Today at approximately 10:13 am, I had an itch to write. And not just write to process or write a letter or write a check but write to be read. I haven’t had that itch, well, probably since I left France. A woman I love told me that if you never want to write again, become an English major. And I have found that to be true. It seems that with hours and books and papers poured into studying the greatness of writers from every age and every country, one loses any confidence they might have had. And I did.
But today I write not out of confidence or security, but rather a delight in my foolishness. Because that is what I immersed myself in at approximately 10:13 this morning.
Britni and I are in Norwood running my dad’s motel (if I haven’t told you this story, please ask, it’s a great one) while the managers are at a family reunion. The sad truth is that tomorrow when they get back, my dad will arrive to tell them that they are being replaced. But I digress.
Let me give you a little background on Norwood, Colorado. It has a population of 460 people. It has three motels (one being ours), three restaurants, two town marshals and three churches. Which is where my story begins.
Britni and I decided that because we live four and a half hours away and because we are about to fire two long time locals and because we are going to replace them with a young couple from Kentucky, we figured that we should attempt as much as possible to spend time in town and show people that we aren’t scum of the earth. So this morning, Britni thought one of us should go to church.
Seeing as I don’t even like church right now and seeing as I recently developed a large pimple on my forehead, I logically deduced and convinced her that she should be the one to go. But as I was getting ready, I had this momentary memory from France and the church I went to there and I don’t know why but I wondered if it might be similar. So then I logically convinced Britni that in fact I should be the one to go. And I did.
The church that Britni decided was the safest bet was called Abudant Life and when I walked in, I was literally the only person in the place. I went and took a seat half-way up the aisle in what seemed like a safe but engaged distance. Three people came in from the front of the auditorium. When I first saw the pastor, I was sure he was one of the town marshals. He was round and red and wearing a yellow shirt and scrunchy smile. His hair was white and disappearing from the top of his head and I saw him awkwardly whisper to a woman who turned out to be his wife, and the worship leader, about who should greet me. She made her way over and warmly introduced herself. I told her who I was (the daughter of the man who remodeled the Westward Ho and gave it a somewhat 21st century name) and she raved about how beautiful it was. When the ninth person had taken their seat in an auditorium that could seat 150, Skeeter, the woman who greeted me, made her way to the front and started announcements followed by her husband. When it came to the offering, Mark, the Marshal-Pastor hybrid, also the husband of Skeeter, stopped and said, “I don’t know why the Lord has laid this on my heart but I need to say it since he has. I just want to say that you can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving.” With this, his eyes glanced at me and then back to a woman in the front row missing her front teeth (I’m not embellishing). Prior to this word from the heart of God, I had decided that I was going to write a check for $20, nothing, but seeing as I haven’t given to a church in over a year, I was feeling rather generous, moved to compassion at the sad state of this congregation. I didn’t write a check. Next, our only prayer request, delivered by Skeeter, was for a starving dog they had found on a camping trip that now needed a home. Transitioning rather abruptly, she said that we would now begin with worship.
She took the microphone and a Rebecca St. James track started playing that we proceeded to sing along with led by Skeeter. And she was pretty awful. But it was touching so I sang with them. Mark stood in the aisle near the front, making elaborate sign language dance with his arms and hands and his ADD son sat at the front to turn the pages containing words that the song skipped over, drumming on his seat and spinning in his chair when his mom sang words that weren’t on his transparency. A young man in his early twenties wearing a suit a size too big would turn to smile at me, the only person in there his age, and would leave worship smiling at me as he walked out and then turning back to smile at me as he came back.
And here I am, standing in this auditorium in a new dress, feeling pretty mysterious and cool because I’m the inn-owner’s daughter and I start to sing loudly in my best voice, just so they can hear my amazing voice as well and wonder in awe at their guest. And my foolishness hits me like a two-by-four and I start laughing as I nearly yell, “What the fuck are you doing?” And then I am crying too, amidst my laughter that I silence so as to not draw any more attention to myself than I already have. Not an emotional cry or a sad cry, just an expressive cry, a full cry. So I am laughing and crying singing to Rebecca St. James with eight other people and I realize they are all swaying in rhythm with each other so I start swaying too. But I still can’t sing because of my laughter. So I just sway with them and laugh because I am so with them in these moments, so very much in Norwood in my new dress with my loud, best voice and my mascara-covered eyelashes, being laughed at by a God with a massive sense of humor.
I managed to stop the outside laughter as we sat and listened to a sermon in which Mark used “Praise God” as a synonym to “Am I right?” as well as “Umm” and “Isn’t that awful?” for a total of 68 times in the second half alone and as the Too-Large Suit Man asked to recite one of his poems at the end of service which I am pretty sure was for me and serves the same purpose as my loud, best voice. But my inside laughter continued throughout the whole thing, and even now.
Teach me kindness like Mark’s. That’s all.
