Intro to "The Religion"

I told Annie I would write about this.  So, here is a start.  Annonymous, as it must be, for safety and sanity and family that still "belongs".

This time of year has always been difficult for me.  When I was young this was “preps” time.  “Preps”, what’s that you may ask?  Well, for every young woman who was one of the friends, this was a time of inner reflection and lots of hard work.  This was a time to bake and cook and clean and sew, all for the good of the friends.  I grew up speaking a foreign language, the language of the professing.  The language of the what, you ask?  See, I told you it was a different language.  We had workers and laborers; professing and non-professing; the friends and the world; the children of God and the children of man. 

I have the desire to prepare.  That is what “preps” was all about, preparing for the upcoming convention.  Okay, that’s another word that is from the Language.  Convention, it’s a four day long religious gathering where you eat, sleep and listen to the word of God.  You share everything you have and wear the best you’ve got.  Convention was like the beginning of your spiritual year.  Those who “profess” are those who have joined the church.  What church, you may ask.  Well, they don’t have a name.  They don’t claim to belong to any organized anything, but there are millions of “friends” around the world and they all speak the same language. 

Sometimes you run into someone who looks like they may be one of them, so you walk up to them and ask them which convention they attend or where Sunday morning meeting is in the area.  When they answer you and tell you they go to Manhattan or Boring or Ronan Convention or they attend Sunday morning meeting at John and Emma Stark’s house or Pat and Jason Derring….regardless of whether you know them, you know these people are one of the “friends”.

The men are clean cut and look like rather normal.  It’s the women that stand out from “the world”.  The women all have long hair and wear dresses nearly 100% of the time.  They don’t wear any make-up and many of them make their own clothes, or at least they did when I was young.  What’s wrong with that, you may ask?  Nothing, nothing is wrong with that.  But nothing is right with it either.  If it were personal choice, then that would be different.  It’s the fact that we were looked down upon if we ever cut our hair, wore make-up, pants, went to movies, dated someone who didn’t  “profess” or heaven forbid, married someone who was “on the outside”.

 I don't "profess" anymore.  I no longer belong.  I left when I was 28.  That was a really big year for me.  I left my husband, who was "professing" and I left my job.  I left my house, my religion and my family.  I took my children, put them in the back seat of the car with clothes in the trunk and left.  I left my life.  I left everything I knew.  I left my belief structure, my friends, my "belonging", my everything and stepped out to find "me".  I longed to be free to be me.  It has been a very difficult trip, but I promise, I will try to tell you everything.  I will be as vulnerable as I possibly can be.  But I must not tell you who I am.  For that, I am sorry.

The Beginning

I am going to write this as it comes to me.  I apologize ahead of time as it won’t be easy to follow, but that is how it was.  Perhaps you are supposed to be as confused as I was, used to be, am.  This “way”, this religion, the “truth” was not easy to follow either.  We, the friends, were bound by unspoken rules, the power of peer pressure to conform, to be one of them.  It was all I wanted for 28 years.  It was my only desire, to belong.  I sat down to write this many times and have come up against a wall.  This wall is so high and so strong and so forbidding that my fingers freeze, my heart races, my throat closes tight.  I look away and close my eyes.  I can’t do it, I just can’t.  Then I take a deep breath and remind myself, “I give myself permission to be free.”  I repeat, “I give myself permission to be free. “ I take one step forward and begin…again. 

For the sake of telling you this story, I must make up a name for myself.  I will call myself Shelly.  I want to take you back to when I first realized that my family was different from everyone else’s.  I was in third grade when I chose to “profess”.  Yes, that is quite young to make a personal decision to follow a religious path, but it was what was expected and hoped for in the heart of my mother.  I always wanted to belong, to be one of them, to be accepted.  Many children of “the truth” did not profess.  They never stood to their feet in front of all attending the meeting of friends to announce that they choose from this day forward to follow God in this “way” only.  They renounce “the world” and follow Jesus in “the way”. 

Only by professing, by joining the church, the way,  the truth can one be saved.  Anyone belonging to a “worldly church” is not saved.  They do not follow Jesus in the true way.  They are chancing the fires of hell and eternity with Satan.  The words of the Hymn still haunt me today.

The voice of the Shepherd is calling to you…

He offers you riches and untold….

There’s bread and to spare and no famine is there…

Enter in, enter in to the fold…

Will you come?.......Will you come?....

Enter in……..Enter in……to the fold…..

I stood to my feet, next to my sister who was a year younger than me.  We made our choice.  We began following God in the footsteps of Christ that afternoon.  I can still smell the freshly cut grass under the benches lined up on the hillside under the large tent.  I can still hear the sound of the breeze as it lifted the flaps of the tent walls.  The large tent was army green.  It had faded over the years and had many patches in it, but covered the entire congregation from the hot sun of that June day.  I remember the sweat rolling down my bare neck.  My hair was swept up in a tidy bun in the back of my head.  I don’t remember exactly what I was wearing, but I know it was a dress.  My mother probably made it.  She probably made my sister’s too.

My father wasn’t there.  He had been professing since he and my mother met in about 1967 or so.  I never knew my father to miss a convention.  He used to be one of the cooks.  I remember him in the kitchen stirring the large cauldrons of stew.  I can smell the roast beef and carrots, potatoes and gravy while they cooked, but my father wasn’t there this time.  He had chosen to not attend.  It wasn’t until we arrived home several days later that I found out he had chosen to no longer “profess”.

I told him I had professed and was now one of the professing friends.  He did not care.  He pretty much said nothing.  My heart was broken.  I had wanted for so long to please him and to be everything he wanted me to be.  I felt abandoned for the first time since I had chosen to follow the way of God.  My father was no longer going to be in Heaven with me.  I was crushed.  I was afraid of what was to come.  I had no idea what “it” was that was coming or how it was going to effect me that he chose to no longer be one of the friends.  I just knew with a knowing, that is something you can’t deny. This was the beginning of the rest of my life.

A Life Divided

After professing, I was expected to give “testimony”.  This consisted of studying the Bible, which was done every day, and choosing a topic on which to speak during Sunday morning “meeting”.  Throughout the year we met three times a week, Sunday morning, Sunday evening and Wednesday night.  When the summer came and all the ministers called “workers” were at different conventions and not in our area, we would only meet twice, Sunday morning and Wednesday night. 

I stood to my feet and professed my choice to follow Christ on a Saturday night meeting at a convention in the summer.  The next morning, I stood to my feet in front of the hundreds of friends gathered in the convention tent and read aloud the verse from Psalms 121:1-2. 

“I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. 

My help cometh from the LORD which made heaven and earth”

I was just a third grade child.  I was giving my heart and soul to the Lord and trusting that he would keep me safe from all harm. My heart beat so loudly in my chest that I could hear it clearly in my ears and thought those around me must hear it too.  I placed my complete faith, in his hands and gave my life over to him. 

When convention was over we went back to our grandmother’s home in a small town not far away from the convention grounds.  She was not of the faith.  She was a lovely lady who served as the secretary of this and that in her local town and went to church every Sunday just down the street from her house.  But she was not saved, not according to the “truth”, not according to the workers who stood on the platform in front of all the congregation and told us that it was our duty to profess our faith in Christ to the world so that other sinners might come and be saved. 

