Reclaiming Childhood

I was in fourth grade when I stopped being a little child and started thinking more like an adult. And it is not easy to find my way back to the child within.


It happened during the year my father was a farmer. It was a transition year for Dad as well. He had been a Wesleyan minister until my grandfather’s tragic death in a farming accident. So Dad stepped away from pastoral ministry for a season (later to become a Presbyterian minister) and tried farming for awhile.


We attended Sunday worship at my grandmother’s church. It was United Methodist, and they had a moment for children during the service. One Sunday, the pastor asked all of the children to write a poem and bring it along the following week. I don’t remember anything else about the assignment. I simply remember being excited to share my poem as the following Sunday rolled around.


And then I overheard Mom talking to Grandma. She told Grandma that I didn’t seem self-conscious at all. No fear in me. I overheard her say that I had that poem ready, and Sunday couldn’t come fast enough for me to read it – in front of all those people.


Immediately, self-doubt replaced my childlike oblivion. I went from being unaware of self to being completely aware of self.


When Sunday morning came, I looked at my poem. I still liked it, but I felt terrible dread at the thought of the attention it would cause me. Everyone would be looking at me. Everyone would be listening to me. It felt like I would never be blissfully unaware again.


I picked up that poem and considered my next move carefully. Then, I set the poem back down and walked out the door of my bedroom.


After church that Sunday, my mother asked me why I hadn’t shared the poem that I had so proudly shown her a few days earlier. “I forgot it at home,” I lied. And that was that.


While the incident faded into the fabric of my memory, the fear remained. And I struggle with it even today.


But I know that perfect love casts out fear. The love of God is that perfect love. And I know that He can take fear – even the fear of attention and the fear of rejection – and completely snuff it out . . . when He so wills.


And so, I keep the part I enjoy . . . the writing part . . . even as I open myself up to the difficult part . . . the public witness. In those moments, I still stand vulnerable and afraid, and I trust that God’s perfect love will come, and cast out fear, and use my weakness to advance the Kingdom.


I would prefer to hide behind the pen. Let me tell you why I’m Catholic, by writing it down and then hiding behind closed doors . . . but there are times when I must speak one-on-one . . . there are times when I must speak to the crowds. In those moments, I remember what it was like to be a little child. One unashamed of shining brightly. Where joy eclipses fear. And God walks freely.


And I say, even so, Lord send me.

Reclaiming Childhood

Once Upon a Time, When I Was Wesleyan

At five, I didn’t realize how much life imitates falling dominoes or how one seemingly insignificant event calls into being the next and the next. I’d yet to memorize the verse that says all things work together for the good of those who serve the Lord. But I knew there was a God. In fact, I knew God existed before I was fully aware of my own existence.

That’s how it is when Dad’s a preacher.

By the age of five, God is at the core of all things. You have doubts about the tooth fairy and Santa Claus. But the Great I Am simply is.

At five, it doesn’t seem strange that Dad’s a preacher. Having a farmer or a trucker for a dad sounds weird. But having a preacher for a dad is normal. He has a church. People come to hear him speak. Mom is the church pianist. And you sit on the front row and behave until the benediction. You go to every potluck dinner, where everyone calls you by name and helps you fill your plate with whatever your heart desires.

When I was eight or nine, I invited Jesus to come into my heart. It was the normal progression in the evangelical and fundamentalist denominations. First, you teach a child. Then, the child chooses for herself.

From that point forward, I not only knew God was real, I knew that the Lord Jesus Christ was living in my heart. And I absolutely fell in love with Him. It was the beginning of my love affair with Our Lord; it set the stage for receiving the Eucharist - though that would not come for a very long time. Indeed, I learned to love deeply, and decades later, when I understood what I was receiving in Holy Communion as a Catholic, I almost couldn't bear it. It was too wonderful, so intimate, to have this one I loved take the form of something I could receive within me - literally and spiritually.

The summer of my ninth birthday came to a close, and my sister and I prepared to start a new school year.

In December of that school year, my parents got a phone call that my grandfather had fallen into a grain bin on the family farm and the local fire department was at that moment shoveling corn onto the frozen ground in an effort to find his body. The recovery team believed he had climbed to the top of the bin with a wrench in hand in order to break through the frozen layer of ice that sometimes forms on the grain during Iowa winters. He’d done this task many times through the years, but this time something went wrong, and he fell into the bin and suffocated. When he didn’t show up for the evening meal, grandma went looking for him. She had her suspicions when she realized the bin’s drier wasn’t working. A wrench had jammed up the gears. Grandpa’s wrench. The one he’d used to break through the crust of ice just before losing his balance. The wrench had made its way to the bottom of the bin and become lodged in the drier. My dad left the ministry soon after that terrible night, and we moved to the farm to help grandma.

I now had a farmer for a dad.

And that’s how things would have stayed if not for a couple of local Presbyterian churches who happened to be without a pastor. But that is another story for another day. It is enough to say that my first love for Jesus began when I was just a child - when I was Wesleyan. Even then, He was preparing me to come all the way home, to recognize Him in the Eucharist and to crave this Bread of Life with my whole heart and soul. Indeed, all things do work together for the good of those who are called.

Once Upon a Time, When I Was Wesleyan