When
my stepmother passed away in March of 2011, I recall calling my older sister
and talking to her about her death. I
was, quite understandably, very upset and very emotional. I was crying and I remember my sister asked
me, “Do you believe in Jesus”? I was
gulping for air and I said I did; but, frankly, I was later mad at her for
bringing Jesus up at a time like this.
Why? Because I thought that she
was doing so not because she really wanted me to know and love Jesus, but because
she wanted to convert me. Later, she did
a few more things that totally pissed me off so that I found myself thinking
“Ha, some Christian she is!” The
thing is; her questions? They were another seed.
So,
back to the message series at the local church (which turned out to be Harvest
United Methodist). I showed the paper with the advertisement from the church to my husband.
I told him this church was literally five minutes away from us and what
did he think? Didn’t it look
interesting? He took it, read it, and
without hesitation said, “Sure, we can go if you want”. I don’t remember what
day that was; it may have been a Friday, because we began discussing if we
should go that coming Sunday. We
initially decided to go, but by Saturday night, I was already having second
thoughts about the whole thing. I mean,
SUNDAY? That’s tomorrow! I don’t know, maybe I don’t want to do this?
One
of the great things about my husband is, he’s not a pusher. Ok, maybe he wasn’t sure, either; come to
find out he had his own very personal reasons for avoiding church, but, when I
got cold feet, he didn’t argue with me.
So, we did not go that Sunday but I just couldn’t get that message
series out of my head. I WANTED to know
what they were going to say. I wanted to
believe that there were people who believed in God who were not judgmental. And, there was also the whole “getting to
know people” thing that we’d promised each other we’d do. And, in all honesty, I was beginning to
wonder what exactly I was going to do with the second part of my life, now that
I’d seemingly “done it all”. So, I next
told him I thought we should go to their Thursday night service. An hour, was all. Maybe it wouldn’t be very crowded, either; we
wouldn’t have to deal with a lot of people and if we didn’t go back, not
that many folks would have seen us there.
I’m serious; this is what was running through my mind when we decided to
try to go that coming Thursday!
This
time, we went. Thursday September 29th
2011. A bright, sunny afternoon and the
parking lot at the church was relatively empty (whew, I thought). We walked up to the doors of the church and
before we reached them, they were thrown open by a man and a woman with big
smiles on their faces. “Welcome to
Harvest!”, they said. We were both a bit
taken aback by their cheerfulness but (when we reflected on it later), it was
genuine. It was pretty quiet inside the gathering area of the church; only a
handful of other people there. The lady,
Nancy, asked us if this was our first time at Harvest because I’m sure all first time
people have the same look in on their faces that we did; a mixture of uncertainty,
shock, deer in the headlights, and resolve.
Yes, yes, we said and we spent a few moments with them telling them
about us and why we were there (the draw of the message series). They themselves were not attending that
evening’s service but were helping out with one of the children’s
ministries. They introduced us to the
youth minister/music coordinator and off we went with him. From there, we happened to meet Steve, one of
the Pastor, and chatted with him a bit before heading in for the service.
One
of the things I remember the most about that evening, other than who we met,
was my doggedness in refusing to take communion. I told my husband that I wasn’t ready to do
that and I felt it would be fake to get up there and take communion when I’d
not set foot in a church for 30 years. Not that I felt my husband was being fake by deciding
to do so; it was a very personal feeling.
That evening’s message centered
on when Christians say the wrong
thing. Oh, boy. Catherine, the other Pastor led the service
and I remember being extremely nervous and uncomfortable, but at the same time,
totally interested in what she had to say.
Lastly, one of the songs sung that night was one I’ve come to love called
“Cry Out to Jesus” by Third Day and the line that stuck with me all the entire
night was “He’ll meet you wherever you
are”.
To Be Continued!
Mrs. B
