“Are you excited today?” the Baptist preacher’s voice asked with exorbitant inflection in his southern drawl. With one fist raised in the air, “heaven awaits us, the only thing in this life that we can look forward to.” Several heads in the congregation nodded, and one old lady on the second pew dabbed tears from her eyes. “If you aren’t excited to see Jesus today,” and the piano started playing choppy chords of the invitation hymn, “then you come down to the altar and give your heart to him.”
I bowed my head and closed my eyes in obedience and conformity to church protocol. But I had a secret. Confused guilt was the pervasive emotion in my mind as I sat with my hands crumpled in my lap, unable to agree with any of the sentiments I had just heard. I’m sure my thoughts were not as easy to express then as they are now, in retrospective reflection, but I was thinking something like this:
If I saw Jesus today, I would be mad as hell.
Because from my understanding of our church’s teachings on Christ and the afterlife, that would mean only one of two things: either I had died, or Jesus had come back to earth to take all the Christians to heaven with Him.
Both were unacceptable options to me.
This unsettling progression of thoughts happened quite frequently in my childhood and adolescence. There was simply no way for me to join the fervent enthusiasm for and pleasurable anticipation of seeing Jesus in the immediate future, since imagining that taking place only made me feel the rush of resentment.
There was so much I still needed to do. I want to get married to a very handsome man, and have children, probably five. I will live in an elegant house with a huge bathtub and a wrap-around porch. I will pack school lunches with string cheese everyday, not just on special days. I will wear lovely expensive dresses, where my husband is just amazed when I walk out of the house because I am so beautiful, and then we will go out to eat—not at Shoney’s, but somewhere even nicer. He will help me read stories to our children at bedtime, and then we will sit on our porch drinking apple cider when it is very late, maybe past midnight…
It was breathtaking—the plans I had in store for myself. I thought it ridiculously unreasonable for God to expect me to be excited to leave.
But something happened.
It’s a little difficult to express—the words get all jammed up in my throat when I try to articulate them. I definitely do not have a desire to leave this life.
But at the same time, if I was to leave, I just wouldn’t mind so much.
Perhaps it’s because I found the love of my life. He was still with me in the morning when I awoke, holding me close.
It could be that I witnessed betrayal. I am now beginning to comprehend the risk of human relationships, and how trusting made her vulnerable.
It could be that so much done here is so very temporary and futile. They wasted tears and blood and sweat, and at the end, had nothing to show for it.
Or maybe it’s because time passes and age advances. I saw her stare, stranded with only memories in a hallway of detached nurses and metal wheelchairs.
Maybe it’s the fact that I saw a fraction of a glimpse of real suffering, and realize how full of shit this world is. Jesus, the 2 year old baby girl, raped by her uncle and now HIV positive. Despair so strong that merciful relief means ultimate escape.
Regardless of the agent of change, I am different now. Sometimes I even want to join the old lady at the front, expectant eyes raised to heaven…
…thank you that I am alive. But it must get so much better than this.
