Forty years

Forty years ago today, I took a splash of faith.

After reading the Bible and studying with two women, I was baptized at the University Church of Christ on November 11, 1981.  I was 18.

I grew up religious. I attended the Baptist church with my family. Around the age of eight, I went forward and "prayed the prayer" with a very nice older woman who'd asked me, "Did you come to be saved?" 

We had all stood up and "gone forward" that particular day. I vaguely remember an older gentleman coming to the house and talking with us; my grandmother also told me much later that "your mother asked, do you understand what this means? And you said, yes."

I think my parents went forward because they wanted to place membership at that particular church. 

The next week, my sister and I were both baptized. I told the preacher my name and he said, "I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit."

I started reading the Bible daily after a Pioneer Girls leader challenged me to read a verse every night. I thought, "I can do better than that, I can read a chapter every night!"

I prayed daily, read the Bible daily, tried to live a Christian life. 

So why get involved with a Church of Christ? Why get baptized again?

Well, for one thing, if I understand Acts 2:38 correctly, we're to be baptized for the forgiveness of our sins. I was not. 

Number two, if this was what God said, then yes, I wanted to do what God said.

Finally, and honestly . . . I was afraid of going to hell.

So I did it.

I didn't know at that time that the church I'd been baptized into was considered a cult. Or, at the very least, controversial. 

The church I was part of was also part of a network of churches loosely associated with the Crossroads Church of Christ in Gainesville, Florida. They had a school of preaching and sent out preachers to other churches.  Crossroads had had great success with reaching their community, particularly college students. They used a variety of methods such as small group Bible studies and prayer partners, or discipleship partners. They encouraged people to turn away from their sins and to lead a life pleasing to God. They encouraged people to study their Bibles daily, pray daily, have close relationships with other Christians, confess their sins to other Christians, and share their faith with non-Christians.

None of those things are bad in and of themselves.

What happened at Crossroads and at other Crossroads-related churches was that these very good things became a method of control. The "prayer partner" relationship, instead of the one-on-one discipling method it was supposed to be, became a one-over-one relationship, with, "I'm the older Christian, so you need to do what I tell you," It also became a session where you were asked, "What are you studying in your quiet time (a period of daily prayer and Bible study)?" "What sins have you committed that you need to confess?" "How many people have you shared your faith with?" If you weren't having a "quiet time", why weren't you? If you weren't sharing your faith, why not? If you weren't having visitors at our weekly Bible studies (designed to attract non-Christians), why weren't you?

That term, "sharing your faith," really meant "inviting people to church, including total strangers." The more people you invited to church, and the more visitors you had at events, the more spiritual you were considered. And if those people you studied with were baptized into Christ, they were considered your "fruit" and you were considered to have "borne fruit". And the more people you lead to Christ, the more spiritual you are considered.

I have heard of at least one person who made it their goal to "share their faith" with every person they made eye contact with. Another person vowed to fast until they shared their faith . . . and fasted for eight days.

Groups of Christians that met together weekly as "discipleship groups" became meetings where you were asked "how many people have you invited to church this week? How many people are you studying the Bible with? If not, why not?" 

I learned much good during my years in Tallahassee, I learned ways to actually study the Bible, not just read it. I learned the value of Christian relationships. I learned that it was okay to pray and tell God how you felt, not just, "Dear God, thank you for this day, please be with everyone, in Jesus' name I pray, Amen."  I enjoyed going out on dates and getting to know other guys. 

But after five years in Tallahassee, I was exhausted and burned out, spiritually. The things that were meant to be good were vicious and controlling. Leaders became controlling and angry when they felt that you were not measuring up. After the last group Bible study I attended before I graduated from college ended, I felt a vast sense of relief that I would never have to worry about inviting someone to Bible study ever again. 

This is not the way to live a Christian life, riddled with guilt that you hadn't "done enough" and riddled with fear that someone would rebuke you -- sometimes very harshly -- for not inviting enough people to church events, or for not having a daily "quiet time", or basically, for not living the way they thought you should live. I had a prayer partner one time who walked into my dorm room, had a conversation with me and my roommate, and then at the end asked us, "Have you thought about rearranging your room?" I got rather ticked off and told her that we'd arranged the room the way it was because we only had two electrical outlets and were trying to get our stuff in a place so we could plug in what we needed to plug in. 

