I used to roam the wide hallways of my church alone, pressing my thoughts against what I was told to believe. My family lived at church as much as we lived at home. My grandparents joined Gilead Baptist in the late 1940s, and my father was a member when he married my mother in 1958. She joined then, too. My mother turned away from her large Irish family, who were non-practicing Catholics with a fondness for drinking and gambling. My father’s choice to marry a Catholic only deepened his commitment to the Baptist mission of rescuing the lost.
Before I started first grade, I spent many Fridays in the church office while my mom folded bulletins. The office doubled as a library, but I didn’t stay long. I wandered upstairs to the baptistry behind the choir loft, a shallow concrete pool lined in tile and set beneath a tall window. Burgundy velvet curtains hung beside the glass, which looked out over the sanctuary pews below. I lay on the cool floor and imagined what it would feel like to be dunked underwater by the preacher. When I closed my eyes, the water turned red in my mind—from the blood of the little lambs I’d heard so much about. My grandmother often said suffering was the expected lot of God’s people, but I hated that the lambs had to hurt, too.
At Gilead, I did everything a good Baptist girl was supposed to do: Sunday school, Vacation Bible School, Wednesday night suppers, Girls in Action—a Baptist version of Girl Scouts where I earned badges, a crown, a cape, and even a scepter for doing good deeds. I played piano, and my teacher was also the church organist, so my recitals took place on the same stage where people gave their lives to Christ.
God came on vacation with us, too. One August in 1970, my family of four and both grandparents piled into the Oldsmobile and headed for the mountains of eastern Kentucky. We never took long trips—there was always too much work to do on the farm—so our vacations were quick and tightly packed. My father drove fast, steering through switchback turns while the engine labored uphill toward Pineville. My grandmother prayed aloud from the back seat whenever we passed cars on the curves. She said she knew God was with us because we were doing his work.
We had come to see a play—The Book of Job—an outdoor performance my grandmother heard about on one of her Billy Graham broadcasts. The stage looked like a church sanctuary, and the actors wore costumes painted like stained-glass windows—faces and hands covered in gem-colored makeup. The organ music was loud and strange. I sat on a folding chair next to my mother, watching through one eye while I buried the other in her shoulder. Job stood at the center of a storm, lit from below, his face glowing gold. The voice of God boomed out, silencing everything under the open night sky. The chorus raised their hands, covered their faces, then dropped their arms and shouted, “Job! Job! Job! Dead! Dead! Dead!” As the lights dimmed around him, a group of women chanted in low tones, their voices echoing as the stage darkened.
Back in the car, my grandmother said she liked how the play showed that even the innocent suffer. I remember the calm in her voice. I think the play comforted her. I reached across the seat and held her hand.
The next day, we drove south to Gatlinburg. My mom wanted my brother and me to ride to the top of the Space Needle. My grandma wanted to see Jesus.
At the top, 400 feet above the street, I looked out at the smoky fog rising from the green hills. My mom pointed out Mount LeConte and read from a pamphlet about the Smoky Mountains. Below us, the Oldsmobile was parked at the curb, and she kept showing us how small it looked. My grandpa had refused to come up—he didn’t trust buildings built that high. I think my grandma would’ve liked it. It seemed like a place close enough to touch God.
Later, we visited Christus Gardens, a walk-through museum of wax figures showing scenes from Jesus’ life: the manger, the temple, the Last Supper. A soft voice played through speakers overhead, calling Jesus “The Master,” backed by a thin, warbly choir. At the end, we entered a dim room where a massive sculpture stood: Jesus, carved from white marble, with eyes that seemed to follow you no matter where you moved.
“That’s how it is,” my grandma whispered. “Jesus is always watching.”
She stared at him in awe. But I stayed behind my mother, just far enough back that the eyes didn’t find me.
I knew then—though I couldn’t have said it out loud—that I didn’t feel what my family felt. Not about Jesus, not about salvation, not about being watched. But I said nothing. Some part of me had already learned that in order to be loved, I had to be like them. And I wasn’t. I couldn’t kneel before something that let my grandma suffer and did nothing.
But in 1974, I finally said something—at recess, on a regular school day, to the people I trusted most: my best friends Melissa, Sheri, Laura, and Dayna. We were walking laps around the big field across from our elementary school. It was the kind of field where kids had worn the grass down to mark home plate and first base.
“I don’t believe it,” I blurted.
I told them I didn’t believe we came to Earth for a short time just to be judged forever. It didn’t make sense. How could the Almighty of everything sort us into heaven or hell based on what we did before we even understood what we were doing? I said it like it was fact. But I still spelled the word hell—H-E-double-L—because swearing could send you straight there. My grandma had warned me plenty.
My friends and I wore matching airbrushed t-shirts from the county fair—one had dolphins, one had a rainbow, mine had a heart with wings. At each other’s houses, we knew which cabinet held the drinking glasses. In the summer, we’d sleep on Sheri’s back porch in our sleeping bags and dance to The Locomotion by Grand Funk Railroad, forming a girl-train that shook the floor. We were tight.
None of them joined me in doubting. Dayna said she was already saved—at last year’s revival. Laura said the Dead Sea Scrolls proved the Bible was true. Sheri cracked a joke about how God’s days must be longer than ours if He made the whole world in seven. And Melissa, quiet and kind, looked at me like she worried for my soul.
The bell rang, and we walked back toward class. But something had shifted. I had said the unsayable. Big Jesus had heard me, and so had my friends. And none of them understood.