Deft Daffodil #2

God first let me down when I was in kindergarten. Our cat, Booties, was missing again. Booties was always exploring and he’d disappear for a few days. Once after he’d been gone for a few hours, our duplex neighbor brought him home. He’d crawled into their side of the house through a hole in the attic wall and they’d fed him warm milk. But this time he’d been gone for five days and I missed him a lot. I prayed to God and promised him that I would be good for a whole week if he just sent Booties home. He didn’t come home for two more days. A young guy, who I swear looked like the painting of Jesus hanging in my Sunday School class, had hit Booties with his car and followed the address on his collar to bring us the body. I still believed in God but I didn’t trust him.

It wasn’t until high school that I stopped believing altogether. It didn’t happen in one dramatic moment with drama and tears and all that. Instead it happened after many empty moments when I just didn’t feel God. He wasn’t carrying me through the hard parts of my life like that sentimental poem – there was only one distressed set of footprints ambling across the sand.

So it doesn’t make any sense at all, but when I’m stressed and need some solace from my life, I go to church. I sit in the back so that the preacher can’t get a good look at me. I think that everything he’s saying is rubbish but the singing! When the congregation sings Hallelujah to their Lord I can feel happiness pulsing through my body and tingling my toes. It’s that moment that I think there might be a God. The joy is so uplifting and it reminds me of my early childhood when I sang Jesus Loves the Little Children and believed. When I leave, the stresses that brought me there – my homework, my loneliness, or my family – seem so petty compared to the passion inside the church.