Prior to becoming an adult, the only time I ever went to public school was for driver’s Ed. I was fifteen and the most agonizingly self conscious I had ever been. Everyone was looking at me. And it wasn’t just because of my height, clumsiness, awkwardness, red hair or my outdated look and long skirt. They all knew who I was even though I didn’t know who they were. In the tiny town of Pine River, MN, everyone knew that Pastor Staie did not send his children to be educated (except for driver’s Ed) by a system which was built by the devil.
We were too good for that.
I paid dearly for my father’s belief about us being the chosen ones, or as he said it, the bride of Christ. But by then, even though I was secretly rebellious and wanted to fit in, the “holier than thou” mindset was mine too. Once, the boy who laughed at me the most raised his hand. When called upon, he looked at me as he asked, “Yeah, uh, who is God and why did He create us?” Some of the other kids laughed. The driver’s Ed teacher answered, “I tell you what. Anyone who turns in an essay with an answer will get ten extra points on their next test.”
While I knew that the kid was making fun of me by asking the question, I did not realize until well into adulthood that the teacher was also participating in the mockery. I suppose my superiority complex gave them a right to make fun of me. But they didn’t know how scared I was of them or that I didn’t know any other way to be. That evening, I sat with a concordance, the Bible, a pencil and a notebook. I wrote that essay and I got my ten extra points. And here I am, writing it again as an expanded version from a new point of view.
Ironically, though, by the time I left my husband for the final time in my mid-twenties, I wasn’t sure if I even still believed in God.
I was in hell, the deepest part to which I had ever been up to that point. And God had not helped or saved me enough as far as I could tell. And besides, I had no time to think about Him and all His rules and the doctrines and theologies from my childhood and Bible college days. I had to figure out how to pay the rent, feed the kids and keep the lights on without child support.
During that time, I was being taught the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory in nursing school. And all the while, I was just barely maintaining at the bottom level of that same hierarchy. But by graduation, I was starting to creep my way up from the bottom of the bottom level to the top of the bottom level. And that is where I experienced what I could then only call God even though I couldn’t yet define “Him.” I graduated on the twelfth of May and my third baby was due on the twenty-second. We had been without hot water for a very long time.
But the kids had to bathe and baths helped my morning sickness. So I’d regularly boiled water on the stove and carried it pot by pot to the tiny yellow bathtub in our 12×60 (1980’s) trailer home. I’d been worried, though, that after the baby was born, child services might find out that I had a newborn and no hot water. I couldn’t keep trusting my five year old son and my almost three year old daughter to not tell anyone. I wasn’t sure if having hot water mattered to them.
But either way, I didn’t have enough money to fix it unless I stole from God and used my tithe money.
Many times, through my father’s preaching, I had heard the story of Ananias and Sapphira who dared to rob God. He struck them dead for it. Thus, the fear of stealing from God had been instilled within me.The Scripture reads, Then Peter said unto her, How is it that ye have agreed together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord? behold, the feet of them which have buried thy husband are at the door, and shall carry thee out. Then fell she down straightway at his feet, and yielded up the ghost.
And the young men came in, and found her dead, and, carrying her forth, buried her by her husband. And great fear came upon all the church, and upon as many as heard these things -Acts 5:9-11. But at the end of the day, I was still more afraid of child services than God. So I decided I would borrow the tithe and pay Him back later. I didn’t know whether to call an electrician or a plumber. So I decided I would just pick one of the two from the yellow pages.