I never understood how God could not love my grandmother.  I loved her dearly and she loved me.  I was never at peace with this thought that God would condemn my loving Grandmother to hell simply because she chose to follow him through a different path.  I never understood why this was the only way, the one true way, the truth.  If this was the truth, then everything else was a lie.  Where was the loving and compassionate and forgiving God that I read about in the Bible?  And why was I so afraid of him. 

When summer was over and we returned home to Montana, I started the fourth grade and I can’t say I remember much of anything except playing kick-the-can in the neighbor’s yard until it was so dark we could no longer see each other.  I took piano lessons from the lady across the street.  They had three children with whom I went to school.  I don’t recall disliking them, but I do remember fighting with them quite a bit.

I will call them the Krinkles.  They were also professing.  Their family was well respected amongst the friends as both of their parents were professing.  The entire family went to meeting with each other every Sunday and they had Wednesday night Bible Studies in their home.  We didn’t go to their Wednesday Bible Study, because the workers said it was better that we went elsewhere.  I was never sure they had decided that due to my father not being one of the friends anymore and we were somewhat unwanted, pariahs of a sort, or the fact that we were neighbors and possibly there was a different reason from that which I was ever able to come up with.

My family was called “divided”, since both of my parents no longer went to meetings.  It was expected that either both parents were professing or your family was considered somewhat less than the others.  You weren’t invited to ice-cream after the Sunday evening gospel meetings.  If you did happen to show up, you would see the whispers and sideways glances as you walked into the Ice Cream Parlor.  There were get-togethers and picnics and potlucks that we were simply not told about.  We weren’t invited to others homes after Sunday morning meeting and no one wanted to come to ours. 

There were a handful of people, truly good people, who I recall extending an invite during those years.  My mother was so lonely.  She had married a man whom she thought was walking in the path of righteousness and he had quit.  Simply quit.  He walked out of the church but stayed in the marriage.  This was not necessarily a good thing.  He was unhappy.  My mother was unhappy.  She refused to divorce my father because if she did she would be relegated to a life alone.  She would never be able to remarry unless my father passed away.  She would be not just unhappy, but single and unhappy.  She held on to the little that she had in their relationship.  She loved my father, but we would come to know another side of him in the next eight years.  He could be mean.  He could be so very mean.  But I will wait to tell you about that until later.

“If that’s the way he wants it”

 We had been out of town visiting my grandparents for a few weeks and when we arrived home there was a surprise waiting for us.  The woman sitting on the front porch of our house in my mother’s bathrobe smoking a cigarette was not my mother.  I knew this even with my grade school problem solving ability because my mother was in the car next to me.  She had stopped abruptly at the corner of our street and stared glassy eyed at the blonde woman seated on the cement stairs.

Even as a young child I could feel the anger and fury coming from my mother’s very being.  Her soft white hands gripped the steering wheel as she muttered something under her breath.  All I could make out was something like “If that’s the way he wants it.  I’ll show him.”  Then she turned the car around and as the gravel flew, the woman on the steps abruptly looked up.  Her cigarette dropped to the ground and she hurried inside our house.

Mom dropped us girls off at the library and told us she would be back in a few hours.  I went to the audio book section and placed the headphones on my head.  The story of “Black Beauty” drowned out the pictures racing through my mind and the questions receded into nothingness as I closed my eyes.  Escape to fantasy was such a relief from the questions brought by reality, adults and lies.

When my mother returned for us she seemed less confused and much more in control.  I can’t say I ever thought of my mother as in control often, but this day, in this instance, she had obviously come to a conclusion in her life and acted upon an idea.

It wasn’t but a few weeks later that we met Mr. Jenson.  We sat in the brown tweed waiting room chairs and flipped through magazine titled “Psychology Today”, “Parenting” and “Family Circle”.  When we were called into his office he said that anything we talked about in his office was “not allowed to be discussed at home.”  He asked us if we were angry about how things were at home and if we had any feelings we wished to discuss. 

The only thought that I recall going through my mind was, “What things are we allowed to be angry about?”  I can’t say I asked it, but it was always a question.  Sure there were things I was angry about.  I was angry that we couldn’t be like other kids.  I was angry that we didn’t know the movies and songs that other kids knew.  The issue between my parents and their relationship, or lack thereof, was never a question for me.  I knew my mother would never leave my father because of the “religion” and I knew my father would do whatever he wanted regardless of what my mother desired.  My opinion and my anger didn’t matter so I said nothing. 

I did ask my mother why we weren’t talking about this to the “workers” (ministers in our religion) and she told me they wouldn’t understand.  I couldn’t figure out how a minister who was supposed to be in direct contact with God not understand the troubles of their people?  Why wouldn’t they know how to advise my parents?  The answer came many years later when I was having troubles in my own marriage.  Their advice would have been to love each other and endure all things.  God will take care of you and your relationship.  They would have told my mother she had no “rights”.  She must simply have faith that what was happening was for her own good.

Our house was a very unpleasant place to be that year.  My older sister ran away and my father hung a sign on her bedroom door.  It said “Sewing Room”.  They wouldn’t talk about her.  They said she was at a hospital because she was sick and we couldn’t visit her.  I missed her, but didn’t miss the screaming and arguments.  She was a loose cannon when she was home and my mother was frantic when she wasn’t.  I heard conversations about red pills and alcohol, “uppers” and “downers”, but never understood what it all meant. 

I was torn between the harsh realities of what was actually happening and the “just have faith in God” religious beliefs in which I was raised.  Everything that was wrong or bad or worldly was simply ignored or denied.  We were taught that if we denied it was happening it would simply vanish, but that wasn’t happening in reality. 

The workers said it was because we were lacking faith and needed to pray more for it.  What were we to have faith in?  Whom were we to have faith in?  Where were we to go to get faith?  What did faith look like and if all these bad things were happening to my family because of a lack of faith? Did that mean we were all bad?  This “Just have faith and God will fix it.” rule confused me even more.

Explaining

There were many unwritten “rules” that we followed in this thing we called a religion.  We did not swear.  We did not divorce and if we did, we most certainly never remarried.  That would be a sin and we would be damned to hell no matter what we did if we were to do this.  Once a person was remarried they were no longer allowed to “take part” or be a part of this way of God.  They could show up and listen, but they were not a member of the congregation. 

If you were divorced, and chose to remarry, you were ostracized by your fellow members.  The best way I can describe it is like being shunned.  Your family could still have lunch with you and see you, but any person outside your family having any kind of contact was seen as someone taking pity upon you and/or possibly trying to show you your sins and bring you back to the way of God. 

If you had ever “professed”, “taken part” in a Sunday morning meeting, stood to your feet and exclaimed to the friends that you were a true believer and you claimed this way as your own, you were never allowed to break that rule.  There was one small loop-hole though.  If your ex-spouse was to ever die, you were free to remarry.  Can you imagine the feelings this raised within the hearts of those who were “kicked out” simply because they chose to not remain alone for the rest of their life?

