Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you? Psalm 85:6
I didn’t grow up in Church. I’d been a few times before for Easter Sunday with my mawmaw when I was little, and I think one time when we lived in a city I went to Church with a friend for Christmas. I thought that Service was weird because we had to keep standing and kneeling, and then standing and singing, and then more kneeling. It seemed like a lot of work. Then one summer when I was around nine years old I got lice and had to cut all my hair off into a pixie cut. And then shortly after, in a now-obviously-unrelated turn of events we moved deep in a holler outside Giving, West Virginia, which was one county over from where all my aunts and uncles lived. The only other kids I saw were singing and screaming on the short-bus-Church-bus that would drive by our house, and I guess they saw me, too, because soon two Men in Suits that were way too hot for summer come up our driveway to talk to Mom and Dad for a minute. Next thing I knew, I was singing and screaming on that bus, too, all sticky with lemonade spilled from a Styrofoam cup and headed to Revival.
Revival took place in the dead of summer, outside under a big tent and unironically hot as Hell. But people still showed up in suits and Sunday dresses like it was inside and just ignored how slick and sweaty we all were. Some people had paper fans, but I really don’t think it did them much good. They’d just move the hot air around a little bit if at all, but the humidity would still hang so I never saw much point.
And it was a days-long affair. You’d come every day and listen to the sermon, sing a bunch of songs, listen to someone else sing a bunch more songs, and then there’d be an Altar Call in the evening where Pastor lays it on everyone’s hearts to come up to the front and kneel and ask forgiveness. If there was ever a time to be Saved, this was it – this was the moment. Your soul could be spared from Eternal Damnation in the Fiery Pits of Hell by asking Jesus to come live in your heart, take away your sins and temptations and show you right from wrong, but it was now or never.
The Pastor was usually a guest from out of town and had some kind of superpower. I’ve heard of Pastors that can speak in tongues, prophesy, handle snakes, all sorts of things. Even heard of one doing a back flip he was so overcome with the Spirit. But then I also heard he couldn’t hardly walk for the next two days so I wonder just how much of a superpower that actually was. This particular Pastor was known to lay hands to heal afflictions, and everyone agreed he showed up just in the Lord’s time. From aches and pains and broken hearts to cataracts to cancer and everything else in between, the Church was surely afflicted.
Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” John 11:40
The last day of Revival had a buzz to it. I remember climbing on the short-bus-Church-bus and the bus driver handed me a root beer float instead of lemonade. I thought it was so fancy and cool. It was also the first time I had root beer, so you’ve got to imagine how disappointed I was when I found out later that they make root beer without ice cream. Why even bother.
When I turned from the driver to look for a seat, one of the adults at the front asked me to sit up there with them for a minute because they had something they wanted to talk to me about. I sat in the second seat from the front, behind one Suit Man and across the aisle from another Suit Man and his wife. And it was at that point I became extremely aware of the status of my root beer float. I could feel the three of them looking at me, and I was just waiting for the driver to slam into one of them potholes and splash this float all over me, and then we’d really have something to talk about. So I took as big of a gulp as I could to try to make some room in the cup, you know, account for the gravel and potholes and all.
Suit Man’s wife traded spots with her husband to sit closer to me, and I took another gulp. It was about two-thirds of the way gone at that point, not so much in the danger zone. “Hey, honey, you remember me? Remember my name?” I did not, but I reckon she knew that because she said it immediately: “Joanna.” She asked if I had a good week at Revival and if I was learning to love the Lord. I nodded and took another gulp. Half gone, mostly just ice cream now. “Well, honey, I been meaning to ask you something. You see how I got my hair braided like this?” I looked at her French braid as she pulled it over her shoulder and nodded again. It was long, down to her waist almost, and had blond highlights woven in and out of it. It must have taken her forever to brush that out and braid it like that. I remembered when my mom used to braid my hair like that, and it did take forever. I hated it.
