I heaved the door open and dashed down the hallway, “Mommy! I just thought of something!”
“What is it honey?”
“Isn’t it really weird that God exists and he’s sitting in heaven and he created the world in 7 days?”
“What do you mean weird?”
“I don’t know, it’s just weird. Like maybe he’s not really in heaven and didn’t really make the world.”
“Well, God did create the world in 6 days and he rested on the 7th. He’s looking down on you right now and cares about you and how you act.”
“Don’t you think it’s weird sometimes too mommy?”
“No honey, God gives me faith so that I know what is real.”
The rest of the afternoon then continued in a typical 6 year old fashion with a my little pony village where a purple-maned mare lived next to the twin baby pegasus in the stable.
Like most housewives, my mother hid her turmoil well. She’d groan when my older sister decided to draw pictures of hands in the entryway closet or gasp when I fell and scraped my knee—coddling or punishing appropriately. But my youthful tendency to divulge every little thought must have been unnerving.
There is a formula that currently exists which is supposed to create cookie-cutter children who sing hymns and get baptized at an appropriate teenage age. My parents followed the recipe to a ‘t’ giving me a life of Cole Christian Community school, church, and Psalty the singing bible. I could count my friends who didn’t go to my church on one finger. I was to be part of The Family (with a capital ‘F’).
But there was a little catch in the formula. Although my sister was the one drawing on walls or throwing tantrums when she heard the word ‘no’. I was the one who came to my mom with little gems like “isn’t God weird,” “Is he really there?” or “why did Karen touch my weewee?” All of which she never really answered and brushed under the carpet with bible verses or a brusque, “get your coat on, it’s time to go to school.”
As I grew I still tended to blurt things out, although I’d started to keep in the puzzles I knew would be ignored. When I met my new public school friends I asked her, “Are they really going to hell? Julie’s catholic and Stacy’s Jewish, they believe in God, isn’t that good enough?” When I was customarily left out of the invitations to a big boy/girl party that most of my sixth grade class was attending I naturally vented my frustration to my mother by criticizing the presence of a ‘make-out’ room. 6 months later, when there was another party, I was finally invited but my mother would not let me go, citing the previously mentioned ‘make-out’ room. A light bulb turned on, my mother was actually listening to what I was saying. In fact, carelessly mentioned facts could count against me at a later date. It didn’t matter that I would never feel comfortable enough to make out with any of the little fresh-cheeked 6th grade boys or that any would even want to. But no matter what I said, my mother wouldn’t budge.
In 7th grade the subject of my faith began to crop up. The questions: “So, how’s your walk with God?” “What are you reading in the bible?” “Are you doing any bible studies?” The more frequent the questions came the less zeal I held until eventually I began to answer in monosyllabic “dunno”s or “fine”s. An offer for a parent-guided bible study on any question I posed, was designed to bring back a little zeal. I thought for several days and came up with a question that had been bothering me for most of the year.
“Why are using bad words a sin? Who decides what words are bad and why are they so sinful? Aren’t you just supposed to use kind words with others rather than being worried about these specific words?”
I had been thinking of this for months because the grandmother of a friend of mine liked to use the phrase, “oh poop!” The year before I had just learned that the word shit meant the same thing. So then, why was it bad to say oh shit, but not oh poop when they meant the same thing? I thought it was an honest question, but after showing me some vague bible verses about watching the words coming out of your mouth—which only proved my hypothesis—my parents were crestfallen that I didn’t automatically take their side. My father announced that I was immature in my faith and I was started on a beginners level bible study book that covered the fundamentals of the christian faith. At this point I vowed never to tell my parents anything again.
