baez or Peter, Paul, and Mary. And I didn’t really lose any of that hippy drive but over and above it it was like someone was calling my name, knocking on the closed door of my heart and begging me to believe there could be more for me and for so many girls like me and women like my mother. And without wanting to, without knowing why, I said yes. I believed.
I remember sitting in the empty church sanctuary with Dick, it was sort of dark, the horse hair pew cushion was not all that comfy, I was staring at the fabulously magnificent organ my mother had played since before I was born, where I’d stand beside her and turn the pages for her- ever the helper, ever close by. And in that pew, in that church I told Dick I wanted to believe that Jesus had died for me personally, that he loved me in particular. I wanted to be made clean, whole. I remember saying vague things like there were things, things that had happened to me that were terrible and that I didn’t think Jesus could change them and Dick said, Jesus changed water into wine and death into life, there is nothing Jesus can’t change. No one is too big for Jesus and I remember punching him in the arm and pouting a bit because I thought that was a dig about my weight which it was but which he also meant sincerely. I remember Dick saying, “You are a beautiful young girl, you are special. You are sweet and kind and funny and wise beyond your years and God is going to use you in ways you can’t imagine. God does not want you to hide behind that pout and that weight. God wants you to shine. You’ve got to trust people. No one can help you- I can’t help you if you won’t trust me. I won’t hurt you. God will not hurt you. Ever.” And then I remember weeping with such relief and when Dick put his arm around me I felt like a baby in a mother’s arms, like the world was a safe place and now I had a Father and Mother who would not hurt me or let me be hurt. I was not alone.
And this is the crazy, I can’t-believe-it-still part. I felt something when I prayed. Something beyond language, something so deep inside myself it is pre-verbal. Something changed. It was like a gaping hole closed. My life still sucked. Many, many bad things happened to me after that. But I was never the same. December 5th- it’s always felt like my real birthday. It was like I left one world and went to another. When I hear immigrants talk about leaving lands of persecution and starvation and abuse and then talk of their love of freedom, the hope of freedom, the power of freedom, I feel like that is me. I lived in a world that was without hope and was blessed to move to a new land with hope. With terrible pain and suffering but also with hope and love and redemption.
And for years and years afterwards I tried out many religions, religious practices, other paths to enlightenment (or cloudiness- smoking pot and drinking never made me feel enlightened as much as less bothered by what I couldn’t see) and nothing ever made me feel known, loved, forgiven, hopeful, except Jesus.
I so don’t want to believe in Jesus. I think it’s a highly suspect concept. Goes beyond all rational thought. The Bible is not just full of inconsistencies but I hate many parts of it (See story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac- what the hell. Can you spell mental illness?) Christianity is used by way too many people to hurt, exclude, judge, manipulate, and control (and that’s without even mentioning the White House) others. But that’s Christianity. I’m not at all proud of so much that is done in the name of Christianity. In fact, these days, I’m downright ashamed. But that has so little to do with me. I am not really about Christianity, or the practice of Christianity. I want to remember the day I heard an amazing truth about the love of God sent to the world in the body of Jesus and that that hippy Jesus hung with lepers and whores and shamed the political powers and died because he was just way too powerful what with preaching all that peace and love and put down your swords and get up and walk and feed the hungry and Remember Me, Remember Me.
Believing in Jesus ended up NOTHING like I expected it to. It’s like a long marriage. The passion only makes it to the surface every now and then and sometimes I forget believing ever meant anything so incredibly earth shaking. But every December 5th in my heart I remember and I never talk about it. What and look like a lunatic, not to mention a hypocrite -most Jesus loving Christians do not sprinkle their speech with the f-word or tell God if this is what you call loving the world your love is shit, the way I often do.
But beyond all rational thinking, when push comes to shove and especially in the month of December what with December 5th in it and baby Jesus about to enter the world in nativity scenes around the world, I just have to say out loud that even though “born again” is a corny phrase and been given a god-forsaken reputation in our culture right now, I am so glad that Jesus came into this world and that we can all be immigrants, delivered into a spiritual land of freedom and healing if we will make the journey and keep making the journey, mile after mile after hot dusty-will-it ever-end-mile. It will end and I am no where near ready for it to end. In many ways I feel like I am still just beginning. So much still to learn, so much healing still to live into. So much hope still eludes me.
And yet I blog. Blogging is an act of faith. Maybe even a prayer.
This December 5th I have just returned from the hospital after finally successfully completeing the CT Angiogram. By Thursday I should know what’s happening with my heart. What’s blocking it- be it birthday cake or secrets.
It seems an interesting coincidence that my mother’s first heart “event” (it wasn’t a full fledged heart attack) happened at just about the same time as mine. And I was so frightened then that I had to reach out to Dick and then to God and then my whole life went in a direction I never could have imagined. And for all the loss and pain that that has held it has held much more life and joy and love.
This December 5th I thank God for Jesus, for the Word made Flesh. And I pray that as I first came to understand that God had lived and breathed in flesh and redeemed my life in doing that, God help me to come to understand my own flesh, how I can redeem my body and all the secrets it holds. How I can allow it to be redeemed.
Right now all I know to do is drink tea and write and accept the blessing of the Faithul Four and the other kind souls who have encouraged me as I pull off the layers right in front of God and everybody.
Thank you God for the miracle of December 5th in my life. May it always be so.
3:09:19 PM 
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