I remember a young man who had gone to meetings most of his life.  I will call him Steve.  He married a young “worldly” girl and they had a child but were no longer attending meetings.  After a few years of marriage, the young wife divorced Steve and he eventually remarried.  He brought his new wife to meetings and they both professed.  They stood to their feet and claimed this one true way as the way of God and professed before all there that they chose to follow this way for the rest of their lives.  They were allowed because after all, Steve had never “professed” before.  Try to be a young child understanding this.  If it’s confusing to you, it was even more so to me.

I often found myself having to explain my life and religion to others.  I grew up most of my youngest years without a television and we were not allowed to go to the movies.  I didn’t have a radio that played any music, just static.  My father, who was no longer professing, had a small television that he would take out of the closet to watch his football games on the weekend. My mother would not allow it in the living room.  We were occasionally allowed to watch Mutual of Omaha’s “Wild Kingdom” and unbeknownst to my mother, sometimes snuck in an episode of “Dukes of Hazard” or “Lawrence Welk”.  Those things were viewed as “worldly” and were only filled with things of this earth.  We kept this a secret from the friends and never spoke of it to others. 

 My hair was long, but not as long as the others.  I didn’t quite fit in with “the world” nor did I quite fit in with the girls in “the truth”.  We wore no make-up and no jewelry.  A watch was acceptable as was a wedding band, but a watch was seen as a tool and as long as it was rather plain, it was tolerable.  A wedding band was the outward symbol to others that you were married and had chosen a spouse for life. 

We did not smoke or consume alcohol at all.  I remember hearing of a professing couple out for dinner one night that had a glass of wine with their meal.  I knew of this because someone spoke of it to the workers and it was mentioned in a Sunday evening gospel meeting.  The couple’s name was not mentioned, but whoever they were, they got the hint.

 I knew little to nothing of current events and we had no magazines other than National Geographic in our home.  My parents spoke nothing of politics and we were uneducated about voting rights, political parties or any world issues.  We did not know anything about professional sports and had no way to follow them if we had known.  I used to hate it when children would talk about the newest song or music group or video that was out.  I knew nothing of these and just smiled and nodded and acted like I had seen it or heard it or knew the words. 

The girls in “the truth” who were “professing” only wore dresses.  These dresses were usually rather plain but not as simple as those worn by the Amish or Quaker’s.  I remember wearing pants every once in a while, but that was half-heartedly accepted by others in “the truth” because after all, I was from a divided home.  You see, I didn’t have a good example at home and you couldn’t expect me to hold the standard as high as I should.

I apologize again for any confusion this is causing, but imagine having to live it and trying to explain this way of life to others.  Our church had no name.  We didn’t actually call it a church.  The workers said that a church was a building and we didn’t have one.  We met in homes or tents on someone’s property and occasionally rented out a large room or hall at a school or public building for larger gatherings. 

We simply referred to ourselves as “friends”.  We called this thing we belonged to by many names and yet owned none of them.  Often I have heard it referred to as “the two by two’s” or “the way”, “the truth” or “the friend’s church”.  I do not capitalize them here as they are not considered by me even today as a name.  We didn’t have one.  I told my school friends that our religion was nondenominational and we were Christian, but had no name.  I think this just confused them more.

We considered our ministry “unpaid” but the ministers had more cash in their pockets than my parents; however, they held no bank account and paid no taxes.  Each ministry team would go forth as a same sex pair to preach and leave all worldly possessions behind.  They gave up everything they ever had to preach the word of God.  They lived with us in our homes and did not have a home of their own.  It was considered a privilege to have them remain in your home for more than a night or two.  I remember the workers staying in homes around us and near us, but since our home was “divided” they would not remain in our home overnight.  My father was never cruel or mean to them.  They were just not invited.

I never knew how they paid for their gas or bought their clothes, which were always nicer than my mother’s, until one day as I was leaving the Sunday night gospel meeting I saw the man behind me hand an envelope to the elder of the two workers.  It was not closed all the way and I saw inside the green of money.  I was confused at this as a child, but came to realize that it was how they were helped.  We never called it “paid”.  We called it “helped”. 

There was no collection during the services, ever.  I mean, ever.  To an “outsider” this would appear to be a completely “unpaid” ministry.  That is obviously unrealistic in this day and age as they had to buy their gas and purchase their clothing somehow.  I found out when I was a bit older that they only accepted “help” from those who were professing.  Those who were “of the world” or just visitors to our meetings were never allowed to financially contribute.

The Forgotten Years

If there was one thing I learned how to do by growing up in this way, it was to deny myself.  We were expected to deny ourselves just about everything.  The world, we were told, held only damnation and hell.  All things of this earth would do nothing for us in the eyes of the Lord.  We were to take up our cross and follow the footsteps of Jesus.  This sounded good in theory, but it created an entire culture of “deny, deny, deny”.  It got to the point that I would do something and realizing that it was “of the world”, I would pretend that I hadn’t done it.

I was in a perpetual state of denial.  I was growing up with such conflicting realities that I felt almost like two different people.  There was the me who wanted to watch television, play sports, join Girl Scouts, listen to music on the radio full blast, kiss boys, wear jeans, learn how to use make-up, don a few rings, pierce my ears, cut my hair and simply be allowed to be a kid.  Then there was the other me who wanted so desperately to “belong”, to be one of “them”.

I often wonder if this contributed to my ability to lie during these years.  I could convince just about anyone of anything, or at least I thought I could.  I would stand up in Sunday morning house meeting and give my testimony, reading verses from the Bible and talk about how much I wanted to be like this person or that person or do a better job of being a “good example” to the worldly people.  Then I would leave the gathering in my Sunday best and arrive home to our little house in the valley only to get that dress off as quickly as possible and change into something more comfortable.  Usually this was the one pair of jeans I owned and a t-shirt.

I recall sticking my head in the sand from about fourth grade until probably the seventh.  Those years went by leaving only a whiff of memories.  Kind of like the smell of something in the wind.  You have a vague recognition and think, “I know that smell.”  And then it’s gone.  Poof, off to somewhere you have never been.  I know this time in my life must have been pretty tumultuous as I only recall about half a dozen things. 

I remember my father getting angry about something while he was sitting on the couch in the living room.  I believe it was a Sunday afternoon as I recall the Sunday comic page from the newspaper.  I remember wanting to read them.  Then, for whatever reason, he got so angry that he grabbed the entire paper off the floor and ripped it to shreds.  I was upset that I was now not going to be able to read the comics (remember, we weren’t allowed to watch television).  I said something like, “Some of us haven’t read that yet.” 

I remember his face was beet red with anger and as he ripped up the paper he snarled at me and said (and I remember his voice until this very day), “Go to Hell!”  My heart was beating in my chest like that of a tiny bird.  I felt it was going to explode.  My ears began to ring with that loud, high pitched tone that screams and doesn’t stop.  I stood up from the brown shag carpet and walked to the basement stairway.  I recall wearing a pair of pink gauchos with a white ruffled t-shirt.  I walked down the stairs to my bedroom with its beige walls and beige carpet.  I lay down on my navy blue bedspread and cried my eyes out. 