I deliberately moved to another church that had been part of the Crossroads movement. The church I moved to, I'd heard they taught grace, and I badly needed it. Right at the time I got there, in 1987, the Crossroads movement morphed into the Boston Movement. Chuck Lucas, the preacher at Crossroads, was fired for "recurring sins" in his life. One of his proteges, Kip McKean, was then preaching at the Boston Church of Christ.  Kip is bold and charismatic in his preaching, and he took over as the de facto leader of the Crossroads movement. He and the leaders under him began visiting churches, "encouraging" (i.e. practically ordering) the pastor to move to Boston for additional training, and then sending a replacement preacher in. At least two churches I'm aware of, one in Atlanta, the other in Tampa, split as a result of the actions by people from Boston.

My church, in Miami, refused to be taken over . . . so people from Boston planted a new church in Miami. At the same time, my church was having serious financial problems. So, in 1989, the solution the leaders came up with was to start meeting in independent house churches. It was sold to us mostly as "this is the way the early church met". There were those who decided not to go that route and went to other churches. I went the route of the house churches. 

The idea of an independent house church looks good on paper: having a small group of believers meeting weekly and sharing what they've learned, praying together, helping those who are struggling, etc. I think there's a lot we can learn from a house church movement. But we did house churches as a direct result of the abuse we'd experienced at the hands of Crossroads/Boston, and I think that was a mistake. We were so desperate to get away from what we called legalism that we went 180 degrees in the opposite direction. 

By 1993, I was engaged to be married, and my father was ill with ALS. He would die four weeks before my wedding. 

Right before we got married, I told my now-husband, "The house churches are not working. We need to get out."

It took a year, but we eventually did get out. I took a job in Atlanta, and my husband and I moved and went back to a traditional church setting. We've been there since 1994, and while the place has had its ups and downs and turnarounds, I know that churches are not perfect and I believe the place we're at is doing the best it can. I believe our leaders love God, and they do not try to preach a "formula" for a perfect Christian life. 

Where am I, after 40 years? 

I call myself an imperfect follower of a perfect God. If someone asks, are you a Christian, I will gladly answer, "Yes." I struggle at times with believing God loves me. I wonder about what is literally true in the Bible and what is allegorical. I get very frustrated with "Scripture wars"; such as, "Acts 2:38 says you have to be baptized in order to be saved," "Oh, yeah! Well, I'll see your Acts 2:38 and raise you an Ephesians 2:8, where it says you're saved by grace!" And I can name more and more. 

And yet . . . if God exists, if Jesus of Nazareth was God in the flesh, who is the perfect, sinless sacrifice for us, if he did rise from the dead and go back to heaven, and if the Bible is true . . . that Bible says that God is love, and that God so loved the world. That means me. 

I don't understand a lot about God. I don't understand why evil and pain exist, especially when innocents are the victims of that evil and pain. I don't understand certain parts of the Bible where God commanded the complete destruction of a people, including men, women, and children. I don't understand why some prayers get answered "yes" and why some prayers get answered "no". 

There are also the questions I've seen people ask, such as, "Was the world created in six literal, 24-hour days?" "Can women lead/preach, etc. to both men and women?" "Is homosexuality a sin?" "Is there a  hell with a literal lake of fire? Does everyone get to go to heaven? Or are non-believers just 'annihilated'?" "Does someone have to be immersed in water in order to be saved? What about those who don't believe that, or who believe that immersion is 'an outward sign of an inward grace'?"

To be honest, the questions exhaust me. The extra-Biblical expectations placed on people also exhaust me, especially the expectations placed on women:  be a perfect "keeper of the home", which means household tips, how to please your husband, how to raise your kids "in the nurture and admonition of the Lord" (preferably by homeschooling them). 

