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.