Faith

Guess there is supposed to be a lot of people giving up on religion. Someone is saying that more atheists are out there these days than there were in the past. I haven't heard that the Jews as a whole have lost faith. Muslims have become stronger and more important. It must be Christians that are loosing ground. In past years many people became born again Christians. I wasn't raised going to church. In fact I was never in a church with my mother or my father. They both would have called themselves Christian. Some church people stopped by and took my sister and I to church for a few weeks one year. That came to an end when my foot was swollen with a red ant bite and I couldn't get my foot into a shoe. The church lady got upset with my mother because I wasn't ready to go with her...my sister was ready but after a few words were exchanged between the lady and my mama she left and was told not to come back. After that my church experience was going with friends a few times. Then in the 1980s I joined a church that my friend Janey took me too. I wasn't born again though. After a few years I stopped. Not because I lost faith. I've always had faith. I had faith before that childhood experience with the church lady. I guess my mama did raise us to have faith in God. So my faith has always been there.

Mama taught me to say the prayer, "Now I lie me down to sleep. With angels at my head and feet. If I should die before I wake. I pray the lord my soul to take." Thinking about this prayer...It could be scary for a child. I was too young to understand about death though. Anyway my father came in one time and changed the last line to, "O bury me in jelly cake." I thought that was so funny and I laughed and laughed. After that I wouldn't say the prayer the way it was supposed to be. My mama gave up having me say my prayers.

My parents got divorced when I was four. I wasn't as happy after that. Something was missing. I remember looking across the road at my Daddy's house hoping to see him. We were at my Uncle Burt's house then. Sometimes I would walk across the road. Wasn't supposed to do that and if I got caught I got spanked. I would do it anyway. Most of the time I never saw my father there. Later I learned that he had rented the house to other people.

My first stepfather built my Mama a little brick house down the road. My Uncle Burt gave my Mama a small piece of his property for the house. They were going to build a big house and only got the concrete foundation done. My sister and I used to play on the foundation. We lived in the little house when I was six and I remember thinking about God and I knew he existed. I only felt that I might not be good enough to go to heaven. My sister and I got spanked a lot. My mother's marriage to Bob was done and she wasn't happy. Guess it was hard. I don't know how I had faith. Years later I found out that my sister didn't have any faith in God and grew up not believing. Most of all I found out that my Uncle Burt didn't believe there was a God. Would knowing this when I was a child have made a difference in my faith. I know it would not have. We are what we are.