But, when I strip it all down to what I understand the "basics" of Christianity to be, it comes out to: God loved us first. God created us in His image. God wants a relationship with us. He sent Jesus (God incarnate) to give himself as a perfect sacrifice for our sins. (I have heard Jesus' death on the cross interpreted as, "You're so awful you made God kill himself." That ignores Jesus' statement in the book of John, where Jesus himself said, no one takes my life from me but I lay it down of my own accord.")
But Jesus didn't just die for our sins. He came back to life -- the ultimate triumph over death. He went back to heaven and we're still waiting for him to come back to gather His people. 

If I accept that I'm a sinner (which I am) and I believe that Jesus came to forgive my sins (which he did), and I repent -- turn away -- from my sins, and -- I believe -- if I participate in the act of baptism upon confessing that I believe Jesus is Lord, and I want him to be in charge of my life and live how he wants me to live, then I am saved. I can call myself "child of God", "Christian," "disciple," etc.  And God will not leave me to wander in the wilderness. He gave me three things to help me: 1. The Bible, 2. the Holy Spirit, 3. Other Christians. He does expect me to turn away from my sins, but when I sin, God promises that if I confess my sins, he will forgive them. 

I do struggle with the fear of hell. Whatever hell is, I do not want to be there. More and more, though, I want to serve God because I love him back. Not because I'm afraid of what he'll do to me if I don't obey him.  He loved me first, I want to love him back. 

There are answers to questions I don't have. The longer I live, the less certainty I have. 

But after forty years? 

Even with the struggles, even with unanswered questions, even when I go "Huh?" when I hear/read certain things . . . I keep coming back to, there is a God, he is wiser than I and he knows best . . . and he loves me. He can take my pain and anger because he is bigger than my pain and anger. I don't know "why (fill in the blank)", but he does, and if he is a God of love -- which I believe he is -- I can trust him with the pain, doubt, unanswered questions, etc. that I have. 

It's been forty years of pain, struggle, sometimes triumph, questions unanswered, faith challenged.

I still choose to believe.

I still choose to put myself into the hands of a loving God. 

I look forward to more years with him.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Dare I hope?

When you live in Atlanta and follow sports, you learn very quickly to -- in the words of the Dread Pirate Roberts -- "get used to disappointment."

Atlanta is the home of the team that blew a 28-3 lead over the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl. Someone later commented that Atlanta hadn't been burned that badly since Sherman in 1864.

So when the Atlanta Braves made it to the National League Championship Series, I didn't pay much attention . . . until they started winning.

The last time Atlanta was in the World Series was 1999 (the year my son was born). The last time Atlanta won the World Series was 1995, the year after we moved here. In the years since 1995, Atlanta has done a good job of winning their division, the National League East, but just couldn't seem to "seal the deal" and get to the championships. 

The last few seasons have ranged from good to mediocre and just plain bad. 

This year, bleacherreport.com said this about the Braves at the All-Star break (a game Atlanta was scheduled to host but that was pulled due to controversy about Georgia's voting laws, a controversy I will not get into here): " Relative to preseason expectations, the Atlanta Braves might by baseball's most disappointing team in 2021 because of their 44-45 record . . . A year after coming one win away from reaching the World Series, little has gone right."

But they did go on to say, "The wide-open nature of the National League East division of the National League East division means they are still only four games back in the standings even with a sub -.500 record, and that could be enough to chase another postseason appearance, especially with [first baseman] Freddie Freeman headed for free agency."

Despite that sub-.500 record, Atlanta staged a comeback, and last week, they beat the Los Angeles Dodgers four games to two.  The morning after that game, I picked up my phone, dreading to see the results, and when I saw "Braves win!" I said to myself, "Yes!"

Now our city has been seized with World Series fever, everyone who owns any sort of Braves paraphernalia has dusted it off and put it on, and I'm sure that you cannot buy, beg, borrow, or steal anything with the name "Atlanta Braves" on it!

So dare I hope?

Dare I hope that this will be the year that the Braves will repeat 1995 and win the World Series?

Dare I hope that at least one of our sports teams will give us a reason to celebrate, especially in this year two of COVID?

Last night, in Houston, the Braves beat the Houston Astros 6-2. Game 2 is scheduled for tonight in Houston, and the Braves will come back for Game 3 on Friday. The slogan around there is, "Party like it's 1999!" and I'm guessing that Truist Park, the home field for the Braves, will blast the song so that it can be heard through the neighborhood at full volume. 

