When you think of Sunday, what is the first thing that comes to your head? For me it was different at one point in my life than it is right now. To suggest to me at age sixteen that one-day I would look at organized religion and cringe was completely out of the question. God was my savior, my guider, and my reason for existence.
Now he is my friend, an acquaintance at best. One sunny day in April, my mom informed me that I was nominated to head one of the Sunday school classes, being that I wanted to pursue a career in teaching. I remember the weather that spring day because it started out as one of those mornings that make you take a deep breath and thank whoever it is that you choose to thank in situations of almost complete fulfillment. The birds were blasting out glorious hymns and the smell of the first lawns being mowed were enough on their own to make me love life just a little bit more than usual. What happened to the weather later on that afternoon is extremely appropriate to the changes that occurred in my mood. It was around 4:30 and the shadows were beginning to give way to the approaching storm front.
The wind picked up and lightning flashed in the distance, not yet accompanied by thunder. Nonetheless, I was excited to say the least about my chance to prove the congregation that I was the best sixteen-year-old Sunday school teacher that Holy Trinity had ever seen. I was going to prepare a lesson that would hit the hearts of the children and at the same time be extremely simple in both speech and idea. It was challenging to say the least.
I spent the better part of the stormy evening going through my picture bible and choosing, preparing, and practically scripting my lesson. The final draft of my 30-minute spiel was nonetheless something to gloat about. It was the Saturday before my scheduled debut and I spent the night at my best friend Sarah’s house. We were listening to the Spice Girls and having a discussion about why her parents didn’t make her abide by society’s standard and attend a weekly service. She used an analogy that will stick with me for the rest of my life.
“Connie, my parents told me that church was like a shoe. You buy it because it looks and feels good but over a period of time the shoe becomes engraved to your soul and almost personalized to meet your expectations,” Sarah explained. The weight of her words didn’t seem so heavy at first, but as soon as I reevaluated her remark, it hit me. Being sixteen years old and having just been told that the religion that I have grown up to trust is nothing more than a comfort zone, something to make my life a little more convenient, ended up making me more confused than anything.
How selfish of me as a member of the Holy Trinity congregation to sit there weekend after weekend and fill my heart with empty promises and rehearsed lines when I should be out helping others not just feeding my conscience with metaphorical pats on the back! I remember wondering if I was committing a sin just by sitting in church trying to grasp and practice the concepts and standards of a “personalized” religion. As the dark room illuminated periodically with flashes of white light from bolts of lightning, we laid there in silence. Not the silence of sleep but the silence of uneasiness. Sarah new just by the look in my eye that a blanket had been lifted.
To this day, I don’t think that she was prepared to be the deliverer of such a spiritual awakening at that stage of adolescence. That night, I fell asleep to the arguing in my head. One part of my rational thought kept telling me that what she said was true. The other voice was yelling at me to maintain comfort and stick with what I knew best. The mental conversation continued through the night and well into the R.E.M.
stage of my sleep. I began to dream that I was in church staring at my new pair of shoes and wondering how long it was going to take to break them in. Paying no attention to the sermon, I looked around at the different faces of the congregation. To my surprise, they were all asleep with expressions on their faces that would suggest that they were following the pastor’s lesson. I got up from the pew to run away but as I tried to lift my feet I realized that my brand new shoes were stuck to the ground. After what seemed like minutes of trying to wriggle free, I tried to say something to try to wake the stranger next to me but every time that I opened my mouth the pastor’s voice got louder as if to drown me out.
The last thing that I remember about my nightmare was the fact that the pastor’s outfit was one of a car salesman. His light blue leisure suit was horribly tacky and out of date, his tie was tied too short. I woke up startled but content. To me the dream portrayed a number of things. The shoes of course were those of which Sarah spoke of earlier that night symbolizing church as a whole. The people being asleep acting like they were listening represented the fact that they had not “woken up” to realize what I had.
When I spoke and the pastor’s voice overcame mine, it lead me to believe that what one individual person has to say about how life should be lived has no meaning before God. Last but definitely not least, the image of my pastor dressed like a car salesman portrayed the idea of forcing religion like selling a car onto seemingly innocent minds. The dream was even more powerful than the metaphor that Sarah used. The next morning when my mother called to tell me she was on her way to pick me up to head to church I politely declined. I explained my epiphany not expecting for her to understand completely. I could tell in her voice that she never thought the day would come that I would turn my back on church and the congregation.
It saddened her, I could tell, butt nothing could make me more happier than I was that day. When I got home, I marched straight up to my room and in to my closet. I grabbed the new pair of shoes that I had bought earlier in the week with my allowance money and brought them to my lock box that I keep under my bed. I let out a sigh as I opened the box and put the shoes in. In parting with the shoes, I parted with a big chunk of my life but, strangely, that was all right with me. I still have the pair of shoes and to this day they have never been broken in.
I can definitely say that day changed my life from how I knew it then to how I know it now and I am grateful. The End
