Because it really is personal…

About 2 years ago I quit going to church. I just quit. Blam. Not because I’d lost my faith (I haven’t), or because I opposed the idea of organized religion (I don’t), but because it gave me a headache and made me tired.

We belonged (still do, technically) to a Huge church. Monstrous. Unreasonably large. To the tune of nearly 5000 members. Yes. With 3 zeros. I participated quite happily in various niches in this church, from Vacation Bible School planning to ringing in the handbell choir and always, always in a long term high- discipline Bible study. I loved it, and it gave me the feeling of belonging to a close knit community.

The problem I had (and still have)was with the Sunday worship experience. I love worship, singing the songs, a communal participation in a ritual with purpose and meaning. Except that the feeling of community is lost when there are more people in the room than lived in the entire town we lived in before moving there. When there are 1200 people in a room, each Sunday, something is lost. You don’t recognize folks and they don’t know you. They don’t say hi if they pass you in the grocery store, and absolutely no one knows it if you’re gone a couple of weeks in a row. Or 6 weeks. Or a year. No phone call, no concern, just ritual anonymity. It’s not right.

This was the church Sweet Daddio and I belonged to when we married. It was much, much smaller then. We had friends there, and a close Sunday School class of interesting and varied people. But other than that, the church had become a community of Pretty People. Fashionable, thin, young, successful families with brand new SUV’s and houses in Grove Hill. It was becoming like high school, where one’s worth was rated by one’s wardrobe, address, and haircut. Sunday Church was becoming a weekend of anticipatory stress culminating in nausea and debilitating anxiety attacks.

One really should not have to rely on tranquilizers to get through a worship experience. I don’t think it’s what God intended. Really.

It had gotten to where I just couldn’t do it. So I quit Church. I kept up all the auxillary stuff. I absolutely dearly loved playing handbells, and I was good at it. The group of women I took the Bible Study with were like sisters, after 8 years of it. Vacation Bible School was something I started working on in February, and threw my whole heart into.

But I can’t go to worship. The whole Sunday thing, starting with making sure everyones clothes are ironed, then assembling Sunday Dinner (pot roast, chicken and rice, etc)so it cooks while we’re at church, then rushing home after to set the table and feed everyone before they collapse in hypoglycemic faint. In the middle of that is an hour of dry mouthed panic as I sit behind someone who dunked herself in Obsession and in front of 3 scantily clad college women flirting with the fraternity across the row. I’d look down and see a small stain on the front of my shirt, which would grow to the size of a volkswagen the longer I fretted over it. I’d go to the restroom toward the end of the service and discover an entire head of lettuse growing between 2 of my teeth. It just wasn’t worth it.

The churches here are smaller. We’ve visited a couple and one of them has received the seal of approval from the boys. I think #3’s Twins go there. The congregation at the service we visited had about 120 people in it. A managable size, a far easier bite than 1200. Now I just have to get my nerve up and go. Entropy is setting in, and I am really enjoying Sunday mornings without the pressure of making sure everyone is spit-shined and wrinkle-free.

But I miss people, and church is one place I know I can find them. I am looking at Labor Day weekend as the start-up date for resuming our church-going ways. I am nervous as hell about it. To inject myself deliberately into a crowd of people, all of whom know each other and none of whom know me, ’tis daunting. But I am going to do it. Because it’s right, and my family needs it. #4 has asked when he can go to Sunday School again, and #3 has asked to go as well. He wants to join the youth fellowship.

I’m going to do it. I am.