The Suit Man in front of me turned around and looked at me. He had these really pale blue eyes that I felt like you weren’t supposed to look at too long, so I didn’t — I looked at Joanna instead – and he said to me, “A woman’s hair is her glory,” and that was it. I must have looked confused because then that’s when Joanna jumped in to put it a different way. She went on to explain that I had sinned by cutting all my hair off and that looking like a boy would wind me up in Hell. “See, that’s why I keep my hair long, like James up there (Front Seat) said: it’s how I give the glory to God, how I tell the world I love Him. It’s what He requires us to do, you know. You have to tell Him you’re sorry today. When Pastor calls Altar Call, you got to make it right with God. And you know, I’ve seen you come every day this week and I think He just laid that on my heart to tell you that.”
I think the bus driver at some point had to have hit a pothole and I just wasn’t aware of it because when I looked down after that, I had a half-melted blob of ice cream sitting in my lap and root beer running down my leg. I scooped what was left back into the cup and held it with both hands like a sigil candle, afraid to spill any more, then looked down at the foamy glob of ice cream and considered eating it still, but decided against it since my spoon had run off. So I just held my cup real careful and tried not to focus on the breeze on my neck or the float starting to dry on my hands and legs. I noticed that if I held real still then it didn’t feel as sticky, so I didn’t hardly move at all for the rest of the way, except my mouth to sing. When we got to Church, I ran to the bathroom, wet some paper towels, and wiped myself down best I could. My skort was stained, but at least I wasn’t sugar-sticky anymore.
Go home to your own people and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you. Mark 5:19
When I came out into the tent there was extra excitement in the air that Pastor attributed to the presence of the Lord, but I reckon we were all just sick of being out in the heat again, looking forward to wrapping up. I began to realize that the last day was a big to-do and wasn’t going to be like it had been the rest of the days. The rest of the days, we got to play outside. It was like track and field day at school, with relay races and fun yard games, but at Church with more singing and snacks. There were study times where we would sit in a circle in the grass and talk about what Jesus did for us. I honestly couldn’t tell you much about those lessons except that they had sourgrass and red clover growing in their yard, and I wanted to eat them but was too afraid the other kids would make fun of me, so I didn’t. It was a time for us to catch our breath and snack on a couple cookies in the shade. I remember this one girl being totally laid out in the circle, her face red and hair frizzy from sweat, not even pretending to listen to the lesson. I thought that was so bold. There weren’t any yard games or cookie circles today, though. On the last day of Revival, everyone is under the tent together for the whole thing.
The ushers put all us kids from the bus up in the front two rows, just in front of where the band was set up. That way God could keep a better eye on us and make sure no Little Lambs wandered off or fell asleep and missed His Word. The kids who came with their parents got to sit with them wherever they ended up. I felt sorry for them because now they were under God’s Eyes and their parents’ eyes. They really had to be on their best. As we were negotiating with each other to make sure we were sitting next to who we promised we’d sit next to, the band started to play. We knew that was our signal to park our bottoms and pay attention to Pastor, so that’s what we did.
Pastor reminded me of that cartoon, Life with Louie. He was shorter than my dad and much fatter. He had a big smile full of square teeth that had little gaps in between and no hair on top, just on the sides of his head. He had kind of a nasally voice, and when he laughed it was with his whole body. He’d get overcome by some inside joke the Lord whispered and he’d just get to cackling, his body bouncing along to the sound. I wondered if anyone else noticed that the sweat on his shirt kind of looked like a smiley face and thought about how that must be God in his sweat, smiling at all of us because we came to His Revival. Every day up until the last day, Pastor wore khaki pants and a polo shirt, both of which I figured his wife must have thrown in the dryer when she wasn’t supposed to. But on this last day, he was wearing a suit just like the men on the short-bus-Church-bus, except theirs were grey and Pastor’s suit was tan, and they took off their jackets when they sat down and Pastor did not. He kept his jacket buttoned up.
While the band played and everybody got situated, Pastor walked up to the pulpit and stood behind the lectern. He opened his Bible up, flipped through a couple pages, then waved his arms for all of us to stand and sing with him. “Follow along with us in your programs, folks,” he said. “We got the words printed in here for us, let God hear you!” The band started to play a little faster and louder, the Choir sang a little more forcefully, and all us in the congregation stood and sang too:
“This little light of mine,
“I’m going to let it shine,
“Don’t let Satan whoosh it out,
“I’m going to let it shine,
“Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.”
