When I was in seventh grade at Elvie Street Elementary School, Mrs. Holmes assigned us the task of writing autobiographies featuring the top ten moments of our lives thus far. I began my book with a chapter entitled, “Are You There God? It’s Me, Kathy” and mentioned my baptism two years earlier. I don’t know if I really saw my baptism as one of the pivotal moments of my life or if I just wanted to please my teacher, probably the latter. Still, it is interesting for me to see now that Judy Blume’s book, Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, helped me connect with God more, perhaps, than my baptism did. It is strange that the book has been banned in some school systems from the moment it was published.

But this article is not about book banning. It is about my spiritual journey, which I suppose began with my baptism but became more personal with a “controversial” book about a little girl named Margaret.

I am sixty years old and joined a church this past Sunday. Weird, huh? I am excited to begin this phase of my spiritual journey, as it has been TWO DECADES since I have really been – and felt – a part of a church. If any readers have been lost or out of touch or at a standstill with God or church or spirituality, maybe you can relate to some of the steps and stumbles I have taken along the way.

First Baptist was where my formal religious journey began, and I still feel so much love and nostalgia for that beautiful church. (See my previous post, “Shaking the Pews.“) My aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents went there, and yep, we all had our designated pews. My family’s pew was in the balcony on the next to the last row – not in the youth section that was at the very back of the balcony, though Greg did leave us to sit there when he was involved with the youth group. First Baptist is special to me because it is where I was baptized; it is where I sang in the children’s choir, learned to play the handbells, attended and later taught Bible school, where I was married. First Baptist was beautiful and ornate, fancy shmancy, and familiar. Every classroom had a piano in it, and I loved when the music teacher would come in and play it during Sunday schooI. As a little girl, I used to sit in the balcony beside Mama (when she wasn’t singing in the choir) and draw pictures of Mr. Bussey while he preached. In my memorabilia from elementary school, I have an old capitalization worksheet and am still indignant that my teacher marked my answer wrong to the question about my preacher’s name (a weird question for school!). I had put “Mr. Bussey.” She corrected it to Rev. Bussey. Humph. No one called him that.

First Baptist taught me the foundations of Christianity, though sometimes I would get confused about the three-in-one concept of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Which one was I supposed to pray to? During the really long prayer when we bowed our heads until some folks nodded off, I learned that church can be magical. I would tell myself to pay attention because Mr. Bussey always started the prayer behind the right podium, but by the time he said, “Amen,” and we opened our eyes – Poof!- there he was on the left side. I never once saw him walk there. So, yes, church was magical. First Baptist taught me the basics of Christianity as best as it could, but as I became an adult, it just wasn’t enough. I didn’t feel God when I was there. Still, it was a beautiful church that I think of with love and gratitude, like an old friend that made an impact on my life until we both changed and grew apart. I still have the magical memories and the lessons and am grateful for them.

Still thinking we were Baptists (LOL), Kelly and I went to Grace Baptist next. Much smaller, less fancy and ornate, not quite as gorgeous but lovely in its informality and hospitality, Grace was what I needed as a thirty-year-old. I had NO IDEA how opposed to my core values of equity and inclusion Grace was; I just knew the preacher’s sermons made me cry, and the people were so loving and easy to be around. I loved that people said “Amen” during church and clapped after the choir sang. I loved that sometimes people cried right there in front of everyone. None of those things had happened at our previous church. When I left Grace on Sundays, having learned so much about God and really feeling the “spirit,” I wanted to be a better person. My friend Betsy was in charge of everything there — playing the piano every Sunday, singing in the choir, sewing whatever was needed for children’s plays, cooking for Wednesday night suppers, making wedding cakes, everything! – – I wanted to be more like her.

At Grace, Kelly and I both really grew in our faith and didn’t really question some remarks we heard now and then (like how Disney World is a place of sinners). We were members of an amazing young married couples class and made lifelong friends there. At Grace we learned what it meant to serve others. We helped in the nursery, served on the grounds committee, taught at Vacation Bible School, volunteered in the nursery. When a dear friend’s husband suddenly died one night while we were all at church, our Sunday school class did all we could to help that friend survive the awful aftermath of sudden tragedy, even sending her a check every month for a year to help offset the financial burdens of having no life insurance and three young children to support. I became like “the older women” in my previous church. I learned to cook for others, to send cards, to call, to show up when anyone was struggling.

But little by little, things started to change. Our amazing preacher left. My mama died. Our best friends moved away. We started to pay attention to more of the messages that didn’t feel right. I started to wonder why no women were ever standing at the pulpit, why not one single deacon was a woman, not even my friend Betsy who practically ran that church. And then, on my first Mother’s Day as a motherless woman, the preacher’s message was about abortion. I wanted to walk out right then. Eventually, that is what we did…slowly, as we started dreading church instead of looking forward to it, as the kids didn’t want to go to the nursery anymore, as I would leave church angry rather than filled with love. The beliefs of Southern Baptists started to be too much to ignore, so we just stopped trying.

Despite all of that, Grace Baptist made me believe in more than magic. It made me believe in both miracles and prayer, and I am thankful for those lessons. They would help sustain me through the next two decades without a church home.

