I remember when I was 18 and I was in a residential program for ‘troubled girls’ – I sure was troubled.  I had 3 rehabs under my belt and a few suicide attempts.  I was doing great.  NOT.  ‘Troubled girls’ thats what they called it back then (we were barely passed the millennium- we talked different in those days), also I was in the deep, Deep South.  Remember Duck Dynasty?  The town they were from?  Yeah, I was all the way down there.  Southern, swampy, sticky, Louisiana.  It was glorious.  I quickly gained 20 pounds because all recipes in southern cooking include butter and or sugar.  God’s way.  Don’t let anyone tell you different.  Anyway, this residential program that I went to was a minimum of 6 months stay.  I was there 7 months and 1 day.  This was a beautiful time in my life that I hold dear.  From my stay at this program, I fully recovered from Bulimia.  But that’s not the point of this blog.  Keep reading.

As part of this program, as it was a Christian program, we of course went to church every Sunday.  This was no ordinary church.  This was a FULL GOSPEL church.  There were around 20 of us girls aged 18-30 in this program.  We had a private bus and we would go to church without fail every Sunday.  Bibles in hand, we even sang songs like we were in summer camp on the way to church.  It was fun.  To church we wore our Sunday best. How can I describe the church meetings? To put it plain, the services were sure to get you swinging from the chandeliers.

Characters on the scene, Brother Harry (the pastor), Miss Pam (pastor’s wife), various elders sprinkled all over the church.  Mostly aged 50+.   The pews were wooden, the carpets were typical.  Some of the women wore funny hats.  Must have been a southern thing.  There was an altar that was a few steps high and a baptismal pool to your right as you faced the stage in the wall in case anyone wanted to get baptized.  I always sat in the same pew, with a woman called Miss Josephine (I think- it was a long time ago) and her husband sat behind me.  I’m foggy on her name but I do remember her.  She called me ‘dallin’, ‘shugar’, and ‘huney’ in a Steel Magnolias sort of way. Josephine had this air about her.  Like you would want to sit with her on a back porch eating pecan pie while drinking sweet tea.   Her husband didn’t talk much, he just smiled and always said, bless you child.  Like a good wannabe southern girl, I would respond, ‘amen.’  I couldn’t help myself.  One of my most favorite characters at this place was Brother ‘Smoke.’  That’s right, Smoke.

Smoke was a handsome, must have been older than 60, African American man.  I think he was a cop.  I’m not sure.  He certainly looked like a cop, a friendly one. The sort of cop that you would want to find you and your friends if you ran into some trouble late at night, and had to take you home to your parents and give you a good talkin’ to. He resembled Sidney Poitier. In every sense.  Tall, statured, well spoken, kind eyes.

Anyway- what’s a ‘Full Gospel Church?’  Well, I won’t go into doctrine, but I sure can tell you about the atmosphere.  The worship (music portion of the service at the beginning) would start with someone wildly playing grass roots gospel songs on the piano.  I didn’t know what half of the words to the songs meant.   Altars, mountains, words with lots of Z’s, Jedidiah’s, Hezekiah’s and Uzziah’s.  Didn’t know what they meant and didn’t care.  The atmosphere in the place was electric.

Brother Harry doubled as the Worship Leader and the preacher.  It wasn’t a big church so they didn’t have a big team of singers to pull from.  And to be honest, he was the best.  It just worked.  The words would appear on a white pull down screen and one of the ‘sisters’ would flip the OHP’s on the projector as the songs progressed so we could all sing along.  NO ONE would be in their pews.  People would be stood up, clapping, dancing, jumping, shouting, throwing hands in the air, praying for each other.  It was good ‘Oisiana church fun.  High heels would be off of the ladies feet and they would be dancing around the aisles.  Men would be clapping their hands and stomping their feet.  Some people were so zealous that they would bring tambourines.  Brother Harry was an incredible preacher.  Sidenote- I really found my love for the Bible as a result of his preaching.  I still have an old cassette tape of one of his sermons on faith.  Clear, simple, but moving.  I finally began to understand what the Bible was talking about.  Jesus, Holy Spirit, God the Father, Mary, Adam and Eve, the apple tree, and all that.

It was typical in those days for Miss Pam (Harry’s wife) to walk up and down the aisles during the worship service praying in tongues, and praying that God would shut down all demonic establishments.  Mainly, and especially, Hooters.  I mean, who can blame her.  The food is nasty and I am sure that people do not go there for the cheap beer.

The church was building was older, modest, what you think of when you think of a church.  With that kind of musty smell.  Comforting, but musty.  Why do churches obtain this smell?  Is it a plug in air freshener? Do you know what I mean? I’m digressing, anyway.

The building wasn’t much but it didn’t matter.  The people were captivating.  I had never seen bible believers like THIS before.  I had mainly grown up in white, conservative, quiet, North American church.  These southerners from West Monroe  did not resemble that whatsoever. These people were on FIRE.  Like literally.  It was as if Christ Reincarnate had made them breakfast, given them a pep talk followed by shots of red bull and then were ready to heal the sick, raise the dead and disciple the nations before 9.30am.  These people were charismatic, endearing and do no harm and take no mess kind of people. I felt for some reason, not so weird among these people.

