This sandwich is so good it should have its own religion,” I said on date night.
“Agreed,” Trent replied, biting into his own gourmet grilled cheese. “But would it count as one of the thirty? Church of the Big Cheese sounds like a place you would like.”
I was making a face that said, “Don’t push your luck if you plan to get lucky,” when we saw the troop of young men file in the restaurant’s front doors two-by-two, like cute pairs of Noah’s ark animals in matching suits. I didn’t need the Book of Mormon to know these twenty clean-cut guys were missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS); they were wearing name tags. I elbowed Trent and pointed.
“Stop staring,” Trent whispered.
“I’m just trying to figure out how to approach them without looking like I’m hitting on them.”
“You’re going to hit on another guy when I bought your dinner?”
“I bought your dinner, pal,” I reminded him.
On our way out, I slipped the missionary at the end of the table a napkin with my cell phone number and said, “Please have someone call me.” (In retrospect, I failed miserably. It definitely looked like I was hitting on him.) I may not be the only gal to ever have picked up twenty missionaries, but I bet I’m the only one to have done it in sweatpants, with a to-go box of grilled cheese and husband in tow.
The missionaries must have been salivating more over my potential salvation than their dinner, because there was a voicemail waiting on my cell when we got back to the car. “This is Elder Deck,” went the message. “Please call me back to set up a time for us to get together.”
“Wow, these guys are a well-organized militia of world-savers!” I said to Trent.
I called Elder Deck back right away. We set two times: Friday to meet with the missionaries and Sunday to attend services near OSU’s campus. I asked him if anyone had ever volunteered their cell phone number.
“Well,” he answered, “I’ve heard of things like this happening, but they’ve never happened to me . . . or any missionary I actually know.”
Aha! I was so going to become a Mormon missionary urban legend! I felt certain the story of “the girl and her cell phone number” might circulate evermore among the sweet, suited missionary-mafia. Perhaps it would even grow from the truth to full-on lore. I heard she found the truth right then and there . . . I heard she begged for the Book of Mormon on her knees! I heard she disappeared right in front of them . . . She was an angel sent from heaven to test their knowledge!
Well, maybe not the angel part. But it’s not every day a gal gets to become an urban legend.
I MET MY PAIR of assigned missionaries at the local meetinghouse for their ward (congregation), which was located right off Ohio State’s campus. They wore matching white dress shirts, black ties, and serious yet friendly expressions as they waited for me by the entrance.
“I’m Elder Deck,” said the shorter of the two, as he opened the door for me. He was a handsome, well-built fellow with dark hair and a wide smile.
“And I’m Elder Bedford,” said the taller one. I’m not sure whether it was his thin frame or innocent eyes with blond lashes, but he seemed very young.
We sat in the meetinghouse foyer, which was set up much like a living room. I sat on a long couch, and the Elders faced me from two armchairs and I learned a little about their missions. They each volunteered to do a two-year mission, during which they would give up TV, Internet, e-mail (except once a week to family only), radio, music, reading (except the Bible and selected LDS texts), seeing their friends, dating, and thinking about dating. This was in addition to having already given up or never partaken in sex, drugs, porn, coffee, masturbation, and cigarettes, among other things. They chose to surrender control of where or with whom they would live, knowing they would not see their families for twenty-four months.
In slight awe of their dedication, I asked how they did it.
“Simple,” Elder Deck said and smiled. “Our service to God means more than anything.”
“How does it feel when other Christians say you aren’t saved, or claim you are part of a cult?” I asked.
“It hits me right here,” Elder Bedford answered, slamming a fist to his chest. “It really hurts. I love the Savior. I believe in God the Father and the Holy Spirit. How can people say that?”
The Elders did most of the talking during our conversation, and their countenances shone with spiritual fervor. I knew this look well; I used to wear it myself before the Breaking, back when I had all the answers. When he talked about Jesus, Elder Deck’s passion became more pronounced. He believed so hard that he almost shimmered, Twilight-vampire style. It was the kind of light Mrs. Easton reminded me about, the glow I wondered if I could ever have back.
Talking with them reminded me so much of myself at eighteen that I choked up. Elder Deck was positively on fire about the truth of the Book of Mormon; his dark features were animated by a faith he would never think of as blind. Then again, I wouldn’t have called my faith blind either when I was his age.
