If You Could Meet Her

Saturday I linked to Shauna Niequist's post about the church where she grew up...and how to her it wasn't the mega-church everyone else knew it to be. It was her sister...her friend...a trusted place that was as real to her as a sister.

Her post sent me through a meadow of my own memories at my own church...not a mega-church by any standard, but a massive stone building that formed who I am and how I worship.

I left when I was 19 entering my sophomore year of college. I left without telling a soul I was going because I knew they'd beg me to stay and they would win. I didn't want to go. Not at all. But the church was declining and I knew God beckoned me to go where I would find people my own age and opportunities to serve. So I swallowed tears on my final walk out the door and sobbed when the car door shut behind me.

How I wish I could take you there...inside the walls of a church that somehow stays open each week...and how I wish other kids still scampered through its halls.

* I would show you the prayer room where I paced and prayed fervently the night before I shared the main devotions in the midweek service for the first time. I was a high school speech class failure.

* I'd let you peek inside the nursery where I escaped week after week during my "I don't really like church all that much" phase. I changed hundreds of diapers and played peek-a-boo and wiped away I-miss-Mommy tears before Mommy realized they were being cried. I spilled my latest love life dramas to the patient women who shared the space with me each week.

* Oh. And I'd show you the exact spot in the nursery where I sat as a 9-year-old with 4 kids under my watchful eye...when one of them had a seizure. I can still see his fever-soaked little body falling to the ground, unable to stand up...and I hear my voice shouting in panic for his older sister to open the door so I could rush him to his mom, who was helping prepare food for a fellowship.

* The tiny Sunday School classroom where I set up a tent to make a fun teaching space for the kids' midweek service when I took over teaching them because no one else would.

* The huge assembly room where I began every Sunday morning as a kid - and learned songs that taught me every book of the Bible. I learned memory verses and dropped pennies in the church-shaped bank on every single birthday.

* The Sunday School room where I sat in front of a red Bible and learned how to look up verses for myself, instead of having an adult turn to the right page for me.

* The youth room where a group of girls huddled around a Bible and read the blush-inducing Song of Solomon...out loud.

* The office where I worked as a secretary for one summer - before I got fully immersed into the real world. Where I made my first business phone call and shook in fear knowing the pastor listened in from his own adjoining office.

* The library where I'm sure you could still find awkward cursive scrolls on cards...that spell out my name...or at least as much of it as I could squeeze on a tiny line.

* The kitchen where I stirred up dozens of pitchers of Kool-Aid for the kids on the nights I taught them. The kitchen with its fascinating square mattress that fit inside the pass-thru when the fellowship hall was divided off for classroom space and women chattered inside the kitchen, preparing church lunches.

* The men's restroom I sneaked into one time when Mom and I were at the church on a week day and I knew no one would catch me. I just wanted to know what the men's room looked like.

* The third pew from the front, organ side, where I sat with my parents every single week from the moment I can remember on up. Where the pattern on the red fabric on the pew left indentations on my chubby little legs, bare beneath my ruffly dresses. Where the red hymn books were stored...the songs I hated singing until I was an adult and could fully appreciate them.

* The coveted back pew where I eventually got to sit as a teenager, as long as I sat with a responsible adult. {She and I talked far more than any teen and I ever would have, thankyouverymuch.}

* The choir loft with its set of swinging doors that always seemed magical from the pew...the loft where yes, I did sit for a few years when I fancied I could sing.

* The little cove behind the choir loft that always seemed like a secret passage way to me as a kid.

* The grand piano where I played panic-inducing solos during all those years of lessons.

* The storage room that held the handbells. I played the tiniest ones - little high notes that squeaked out every fifth measure or so.

I loved that church so very much. I fell in love with my junior high crush there...and believed with all my heart I would walk down the red carpeted aisle to get married one day. That was one of the hardest parts of leaving - knowing I was walking away from my lifelong wedding dream.

So thankful for that place and how it formed me and held my childhood so carefully within its stone walls. I wish it could thrive again - and maybe God has plans for just that. In the meantime, I'm grateful for who she was for me.