Oh Dear God! I have been so busy living and working and worrying that I totally missed the email about today being the last day! Crap! How am I gonna explain this to The Big Guy? He will probably just take one look at me and say "It figures!" I am just not prepared...I have to write some more blogs and clean my house and pack it up and buy some birthday presents and pay some bills...wait a minute! SKIP paying the bills-just in case!
I am not making light of the whole subject, believe me! I was involved in a religious cult for a few years back in the early eighties and they had us scared shitless! I constantly worried that Jesus was coming back and I was always "looking to the east" to see if He was coming in the clouds! Now what is wrong with that? God does not want us to worry! A life lesson I have been trying to learn...well, frankly, all my life! "Cast your cares upon Him, for He careth for you" When I clicked on some facebook thing "What is your life verse? "(from the bible) that's the one that popped up....know what I said? "It figures!"
Back to the cult: Did I learn about love and forgiveness and life everlasting? Yeah, sure...a little bit, BUT there were conditions! Oh Yes! These people had rules and the rules were, mostly for women, IN FACT! the only rule for men was this: You have to wear a WHITE shirt if you want to come to the altar to pray or be prayed for. I am dead serious too. NOW for the women: 1. NO makeup ( Lotsa chicks in desperate need for makeovers in that church, Hell, even an old barn needs a little paint now and then, but not THESE old...well, you get the picture and it was not a colorful one! ) 2. No pants ( I think this was to distinguish us from being mistaken for men...all I know is since mini-skirts-one of my personal all time FAVORITE fashions- were not allowed, I did not dress so cute.) 3. NO jewelry, except for a wedding ring and/or a watch ( that was easy, didn't have too much at that time anyway) 4. You can NOT cut your hair! It is "a covering" kinda like, a yarmulke, or back in the day when Catholics wore those lacy things on their heads when they went to church. That was easy too, I already had long hair, leftover from my "hippie" days in the seventies...Who knew? But I went "rogue" and dyed my roots while my sister went traditional and well, I never really discussed it with her, but I think all the rules literally turned her hair gray! 5. You must go to church each service, no matter what! Do you know how hard that was? Find a dress, not just for me, but two little girls, who by the way, I didn't make follow the rules, I let them wear shorts and look normal for the most part. I had to brush that long hair. Well I guess I did cut out some of the time by NOT applying makeup or putting on jewelry. Hmmm...
And then there was Number 6. Ah yes, six, six, six! wait a minute! 666! Yikes almighty-the devil's number. Oh, man! No wonder this rule caused such havoc and trauma in all our lives! Hindsight is 20/20, right? The rule was this: No TV or movies, unless, it was religious programming! Yep! Well I could never give up TV, so we we watched TBN 24/7-all of us! No "Smurfs" for the kids, blue devils!...my sister went rogue on this and let the kids watch and I guess mine snuck over there to watch too. Thank God, they weren't total robots and had minds of their own, ALTHOUGH, 25 YEARS LATER, they throw the Smurfs in my face! Come on! Really? Smurfs? Mommy will buy you a $5 DVD at Walmart and you can watch all you want! Build a bridge and get over it!!! And this was the same as far as music was concerned too! Would that be Number 7? Now that is God's number, so music of all kinds must be OK, right...right? WRONG! Must be "religious" So the second trauma in our family was this: No KISS! They were Kings In Satan's Service! Oh yes, they were, so No KISS music and no KISS "Barbie dolls" for Christmas! Now to this day, my girls throw THAT in my face! Really? Hey, I LIKE Gene Simmons, he's a pretty smart guy and quite the family man...So Mommy will buy you a KISS doll ( only if I can get it real cheap on E-bay, mind you) and you can shove it where the...uh, where the other barbie dolls are: What did you think I was gonna say?
Are we done? Am I still going to heaven now that I have exposed The Nuts, as I like to fondly remember them? I will never forget the Sunday when the preacher was talking about Jezebel and how she was basically, a painted whore, but he said it in "Church talk" WELL, that day my lips were chapped and I DID put some lovely pink, really more of a nude color gloss on my lips. Somehow I could never throw it away with the rest of my makeup (THAT was a dark day! I had a LOT of makeup! I LOVE that stuff!!!!) Anyway, my 'roots were freshly done too and that guy, that preacher guy turned and looked right at me! Can you believe it? He was calling ME a Jezebel! OMG! And that was before OMG, we would not have been allowed to say or write THAT, I can tell you right now!
So! that was it! I had an epiphany,I sure did! I sure did! and I took my kids and went home to my husband, who had by that time, stopped going to church ( He wasn't real crazy about WHITE shirts, they were too hard to keep clean and then he got tired of spending Saturdays working to fix up the preacher's house, hmm...so he built a different kinda bridge and basically "sprinted" over it) So! That afternoon, I went to Walmart and bought makeup, lots of it! and hair dye ( the bleachi-est blonde I could find) and I got shorts and jeans and flip-flops and I guess I was just having a ME moment (long before they were in vogue, don't ya know) because I totally FORGOT to get a Smurf VCR tape or a KISS Barbie doll for my kids! OMG!
But I was FREE! just the way God wants us to be...He did not come to make us prisoners, He came to SAVE us, and save He did! I started building MY bridge and realized that God and/or Jesus do NOT reside in a church building OR make up crazy rules. He resides in my heart and I can honor Him by keeping Him there and when He DOES COME BACK, He will come and say to me as He takes my hand "Do you want to come with Me, too?...It Figures!"
He Was There All The Time, there all the time...