I heard a knock on my door a few minutes later and my father entered my room.  He walked over to my bed and sat down beside me.  He placed his hand on my back and I refused to look at him.  “Shelly, I am sorry I said that to you.” He said in a low voice.

I looked up from my pillow.  I remember purposely not looking at him.  I looked at the wall in front of me and through gritted teeth I replied, “Don’t you EVER come in my room again.”  I was so angry and hurt and filled with pain that I never wanted him to come near me ever again in my life, much less enter my sanctuary, my place of escape, my bedroom.  He had told me to go to hell.  How could anyone, much less a father do this to a child.  My heart was broken.  I realize now that he was only human and had his faults and fears.  My relationship with him was never the same after that.  His drinking got worse and he was away from home more than he was there.  And you know what?  He never did come in my room again, ever.

The next few years went by in a muddled mixture of church meetings and counseling sessions.  My mother had told my father that he had better get help for his drinking and drug abuse or she was going to leave him.  She was tired of the abuse, both verbal and physical.  His job took him out of town quite a bit and that was a relief, but when he returned he was distant and usually drunk, so in a step contrary to the denial she usually cherished, she threw out the ultimatum.  He agreed to get counseling. 

By then my older sister, I’ll call her Marie, was drinking and doing whatever she could to numb the pain she was feeling for whatever reason she felt it.  Like I said, I really don’t remember many details of those years.  Perhaps it is a defense mechanism to shield me from the pain that would be further brought on by the memories. 

I remember being sick for nearly my entire seventh grade year.  I had Mononucleosis.  I spent that year mostly in bed.  My grandmother came to take care of me since both my mother and father worked and I was barely able to walk on my own.  I was very ill.  My throat was so swollen shut that my mother could hear me breathing from her bedroom.  I was fed liquids mostly since I could barely swallow and I simply existed.

The summer before my eighth grade year we moved again.  We did this quite often due to my parent’s occupations.  I decided that this was going to be where I changed who I was.  This new place was going to give me a newfound self.  I was going to become something different from what I had been.  I cut bangs in my hair and stopped “taking part” in Sunday meetings.  I still went, as my mother insisted, but I refused to stand and give my testimony anymore.  I refused to be a part of this thing called they called the truth.  If this was the truth I decided I was fully prepared to live the lie. 

Freedom Interrupted

The summer before eighth grade was when I started to try to break free from this thing called “the truth”.  This was all I had ever known and I had absolutely no idea how to make even my first attempt at leaving it.  Then, I fell in love.  I fell in love with a boy who was just two years older than me and yes, one of the friends.  He was the calm to my storm, the quiet to my noise, the introvert to my extrovert.  For the purposes of this story I will call him Robby. 

Robby was quiet and unassuming.  He truly calmed me.  I have never been able toexplain it, but that is what he gave to me.  His calm and quiet nature just soothed my troubled soul.  We met at a convention up in the mountains of Montana.  The rain came down in sheets during the nights and kept up a steady drizzle during the days.  The roads were muddy and the grassy meadows between convention tents were even muddier.  We pretty much skipped between the meeting tent and the dining tent for the next four days. 

We had many tents to choose from.  There was the meeting tent and the dining tent.  Those two are pretty self explanatory.  Then there was the stand-up cafeteria tent where the “young people” who were able bodied and had no children to feed ate.  The tables were bar height, and we stood to eat at them, thus, it was aptly named the stand-up cafeteria tent.  There were tents where we could not hang out such as the elderly women’s sleeping tent lined with metal bunk beds covered in sleeping bags.  Ladies dresses hung from wires and rods across the length.  The elderly men had a sleeping tent as well, but I have never been in that one, so I can’t describe it to you.  I assume it was much the same as the elderly ladies tent minus the dresses.  There was the women’s tent and the men’s tent where the rest of us all slept separated by gender and given a place to sleep in our sleeping bags beneath these musty, leaking, army green tents. Each sleeping tent housed between forty and sixty people, depending on the size of the tent.

You would have to imagine a tent the size of a circus tent to understand the enormity of the meeting tent.  This giant green tent was filled with benches.  Row upon row of benches lined the grass like rows of vegetables in a garden.  Each bench had a different blanket covering it.  There were flannel blankets and patchwork quilts, brightly colored afghans and old grey woolen blankets.  Each person came to claim their bench on Wednesday evening, the first day of convention.  Some people put their blankets on the benches during the final days of preps.  This was considered cheating and frowned upon when it got out of hand. 

The bathrooms facilities were in a separate building, although they were only outhouses, they were multiple person outhouses.  You only have to imagine the stench that occasionally flowed out the doors of these “twenty-seaters” to know that you wanted to drink as little coffee as possible for the next four days.  There were usually four or five showers in the back and with cold water, most of us chose to shower before we came, wash up as best we could in our personal areas and wash our hair in the cold water that could be had from the sinks.

You may wonder how one hundred or so young people entertain themselves for four days with no sports, no television, no radio, no McDonalds, and no dances.  Well, we did a few things.  We stood around in groups and talked.  We sang hymns in the meeting tent in the evenings.  We helped out with the needed chores in the kitchen, the bathrooms, the garbage and the draining of water from the roofs of tents, or we took walks.  Obviously, the rain at this particular convention was not conducive to taking a walk.  But let me explain this idea of “walking” anyhow.

It’s pretty straight forward.  It’s like a date.  When a girl likes a boy, or vice-versa, one of them asks the other if he/she would like to go on a walk.  If the invitation is accepted and you hold hands, you may be considered a couple.  Yes, it was that naïve.  It was that pure. 

Not everything about this truth, this way this life was horrible.  I still think back and fondly remember some of the things at convention.  I remember the feeling in my stomach, the butterflies that would chase up into my throat and tickle my backbone as they flickered in excitement of convention.  I didn’t so much look forward to the meetings, the three meetings that took two hours each, every day.  I did look forward to seeing my friends, my peers, the boys that I got to pick from.  That year, Robby, introduced to me by his cousin, asked me to go on a walk.  We did not hold hands.  We really, really liked each other though and when I found out that he was going to be at Manhattan convention, I was overjoyed.  So was I.

I had cut bangs in my hair and had quit taking part in meetings, but Robby didn’t care.  He didn’t judge me for my choice and for that, even today, I am truly grateful.  We met at Manhattan a month or so later and the days were warm and walks were a good thing.  We held hands and smiled at each other and I started rethinking my choice to leave the truth.  Where was I going to go anyhow?  My mother would make me go to meetings regardless of whether I chose to take part.  I slowly drifted back into the rules and decided to grow my bangs out.  By the time I saw Robby at Manhattan convention, I was once again caught in the snares of this trap, this religion, this truth.

Growing Pains

Many of us as adults realize that our preteen and teen years are very confusing.  This thing in my life called religion seemed to confuse those years even more for me.  It is difficult to be different from the other kids at school, being different can often bring on a loneliness and perceived air of being better than everyone else.  In my case, I wrestled with overwhelming confusion and the conflict of two worlds, two ways of life. 

