Something About Church

We met in parochial school and have been connected to the same church ever since. For all of our flaws, we seem to know Who to thank for that. 

Her Take: I want to understand why I’m so reticent to talk about my faith. 

It’s not shame, I know that much, at least not anymore. When I was younger, a teenager and into my twenties, I can remember feeling a little embarrassed knowing that some of my ‘smarter’ and ‘cooler’ friends smirked at religion the way they did. I knew they saw it as quaint and uninformed and I didn’t want them to see me that way. For all my aw-shucks enthusiasm, I’m not a rube. 

Fortunately, even though I had to take a path around the way and find my way back to the core of my faith, nothing about what those friends said ever really affected me. I labeled the subject as taboo - along with a lot of other things - and moved on with my belief unshaken. 

Maybe, like so many things that I am today, it was my upbringing that made that possible. To say that my parents are private people is like saying that the Atlantic Ocean tends to be a little damp. I remember working on a school project that required me to ask my parents how much they made in a year so I could learn how to budget. Mom told me that it was ‘none of the teacher’s damn business’. I might have failed that project but, to be fair, I’m not that good at math so I would have anyway. Now, as far as I know, my parents weren’t ashamed of how much they made, anymore than they were ashamed to send us to Lutheran school, go to church every Sunday, and raise us in the faith. It just wasn’t anyone else’s business. 

The obvious question you could ask here is ‘Didn’t Jesus say something about telling other people?’ and the answer is yes. He said many somethings about that, and I believe all of them, which is why I don’t really understand what stops me. 

You see, all of those things I just never talked about - my mental health, surviving domestic abuse, how imperfect and scared we all are almost all of the time, all manner of things - they just don’t phase me anymore. To the point that I wonder if my closest friends, family, and people unlucky enough to sit next to me at seminars wish I had a few more lines I wouldn’t cross. 

My faith is the last thing I keep private, and I’m not sure why. 

To be fair, I have an almost-handful of people that I trust, including my husband and kids, who have heard basically everything I think and feel completely unfiltered and… you know.. Cheers to them for surviving it. I can’t tell you how grateful I am for those people, especially the friends that don’t believe the same things and still create a space to hear and respect my faith journey. 

Ok, it’s time to stop avoiding the topic and get down to it, friend. This week my co-blogger and I are writing about church, and I’ve stalled long enough. 

It’s been a long time since my feet didn’t reach the floor from the church pew, but my experience in that pew has remained largely unchanged, in a good way. On the subject of things that are ‘unchanged’: that pew has been exclusively the back pew on the left-side for more than 20 years. It’s not that we can’t sit in other pews, it’s just that we don’t. Sitting in that same pew, Sunday after Sunday, is as comforting as a thing can be. 

It’s almost as if I can feel my soul exhale when I settle into my seat, the world stills, and the air feels entirely right, maybe for the only time that week. Sitting here, at home, writing this, I’m tempted to skitter over the next sentence, but I promised myself I would tell you the truth, so here it goes. There’s no doubt in my mind that God is holding me in his arms when I’m in that familiar seat, my mind quiets, my anxiety settles, and I’m fully present to hear what He has to say. 

My fear now is that I’ve lost you, my reader, because of how that sounds, because it sounds magical. Sometimes, though, truth is the magic we need, and that is my truth. 

It’s not merely the feeling of the church building that comforts me, either. Singing hymns with the rest of the congregation, confessing that I’m ‘a poor miserable sinner’ and receiving absolution, saying the Apostle’s Creed, singing ‘I Am Jesus’ Little Lamb’ while kids toddle forward for the Children’s Sermon; these all ground me in my place and still my heart to go back out and face secular life as a believer for another week. 

Each week we walk through many of the same prayers, year after year we sing the same hymns and hear the same verses but it doesn’t grow stale for me. Instead, one day I gave myself permission to feel everything that church makes me feel and not be ashamed. I’m a lot of things, but I’m not cool enough to stay aloof when I’m moved by the music or the words. 

As the Pastor delivers the sermon, I try to listen to what He (God, through the Pastor) is telling me at the moment. Maybe the message is as straightforward as the words that Pastor has chosen to use, sometimes it’s in between the words in the way I feel when I hear them or the memories they stir. No matter what, the message is there if I can listen. 

If I’m being honest, it has taken me a lifetime to get to this point, both in this blog post and in my relationship with my faith. Having the faith that I’ve gained, feeling comfortable to rely on it, and even being able to vocalize all of that to another person is work. Good work, healthy work, but work nonetheless, and the work continues. 

That’s it, that’s my confession of faith, that’s me telling you why church is important to me, and I feel good. I hope you do too.

His Take:

When I was a kid we didn’t use Instagram, Reddit, Facebook, or the Twitter machine. In fact, if you had followers it was literally people walking behind you. No, we had our own social media and it was ACTUALLY social. It was called Church and, to borrow a phrase, it was the happiest place on Earth. I was lucky enough to attend Immanuel Lutheran Church in Wisconsin Rapids, WI and I also got to go to school at the church’s grade school. The school is a magical subject for another time, because I’ve had to “cut the fat” on this writing twice already to keep it from being way to long. 

Growing up, Immanuel wasn’t the only church I knew, I lived in California with my mom and dad for two years and we went to a church there, but I can say by far that Immanuel was “my church”. 99% of my friends went there, it was the coolest church in town (but not in the summer time) and honestly, I didn’t even want to try going to church somewhere else. My family did go to St. Luke’s for a special occasion here and there, and I loved Pastor Tim Wenger, but again, Immanuel was the best. They had not 1, not 2, but THREE services on Sunday morning, and there was even a service on Thursday nights. Our regular service was Sunday at 10:30 am. Sometimes we would go to the Thursday night service, which was a special favorite of mine because that’s the one a lot of my classmates went to.

Beyond all the bells and whistles that made it cool, the best thing about church was that there, you actually felt that God was there with you. Not sitting beside you, or speaking through the Pastor or anything else, but that God was all around you. Like you were in the middle of the presence of God, if you will. It didn’t matter what time of the year it was. You felt the same way on a random Sunday in August that you felt on Easter Sunday and on Christmas Eve. I think that’s the sign of a good church, or rather a great church. That you can feel the presence of the Lord anytime that you’re there. A lot of important life events happened in that building, and I know a lot of other people’s important life events happened there, too.

Now, whenever I come back home to Rapids, I can’t wait til Sunday morning. The inside of the church looks a little bit different now, they’ve added some technology and updated some furniture, but the important things remain. The people still feel like family, and I can still feel God all around me.