You can’t know what blind faith is until you see what it isn’t.
“The LDS church is all I have ever known,” he admitted.
I hoped the day would never come that he would question his identity as an elder. I wanted to put him in a glass box so he could always glow, so he would never have to lie in bed in the night and realize he gave up two years of his life for something he could no longer believe in. I didn’t want him to ever lose the faith that made up his life, because I didn’t want him to have to wake up with total emptiness like I did.
Did.
Did I just speak of emptiness in past tense?
FOR MY SUNDAY VISIT with the elders’ congregation, I raided the back of my closet.
“Well, hello,” I said to a conservative navy suit I hadn’t worn since my Focus on the Family days.
I knew it would still fit, but only with control-top pantyhose. While shaking my booty into the hose, I tripped over Oxley and landed on the floor with my legs in the air. Since only half of me fell into the hosiery, I wriggled around on the floor trying to stuff in the other half. Then I heard Trent open the bedroom door.
“Look away! Look away!” I cried. “Some things are simply too shameful for a husband to witness!”
Things like shoplifting on the way to church, for example. I didn’t realize I was ferrying stolen goods onto LDS property until Elder Deck was introducing me to the bishop.
“It’s so nice to meet you!” I enthused, removing my gloves to shake hands. Stuffing the gloves into my coat pocket, I found a granola bar—an item I’d forgotten to pay for at the gas station. (For a girl who once turned herself in for stealing a red-hot from a teacher’s candy dish, a contraband granola bar seemed akin to bank robbery.)
I did not confess, though. I had my urban legend status to safeguard.
“This is the girl doing the religions project,” Elder Bedford said to a group of missionaries. They all nodded knowingly, which made me feel as if I had been the subject of prior discussion. I imagined myself on a list of conversion prospects like the sales prospects lists I make for my Monday morning conference calls; perhaps my name had even been drawn on a brainstorming sheet in a missionary conference room. How exciting!
Elder Bedford and I were late joining Elder Deck for the start of the service; the singing had already commenced. As I slid into my seat, Elder Deck whispered excitedly, “This is such a great song!”
It was number 196, “Jesus, Once of Humble Birth.” While we sang, I studied the lyrics, thinking how sorely disappointed anti-Mormon Christians might be at the orthodox-sounding verses:
Jesus, once of humble birth,
Now in glory comes to earth.
Once he suffered grief and pain;
Now he comes on earth to reign.
Scripture study, hymns, prayer, and the taking of the sacrament (communion): everything was so unremarkably normal in comparison to a Protestant service. One exception was that the sacrament featured water instead of wine or grape juice. This made me think of Catholic holy water, except this was for drinking, and I considered that if I were to partake in communion ever again I’d still prefer wine to water, if only for the holy tingle on the tongue.
I’d been taught as a child to regard the LDS church as a cult, the same word we used for sects that brainwashed members into living in compounds and committing mass suicide. As I looked around at the rows of shiny, singing people, it was hard to compute how this crowd ever fell in that category.
It was the first Sunday of the month, which, I was told, meant everyone was fasting. It’s a good thing I didn’t chow down on my stolen granola bar in the lobby! Fast Sunday also meant that instead of having assigned speakers, there would be “testimony time”—basically open mic night, except in the morning and without any bad poetry.
Though officially this ranked as my first Mormon testimony meeting, I had logged scads of hours in similar services. In my experience, it always became an adult version of story time—with pews instead of carpet squares and God stories instead of stuffed animals. There was always the over-sharer; the one who said, “Um, um, um . . . instead of speaking; and the one who talked an inappropriately long amount of time about an unsuitable topic. Depending on the age of the congregation, an embarrassing medical condition or gruesome surgical maneuver might be explored.
“Brothers and sisters, the time is now yours to bear your testimonies,” the LDS leader announced. An awkward silence ensued. I could almost hear everyone’s heart beating questions like, “Is that indigestion or the Holy Spirit telling me to go forward?”