There were probably fifteen more verses of all the things we weren’t going let Satan do to our little lights, but I can’t remember them all now. And I know we must have sang for at least another thirty minutes because at one point an usher showed up with a basket of flags and ribbons for all us kids to wave and run around to the music, and by the time we quit singing and sat back down, that same girl from the cookie circle was laying flat on her back in the grass at her parents’ feet, panting, red-faced and frizzy-sweaty. You just can’t get that way unless you’re running hard for some amount of time.
After the opening song, Service kept on with special performances. One lady come up with her daughter and they sang a song together about white doves. A high school kid came up and played a solo on his saxophone to honor the Lord, too. It was more squeaks than song, but Pastor said it was an offering to the Lord just the same. Then an old man come up and gave his testimony about how God healed his leg. He said he fell off his tractor last spring and couldn’t hardly walk on it, his knee was swolled up something awful. All winter long he limped around on it, thinking it would never be the same again and accepting his fate. Old Man had been real worried about this coming spring season, if he was gonna be able to handle running the tractor again this year, and he brought that worry to Revival this week. He pulled up his pant leg, showed a big scar going from above his knee to below it, and said, “I had three surgeries to put it all back together again, plus I lost count of all the hours I did with a physical therapist. They all say there ain’t nothin’ wrong no more, but I tell ya, it still ain’t right. So I hobbled my way into the Lord’s house this week, and by the power of your prayers and the Grace of God, I am a walking man today! I bet I could run!” And he took off sprinting back to his seat, hooping and hollering, “Praise Him!” Never did limp after that, and everyone said that was a miracle in the making.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 1 Corinthians 13:6
Once the sun went down over the hill, the mood changed. The temperature did not. The singing wrapped up, band members set down their guitars and turned on the string lights, then came sat with us in the congregation. The big Louie grin fell from Pastor’s face, and his tone got real serious. “Church,” he said, “why are we here?” He paused, and I could actually hear crickets in the silence. I looked out toward the tree line, and the yard was lit up with lightning bugs. It was kind of like watching that movie Fantasia, what with the cricket symphony and the bugs blinking, almost like they were putting on a whole show.
“Church!” Pastor hollered out again, and I snapped my eyes back on him. “I ask you: Why. Are. We. Here? And I don’t mean why did God put us on this earth, because He tells us why, we know why: To worship Him and speak the Truth of His Word. My question, Church, is much more particular in nature. I want to know…” He stretched out his arm toward the Choir, then pointed to his chest, then stretched his arms out to us in the congregation and said, “What brings us all together under this tent tonight? Or more importantly, Church, Who brings us under this tent? Who has showed us His Face this week? Through all the miracles of faith we have testified to this week in Scripture and in our very own lives, Who showed us the path to this day, this Giving Church, this very minute?” I thought of the Suit Man in the front seat, but figured that probably wasn’t the right answer. “For me, it was God that brought me here. God laid it on my heart to reach out to Giving Church in its affliction. Now, Church, I’m still not quite clear on what that affliction is. He has not revealed all of His Plan to me, nor does He have to, amen?” At that, a few of the people behind me echoed “Amen” in agreement, and Pastor carried on.
“I’m gonna guess here for a minute, Church, because I have a lot of years of walking with God and He and I have a good working relationship. I read His Word, and I believe his Son died for my sins, and I keep my Faith, and in return, He hears my prayers and I become one of the sheep of his flock. I am protected by the awesome armor of the Lord Our God! Amen?” Few more Amens. “So I’m gonna guess, but I’m gonna say that same God what brought me here today – The God of Abraham, The God of Moses, The God of Noah, The God of David, The God of Job, The God of Paul, The One True God, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ — is what brought you today here, too.” Now there were a bunch of people hollering Amens in support, and a few people decided to stand so they could hear better.
“I can feel it, Church. Can you feel it? There’s a Joy here, free for the taking, and it ain’t just coming from all the good songs this band and this Choir has been singing with us, is it?” More people stood up. “And that Joy has got a hold of my spirit, Church. It’s got a good hold!” Pastor was so overcome with the Spirit he started cackling, his arms outstretched and his big body heaving up and down. He started to shake a little bit, stepped in front of the lectern, and the Amens rolled through the tent like a summer rainstorm. A couple of the Choir ladies just up and started singing, not even the same song as to each other, and someone brought the flags back out for us to wave around if we wanted to. There wasn’t any music, though, so I didn’t see much point in that. Then Pastor did something completely unexpected: He unbuttoned his jacket, turned his back to us and hung it up on the front of the lectern.