Dare I hope that the Braves will pull it off, despite the Astros having home field advantage?

Can Freddie Freeman and the guys do it?

I'm not much of a baseball fan, but when the Series comes around, I pay attention to who's playing, and I may or may not have a favorite team. 

This year, I'm rooting for the Braves.

If they win, I will treat myself to a large bowl of chocolate.

But, if my hopes are dashed, I will drown my sorrows . . .in a large bowl of chocolate.

So either way, I win. 

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

"He'll never amount to anything."

When my Uncle Jerry was a young boy, a teacher told his mother -- my Granny Mary -- that "he'll never amount to anything."

Why she said that, I don't know.  Maybe it was because he didn't know how to tie his shoes yet (a skill which, by the way, I didn't learn until I was eight.) My father stepped in and tied my uncle's shoes . . . while my uncle read a comic book. (He couldn't tie his shoes yet, but he could read!)

But he spent the rest of his nearly 82 years of life proving her wrong.

My Uncle Jerry was born in Harlan, Kentucky in November of 1939, into a world that was just beginning World War II. He was the youngest of five children, and too young to remember the personal tragedy that hit nearly two years later, when his father was killed in an accident. 

He grew up in a world without a father, and in a world shaped by World War II and its aftermath. 

I don't know what made him pick electrical engineering as a path in life. But Harlan, Kentucky was not the place to do it. 

So he went to college and eventually earned his doctorate at the University of Cincinnati. Cincinnati was a popular place for people from rural Kentucky to end up. One of his big brothers was already there. (Two of my mother's siblings also moved from Harlan to Cincinnati.) 

His doctoral dissertation had something to do with neutron-irradiated silicone. As an adult, I worked at a university library and used their interlibrary loan computer to look up Uncle Jerry's dissertation. When I found it, I read off the title to the other woman working at the reference desk.  She just looked at me and said, "Sure!"

The boy who would "never amount to anything" eventually moved to Clearwater, Florida, got a job at Honeywell, and taught engineering at the University of South Florida. He also traveled worldwide, visiting countries such as Israel, Japan, and Poland. I remember the slide shows he would have when he'd come back from one of his trips. I still have a pin he gave me after a trip to Moscow, an Olympic pin with "Mockba '80", It was the Olympics that the US ended up boycotting. 

Uncle Jerry would eventually live from coast to coast doing consulting work. He's lived in Colorado Springs, Bellingham, WA, Palmyra, New York (where he lived on what he described as "23 acres of weeds") and finally in Sarasota, Florida.

He and my father were very close, as befits the last two members of a family.  He once said about my dad that "he was my hero before I ever knew about heroes." 

My father fell ill with ALS in 1992, My now-husband proposed in May of 1993, and I knew there was a chance my father might not live to see me get married. 

So I wrote Uncle Jerry and asked, if Daddy can't give me away, can you?

He called me and said three words:  "I'd be honored."

My father died on September 11th, 1993. I was married on October 9, 1993, with my Uncle Jerry walking me down the aisle.  He also loaned Frank his wedding ring for our pictures because I had forgotten to bring Frank's. That is a funny story now. Then, it was tragic.

After his first marriage ended, he married again in May of 1980 to a woman who made him happy for many years. That marriage also brought him three stepchildren.  He had no biological children, but he stepped in as a father figure. 

It devastated my Uncle Jerry when his wife died several years ago. 

The last time I saw Uncle Jerry was right before my mother died.  He came to see her on the same day I did.  He told met, through tears, that you knew you were getting old when you started losing the people you loved. 

Uncle Jerry loved his work and contributed much. My father told me that Jerry was one of maybe ten people in the country that knew what he knew. 

In the end, all he wanted to do was go home. 

His health would not permit him to go back to Harlan, so he settled for assisted living in Ohio. It helped that his sister-in-law was at the same facility.  

Just a few days ago, I learned that he had a wound on his foot that was not healing. He made the choice to refuse amputation and signed paperwork for hospice care. He was going to leave the world on his own terms. 

Last night, at 11:15 p.m., October 20, 2021, he did just that. 