One Sunday during the worship Miss Pam grabbed the microphone, she had been a’ prayin,  (and when she prayed the I could always hear it, clear across the room, above the music- and the music was LOUD).  Something about what she was asking of God mesmerized me.  I didn’t know people could pray like THAT.   On this particular occasion, with strength in her voice she grabbed that mic and protested to the congregation, ‘people, we have GOT to pray.  This country is going to hell in a hand basket.  What are we gonna do about it.  This ain’t a time t’be silent, this is a time to get on your knees, to command, to demand, to change things. We cannot watch people go to hell in a hand basket.’

I don’t remember what current event she was ticked about.  Maybe there wasn’t one.  We didn’t have internet back then, so keeping up to date with news was virtually impossible.  We didn’t watch mainstream TV back at the house and only had contact with the outside world twice on a Saturday via phone calls with 15 minute scheduled time slots. I don’t remember what ruffled her feathers.  But they were ruffled.

I’ve wondered why this moment fossilized in my mind.  Why Miss Pam, this memory of her has stayed with me for 17 years now.  For goodness sake, I even remember how she wore her hair and what dress she wore that day (Hair- brown and wavy, shoulder length, side parting with thick bangs & navy blue dress, with small flowers, buttons down the front, a-line, in case you wondered).

I think I remember her because there was something about her Pamness that reminds of the person that I have avoided becoming.  Do you ever see someone, so comfortable with themselves, that it makes you feel uncomfortably comfortable?  Like agitated that you aren’t that, maybe a little jealous, but know that you can be that that is who you innately are?

I liked Miss Pam.  I liked her anger, her righteous indignation.  I liked her passion.  I liked her spunk.  I liked that she was comfortable walking in her shoes or even barefoot in church and being seen for who she was and as she was.   She was absolutely and 100% not trying to keep up with the Kardashians.

Pam didn’t ever grab the mic to draw attention to herself, or to proselytize people to give money to anything, certainly nothing that she would benefit from.  She was just plain old p’oed for people’s sake. She wasn’t showy.  She was just a beautiful lady, confident, and completely happy to tell you how she felt.  She liked people.  She was always caught in conversation before or after the service, taking people in and treating people like they were the only ones in the room.  She was just genuine.

When I think back to what Pam did that Sunday, the power and the honesty in how she spoke, I remember her voice crackling.  I remember her tone.  Her mom-ness. Her ‘here I am take it or leave it but I am still throwing it down-ness.’  I think I just want to someday be like her.  Like her in the sense that,

‘hey I am flawed like everyone else but I still get a vote,

and hey, I am real happy being me,

and hey I am real happy having an opinion,

and hey I am not asking for permission to have a voice because of my gender, race or sexuality,

and hey I have a vote even though I have a football teams worth of kids- being a mother does not disqualify me from the line up,

and hey I may just be in a little town in the Deep South but my contribution to society matters,

And hey I don’t have all the answers but I do have some.

And hey I know life is still often times a mens club and unfortunately a mean girls club, but I do not care about getting a membership card to those clubs.

Just all the HEY.

Some may think thats ballsy.  But I think if a man were to take the above postures we would celebrate it rather than judge it and certainly not question who the hell they think they are.

I don’t think she was trying to be masculine any more than she was trying to be Minnie Mouse, I think she was trying to be her.  The way she spoke is the way I am sure she speaks in her home, with her husband and her kids. She was just being her unexaggerated actual self.  Gets me thinking.

I am the daughter of a Nascar driving dad and a successful business woman.  My mom has led teams of people in her field for over 35 years, including lots of men.  She has had to go toe to toe with some interesting personalities over the years.  My dad has lived in the fast lane since he was a boy.  Literally.  Racecars, they go fast.  Also, the smell of gasoline and brake cleaner is as pleasant as the smell of aromatherapy to me.    With the mixture of those two strong in their own way personalities, and especially if you have ever met either of my grandmothers, you would know that there is nothing about me that was destined to be quiet.  I’m one of 5 kids, and we all show this differently, but we all have this in common, that we have this unstoppable urge to be boldly us wherever we are.  We can’t help it, and we shouldn’t.

But for lots of reasons, for forever, I didn’t allow myself a voice.  I didn’t allow myself to be comfortable in my skin.  I didn’t allow myself to be seen.  I didn’t want to be seen.  I didn’t want anyone to be offended at my thoughts.  What if I dared ruffle some feathers.  What if I disrupted status quo?   In my mind I was an embarrassment because of my life choices.   I had lost my rights when I became bulimic  and definitely forfeited my voice because I believed I was the sum total of crap plus crap.

I’ve done a lot of hard work.  Ask my therapists.  They are clinically liable to tell the truth.  In all, I think I am a lot like Pam.  I think that memory serves as a mirror.  Metaphorically speaking, I do intend to grab the microphone.  I’m not sure what about.  It will come to me in the moment as it did Miss Pam.  But I think the point is that I’m no longer terrified to do that.  I am grateful for her.  I am grateful for my memory of her.  She unknowingly gave me the nod that it was okay to be me.  I carry that and her with me.  And I am grateful for that wild church in West Monroe, LA.  For Brother Harry, Miss Jo, and Brother Smoke.  They are my kind of people.  x