While he was turned around, Pastor took a deep breath and dropped his shoulders. “How can we receive this Joy, Church? How do we open our hearts to the Joy that is only known through the Forgiveness of our Sins by Our Savior, Jesus Christ?” His back was soaked. He turned around, and the smiley face was back. For a split second, I thought about being under God’s Eyes again. It felt literal now. I looked at the sourgrass down at my feet and wished I would have ate it earlier before everyone walked all over it. Pastor started to roll up his shirt sleeves, took a couple steps down the middle aisle, and laid his hand on a man’s shoulder while he talked. “Well, we learned a lot this week about what the Bible says about love. About God’s Perfect and Holy Love, about the love we have for our neighbors, the love we have for our friends, for our family members, our children, our spouses, the Healing Love of the Holy Spirit … We’ve talked about a lot of different kinds of love this week, ain’t we, Church?”
“But I’ll tell you one love we haven’t talked about this week: the kind between two girls or two boys. And why IS that, Church? Why ain’t we talked about that kind of love here this week?” It was a scenario I just hadn’t considered before, two girls or two boys loving each other, but I wasn’t quite sure what he meant. I was pretty sure the woman in the cookie circle said earlier this week that sisters love their sisters and brothers love their brothers. I was missing something but didn’t know what. One of the people standing up yelled, “It’s an abomination!” And then a bunch of people hollered out their Amens in agreement. I wondered what “abomination” meant. “Yes, Church,” Pastor said, “because it’s not love, is it? It’s a sin. And they are mutually exclusive. It cannot be love if it is a sin. If it is a sin, it cannot be love. We could have spent the whole week here under this tent talking about all the sins of our world, but God didn’t lay that on my heart to do that with you this week. God laid it on my heart to talk to you about what love is, not what it is not.”
Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” Mark 5:9
Pastor took his hand off the man’s shoulder, walked back up the aisle to behind the lectern and flipped through his Bible. “Now I’ll tell you, this is not what I had planned for this evening. I had a whole nice, neat, little schedule made up for what I was going to talk to you about. I went so far as to write it all down, do the edit, practice it out loud. I knew what I was going to say.” He gave a big sigh and a look to all of us as if to say he worked too hard on his final-day sermon. “But we know what God does with our plans, don’t we, Church?” Pastor laughed and so did a handful of other people, but I didn’t get it. He said, “I have it on good authority that we have affliction right here still in this tent, tonight. And you know, I asked God. I said, ‘Is this Your Will for me to do?’ Because I been writing on this sermon for two days now, and God was laying it on my heart to scrap the whole thing on account of this wickedness that is running rampant not just through Giving, Church, because believe you me, it ain’t just us, but through our entire nation, countless families, and generations of our children. And He heard my prayer, y’all. He heard every word, and He responded clear as a bell to me, told me to study His Word. So I open up my Bible at random – and you tell me how many of you have done this exact same thing – and It falls open to the most perfect Verse for my question. Please stand for the reading of God’s Word coming from the book of James, Chapter 5, Verse 15.” We all stood. “The prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.’”
Pastor looked at his Bible and paused until the congregation’s Amens died down. He closed the Bible and looked back up at all of us for a minute. He started to say something and then stopped, walked to the front of the lectern, and clasped his hands across the front of him. We sat back down. “Church, Satan is here, and he knocks on our door.”
“And sometimes he knocks loudly and ferociously!” Pastor ran over to the drum kit and hit the snare real loud with the stick. Then he ran halfway down the aisle and tapped an old lady on the shoulder. “Other times he knocks softly and quietly.”
He leaned in closer to the old lady. “You gotta lean in sometimes to be sure it’s even a knock at the door.”