When I was in my grade school years I was allowed to do things that other professing children were not.  My father had the final say in much of what went on in our home and being children, we usually picked the easiest choice.  When it came time to begin school sports, my father demanded that we be allowed to choose to do what we wished.  My mother, only thinking of our “spiritual security”, begged us to reconsider and choose the harder path and remain “steadfast in the way”. 

My older sister was not interested in participating in sports very much.  I remember her playing basketball for a few years in grade school and when she reached high school, she became a cheerleader.  You can only imagine the horror my mother felt when she saw my older sister dancing around on the basketball court in her tiny cheerleader skirt with her legs kicked up in the air for everyone to view those cheerleader panty things she wore.  My mother rarely attended any sporting events and had found a slight acceptance and ready excuse for Marie’s cheerleading activities; after all, she wasn’t professing. 

My younger sister, Lisa, was never very sports minded.  She was a bit on the chunky side and extremely intelligent.  When children could be found playing outside on a sunny day, Lisa was most likely curled up with a book under a tree or staring at the puffy clouds in the sky dreaming her days away in quiet solitude.  She seemed very lonely to me, but as the youngest of three girls, she was often ignored or passed over and seemed to simply exist.  As she grew older she told me that she was never happy with who she was and felt like a stranger in her own body.  She found her escape in school work and excelled in all ventures academic.  She was a good little professing girl.

I was the middle child and sought attention from anyone, anywhere.  I wanted desperately to be accepted, to be part of the team, to belong.  I loved to play basketball and volleyball and baseball and to be involved in team sports of any kind.  I joined the school wrestling team in grade school and excelled.  I was exceptionally strong and agile.  I told others that I was a wrestler and was proud of it.  I only lost three matches in three years.  I was good at it and I finally found a feeling of belonging.  Then a sister worker (woman minister) said, “It is an embarrassment and unacceptable as a professing girl, much less one becoming a teenager, to grapple around on the floor with half naked little boys”.  I quit.

I tried to be the son my father never had, but so many things boys did were not acceptable for young professing girls and once again I was on the outside of the group on both sides, not accepted by the people of the “world” but not accepted by the professing “friends” either.  As I look back at that feeling desperation I felt, I see how I was simply trying to belong to anything, anyone.  That desire to belong became the one and only goal in my life.  It resonates over and over again throughout the years, the relationships, the failures and the fears.

There was only one relationship in my youth where I felt that I belonged.  That was with Robby.  He and I wrote letters to each other since we lived hundreds of miles apart and I remember running to the mailbox every single day, my heart in my throat, just praying to find a letter from him.  I belonged to him.  I was his.  My heart was his and his alone for many years.  Sure I liked other boys or thought they were cute.  I flirted and smiled, laughed at other’s jokes and enjoyed the company of boys, but my heart always belonged to Robby.  I had found that safety, that security, that total acceptance from him that I longed so much for from my parents.

I am sure my parents loved me and I am sure they wanted what was best for me.  They weren’t horrible people.  To others, they appeared rather normal, they seemed like a nice enough couple.  They didn’t fight much in front of us girls, but there was an underlying tension between them that belied a stormy relationship filled with something intangible but yet very real.  There was something just below the surface that you simply couldn’t put your finger on.  They played a good game and seemed like they were happily married, but for many years it was a marriage in name only.  My father traveled for his job quite often until that summer of my eighth grade year.  That’s when everything changed.

Marsha

When I say everything changed, I am not kidding.  We moved several hundred miles from the town I had lived in for the past few years and my father rented a large, white, house built in the 1920’s on the corner of 10^th and Powell.  This was a beautiful old home with a sprawling front porch, giant maple trees, ancient rose gardens, climbing vines and wood floors.  This house had character like nobody’s business.  There were two fireplaces and five bedrooms.  An atrium that ran half the length of the entire house jutted off the master bedroom.  This was a far cry from the tiny ranch style tract home, built in the 1970’s, we had occupied in the valley outside of Hooksville.

Normally, when you move, you get to start fresh in so many ways.  I was going to have to create some of it for myself and I knew it.  Having a conversation one day with my overly brainy younger sister, she suggested I change my name.  She even said she’d do it too.  She chose her middle name, Shannon.  I thought about it for about two minutes and decided I liked the idea and jumped on the band wagon.  I didn’t realize that my name was so intrinsically melded to my personality.  When I chose a new one, I also chose a new personality.  I left Shelly behind.  I left the convictions she had.  I left the morals and the values and even most of her personality.  I chose my middle name.  I was now, Marsha.

Marsha was good at sports and never missed a game.  She would go to basketball practice after school and run miles around the gym.  Her body had blossomed and she had the womanly curves desired by any young girl.  Her legs were strong and muscled and her arms would put any young weight lifting teenage boy to shame.  She lifted weights with the football team and never, ever, ever sat still for one single moment.  She joined the school band and having only played the piano and violin before was forced to make a choice of a different instrument.  She chose the drums. 

She played the tympani, the cymbals, maracas and snare, base drum, tambourine, triangle and was finally allowed to sit in the seat most coveted by the drummers.  She was the set drummer for the band.  She sat behind that big contraption made of five drums, three cymbals, two foot petals and the coveted drummer’s chair.  She pounded and banged and tapped and swished.  The drum sticks in her hands became just extensions of her arms.  The ferocious speed at which she picked up this drumming thing was astounding.  She became “first seat” in the drumming section and was often asked to come up to the high school and practice with them.  She did and she loved it.

She became one of the popular girls at the school and all the boys liked her.  Believe me, she liked the boys too.  She dated a high school senior.  He was the quarterback of the football team and one of the popular boys.  Many of the girls wanted to be like her and she was invited to all the birthday parties and homecoming parties and school dances and social gatherings.  She ate burgers at the Tasty Freeze and played the Pac-Man video game in the corner.  She even had her name on the “Best of Pac-Man” list that stayed on the screen for all to see.  She spent hours at the swimming pool with the boys she hung out with and had one of the best sun tans in town.  It seemed she had everything she wanted, but inside her, I sat and watched and wished I could be like her. 

As I look back now on Marsha’s eighth grade year, knowing full well that it was mine too, I seem somehow detached from it.  Marsha didn’t go to the Sunday morning meetings.  I did.  Marsha didn’t take part and speak humbly before the living room full of stoic professing faces about wanting to be a better example and hoping to be more like Christ and less like “the world”.  I did.  Marsha didn’t care about Robby and his genuine kindness and gentleness and acceptance.  I did and I was silent for an entire year.

Marsha’s little sister Lisa had chosen to change her name as well.  She chose to use her middle name as well.  She chose to be called Shannon.  Her year was nothing like Marsha’s she was forever misunderstood and was not into sports.  She spent her year in the big old house with her dog and her books.  She had to have her legs bound to boards during the nights as she had developed a disease called Osgood Schlatter’s that made it extremely painful to bend her knees, walk or even sleep.  Marsha ignored her little sister with whom she had been so close during earlier years and they went their separate ways in life from that point on.

