Like all faith journeys, mine begins and ends with God. It started in childhood when my mother told us that rain occurred when God removed the plug from his bathtub and drained the water. I remember wondering if God’s bath water was dirty or not.
My mother also liked to tell us that when God created people he took white people out of the oven too early and burned black people and I always thought of hispanic people as having the best color of all. I remember a friend who lived across the tracks from us named Carmen and I envied her her beautiful brown skin.
I remember Sunday school as a child but we didn’t go very often because we had one car and my father often worked shifts as a telegrapher but I remember it as a happy place. We were taught Bible stories and learned to sing “Jesus Loves Me.”
During my teen and pre-teen years, we attended a Nazarene Church. Even then, I sensed an undercurrent of self-righteousness. There were many congregants who harshly judged those who did not attend Church. I learned John 3:16 and the Lord’s Prayer while there and repeat them to myself in times of need.
By High School we had joined a start-up Presbyterian Church and up until I was about 21, I attempted to play their very sad organ. When I left that Church I didn’t return for many years.
My faith did not grow during this time and I turned from organized religion. I blamed it on the Nazarene Church where my father took me to EVERY service, including the revivals which would mean church services for a solid week at a time. But looking back, I cannot blame my sinful ways on the innocent Nazarenes. I can only feel embarrassed by how long I rejected organized religion of any kind and stopped growing my faith.
During all of this time, my father was my touchstone to God. I know he prayed for me every day and read his Bible every day. As his health deteriorated, he stopped attending Church, but he read his Bible so often that it lost its cover. I now own it and cherish it because it was so important to him.
Timing was important for my return to this Church. My daughter had finished College and had been married at St Mark in 2008, a Church which had called to me years prior when I attended Girl Scout Leader meetings in the basement and heard the choir practice. My father and mother had died in 2010 and 2013 respectively. My husband had retired in 2013.
I heard of an Easter Sunrise Service at Babler Park in 2013 and I felt drawn to attend. I was moved by the service and the music brought back memories of singing in Church standing next to my parents beautiful voices with my father’s bass and my mother’s contralto praising and worshiping God. The tears came and I could not stop crying. I was so moved by the setting and the feel of coming home.
A few years later, in 2015, my husband and I decided we needed a new home. The changes we wanted to make on our current one would be too extensive and disruptive so we began house hunting. I also began attending another Church but found the service off-putting. I did not like having words of hymns projected without music. Especially unfamiliar ones.
Somehow I learned that St. Mark was putting on a Christmas Cantata in 2014 and I convinced my husband to come with me to hear it. I came back another Sunday and another and choir members were being recruited. I was hooked. I was in choir a full year before I joined the Church and the following year became a Deacon.
Shortly after I joined the Church in 2016 we found the house where we now live. We had searched for a year to find a home to suit us. It was time to serve my God with my whole heart. I know now that he has never deserted me despite my many years of ignoring him. My faith journey has begun again. I pray that it will never end.
Judith Richardson, September 2023
Photo by Dawid Zawiła on Unsplash