A brave soul trooped to the microphone, daring to go first. He began with, “I know the Church is true, the Book of Mormon is the Word of God, and Joseph Smith is God’s prophet,” and continued into a lovely story of God’s provision for tuition money. With the ice broken, a line formed and one person after another bore testimony, all beginning with the first guy’s proclamation and ending with, “I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.”
Many spoke of reading the Book of Mormon, asking the Holy Spirit to “bear witness of the book’s truth,” and feeling that truth in their hearts. I recognized the feeling they described. It’s the same feeling you get when the power goes out, and you think the battery might be out of flashlights, but . . . aha! Then it flashes on, illuminating everything.
That was a feeling I had missed for a long time before starting Thirty by Thirty. But since meeting the Urban Monk, it had started happening all the time—a tiny, everyday miracle. A miracle I wanted to share.
I have to testify. Where did that thought come from? I squinted at the elders, like one of them might have planted it. I felt a familiar draw to the microphone, then a question. Wait, am I even allowed to testify? Being non-Mormon and all?
I leaned over to ask Elder Bedford. His eyes got as big as saucers, and he consulted with the missionary on his left, who consulted with the eldest elder on his left. They all looked back at me, nodding their assent quickly as if to say, “We can’t stop you, but we are not responsible!”
I got up on quivering legs, wondering even as I did—What am I doing? I felt the elders’ collective eyes on me, begging me not to embarrass them. As I made the long walk to the line for the microphone, I gave thanks for control-top pantyhose; they were so tight my knees couldn’t knock.
I was up: mouth two inches from the mic; hand wrapped around its clammy base—or was it just my hands that were clammy? I stared at a hundred freshly scrubbed believers and thought, I am so going to be the person who just says, “Um . . .”
“I’m not a member of this church,” I felt compelled to say—as if everyone didn’t already know. This congregation—a young adult ward near OSU—was like the Mormon singles version of the neighborhood bar; if I had belonged, everyone would already know my name.
“So, um, I hope it’s okay that I’m up here, um, talking,” I looked at the bishop in charge for verification, and he nodded his puzzled permission. “I . . . I’ve been through, well, an awful lot really with God, and with the church, too much to talk about here. But I just wanted to tell you . . .” What did I want to tell them? What did I want to tell myself ?
“God will meet you wherever you are or aren’t. I used to think my doubts and questions were what kept me from God, but now I know that they brought me closer. Sometimes the greatest miracle happens when you are willing to say, ‘I don’t believe. Help me.’ ” I cleared my throat. “And I wanted to say to all the missionaries, especially elders Bedford and Deck, your devotion is an inspiration.”
Elder Bedford gave me a thumbs-up as the room erupted in applause. Or at least that’s how I remember it. My friend Jana, a wise Mormon, later informed me that congregants don’t typically clap in church, which made me wonder if the sound had only echoed internally, as when you finish a tough workout and mentally hear the Rocky theme song. Heart still pounding, I scooted back to my row.
Elder Bedford offered a discreet high-five. As I slapped his hand, I took a startled breath: With a few shaky steps up the LDS aisle, I’d reclaimed the right to have a story, and to tell it. I’d testified. Out loud. In a church.
Elder Deck whispered, “That was very brave!”
Maybe it was. Or maybe it was just one more step to freedom. With a little help from the elders, another piece of my spiritual history had been redeemed.
Take that, Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome.
“OH, REBECCA,” MY MOTHER’S voice broke. I could hear the strain in her tone, like a violin string pulled too tight.
I’d just finished updating her about the latest Sickness attack. A few days after my visit to the Mormons, my fingers had stopped working mid-brushstroke, as if going on strike against a good hair day. Trembling had overtaken my body, and knocking knees forced me to collapse on the toilet—the lid of which was blessedly closed. (Losing control of one’s body is one thing, but to then plunge unexpectedly into the commode? Ugh.)
I was used to the Sickness’s muscle cramps that struck at inopportune moments like mascara application, resulting in great, black streaks across my face—but these full-body earthquakes, muscle spasms on the Richter scale, shocked me. They struck willy-nilly now, almost every hour, and caused me to do things like spill gasoline and perform unexpected pirouettes. Had these acts been captured on video, I would be YouTube famous. With the shakes came hives, joint pain, and the oh-too-familiar, soul-crushing fatigue. Except I couldn’t sleep, because I would wake up shaking like an overloaded washing machine. My doctor thought I was just suffering from severe anxiety and gave me enough tranquillizers to relax a tense rhinoceros. When the episodes finally subsided after five days, I looked even more haggard than I felt.
