BEYOND THE PARENTHESES

Chapter 1

We each have distinct barriers to personal faith.

For me, these first spiritual roadblocks took the shape of the legalistic fundamentalist Baptist church in which I was raised from the time I was eight years old.

Its unique paradigm permeated and shaped my spiritual worldview in lasting ways.

I was born on a Thursday, and three days later, on that very first Sunday, I was in church.

I know this because growing up, my parents often told me the story. They spoke of it as though it were a badge of honor and pride—like having the county’s first New Year’s baby or something.

It was their very first act as Christian parents. At not even a week old, they had begun to “train up their child in the way she should go,” just as Proverbs 22:6 instructed.

Three days old, and figuratively speaking, my butt was already in the pew, to use one of my dad’s favorite phrases.

My freshly diapered butt was actually strapped in a car seat placed underneath the pew, but still, I was there, hearing the Word.

Starting that day, through the first eighteen years of my life, I can count on both hands the number of Sundays we missed church.

Even when we were traveling on vacation, there was no problem. Simply pick a Baptist church from the handy local phone book found in the hotel nightstand next to the Gideon Bible.

On any given Sunday, we were there, butts in our unofficially reserved pew, for both Sunday school and church service. There was also a Sunday evening service, but we never attended it.

As I understood it, that service seemed to be reserved for the pastor’s family, who had no choice but to attend, and for elderly parishioners who had nowhere to be early the following morning.

We had school, and Dad had work, so apparently, God forgave our absence.