His stepdaughter, who's spent time and energy and love caring for him and keeping the family informed, told us that Uncle Jerry's body will be cremated and the ashes spread at Cumberland Falls, Kentucky, a place he enjoyed taking his grandkids (the children of one of his stepdaughters). 

So in a way, he will go home.

My uncle, Dr. Jerry Sergent, will be remembered as an engineer who traveled the world sharing his knowledge and who gave his knowledge to his many students. 

He will be remembered as a man who would live life on his own terms.  

He loved his family, his brothers and sister and sisters-in-law, and his nieces and nephews. 

Quite an accomplishment for someone who was never supposed to amount to anything.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Riot Reflections, 50 years later

Had the riots at Dixie M. Hollins High School in St. Petersburg, Florida happened today, I would probably be writing about a body count, who the shooter was, and what weapons he used.

But it was 1971, and what happened at Dixie M. Hollins High School resulted in fighting, injuries, multiple arrests, and at least one stabbing.

I was seven years old in September of 1971, the first school year when court-ordered busing went into effect in an effort to achieve racial integration. One of the school districting lines went down my street. Had I lived on the other side of the street, I would have gone to Northwest Elementary. Instead, I was able to walk four blocks to Westgate Elementary. 

I didn't understand the controversy about busing.  That first year, I mainly remember the "bus students" listed on the roll in my third grade class.  They were Tonetta, Rita, Lolita, and Valarie, they were placed at the end of the roll and called out separately. 

But during September and October of 1971, Dixie M. Hollins High School was embroiled in controversy, a controversy that would end up making national news.  

In December, 2015, Tampa Bay Times reporter John Romano looked back on those days. He described the students who lived through them as "kids who fought with fists and wounded with words . . . who saw cops on the school's rooftop with rifles and saw adults inciting violence from across the street . . . who saw football games and school days canceled for fear of race riots."

It started a week after the school year began, when Dixie Hollins' principal got on the intercom and announced that the Confederate battle flag, the "Stars and Bars", would no longer be permitted on campus.  

For a school whose fight song was "Dixie" and whose athletic teams were called the "Rebels," this spelled trouble. 

The next day, angry adults, Confederate battle flags in hand, stood across the street, protesting.

For the next couple of weeks, they drove up and down the street, the Stars and Bars protruding from the backs of their cars, flapping in the breeze, as Black students arrived on campus. 

Tension built.  Fights broke out.  Students were sent home early due to fears of violence. 

The week of October 11, 1971, all hell broke loose. 

On October 12, 1971, the school had to be closed after what the St. Petersburg Times described as a "fist-swinging, rock-throwing, slogan-shouting melee." Afterwards, the school superintendent was quoted as saying, "God, I'm tired. They didn't have any courses like this in school administration." 

The next day, a 16-year-old girl brought a steak knife to school and stabbed a deputy in the chest.  Fortunately, the wound was minor.

Eventually, things settled down, though not without simmering unrest under the surface.

In 2020, although the official name of the school remains Dixie M. Hollins High School, the school decided to brand themselves as "Hollins High", and gave themselves a new nickname, the "Royals."

The irony here is that Dixie Martin Hollins, the first superintendent of schools for Pinellas County, supported education for all students, no matter what race, and he often hired people from Black colleges and universities. 

But with the first name "Dixie", the nickname "Rebels", and a mascot resembling a Confederate colonel, "we'd still be tied to a past that we needed to break free from," according to principal Bob Florio.  

This school year marks 50 years since those days of tension and rioting. I remember little about it except reading bits about it in the paper and seeing bits of it on the news. Two of the people arrested during that October week of violence were the father and sister of a girl in my sister's Girl Scout troop.

That Friday, I went with my mother and sister to drop my sister off at weekend camp. The father was there, and he and my mother had a long discussion. I heard none of it. Instead, as a seven-year-old going on eight, all I wondered were two things:  1. Why was he here and not in jail, since he'd been arrested (he was probably out on bail), and 2. Where were the marks of the handcuffs on his wrists? 

Such is the innocence of a little girl. 

I'd love to say that we've progressed in 50 years. 

But school violence? Confederate flag controversies? Racial tensions? 

Little, if anything, has changed.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Tales from the Sickroom, Days 5-10 . . .