“I just wish I could take your place,” Mom exhaled. “When your child is in trouble and you can’t do anything, it’s the most helpless feeling in the world. You only have two choices: fall to pieces or fall on grace. You know I’ve been praying for you around the clock,” she continued in the tone a surgeon might use during major surgery.
“I know . . . thank you.” This wasn’t euphemism. I could envision her lips moving silently as she cooked and cleaned: my mother, God’s favorite housekeeper.
“What you don’t know is I’ve been praying for more than your illness. I’ve been praying for your heart—that you would have the spiritual breakthrough you’ve been searching for. Especially after you felt let down by your monk.”
“It’s not that he let me down. I let myself down.”
“After all the progress you’ve made, I don’t want you to give up now.”
“I’m not giving up,” I promised, thinking of the NPR producer’s card on the refrigerator door, “even if I have to shake all the way to my thirtieth birthday. Hey, maybe I’ll try to cross the Quakers off next—that way, in case I start trembling in church, no one will notice!”
We both laughed, but my mom’s laugh sounded stiff. She paused, a mannerism I recognized as the preface to a loving sermon. I steeled myself.
“Remember after Christmas when you asked me to find the recording from Word Alive Church, the one where Mark Radcliff gave the prophecy over your life? The one we talked about in Chicago?”
I nodded as if she could see me. I’d asked her to find the recording because I’d told the Urban Monk about the experience. “Perhaps you should revisit that moment,” he’d advised. “Messages from God come in many forms.”
“I remember,” I said to Mom.
“I was feeling pretty encouraged because it seemed like you were making a move toward God by asking me to find the recording, but I was freaking out because I had no idea where it was. After Christmas I tore apart the house looking for it, but it was nowhere to be found. I said to God, ‘I trust You to help me find this important word for Rebecca in Your time,’ and let it go. Well, while you were going through this shaking episode, I was praying for you while dusting that photograph of Grandpa in the hallway and the frame fell off the wall. I mean, it just went boom, straight to the ground.”
“Okay . . .” Every hair on my body felt electric. That frame held a photograph of my mother’s father, he of the “persevere” dream. Eerie.
“And you know how I never have any nails?” We both snickered—my mother is not handy around the house. “To rehang the picture I had to look in the kitchen junk drawer for nails, so I was rummaging elbow-deep in junk when I felt the edge of a cassette case. I pulled it out, and it was the prophecy!”
“You’re kidding,” I said, even though I knew she wasn’t.
“Nope. That’s exactly how it happened. I immediately went to listen to it and—you aren’t going to believe this because I almost didn’t—right in the middle of the whole thing the prophet said, ‘Do not be afraid to be outside the understanding of the church, for I am calling you inside, inside Me.’ I realized I’d forgotten that God doesn’t have to guide you the way I think He should. Here I’ve been praying for you all this time but forgetting that God has His own plans. I may not understand it, and I may not even fully accept it, but God has you on your own path for a reason. I can’t control your Sickness or your project; but I don’t have to. God is bigger than my questions.”
“Wow.” I counted myself eminently fortunate that my mother is the type to fall on grace instead of fall to pieces, but I was still shocked. “So you’re not afraid I’m going to run off with a guru anymore?”
“Sure I am, a little. But even if you do, I trust God will be with you.”
“Mom? Remember how you said, ‘God never gives you a Word like that unless you’re going to need it’? Maybe it wasn’t just me who was going to need it.”
“I think I need it more than you!” said my mom, her voice much lighter. “God gave us both that Word way before the problems even started because He knows the beginning from the end, and nothing is too big for Him. He always has and always will have you right in the palm of His hand, even if I don’t understand how. I’m going to copy the tape onto a CD and put it in the mail.”
“REBA!” MY NEIGHBOR ANDRE flagged me down. “Hey,” he said as I approached, “USPS accidentally delivered this to us.” He proffered an envelope, which I took. “Where are you headed this fine Sunday morning?”