That year went by as all years do, one day after the other.  But this one was different for me.  Marsha kept me in a busy whirlwind of activity and the thought of professing and following Christ and my commitments to God were not of importance to her.  I just watched from a quiet place inside her and wished I could be like that.  Full of energy and vitality, full of talent and something akin to jealousy started to fester in me.  I decided I had to do something.  I had to break this hold that Marsha had over me.  She was everything I wanted to be in the sense of “the world”, but nothing akin to what I wanted to be in God’s way.  I had to get rid of her or I had to join her.

A Long Hot Summer

I look back on my high school years now and I believe I have much to thank Marsha for.  She helped me to become a more rounded person and I found that for me to belong to something other than "the religion" whose people didn't really accept me anyhow, was what I truly longed for. 

This was the final year of moving while I lived at home.  My father packed us up in the dusty old brown station wagon, suitcases tied on top like a gypsy from Arkansas, and moved us to a very dry, very dusty, very dreary town in Southeastern Montana.  To call it a town was being very forgiving.  Benderton was not much more than a truck stop, one blinking red light and a court house where speeding tickets could be paid on your way to the Black Hills in South Dakota.

The sidewalks rolled up at 8p.m and the bars opened at noon, already full by ten after five and slowly the fire of cheap whiskey and even cheaper beer would burn in the stomachs of the cowboys come into town from a long hard day’s work.  This was truly my first introduction to "real cowboys".  Every child loves to play cowboys and Indians, but very few actually ever met a real one.  I was lucky enough to meet both.

Benderton was just sixty miles east of the Custer Battlefield and about one hundred miles west of Mount Rushmore.  Never before had I lived in such an open space with nothing to stop the tumbleweeds but another tumbleweed, caught up on a fence somewhere south of town.  My older sister once said that, "This may not be the end of the earth, but if you stand on the top of that house over there, you can see it from here."

We pulled our camper trailer into town and parked it in the grade school parking lot where my parents would be working.  I awoke to bright hot sunshine already beading sweat on my brow by 7:30 in the morning.  "Oh, this is not a good omen."  I said to myself and I opened the trailer door.  The sun was blinding and burned my eyes like heat from a magnifying glass in the hands of a boy killing ants.  This was a horrible little place but I was in no way going to let it get me down before I had even placed one foot on the earth.  I stepped down to the dusty ground and placed my hands on my hips.  My long blonde hair blowing in the wind that never seemed to cease, "This, is going to be a challenge."  I moaned, and taking a deep breath headed off to find my father.

I found him and my mother sitting on a bench near the swings in the playground.  They were drinking coffee from the local gas station and my father had picked up some powdered sugar doughnuts to feed his family a quick breakfast before heading off into what town there was to find a suitable home to rent.  My father's idea of a good breakfast consisted of something solid and something to drink.  It didn't matter what it was, as long as there was something to chew and something to wash it down with.  Thus, the doughnuts and coffee would have to suffice until lunch, whatever that may be.

The small duplex my father found was only five or so blocks from the school and when I say school, I mean the grade school/middle school/high school.  We rented the upstairs of this horrid place and spent most of our time outside since the heat was unbearable by nine in the morning and didn't dissipate until around nine in the evening.  Thunderstorms were a sight to behold from the second story window and our small battery operated radio told us of tornados and lightening strikes, which seemed to be just about all the excitement this town had to offer. 

The picnic table in the yard was my sister's and my favorite place to hang out.  There was no grass in the yard, just a few spots of thistles and earth so hard packed that not even a shovel could penetrate it.  Breakfast, lunch and dinner was served on the picnic table and typically consisted of doughnuts or cold cereal, taco salad (my mother's favorite), and anything my mother didn't have to turn the stove on for, for dinner.  It wasn't that my mother didn't want to cook, it was simply too wretchedly hot to do so.

The old warped wooden table served many purposes.  Without a television we spent many hours playing backgammon, checkers, cribbage and gin rummy.  The hardest part about playing anything with cards was the wind that constantly blew through the yard.  It was hot and it was dry, occasionally the aroma of manure mixed with dust and the smell of sagebrush would hit me.  I hated this place already.  It was so very isolated and devoid of anything that remotely resembled life.

My older sister Marie was just a year and a half older than me and had been sexually active for several years by then.  She had never made the choice to “serve God” and was the black sheep of our little dysfunctional family.  Her first week in town, she met two of the local boys.  They had both recently graduated from high school and were hanging around town after graduation because there was nothing else to do.  She finally made her choice between the two of them and the picnic table became the kissing table.  I am sure there were many more things that happened at that table, but since Gary, her pick of the cowboys, paid my little sister Shannon and I a dollar each to leave the table and go play somewhere else, we didn’t get first-hand knowledge of it.

Shannon was only a year younger than me and had a tendency to be the little spy.  “Shelly, let’s go see what Marie is doing.” She would say. I had changed my name back to my "real" name and so I was now going by Shelly again.

“But Gary paid us a dollar already to go away.” I’d reply in a whisper because we hadn’t gone far.  Shannon would peek around the corner and as soon as she saw that Gary had Marie in his tightest of grips and their lips were locked and the heavier petting had begun, she’d pounce.

“Let’s go Shelly.  Come on, don’t be a prude.  You know as well as I do that this is worth more than a dollar.”  I would obediently follow my little sister back over to the weathered table that was now acting as a bed for the two lovers and clear my throat.

“Uh hummm,”  I would rasp as if I were coming upon something that truly needed to pay attention to me.  “I think I saw Dad looking out the window Marie.  Maybe you guys should lighten up a bit.  I will stay here for a little while and Shannon is going upstairs to go pee.  She will check out what Mom and Dad are doing and when the coast is clear, we’ll let you know.” 

This always worked because Marie and Gary never wanted to get caught.  It wasn’t like Mom and Dad were dumb or anything, but like I said before, my mother chose to stick her head in the sand over many things in life that were in conflict with her religiously built reality and Dad was just usually too caught up in paying bills or reading books or snoring in front of the fan to care what any of his young teenage daughters were up to.  It wasn’t as if he was professing and therefore he had looser standards than other professing girl’s fathers. 

Once the coast was deemed clear, Shannon and I would stand next to the table and require another payment in order to “split the scene” as she put it.  “If you two want to kiss and make out, it’s going to cost you.  Either you pay up or the session’s over.”  She would stick her hand out and Gary would obligingly place another dollar in her palm.  I suppose I too would get another dollar, but I don’t really remember.

Our first week was spent solely between the grocery store and the yard.  We walked everywhere since it was only five blocks from anywhere to anywhere in Benderton no matter where you went. Two blocks to the courthouse, two blocks to the café/bar.  Two blocks to the church two blocks to the funeral home.  We were right in the middle. If you walked from the table in front of my house to the school and then turned around to make an immediate return trip, you could be back to that same old grey table in five minutes. 

None of the people that came and went that first two weeks were one of the "friends".  Boys arrived and left from the old table, played cribbage, drank soda and kissed my older sister.  I vascilated between the two personalities I had created of Marsha and Shelly.  One full of God and religion, professing to walk in the way of the Lord and the other tumbling head over tea-kettle into the ways of the sexually awakened teenage girl watching her sister make out with boys on the weathered stage in the yard.  I had not met any of the "friends" yet and was hoping they were missing in this town.  I hoped I could move on with becoming and find that happy medium that would meld Shelly with Marsha and end up with me.

