(an excerpt from Bathtubs and Warm Water: The Genesis of Faith, by Dottie Dettmering)

I attended Sunday School all through my childhood, and was the recipient of a black leather-bound Bible for perfect attendance. I sang in the choir and sometimes played the piano in duets with the organist. I usually attended two Bible classes in the summer––one at my home church and another at my step-grandmother’s church, where we were required to read the entire Bible. I paged through it but I don’t remember learning anything about Jesus, God, or one thing religious. I only remember some silly incidents that occurred.

One time we bowed our heads while the minister led us in prayer. I heard a muffled thud. I raised my head only enough so I could peek to see what happened. Without missing a word of the prayer, the minister leaned over, picked up his toupee, placed it back on his head…and went right on praying.

I also remember one of the girls named Zelda S. She was homely as a hedgehog, short and pudgy, with a huge bun of blonde hair on the top of her head. She always wore ankle-high leather boots and a long dress that came to a couple inches above her shoes. She looked more like an old lady than a young girl. She may not have been pretty, but she was the model caretaker of her younger brothers, and her mother was proud of her. I’ll always remember how my step-grandmother made fun of Zelda’s mother because Mrs. S had once remarked, “I don’t understand how Mr. S. and I had such beautiful children.”

I certainly believed there was a God, because my mother told me so. But the stickler was that I didn’t understand––even after all the years of my association with the church––that Jesus was my Savior. I didn’t know what a Savior was, nor why I needed one. I wasn’t dumb; I just didn’t have the answers, partly because I was too afraid to inquire and appear stupid, and partly because I had not been taught properly. Is there a proper way to teach the very young about something as abstract as religion?

Children do not understand anything spiritual, even when parents try to explain to them. For example, the first time my grandson Jeff attended church with his parents he was only two or three years old. Because they feared he would become restless and noisy, they brought a plastic bag with something for him to eat when he began to fidget. When his father gave him a cookie, he softly told him, “This is God’s house, and when you are in God’s house you must be quiet.”

Jeff obeyed and silently nibbled on his cookie, but finally leaned over to his dad and whispered, “Do you think God has any milk?”

…In High School, when I did let myself think about spirituality, I remember worrying that if I worshipped Jesus it would make God angry. After all, Grandma had told me that God was a jealous God and I was afraid to worship Jesus for fear God would punish me for preferring Jesus to Him. And my church never mentioned the Holy Ghost. Only the Catholics knew about the Holy Ghost and only the Catholics had miracles. I wasn’t Catholic so I was destined never to see a miracle. And I was deathly afraid of the Holy Ghost. I was truly confused––so confused, in fact, that I didn’t want to think about religion at all. It was too frightening. If I could be as good as I knew how, maybe I wouldn’t have any more black marks on my soul. That was all I could do. …Why am I here at all? I began to wonder.

Again I became aware of the feeling that I was put on earth to accomplish something. Mark Twain once said, “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”

I did not know what it was I was supposed to do nor the reason. I just had this uneasiness in the pit of my stomach that wouldn’t go away. I had to do something!

“Oh, my! Oh, my!” said Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, and this little Dorothy felt the same way. So much to think about.

Like Scarlet O’Hara, “I’ll think about it tomorrow!”