Seeing the Light

About 4 months after we came back from the trip to New York, something happened that would change our lives forever. We had sort of been looking at how our lives were and we wanted to stop doing a lot of things that we saw were destructive (i.e. smoking drinking, drugs, etc) so we were making efforts to do this. We even considered going to a church, but we had no idea where to go. We actually looked in the paper to find one!

One night, while I was working in the bar I managed my boyfriend stopped by - I was surprised to see him since he had just left 2 hours before to go to a party in a nearby town. He sat down and said “The most amazing thing just happened!” I would have never guessed what he was about to tell me. “I just meet a man on the street, and we talked for a long time about the bible. He answered questions for me that I had never had an answer to, and explained it in such a simple way. What do you think about going to his church tomorrow?” I agreed but asked if it would be okay to go there looking the way we did. He said “Yeah, I asked the guy if I could bring my girlfriend.”

That night we made plans to go to this church the next morning. We got up early and drove 1 ½ hour away. We didn’t know what time the service started so we showed up early. We knocked on the door, and the man that my boyfriend had talked with answered. At the time I didn’t recognize this man, but later I would learn that this was the man I had seen so many times before in the downtown district where I worked. He stood on the sidewalk every weekend holding signs with messages on them against drinking and partying; all the bad things that people were doing in the place I worked. When I saw him my friends and I would mock him.

When we arrived at church that morning he looked a little surprised, but he was hiding it I’m sure. He let us in and feed us breakfast, and then we sat around and talked for a little while. We heard people coming in the church, so we went upstairs for the service to start. Nothing prepared us for the type of church that this church was. All we had ever known of churches were large congregations of people charged up for a Christian rock show. Deacons ready to meet you at the door and walk you through a sinner’s prayer. Singles and youth groups designed by a sociologist, ready to jump in the church van and take them out for lunch and a movie and then get them saved. We were accustomed to churches remodeled by an interior decorator. Sound system capable of rocking the whole neighborhood with the gospel tunes. Walls and ceilings plastered with huge crosses, decorations with flowers and plants and the blare of a band to rev everybody up.

When we entered this church there was nothing like any of that. There were the old wooden pews with no padding, no cross in the background, and a simple pulpit. There was nothing really important to comment on - in fact there wasn’t even an amplifier to carry the preachers’ voice across the street. The people we saw looked like they were from another planet, and I’m sure that they might have been thinking the same thing. The women were dressed in long dresses or skirts and extremely modest shirts. Some of them wore a veiling (I had no idea what the veiling was at the time) so I thought that it was quite strange. The children were dressed unlike I had ever seen children dress before. They too were wearing dresses and skirts, and the little boys were wearing very plain button up shirts. Not actually your “Sunday best” garb I had always been accustomed to wearing. I instantly felt that I was dressed inappropriately and was quite embarrassed to be around the children since I was being a bad example by that. It was odd for me, because I had the attitude of” I don’t care what people think of me, and if they can’t accept the way I look, so what.” But I was completely ashamed to be around those children! My boyfriend wanted to sit in the front, which I was not comfortable with, but complied. I sat there through the entire service with my head low and could not wait to get out of there, so that the feeling of condemnation would be lifted from my conscience. After the service, we talked with some of the members, who surprisingly I found to be quite human and normal. Some of them said that they knew where I was coming from since they use to live the same kind of life. I felt really comfortable with them after this, and did not think that they were judgmental, but that they sincere and concerned.