“That’s what I’m here to do today with y’all. We have heard the knock, and we won’t just sit idly by while Satan pounds down our door. We’re going to call out some affliction, some wickedness tonight. We’re going to command Satan to leave this place, he does not belong here, and we are going to heal the wounds he has inflicted through faith tonight. The Lord our God is in this place, Church. He is here. He wants more than anything else to live in your heart and forgive your sins. Let’s help him do that, Church. Let’s open our hearts and allow that Forgiveness, that Joy, to come into our lives so we don’t have to worry anymore. I don’t have to worry about what’s going to happen tomorrow. I could fall off a cliff tomorrow and not have a care in the world on the way down. A lightning bolt could come strike Lefty dead tomorrow, and he won’t have a care in the world because he knows where he’s going. Amen, Lefty?” I turned to look at Lefty, who I hadn’t noticed before. He must have been a million years old and not a tooth in his head. He raised his arm up high in the air, nodded, and bellowed out a deep Amen in agreement. Pastor walked back up to the lectern and carried on:
“Amen. That’s right. And God will always forgive if you ask Him with an honest heart. That’s the key, Church, isn’t it? We gotta bring it all to the Altar. All our demons, everything that Satan has planted in us, everything that we have tried to bury down or stamp out, all the evil that has taken root in our souls and taken our eyes from the Lord. Jesus called the demons by their names to cast them out. That’s what we gotta do here tonight, Church. Let’s open it up for testimony. Call the demon by its name.”
The man whose shoulder Pastor put his hand on suddenly stood up, and he was crying. Not bawling or anything, but he had tears on his face and in his eyes. He looked a mix of a little surprised and a little scared, and it made me think he wasn’t so sure he meant to do that. When he looked up at Pastor, he seemed a little more sure of himself and spoke up. He said, “Pastor, I’ve got a demon tearing my family apart.” Pastor looked at him and raised his eyebrows. “What do you mean, brother?” The man continued, “Lindy and I have prayed on this for months since we found out. We’ve turned to Scripture; we’ve gone to a Christian counselor in town; we’ve cut out the satellite TV thinking that might be an influence; and still this demon lives and thrives on my family’s pain. And I want to call it by its name.” His voice broke a little on the last words, and he looked down at the woman beside him who I guessed was his wife, Lindy, who was also crying. Then he really was bawling. Lindy stood up then and put an arm around the man’s waist. She wiped her nose and said in a stuffy voice, “It’s Homosexuality. The demon’s name is Homosexuality. Judy has a girlfriend. She says they’re in love.”
That’s when I and probably everyone else there noticed the girl sitting next to Lindy. I was expecting to see some otherworldly monster sitting on her lap or on her shoulder, or at the very least some kind of obvious physical sign of her affliction, but Judy looked to me like a normal teenager, like the girls I saw in magazines. She had her ears pierced twice which I thought was really cool, and she dressed like she was straight out of a Delia’s catalog. I noticed we had the same haircut, and for a second that made me feel cool. Then I wondered what Homosexuality meant and if she had gotten lice too. She looked like she wanted to be anywhere else than where she was, and I started to feel bad for looking at her, so I stared at her parents instead. The praise band members crept up to the front and grabbed their guitars. They started strumming some quiet, slow music, and the Pastor walked out from behind the lectern and up to the man. He put his hand on his shoulder, encouraging him to continue.
The man said, “It’s not right. We didn’t raise her this way. We raised her on the Bible, on right from wrong. Then she went and cut all her hair off, and now she says she’s in love with some girl. We been praying and praying, Pastor. She doesn’t even care how much it hurts us.” Pastor looked at him for a second and then wrapped him up in a big hug. When he let go, he said to us, “This is why we’re here, Church.”
Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. Freely you received, freely give. Matthew 10:8
Pastor walked back up to the front and stood in front of the lectern. He looked a little lost in thought, and he waited a minute before continuing. I looked at the root beer float stain on my skort and thought about Joanna. I could feel myself getting nervous. Maybe there was a demon sitting on Judy’s shoulder, only I couldn’t see it. And why not? I couldn’t see God either, but He was in the room. Maybe there was a demon sitting on my shoulder, too — some kind of Lice Demon that forces girls to sin and cut their hair off. And maybe it was possible a person could have more than one demon stuck to them, and if you got one demon then another one piled on and so on and so forth. It was all starting to make sense. Judy’s situation really was serious. The Lice Demon made her cut all her hair off, and then the Homosexuality Demon made her get a girlfriend.