 I will just make it short and sweet:  

QUARANTINE IS DONE! 

I still have a mild amount of nausea but I can eat and nothing's coming back up.

And I will still wear a mask and wash/sanitize my hands.

But I can get out of the house.

Tomorrow I celebrate with a haircut!!

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Tales from the Sickroom, Days 2-5

 Both my son and I have now tested positive for COVID, and I’m having a hard time explaining why he tested positive when he got his shots. 

We are now all on quarantine, because my husband has also been told he can’t go back to work until I test negative. 

The biggest enemy of quarantine is boredom. While I have more advantages than my grandparents had when/if they were in quarantine, boredom is a universal problem. There are only so many games of solitaire you can play on an iPad, only so many websites you can visit. I fried my brain on too many solitaire games a couple of days ago. 

Tomorrow none of us will be at church.  We will go back to the days of online church, where I will make communion bread and we will dig out the last of the grape juice to drink. 

Quarantine also totally throws off an internal clock. I’ve lost a sense of what day it actually is and even had to check my phone to see what today’s date was. 

Fortunately, I fall into the category of “not that sick” and my husband took advantage of that . . . By having us go and do yard work in the back yard this afternoon. He mowed, I ran the edger. 

Tonight I got a nice infusion of courage from the movie “Darkest Hour”, the story of the first weeks of Winston Churchill’s term as prime minister in 1940.

None of us are lying in bed feverish and coughing. 

My release date should come on September 29th, barring another positive COVID test.  The test has already been scheduled.  

And I took advantage of Instacart to restock necessary supplies of apples, bananas and chocolate. 

Unfortunately, I had to settle for dark chocolate Reese’s cups rather than milk chocolate ones. :: places hand dramatically to forehead :: Oh, the humanity! Life is so unfair! 

On the other hand, if the lack of milk chocolate Reese’s Cups is an indication of how unfair life is, I think that is something I can put up with. 

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Tales from the Sickroom, Day 1

 I have been ill off and on since around Labor Day. The worst of it was around the beginning of September, when I had a bad sore throat and it hurt to swallow.

I felt better right after Labor Day. Then I relapsed.

Finally, I did what I probably should have done when this whole thing started.

I signed up for a COVID test. 

The process took about five minutes and involved swishing a long-handled Q Tip in one nostril while the person counted to 12, then repeating the process in the other nostril. For those of you that had a COVID test where the swab was shoved up your nose almost to your brain, no, this was not like that. You just had to get enough to be tested.

After said swishing was completed, I broke off the cotton portion of the Q Tip into a vial filled with liquid, sealed it in plastic which contained the ominous orange and black warning "BIOHAZARD", then dropped it into the collection box. All of this was done at our pharmacy's drive thru. 

The test said "one to two days" and I had mine done Sunday, so I didn't expect to hear until Tuesday what my results were.

Last night my phone dinged with my results.

I tested positive.

First off, I was shocked but not really surprised. It's a shock when you see "positive" on a test where you wanted a "negative." Second, even though I've been vaccinated, I've heard about breakthrough COVID and I figure this is what it is. Third, I'm grateful I did have the vaccine because I would have been much sicker without it. 

Today I called my doctor's office.  I am to quarantine for the next 10 days. And my husband and son need to get tested.

When I told my son, he didn't get why he needed to be tested because he'd already had his shots. But I got him tested anyway. And my husband is scheduled for tomorrow. 

I am not really that sick. I just have lagging congestion, the occasional cough, and residual fatigue.

Last year, I would have been terrified at a positive COVID diagnosis. 

This year, I'm just annoyed because this morning, I was on either phone, e-mail or text notifying everyone who needed to be notified and changing appointments that needed to be changed. (I'm reminded of my mother in law's comment after she had a seizure -- probably due to a lack of magnesium -- a number of years ago. Her complaint was, it's in the middle of a busy week!) 

But, I'll take annoyance over hospitalization any day of the week. 

I can't use "It's The End Of The World As We Know It" as my theme song in this particular snarkfest because I don't "feel fine". If anyone can find a funny song about illness, send it my way. In the meantime, I will be waving from the sick room.  Cheers! 

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.