“Church,” I smiled. “Quaker service.”
“Aren’t Quakers like Pilgrims or Amish or something?”
“I only know three things about Quakers,” I held up my fingers. “One: I love Quaker Oats. Two: They used to shake or tremble during their services, hence the name. Three: I used to play with a set of historic Quaker paper dolls.” (I know not how the prim Quaker cutouts made their way to my toy box, but I much enjoyed changing the Quaker ladies’ aprons and bonnets. True, the dolls were not the Barbie brand I might have preferred, but they projected a certain drab appeal after I covered them in gold glitter.) Andre raised his brows.
“Long story,” I said, “and I have to get going. See ya!”
In my car, I opened the package. A CD was inside, with an accompanying note: I love you! I hope this helps your journey! XOXO—Mom
I pushed the recording into the CD player as I backed out of the driveway. I cannot say why I thought delving into my spiritual history while navigating downtown Columbus was a good idea, but the recording, circa 1995, surrounded me with static before I heard the voice of Mark Radcliff, the traveling minister—or prophet, depending on who you’re asking.
“Is there a Becky here tonight?” he said through my car’s speakers.
His sentence had been phrased as a question, but there was no question in his tone. He’d known I was present, and that God had a message for me. And even though I’d never gone by Becky, I knew he meant me; seconds before he spoke, my hands had started shaking and the Energy—which I’d then called the Holy Spirit—had swooshed around me with almost physical vibration. It wasn’t quite the earthquakes the Sickness had subjected me to lately, but it was a shaking nonetheless.
Mark’s voice paused. “No, it’s Rebecca. Is there a Rebecca here tonight?”
I’d stood on shaky limbs. In this entire crowd, how am I the only Rebecca or Becky? I remember thinking. There were three Rebeccas just in my small seventh-grade class!
“Hello there . . . hi!” he’d said this to me, then turned to the congregation: “Extend your hands to her.”
Hundreds of people had reached toward me, in silent yet electric agreement, their hearts prayerful and gazes expectant. The feeling had pulled against me magnetically, as if the crowd could enfold me with love. And they did love me, I had known. Not only were my parents part of this congregation; the room had held hundreds of people who regarded me as a lamb to be protected and praised, a princess in Jesus’ kingdom. Whatever was about to happen to me would also happen to them because we were a family.
At the memory of this, my hands began to tremble around the steering wheel, just as they had in 1995—well before I could drive. I tried to attribute the trembling to the Sickness or to PTCS, but it felt so different: where the full-body earthquakes and PTCS symptoms pressed on me externally, this trembling felt as if something inside me quaked for release. Something big. Something I wasn’t ready for. I flicked the off button on the stereo.
I maneuvered into a parking spot at the Quaker Meeting House, which almost directly faced the house I’d lived in for several years at Ohio State. I’d systematically rejected God in that house. I’d spat at the ceiling above my loft bed many times: “Leave me alone! I don’t want your calling; I am done with you and your church. I don’t want to hear from you ever again.”
I’d driven into the veritable Bermuda Triangle of my spiritual life with a prophetic CD in my stereo. I was sitting in the middle of my past with my foretold future just one click-of-play away. I thought, The Godiverse really went out of her way on this one. And suddenly I knew.
Just like I knew before I knew that Mark Radcliff was going to call my name in 1995, I felt the shift in 2011. The Godiverse was about to give me a second chance to accept my first calling.
My finger hovered, but I couldn’t press play on the CD—not yet.
This is partially because I was raised to believe the call of God was unavoidable, like answering the Soviet Union/United States red phone hotline in the ’60s. (In case you were wondering: God, in this analogy, is the communist on the other end of the line.) I lived most of my childhood in fear that God would call me to be a nun in Africa. The fact that my church lacked nuns did not quell this fear. If God called you to wear a black habit in 120-degree weather, you would do so with a joyful spirit!
But I was confused: Why would the God I’d just been getting to know, the I Am, call me from the red phone of the God I grew up with? Couldn’t he just send another prophet or something—preferably one of a different religion who wasn’t tainted with PTCS?
I wasn’t ready to press play because I knew that once I did, there would be no turning back.
I turned off the car. I had a service to get to.