Suddenly everyone was on their feet and Pastor was leading the man and his family to the front. He stood the three of them up there with the man on the left, Lindy on the right, and Judy sandwiched in between them, kneeling. Then he turned to us all, opened up his arms real wide, and said, “Church, we have a wickedness among us, and we have given it a name. Come forward with me, Church, and lay hands on this family to cast out this demon, this affliction, this anguish that has caused this family so much strife. Come forward, folks, and let’s heal this family in the Name of God, in the Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ, in the Name of Our Holy Spirit.” People started filing out of the rows and up to the front to crowd around them. The people directly in front of them kneeled down with Judy to lay hands and pray over her, and everyone behind them stood and laid hands on her parents. There must have been about twenty people crowded up there trying to get a hand on someone. If they couldn’t make direct contact with the family, then they would lay a hand on the back or shoulder of the person in front of them like a conga line but with much slower music. And no dancing, just muttering praises to God and prayers for His Help and Healing.
I looked away from the pulpit and down the row to see what the other bus kids were doing. A couple had wandered off into the evening to chase lightning bugs, and I saw an adult go chasing after them. Everyone else was playing with the grass or their shoelaces and didn’t seem all that entertained with the happenings of it one way or the other. I thought they were crazy. Couldn’t they see what was happening up there? That girl had demons in her and these people were going to kick them out of the tent and save her soul from Eternal Damnation. Why weren’t they watching?
What started as muttered prayers rolled up into full on wailing and swaying, the whole gamut. I couldn’t see Judy anymore, there were so many people crowded around. I couldn’t see Pastor anymore either, but I could hear him shouting to God over the wails: “Father God, we pray to you today, O Lord, to come into Judy’s heart and heal her, O Jesus. Judy is sick, Dear God, she has an affliction brought on by a demon, Amen. And with Your Power, Your Awesome Almighty Power, heal her! Cast these demons out of her heart, Lord! Make her hair grow back to Your Glory, God’s Awesome Glory, and remove the sin from her heart!” I heard one person bawling their eyes out somewhere behind me and another person speaking a made-up language off to the side, but I didn’t look away. I could still see the top of Judy’s dad’s head.
After a while the wailing started to die down, a few people got up off their knees and went back to their seats, and the circle opened up enough to where I could see all three of the family again. They were all sweaty and crying, and Judy’s hair looked messed up. They looked worn out. Then I heard Pastor say to God: “I hear You, Lord! I hear You, God, loud and clear! Judy has asked Your Forgiveness and wants to be free. She’s come to You with an open heart, Lord! This demon has no place in her heart, Father God. We will cast this demon out! We will remove this sin and inclination toward it! Now!” Pastor stepped out from behind Judy’s parents and in front of her, held out his hands to pull her up to her feet. She stood up but didn’t look up. He turned her to the side and stood facing her so we could all see both of them. Pastor took a deep breath, looked up at the ceiling of the tent and kind of rolled his eyes back in his head a little bit. He put his hands on Judy’s shoulders and shouted, “In the Name of the Holy Spirit, the Lord Our God, I command thee, Homosexuality! LEAVE THIS GIRL. Demon, you will harm her no more! By the Power of the Holy Spirit! JUDY, BE HEALED.”
Pastor put his hands on either side of Judy’s face and made her look at him. He took a big breath in, and then blew real hard in her face. Then he ran his hand over her forehead and over the top of her head and wrapped her up in a big hug. When he let her go, they both turned to all of us. Pastor looked worn out too. Judy stepped back over to her parents, all three of them crying and nodding and hugging. I kept hearing Lindy say, “It’ll grow back, it’ll grow back.” Some choir members that were part of the prayer conga started singing the same song this time:
“Lord prepare me
“To be a sanctuary
“Pure and holy
“Tried and true…”
As I watched a few more people file up to kneel at the Altar, I thought about Joanna again. That must have been what she meant: I needed to let God in my heart so Pastor could cast out the Lice Demon. Maybe the Homosexuality Demon, too; I wasn’t sure about that one, but you never can be too careful. I looked around again at the other bus kids still braiding blades of grass, and I just knew this was it. Now or never.
I walked up to an empty spot at the Altar and kneeled down in front of it. The choir chairs were right in front of me, but nobody in the choir was sitting in them. They were all scattered around the tent singing by this point. So I bowed my head and closed my eyes and whispered the first thing that came to my mind, a Bible verse we had to memorize that week in a lesson: “For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish but have Everlasting Life.” I paused. What now? I thought. Oh, yeah – “Amen.”