After years of visiting other Baptist churches, Methodist churches, non-denominational, come-as-you-are kind of churches and never feeling quite right at any of them, I spent most of my Sundays with Oprah. My “church” was “Super Soul Sunday,” and all I can really explain about that is “If you know, you know.” Sundays with Oprah meant setting up my ironing board, the clothes we needed for the upcoming week, and my cup of coffee in the laundry room, standing there to iron in front of my little TV (This was way before “streaming” had been invented), learning about God, Jesus, love, peace, stillness, and healing at the church of Oprah. “Super Soul” came to me at just the right time and let me know it was okay to take a break from real church, to take time to ponder religion vs. spirituality; it was okay to have my own ideas about God and to think that maybe some of the men who wrote down the stories of the Bible and the preachers who interpreted those words — could have been wrong and probably left out some parts. Maybe God didn’t think women were inferior to men. Maybe God didn’t think women should be submissive. Maybe God didn’t care if women cut their hair or didn’t cut their hair or wore jewelry or makeup or not. Maybe God didn’t care what people wore to church. Maybe God didn’t really want to be the fashion police. Maybe God was love.

Oprah taught me that spirituality means more than going to church. She showed me that it can mean prayer, gratitude, introspection, stillness, and quiet, personal conversations with God. Through her interviews with people like Maya Angelou, Brene Brown, T.D. Jakes, Deepak Chopra, Sara Ban Breathnach, Cheryl Strayed, Elie Wiesel, and Eckhart Tolle, she showed me that a relationship with God can be so much more than an hour spent in a church on Sunday. She taught me to keep a gratitude journal, a practice that changed my perspective, especially after my mother died of cancer at age sixty-two. She taught me that taking a walk with dogs outside in nature can be a form of worship. She made me believe I was not crazy or weird for being interested in meditating when no one else I knew was. She taught me how to manifest a dream by telling it to God, even writing it down. She taught me to believe in God again and to stop being angry with him. She showed me it was okay to be my weird little poetry-writing, manifesting-dreams-to-God self. Ironing with Oprah helped me iron out the wrinkles in my own beliefs, but I eventually began searching for a church community again.

My friend Terry said to me one day, “You would love my preacher! She is so kind and full of love.” I decided to get my family to check out West Nash Methodist around Christmas that year. Terry was right. I loved West Nash, especially Pastor Tuck. The people there were so nice, too, and we even had some old friends and some family members there. I loved how at the end of every service, Tuck would remind us, “Nothing can separate you from the love of God.” Sometimes that one sentence made me weep. But after a year or so, West Nash Methodist taught me the hard lesson of politics in church, the heartbreaking lesson of exclusion. Even though it was my FIRST church with a female pastor and that was a welcome change from my previous experiences, West Nash was still Methodist, and we were there during the hoopla and division about their big vote to accept gay people or not. Lord. We stayed there through COVID times and outdoor church services, but when Tuck decided to leave, it was just too much for me. Nobody wants to go to a church that has to vote on whether or not your child is welcome.

Throughout my spiritual journey and my search for a church home, I had learned what “inclusive” and “affirming” really meant. Most churches will proclaim, “All are welcome,” but that statement is misleading and should include some pertinent details:

“Yes, you are welcome to attend our church. We won’t shut the door in your face, but if you are a woman, you cannot preach at certain Baptist churches, and if you are gay, you can’t even lead a Bible study or Sunday school class. You can attend every single week and donate thousands of dollars, but sorry, you can’t have your wedding here…Oh, and our pastor can’t perform the ceremony if she hopes to keep her job or receive her retirement pension one day.”

No wonder we have so many empty church buildings today. No wonder there is such a rise in the number of “nones” (the people who check “none” when asked about religious affiliation).

But as I said at the beginning, my story has a happy ending…

I am sixty years old and – after two decades of searching – I have found a church home. Unlike me, my daughter Emma Jane and her wife Savannah had not given up on church and had continued searching for just the right one. A little over a year ago, they convinced me to join them at First Christian Church of Wilson, where my kids had gone to preschool many years ago. This past Sunday, the three of us were ready to “become official” with the church.

For a whole year or more, I had listened to sermons that didn’t make me want to storm out of the place or make me want to scream, “That is NOT what God meant!” I left feeling renewed and hopeful and at peace. More importantly, I left feeling that the people at First Christian Church loved my daughter…really loved her. They had even cheered for her one Sunday when a church member announced that she had completed her Physical Therapy degree and passed the board exam. They clapped and cheered for her — in church. From the first Sunday Emma Jane and Sav entered that church, they felt welcome. They felt INCLUDED.

My twenty-seven-year-old daughter will be baptized next week, and I bet her baptism will mean more to her than mine did when I was ten and simply following what we were “supposed” to do at that age. She had known for years that the three-in-one God/Jesus/Holy Spirit loves her. Now she knows that members of a church love her — not “no matter what” or “in spite of” or “love the sinner, not the sin” or any of the qualifiers that diminish love. She is loved completely, wholeheartedly, holily, sincerely. For most of her young adult life she felt suffocated inside the walls of a church. Now she can breathe.

And so can I.