“ARE YOU NEW HERE?” blinked a middle-aged woman near the back door of the Meeting House. Wearing a tweed jacket, slacks, and a hairstyle from the early 1990s, she looked like an off-duty professor.
Strictly speaking, my answer could have been no; Trent’s fraternity house sat across the street, and we’d often sneaked away to kiss under the cover of the Quaker church’s bushes. (A strategy that, incidentally, did not work. If I could only count the times his fraternity brothers whistled at us from the patio.)
I assumed her question referred to the church and not stolen kisses, so I nodded a quick yes.
“That’s terrific!” She ushered me through the door. “What brings you to us this morning?”
Lady, that’s a loaded question. I smiled. “Curiosity, I suppose.”
“How very interesting,” she said with a faux-British lilt. “I’m Barb. Come, you must meet everyone!”
Barb swept me through the Meeting House, which was, well, a converted house; half of its downstairs had been renovated to create a meeting space, and the upstairs rooms furnished space for “children and multi-generational worship.” She introduced me to a cast of characters I would have never expected given my Quaker paper-doll history: Orville, a twenty-something gay man who was serving as minister of the day (“Every Quaker here is a minister; we have no lay persons”); Jaden, an enthusiastic Pagan/Quaker who carried Catholic, Buddhist, and Pagan rosaries in her purse (“We’re very ‘live and let live’ ”); Donald, a rocket scientist (“I’m a professor in my spare time”); and Nathan, president of the Ohio State Interfaith Association (“We don’t care if you’re a Christian or an atheist; all are welcome here”).
I joked with a few of them about Quaker Oats and pilgrim hats, and confessed I had expected a more straight-laced crowd.
“We get that all the time,” laughed Barb. “The funny thing is, we’re about as liberal a congregation as you can be. We’re all about justice, peace, and equality, and believe the Inner Light of God is in each person.”
For the service, we settled into concentric rows of chairs that faced each other in two half-moon shapes, similar to theater in the round. For Quakers, even the arrangement of the chairs contributed to the idea of equality.
Orville began with the instructions to sit quietly, relax, and wait on guidance. “We gather in silence to submit to the Divine Presence, which is accessible to all. Sometimes speaking arises out of the silence; sometimes no words are spoken. If a still, small voice is calling, listen to the Inner Light that is the Divine Presence in our midst.”
Well. If I had hoped the Quakers would distract me from my eventful morning, I had come to the wrong place. Still, small voice? Try the static, loud voice of a prophet from your past.
Everything went quiet. If show-and-tell was the motto of most church services, the Quaker motto was wait-and-see. I closed my eyes, glad that even though I was only meeting with the Urban Monk weekly, my near-daily, personal meditation practice had eased me into the stillness of group meditation. I slipped under the silence until a member of the congregation spoke. I snuck a peek to see if he was quaking—due diligence!—but he sat prayerfully: eyes closed, hands clasped.
“The Divine Light is in all of Us; we are all part of the I AM, all part of the Universe’s vibrating energy. Sink into the Light within and embody all that is.”
I faced windows with thin, white curtains, and as the congregant spoke, sun broke from behind the clouds and light streamed in over all of us, as if we really could sink into the Light.
I sat. I waited. I listened.
There is only Light, whispered a still, small voice.
I’d misunderstood what was about to happen in the car. Pressing play wasn’t a second chance at my first calling; it was my first chance at a second life.
I acted polite post-service, but I couldn’t wait to get back to my car, where I pressed play.
“You are called to be a healer,” said the prophet. “You are called to lead by example.”
Called. The word would have bristled only a few months ago because it was so entwined with PTCS, but no longer. Only Light, fractured into a thousand pieces. I smiled. The choice wasn’t between the calling of my childhood and the calling of my future, between the God of my youth or I Am. It wasn’t letting go of one to embrace the other; I had to let go of the idea that I had to choose.
“Do you accept this calling?”
You don’t have to choose religion to choose God . . . or good.
“Do you accept?” Static followed Mark Radcliff’s question on the CD.
I looked at the car speakers, and my hands trembled as they had long ago, when my faith was still blind and my heart unbroken. This time, though, they shook because my eyes were wide open, and I knew I would never be the same.