BRYAN

A kaleidoscope is a toy made of many colored flecks inside a looking glass.  When you peer into the looking glass you can see a beautiful design made up of these brightly colored specks.  Turn the knob on the end of the kaleidoscope and the design changes, the colors rotate and no matter how hard you try, you can never get the exact same design twice. 

This is how I felt to try to mold Marsha back into Shelly and come out with someone who resembled the me I had become, the me I wanted to be and the me who was acceptable both to my religion and my inner most self.  Every time I turned the knob I came up with a different me. Every single one of them was missing something I so desperately wanted to keep.  I thought I was the only person on earth who felt this way.

Then I met Bryan.  He was a wrestler in school and had been adopted by his parents when he was an infant.  They didn’t know back then much about the problems of alcohol and drugs on unborn children.  Bryan had some learning problems as well as problems controlling his anger.  He didn’t fit in with everyone else either.  It seemed we were so much alike that we were meant to meet and become friends.

I could truly talk to him about all my fears and my not fitting in and my family and how they were different from the rest of the people.  He told me about his childhood and how he was not the same as his family either, being adopted, he always felt like an outsider.  His mother and father had divorced when he was younger and his father had left the area.  His mother had raised him, but had never been able to handle his needs that were more than a normal kid. 

One day we were lying on the bleachers behind the high school just talking about life while we watched the clouds float by in the hot blue sky.  Bryan asked me what I thought heaven was like.  I told him I thought it was a peaceful place where you could run and play and talk and laugh and be free from judgment and fear.  He reached out and took my hand and smiled and said he’d like to be there someday.  I agreed said I would too.

We became such good friends during our freshman year in high school.  This was his second time around in 9^th grade as he had not passed his classes because of discipline issues in school.  He had been suspended a few times and had to get on the straight and narrow or he was going to never graduate from high school.  I swore to help him and make sure he graduated with me.

We would spend hours talking on the phone as I helped him write his papers and talked him through science problems and math problems, girl problems and family problems.  Sometimes the conversations would be more about family issues and bad choices than about school, but I didn’t mind that, I understood.  Sometimes family issues could cause school issues because you weren’t paying attention like you should. 

One night the phone rang and I answered it.  “Hello?” I said.

“Shelly, hey, this is Bryan.  What are you doing?  Can you talk?” came the voice on the other end of the line.

“Sure, what’s going on?” I replied.

“I’m done.” He said.

“Done?  Done with what Bryan?” I could hear my heart start to pound in my ears and knew there was something distinctly different about his voice.

“Done trying.” He said.  “I’m done trying to make everyone happy and I’m done trying to get this school crap all figured out.”

“Bryan, are you drunk?” I asked him.

“A little bit.” He said

“What do you mean you are done?  How can you just be done?  I promised I’d help you.  I promised I’d be here for you and I’d make sure you made it through high school.  You know I am serious.”

“Yeah, I know.”  He said.  “But I just can’t do it anymore.  Maybe I should just kill myself.”  I felt hot.  I sat down on the cold basement floor and leaned up against the hard sheetrock wall. 

“I don’t ever want you to talk like that again.  You wouldn’t dare do that.”  I whispered.

Two hours of conversation later and several gallons of tears shed.  We hung up the phone.  I could feel his pain so truly and deeply.  It was like it was mine too.  He didn’t feel he belonged any more than I did.  We became nearly inseparable at that point and talked every day on the phone after school.

The next year was our sophomore year in high school and Bryan didn’t show up for the first day of school.  I had been gone for about a month in the summer and hadn’t heard from him after that.  I called his house when I got back from visiting my grandmother in Washington and no one ever answered.  I figured they were all just busy or out of town and I’d see him when we got to school in September.  But Bryan didn’t show up.

I finally heard from another friend of his that he had left home while I was in Washington and moved out to a town about two hours away.  I was heart-broken when I found out that he wouldn’t be attending school with me that year and my only true friend, the only person I told all my secrets to was gone and I was alone once again.

Fall passed and winter came.  The holidays were spent inside or shoveling the three feet of snow off of our sidewalk.  There were two things it did in the winter there in Benderton.  It either snowed like there was no tomorrow or it snowed like tomorrow was already there.  I didn’t understand how people lived out there and liked it.  I lived out there and couldn’t wait to leave.

Spring came and lambing season was upon us.  Many of the kids didn’t show up for school for several weeks as they could not be spared from the ranch.  I wasn’t a ranch kid and only lived a few blocks from the school.  I never missed a day.  The snow was melting and the mud was abundant as I walked around the streets wandering and wondering when this whole winter thing would go away.  It was late in the afternoon when I heard a car approaching and it stopped behind me.  The horn beeped and I turned around.  It was Bryan.

He had come back to town after the winter snow to visit his mother and his cousin who lived on the edge of town in a big brown house known more for partying than for being a good place to be.  He got out of his car and gave me the biggest hug I had ever had.  “I missed you so much!” he said as he looked in my eyes and knew I was furious with him for leaving me, but I missed him all the same.

“Where have you been?  What are you doing?  How have you been?  Why did you leave?” The questions tumbled from my mind faster than I could ask them.  He told me he’d been living in Billings with some family friends and was attending an alternative school there.  He was learning how to become a mechanic and really enjoying it.  He was good at it too.  He showed me his little blue Toyota that he had saved from a junk yard and replaced the ignition with a switch that you just had to push and the car turned on.  He seemed happy and we headed over to his cousin’s house to sit and talk.

When we got there the party had already begun.  I had never been at a party before and felt extremely uncomfortable.  Bryan took me to the other room and we sat on the couch and talked and he told me all about what he was doing and how he loved it and I told him all the gossip and how everyone was and what everyone said about this and about that.  I told him who was pregnant and who was getting married.  We talked about the teachers and giggled about the antics he had pulled in order to get his mother to let him leave and go to Billings.  It seemed he was happier than he had been when he was living here being away from Benderton made him happier then I was all for it.

He headed into the other room a few times and every time he came back he was a bit happier or a bit more giggly.  Sometimes he was a little more pissed off at something or more talkative than he had been before.  This reminded me of my older sister when she had been sent to the “hospital” when we were young.  I had found out later that she had been sent to a drug and alcohol treatment center for several months in order to get clean from the drugs she had been taking. 

“Bryan, are you doing drugs?” I blurted out.

“Yeah, why?” He said.  “Everyone does them.  I am not doing them in front of you, so what’s wrong.”

“Bryan, you are doing them.  That’s what’s wrong and you’re high right now.” My voice was getting louder and I got up from the couch to leave.

“Come here” he said and he grabbed my wrist.  He pulled me into the kitchen and started to get loud himself.  “You have no right to tell me what I can and cannot do!”

“I’m not telling you what you can do or what you can’t.  I am only telling you how I feel about it.”  I was crying now.  The tears were rolling down my cheeks.  My heart was breaking for him and for his choices.  “Bryan, if you kill yourself, I won’t be at the funeral.”  I choked.

“Yes you will.” He smirked. “You’ll be there.”

