After 13 Years, I Went to Church...

...and I took Raine with me.

Yikes!

My best advice for someone attending church after 13 years: Do not take your two year old with you.

I attended church from infancy until I was twenty years old. It was an integral part of who I became as an adult because of exposure from childhood. While my beliefs about the dogma of the churches I grew up in have changed, the desire to be a part of a community and hear some good ol' fashioned four part harmony has not.

Saturday, November 16th, I announced to Dan that I was going to go to church the next day. My years of isolation had taken their toll. I had friends, yes, but I needed the support of a community. I had not cultivated a new one for myself in all of the years I had been in Oregon. The best way I knew to find that, quickly, was a church. I Googled the only church I knew that would accept someone who didn't believe what *most church folk* believed, and that was the Unitarian Universalists. Luckily, they had a congregation a few miles away that meets for worship services at the senior center in McMinnville every other Sunday. Sunday the 17th was such an occasion.

The next morning, Dan was up early with Raine and dressed him in nice church attire. ;) He let me sleep in a little and went to get coffee. In the meantime, my sister had called us both several times but hadn't left messages. After I got up and got ready, Raine and I were about to go out the door, and I got a text back from her that it was an emergency and to call her. I froze. I called her immediately and she told me a tornado had just hit our parent's house in Washington, IL.

I soaked up as much information as she could give me, hung up and checked Facebook. Hattie had posted her parent's house was hit and wanted to know who was OK. Nick and Megan posted their house was fine but their entire neighborhood was gone and Nick was trying to help people get out from underneath their debris. Amy wasn't posting. Sarah called me and I cried. I promised to let her know as soon as I knew more. I still hadn't talked to my parents. Calls weren't going through. I looked at Dan and asked him what I should do?

He suggested I still go to church like planned. It was either that or sit at home and stalk Facebook and wait by the phone.

I buckled Raine into his seat and took off.

I didn't want to be late for my first church service in 13 years, but I was.

I suppose if there is a good excuse, it is the fact that a tornado just hit your family and friend's homes.

I was greeted by a sweet man with a generous smile and shown where Raine might like to play in a children's room. He was not interested, so I perched him in my lap while the service started.

They had an initial 'joy or concern' sharing session at the beginning. I boldly walked up to the front of the room and squeaked into the microphone "Hi, I am Leah. This is Raine. We've never been here before." Thirty pounds of wriggling in my feeble arms, and I don't know how I contained him, but I did. I stood in front of that room of a hundred strangers and begged them to think of my family and friends and former neighbors who just survived a tornado an hour earlier. Everyone gasped and stared at me. A few people started Googling "Washington, IL" on their smart phones. I thanked them and returned to my seat, where Raine let out a shriek and lunged for the floor. He was NOT interested in my lap.

As the sharing session ended, I took him to the nursery and tried to see if he would play with the toys there with the staff. He became engrossed in building a tunnel for a train, so I tip-toed back to the service. A stranger with kind eyes asked me more about my family. He said we were in his thoughts. I stood with the congregation as they sang a hymn:

May nothing evil cross this door,
and may ill fortune never pry about these windows;
may the roar and rain go by.
By faith made strong,
the rafters will withstand the battering of the storm.
This hearth, though all the world grow chill,
will keep you warm.
Peace shall walk softly through these rooms,
touching our lips with holy wine,
till every casual corner blooms into a shrine.
With laughter drown the raucous shout,
and, though these sheltering walls are thin,
may they be strong to keep hate out
and hold love in.

I shed a few tears at the words and then heard my son crying for me from the nursery. I went back to him and hugged him. He didn't understand where he was and why I wasn't with him. I brought him back out to sit in my lap but he was clawing at me, wiggling, scooting, stretching, coughing, murmuring in my ear, shouting, snorting, grabbing. I tried to give him my iPhone to play a game while the service message began, but the sound was on and I couldn't figure out how to get it off. Meanwhile, he balked and scolded me. The iPhone game chirped and chimed.

I was so embarrassed and hot and tired and exhausted. I realized that I was still trembling from when I stood up and spoke in front of everyone.

We made a quick exit.

As awful as it was, it was worth it. I think all those people thought of my friends and families and neighbors. And they thought of me, and my son, and they grieved for us and our loved ones and the unknown born out of that tornado that morning. And it was enough. For a few minutes, it was enough.