A brief history.

Sometimes I think life would be a lot easier if I believed in God. I was watching Grey's Anatomy last night and Denny The Heart Patient was saying he wasn't worried about dying because he believed in heaven and so there. And I thought Hey! Why don't I believe in heaven too? Because I just don't. You can blame it all on Tracy, my short-lived best friend in 8th grade.

I grew up going to church almost every Sunday. Lutheran church. When my mom and brothers and I lived in Eugene, the service, as I recall, was conducted from a kind-of Preacher Island loaded with randomly scattered candles and pulpits and flotsam (it's a little fuzzy - I was only 5). The congregation was spread out around this island on folding chairs and there was a lot of singing and merriment and cookies and hippies. Awesome. It almost all made up for the fact that my mom made us wear Lederhosen every weekend, which gradually became stiff with sweat, grass-stains and spilled grape juice. It was a real sense of community, and that feeling persisted with the churches we attended in Goldendale, Storrs and for a short while, Kelso.

Then one afternoon during lunch in eigth grade Tracy invited me to her sleepover birthday party. It was going to be a special occasion, because we would all be going to church with her the next morning, and could we please okay that with our parents? I was a little confused by the focus with which the church part of the sleepover received. Who cared about church, were we going to be able to run down the road to see the boys that lived at the end of her street? Yes, it turned out, we were! Church was forgotten until that Sunday morning, when we all woke up bleary-eyed and cotton-mouthed from too many Smarties. We were asked to circle up and pray for the sinners of the world over our morning cereal. Even that didn't really phase me - it's not like praying was foreign, just usually done in private when I wanted Chris Parker to notice me or I really wanted it to snow.

Church, it turned out, was the Longview Assembly of God. I'm not up on my religious vocab, but these people are the book-burners, gay-haters, talkers-in-tongue, and hell-fire and damnation hooligans. In fact, Tracy's dad was leading the charge to ban Huck Finn from out junior high library. We saw it all that morning during that 4-hour service. As I was sitting up in the bleacher seating in that enormous concert hall of a church, I changed. When, for the 20th time, the screaming preacher told me what I sinner I was and how evil all non-believers are I just woke up. It was as if I were riding in a car, watching the scenery run by, tree after tree after tree, then Bam! the ocean appeared. I remember snorting. Tracy's mom was next to me, and the noise and clammer of people yelling out in tongues had actually died down for a moment as they dunked someone in a giant fishtank to keep them from going to hell, and she heard me. I know she did. She looked sharply at me, and I smirked and snorted again. On purpose, because she suddenly seemed so simple-minded. I smirked and in my mind I was mocking her, and she knew it. I never stayed the night at Tracy's house again. In fact, I don't think I ever even ate lunch with her again.

A few weeks after the sleepover my mom asked if I could help teach Sunday school and I said no. I said I wouldn't be going back to church anymore. It made me sad, because I knew I was disappointing her and I really did enjoy the community of people, but all I could think of was how ridiculous and contrived the whole thing was. That feeling of mocking and ridicule stayed with me for a long time. I just couldn't shake the feeling that the whole thing was so hypocritical and made-up. Sure Jesus existed, but he is the son of God? John Smith said the same thing. There was a guy outside Safeway every Saturday that said the same thing too. Boy, God gets around! And the biblical stories? Uh-uh. I was 13-years-old and I knew it all.

But that's changed. I still don't believe in God, but I don't judge people that do. I think Jesus was a great man, one to be admired, studied and emulated. I think Muhammed and Buddha were great men too. They help a lot of people in ways that I can't imagine. AA is based on the belief in God (isn't it?) and I would never EVER point fingers at that institution as hypocritical or wrong. I still admire the sense of community created by churches, I just can't go back. I can't force myself to believe something I don't.

Sometimes I wish I did, though. Just so I could tell my babies that's where we're going to be someday, instead of in a dark muddy hole in the ground. I think that's where it all came from. A mom trying to protect her babies from sadness. I've decided I'll let Madeleine and Quinn decide for themselves. If believing in God makes them happy, that's what I want for them. Me? I just get to sleep in on Sunday.