Nothing happened. Why did nothing happen? I thought I was for sure going to feel some great invisible weight come flying off my body and take off screeching into the night. I’m not sure why I thought that last part would happen as it didn’t happen to Judy. I opened my eyes and looked up at the choir chairs, but instead I saw Joanna’s face. She had come up on the other side of the Altar to sit across from me. I saw her eyes were wet, and I burst into tears, afraid I must have done it wrong. She leaned in close to me and said, “Call it by its name, honey.” I looked down at my hands and whispered, “Homosexuality.” To this day I don’t know why I said it. I wasn’t even entirely sure what Homosexuality was, and I sure as Hell didn’t know what sex was or who I was or wasn’t supposed to do it with. I’d like to think I had the facts of the day all jumbled up in my little mind and was a little bit put on the spot about it. Who knows. I said it all the same.
One look at Joanna’s face told me we had more work to do. Pastor had to go so far as to blow in Judy’s face to get her demon out. Was he going to have to blow on me, too? Joanna brought her eyebrows together and tightened her lips, took a big breath in through her nose and closed her eyes. I did the same. She grabbed my hands on the Altar and started praying real fast, in a sort of half whisper. It reminded me of how the creek rushed after a big rain, when you couldn’t get in it because it could sweep you away and down to the river. She was praying to God that He would open my heart, that I would seek his Face. I was young still, Father God, how could this demon get at a girl so young? She rushed on, praising His Wondrous Accomplishments, how He healed the sick, rose the dead, surely if it was in His Will he could remove this evil spirit from me, this little girl with affliction. I felt someone put their hand on my back, but I didn’t look to see who it was. I could hear more prayers rushing around me, and my mind went blank. The prayer tide swelled low and dropped, nothing like what with Judy, and I felt relieved. Joanna said “Amen,” the hand left my back, and I opened my eyes. She was looking at me.
I felt my face get hot and wanted to go back to my seat, but I didn’t move. Joanna said, “You gotta tell the truth now, okay. Do you want the Lord Jesus to come into your heart so you can be Saved?” I most certainly did want to be Saved from a Demon, so I said yes. Then she said, “You ask Him to come into your heart, and He will. All you gotta do is ask, okay. Here, let’s do it. You say what I say, okay.” More people were getting up from the Altar and going back to their seats. Joanna closed her eyes, and I closed mine. She said, and then I said: “Dear Lord Jesus, I am a sinner. You died on the Cross so that I will be Saved. Forgive me of all my sins, Dear God, and I will live my life for You. Amen.”
I opened my eyes, and Joanna gave me a tight hug over the Altar. She stood up and headed back to her seat. When I stood up, I went right back down. I didn’t notice until that point that my foot had fell asleep. I considered sitting there for a second and letting it get back off the pins and needles, but then I realized I was the last person up there, the choir was taking their seats, the Pastor was at his lectern, and everyone was waiting to move on. So I sort of climbed my way up the Altar and onto my feet and walked back to my seat, Saved. We sang a few more songs while the ushers passed around little wicker baskets, filed out of the rows and back onto the short-bus-Church-bus. It was dark out by then, and I was worn out. I leaned my head against the window and thought about how such little tiny bugs like lice can cause so many problems for people like Judy and Pastor and me, eventually fell into a nap for the rest of the way home.
Judge not lest ye be judged. Matthew 7:1
It wasn’t until years later I ever heard what happened to Pastor. Turns out he took a full-time preaching job at a church a couple counties over, was there for years. And then one of the kids in the youth group showed his mom a picture Pastor had sent to him on his flip phone of Pastor’s balls with a text that said, “Does this look like cancer to you?” The kid’s mom was irate, called an emergency board meeting at the Church to figure out what they’re gonna do about Pastor. I didn’t hear how long they hem-hawed around for, but what they ultimately decided was: who were they to judge as we all sin and fall short of the Glory of God? So they decided to offer their forgiveness which I think translates literally into not calling the cops, but he was still fired. They set him up preaching at another church in Ohio far away from that one, and gave him a little bit of money for moving expenses to make sure he got out of town.
Judy married a man named Robert that she met at church, and now they got two little boys. She’s got hair down to her waist.
