Background Check (part 3)

(continued...)

...so my grandmother just left me there in that  heavily wooded encampment of Jesus freaks.

I prepared for a few short days of smiling and nodding and pretending.

 I participated in the chats, listened to the talks, scarfed down carrots with ranch dip and observed the ladies around me like a behavioral scientist observes lab rats.

There were ladies from every single denomination that I knew. There were young ladies, old ladies, shiny ladies, scrappy ladies, even shady ladies, ladies who smiled all the time and ladies who pouted and quite a few that met me during the breaks for a smoke... they even had ash trays.

So the hours ticked by without our watches or a visible clock. Slowly, talk by talk, prayer by prayer, one by one,  these women began to change before my very eyes.

The "frowny' one next to me spent the first day displaying an aura of defiance and misery. By the next afternoon, her cheeks were wet, her eyes were closed and she was smiling like she had just smoked a fine heavenly doobie.

Another rigid, angry, pessimistic lady who belly-ached about her pig-headed husband back home, was letting go, softening, and "getting it."

I wasn't.  Nope.  The throngs of feisty old gals that arrived with me were deserting me into a mass of tears, and raised hands, spontaneous "Hallelujahs" and "Praise you, Jesus"-es.

The third night, the "home run" night was especially moving.  I watched as clumps of women knelt at the altar and cried.  They were praying and confessing and I watched wondering what was wrong with them.. Or me.

Oh, yeah.  I missed the boat with old Dave Roever...duh. Remember, I was a spiritual dud.

Then my pastor from back home, who just happened to be working the retreat, came over to me.  (He was from the Believer's Chapel I halfway grew up in.) He asked me how I was doing and I said "I just don't get it".

He placed his hand on my head and said the shortest simplest of prayers, "Lord, I just ask you to touch Kacy right now. In Jesus' name, Amen."

I took three steps away and it happened.

OK.

What exactly happened?

I would love to explain it, or describe it, or recreate it, or even emote about it but I won't.  Using a technology analogy, this is what happened:

I was a dead Dell computer in a forgotten on a shelf, THEN someone bigger than me decided that it was finally time. My time.

He came forward and gave me what I lacked.  He "pressed power."  I booted up for the first time in my life and my cold dead motherboard was awakened.  It totally by-passed my rationale.  A new code was generating something entirely new in my circuitry.  I was ON...

It would take me the next few years to de-bug, download updates, install firewalls, and learn to navigate the OS...  but that's pretty much a very precise picture of what happened.  I was dead, then I was alive. It was that simple.

I wish I could tell you that it was a figment of my imagination, but even today, so many years later, I can still hear the whir of the hard drive spinning.  The day he "turned me on"  I never went back to "dead".

So, what happened next?

Like a pendulum pulled way high and released, I swung hard and fast to the Christian conservative right.

It wasn't instant, it took me a good 2 years to find myself a big fan of James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Bob Larson and cheesy Christian merchandise.  I joined the club, became a student of the culture and climbed right in the "clown car" with an air of humble superiority.

I stopped drinking alcohol, tried to quit smoking (but instead, hid it), bought only Christian books and music and I saw everyone around me as a potential convert. I was a walking-talking billboard for the evangelic church, I was a holy lemming and the lyrics from the song "Jesus Freak" explained it perfectly.

People say I'm strange, does it make me a stranger

That my best friend was born in a manger

*Don't worry it gets way better...and worse... then better... then I start think about things differently... and write a blog.

(to be continued...sigh...stay with me...)