Hole in the Soul

Although life moved on (in a sense) after Mom died, death didn't sit right with me.  It wasn't that I thought she didn't deserve to die or that I couldn't get over the grief.  It was death itself that I found so disturbing.  What bothered me most was this nagging feeling that something seemed quite different about the death of a person.  Intellectually, I believed humans had evolved from less developed creatures.  This development went back to energized primordial slime I believed formed the raw material for life to begin.  Of course we've all heard this since we were little, but my experience challenged this belief.

Meanwhile, I was heading to Huntington, West Virginia.  Like many people who grew up in my area, I had some pretty strong conceptions about how backward the people who live there would be.  Yet I was pleasantly surprised to find my previously unknown relatives apparently had all their teeth and were actually rather intelligent.  For the month I was there, I lived with my Grandmother Isenberg, who we affectionately referred to as "Mamaw."  My Uncle Harry and Aunt Winifred (Winnie) lived up the hill, and Aunt Vida lived next door to them.  My cousin Tim lived next door.  I was literally surrounded by a family I'd never had before.  They taught me to play Canasta, a game we still play at family gatherings to this day.

My Uncle Harry seemed to take a special interest in me.  He drove a refrigerated truck to various small and medium sized grocery stores where he sold his goods.  I went with him on at least one occasion and got to watch him engage the people he did business with on a regular basis.  We spent many evenings over the course of that month sitting on the hillside together talking about God.  Since at the time I didn't believe in God, this made for some interesting conversations.  I remember asking him questions like, "If Christianity is true, why can you people not get your story straight?"  I'd talked to many so-called Christians, and they all seemed to believe different things.

I wish I could remember half of the conversations we had over the course of that month.  Eventually I was open to reading some of the words of the Bible with him.  He explained to me what he believed the Bible required of someone who wants to be a Christian.  Faith, confession, and repentance were mentioned, but it was clear that in Uncle Harry's mind the decisive moment was at baptism.  If you wanted to be clean, you had to let God wash your soul.  It seemed a pretty simple thing to me, but at the same time something in me resisted the idea.  But after a while, I remember thinking he might be right.  If I was right and there was no God, then I haven't lost anything.  But if he was right and there WAS a God (and I didn't do anything about it), I was in big trouble.  I figured I didn't have anything to lose.

July 13th of that year was the last Sunday I was going to be in West Virginia.  I'd told my family that I thought I would go ahead and take the plunge.  But that morning when I woke up, I felt sick to my stomach.  When I told them I was going to just stay home from church, I could tell they were disappointed.  But to their credit, they didn't pressure me to go.  Nevertheless, at the last moment I got up and threw some clothes on.  I told them I would go, but I didn't think I was going to be baptized that day.

Everyone has been in church services that seemed long.  But that day I thought the preacher would never stop talking.  His name was John and he seemed to drone on forever before the piano mercifully began playing and we started to sing some song out of the hymnal.  Just a few more minutes and I would be out of there.  Yet at some point during that song, apparently I started walking down the aisle.  Halfway down or so, I realized where I was and turned around to look back at my Grandmother smiling at me.  I figured at this point it would be worse to go back than to finish the journey, so I walked the rest of the way to the front. 

When the preacher started talking to me, the only thing I remember is his breath.  I asked if I could talk to my Uncle Harry.  Uncle Harry came forward and asked me to repeat some words and I was then escorted to a chilly room on the basement floor of the building.  A woman handed me a white garment with lots of strings and hooks and buttons that looked more like a straightjacket to me than anything else.  In that moment, I began to think perhaps I was making a big mistake.  My stomach began churning and I was nearly overcome by a desire to go running out of this building, away from these religious weirdos.  The woman returned a few minutes later and asked from the door, "Do you have it on yet?"  I assured her that I did not, and she got someone who could help me.

She then escorted me to a small pool where my Uncle Harry was standing in the water.  I descended the stairs and turned.  As my stomach continued to protest, I wondered what it would look like if I vomited in the water.  Just then, someone pulled open a curtain and I realized I was standing in front of the same people who I was in church with some minutes ago.  Why hadn't they gone home?  What were they waiting for?  Uncle Harry raised his hands and said some words about Jesus and then pushed me under the water.  When I came up out of the water, I felt different.

For centuries, people have argued about baptism.  Christians have very different salvation experiences.  I cannot speak for others, but in my case I experienced the joy of my salvation the moment I was raised from the waters of baptism.  My stomach no longer churned, I didn't feel sick any more, and I couldn't stop smiling.  I didn't know exactly what had just happened, but I knew I liked it.  I'd never experienced anything like that before.

My 14th birthday was three days later, on July 16th.  But on July 13th I felt I'd finally found my real family, I'd be adopted by God.  The sense of emptiness and longing that had defined my life to that point finally experienced satisfaction.  It was as if I'd been hungry my whole life, and for the first time in my life, I'd actually eaten a meal.  I would be hungry again, but for I at least knew now that I could be filled.