“No, I won’t” I spit out.  I pulled my wrist free and stormed out the door.  The spring wind was bitter cold and it had started to spit a mixture of rain and sleet from the cloudy sky.  I walked home through the mud and the muck and the ice and the snow, tears streaming down my face and my heart breaking for what I knew my friend was doing.  I knew where that stuff lead to.  My father had done it.  And look at the trouble he brought on our family.  My sister had done it.  And look at the trouble she had gotten into already in life.  I was not going to have another person in my life make me cry because they wanted to get high.

 continued.....

BRYAN continued

When I arrived home I went straight to bed.  I was exhausted and cold and upset and all my broken heart wanted was the oblivion of sleep.  The dream came to me some time around midnight.  I know this because it woke me up and I sat straight up in bed and looked at the clock.  The serene meadow was full of wild flowers, daisies and wheat.  A large ancient oak tree stood off in the distance on my left.

 As I ran through the sunny, warm, peaceful meadow I felt someone beside me.  I didn’t have to turn to look.  I knew who it was.  It was Bryan.  We ran hand in hand through the meadow laughing. The feeling of acceptance was overwhelming.  The joy burst out of my being with a completeness I had never known before.  I turned to look at him as we stopped under the ancient oak.  The moment I saw his face he was gone, simply gone.  I sat straight up in bed and heard myself say aloud,  “Bryan’s dead.”

My poor heart raced and my ears were ringing as if someone had just shot a gun next to my head.  My breath was shallow and coming in quick gasps.  I felt like I was going to faint.  Then my breathing slowed and my heart beat became more normal.  The shrill ringing in my ears subsided and I lay back down on my pillow.  “It was a dream.  It was just a dream.”  I repeated to the darkness as I forced myself to take deep breaths. “It was only a dream.”

The Agony of Being Awake

I slept late, later than usual.  I dozed off and on throughout the morning refusing to get out of bed.  It was Saturday and I didn’t have to get up.  My mother usually woke me long before this and as I lay there, I started to wonder why she hadn’t come in and demanded I get up.  The phone had rung around 8:00 and it had awoken me, but it was in the living room and someone else had answered it.  I assumed it didn’t have anything to do with me since no one came to wake me up.

At around 10:30 in the morning I got up and put on a pair of sweat pants and a tee shirt.  I walked out into the kitchen and saw my mother sitting at the dining room table coffee in hand.  The curtains were drawn and the golden glow of morning sunlight filtered through them.  Her eyes met mine and she quietly said, “Shelly, we need to talk.”  I stopped dead in my tracks.  I felt as if the curtains to my soul closed.  My eyes fixed upon hers.  I stood locked in place.

“No, we don’t.”  I said softly.  My eyes felt stuck in position.  My mouth got dry and I took a deep breath.

“What do you mean?”  She asked from the other room.

“He’s dead.”  I replied. “Bryan’s dead.”

“How do you know?” she asked, eyes tightening with motherly concern.

“I just know.”  And I turned around and walked slowly around the corner back to my room.  I sat down on my yellow checkered bedspread that my mother had made for me and started to cry.  I cried like I’ve never cried before.  My throat closed and I lay down on my pillows curled up in a fetal position and grabbed ahold of my knees.  I rocked.  I cried.  I screamed.  I hurt.  He had left me.  He had left me.  I was alone.  Again. 

I didn’t go to the church meeting on Sunday.  I didn’t go to school on Monday.  I didn’t go to school on Tuesday.  By Wednesday my parents finally asked me if I wanted to leave town for a while.  I said that I did and that I wanted to go see Robby.  He was the only person I could talk to.  He was the only friend I had left.  He was the only person who could possibly comfort me and the pain I was feeling because our relationship was free from judgment.

My mother drove me the four hundred miles to Great Falls, Montana and left me with Robby and his family.  She didn’t know how to talk to me.  She didn’t want to deal with this anyhow.  She had her own problems and wasn’t able to even understand my broken heart, my pain, my grief.  Robby just sat there and held my hand.  He put his arm around me and held me.  He was once again the calm to my storm.  He was the life raft in the turbulent seas that was my life.  He had never lost anyone close to him, but loved me enough to just let me cry and held me while I did so.

I spent two weeks with Robby and his family.  I didn’t leave their house or go to church meetings.  I just sat there and tried to figure out why life was so hard and why I couldn’t find my bearings, my way, my belonging.  I couldn’t eat or sleep and the black circles under my eyes became more and more prominent.  I played the piano for hours on end just trying to escape the reality of being awake.

When my mother came to pick me up two weeks later, I had lost weight.  I couldn’t eat without wanting to throw up and my stomach hurt whether it was empty or full so whether I ate or not, it didn’t matter.  I held onto Robby for dear life as he helped me into the back seat of my mother’s car.  I watched him as we drove out of the driveway and he stood on the street with his hand in the air and his face became smaller and soon he was no longer visible in the dusty afternoon.  I lay down in the back seat and closed my eyes.  With my heart in my throat, my eyes too tired to cry, tears would no longer come.  I was alone.

On our way home my mother stopped at some of the Friend’s houses and we stayed the night and took showers and resumed our trip.  From Billings she made a phone call to the workers, our ministers and they met us in a town not far from Benderton.  I sat in the vinyl covered chair at the kitchen table of an elderly couple’s home.  Across from me was a young brother worker.  He could have been no older than 30. 

He sat there and quoted Bible verses and told me that taking your own life was a sin and God only forgave the sins of his children.  Then he said it.  He said “suicide is an unforgivable sin.  Your friend will face the judgment of God and will come out wanting.”

“How can you judge him?” I asked.  “You have no idea what his life was like or what he was going through.  Doesn’t the Bible say ‘Judge not that ye be not judged’?”

“Yes,” he replied, “but I am not the one judging.  God is the judge and he said that taking your own life is an unforgivable sin.”

“I don’t recall God ever saying anything in the Bible.” I stammered.  “I recall people saying that God said this and God said that.  But not once have I ever read the ‘voice of God’.  And if God loves us unconditionally, isn’t what you’re saying a ‘condition’?”  The young worker looked at me and was silent.  He stood up from the table with a sad look on his face.

From the other room I overheard him telling my mother that I was still grieving and couldn’t be expected to think rationally.  “Just leave her alone and she will come back to God.”  I opened the back door and stepped outside so as to no longer hear his voice.  My mother heard me leave and rushed outside to find me.  I sat on the hood of the old brown station wagon, tearless, emotionless, no heart left.

We drove the remaining ninety miles home to Benderton in complete silence.  My mother never spoke to me of Bryan.  She never spoke to me of my grief.  She never spoke to me of my pain of my hurt, of my aloneness.  She never did any of these things because in this religion of ours we were taught that if we ignored things long enough…they would go away. 

All I wanted to do was scream.  I wanted to tell the entire earth of my pain.  I wanted to be heard.  I wanted to no longer be quiet about this aching that consumed my heart and soul.  But that’s not what good little professing girls did.  They accepted things as they were and simply moved on.  “Take up thy cross and deny thyself.  Endure all things.  Accept all things.”  The words of the young brother worker rang in my ears and drowned out the screams of my heart. Having no voice with which to be heard, I remained silent.