Some Decisions Take a Lifetime

Others Take a Single Step Forward

My friend’s mom kindly taught us that second, reworded version of the prayer I learned as a child so we held onto a more fitting verse.

Who ever thought a child would sleep in peace after reciting the original right before bed?

My mom had no religion, and everyone knew that about her. Maybe someone made her feel bad about it at some point in her background because I think she felt lost & alone most of her life.

I never saw her pray, so I absorbed those practices from watching other families.

Later, I learned popular prayers from catechism as my mom agreed to raise her children in my dad’s faith, though he didn’t practice, so I recited The Lord’s Prayer or the one before eating: Bless us, Oh Lord for these, thy gifts . . .

The words held significance to me early in life, even though I was on my own in my family in that area.

Still, I felt a pull to things above and earnestly pursued faith.

Even if I had to hop in a neighbor’s car to go to church or VBS with them. Even if my own family members scoffed at my desire to sing along with the hymns, unabashed.

I have no memories of sitting in church with anyone in my family, not even for midnight Mass on Christmas, which I found both reverent & adventurous.

It’s no wonder that I mustered the strength to find my own practices when I was about 13. I didn’t follow wayward teenagers into alcohol or drugs, though they were readily available in my world, but I accompanied yet another neighbor to a little, run-down church with live music and nighttime services filled with prayer & study.

My parents were just as worried as if I had fallen into the wrong crowd since anything other than my dad’s family’s religious tradition seemed like a cult. And someone joining a cult was an ever-present danger in that time. Maybe, worse than drugs.

I loved those singers strumming their guitars, teaching us refrains from scripture—it’s how I began memorizing such passages as,

Thou art my hiding place; thou shalt preserve me from trouble.

Thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance.

What time I am afraid, I will trust in You.

And every summer, we camped out for a week, enjoying hikes in the woods, swimming in the lake and singing around the campfire after morning services under a pavilion, enhanced by the aroma of eggs & sausages cooking on the charcoal grills nearby.

Once, I talked my mom into coming with me to camp. This was quite a feat because she really wanted nothing to do with anything spiritual. I’m sure she thought if she jumped in, she’d have to change her ways, and she wasn’t about to stop drinking or anything crazy like that.

I’m not so sure she even went the week without something stashed under the backseat of the car, but she agreed to come because I told her I was getting baptized.

We didn’t tell the rest of the family because, of course, I was already baptized as an infant, so this would be completely unnecessary and further proof that I’d gone off the deep end in their eyes.

But this meant something to me. And my mom knew it.

The days leading up to what would be the culmination of camp week, the baptism, some campers noticed my mom slinking away to her car to read.

She was not a big reader, so I couldn’t imagine what was keeping her attention, but there I would find her in the afternoons. I wondered, as did a few others, if she wasn’t so interested in the book but more interested in avoiding talking about spiritual topics with the other churchy people.

I was used to steering clear of either defending or trying to influence my mother’s behavior, so I just let her go and focused elsewhere.

When it came time to make my way into the shallow water & walk up to the pastor performing the ceremonial dunking, my mom sat on the bank of the lake, under a tree with tears spilling down her cheeks.

The pastor asked if anyone would like to join us in the water, and my mom stood up, not tentatively but determined.

She waded in and said she had never been baptized and wanted to now.

Right after I came up for that first breath symbolizing new life, my mom took that same plunge under water too.

She rose up sobbing right over a bright smile on her face.

I don’t know if she ever told anyone about this event, and she never “cleaned up her whole act either,” but I know it impacted her because she would reference it later in life.

She still felt unworthy at times, but she no longer saw herself as the one with no religion—and certainly not the one with no God.

She stood on that hill and proclaimed:

“I got baptized to show I believed. And The Lord met me there that day.”

She may have hid in her car all week, but she surprised everyone at camp.

Well, almost everyone.

There is One who knew.

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