a story

Found this from Max Lynn and liked her "story!"
I want to share with you the account of Ann LaMotte’s conversion to Christianity from her book "Traveling Mercies." As a child she went to church every once in awhile with her grandparents, but her father did not believe.



"None of the adults in our circle believed. Believing meant that you were stupid. Ignorant people believed. Uncouth people believed, and we were highly couth. My dad was a writer, and my parents were intellectuals who went to the Newport Jazz Festival…and listened to Monk and Mozart…My dad was a serious bird watcher…He worshiped in the church of Allen Ginsberg…at the Tabernacle of Miles Davis. We were raised to believe in books and music and nature."



In many ways Anne lived a privileged life, but not all was great. She writes, "I loved and often seemed cheerful, but fear pulsed inside me. I was broke and clearly a drunk, and also bulimic…"



Anne mentions she never stopped believing in God, but she stayed clear of Jesus. "Mine was a patchwork God, sewn together from bits of rag and ribbon, Eastern and Western, pagan and Hebrew, everything but the kitchen sink and Jesus."



La Motte frequented the Marin City flea market, "This is where I liked to be when I was hung over or coming down off a cocaine binge, here in the dust with all these dusty people, all this liveliness and clutter and color…



"If I happened to be there between eleven and one on Sundays, I could hear gospel music coming from a church right across the street. It was called St. Andrew’s Presbyterian, and it looked homely and impoverished, a ramshackle building with a cross on top…But the music wafting out was so pretty that I would stop and listen…It had a choir of five black women and one rather Amish-looking white man making all that glorious noise, and a congregation of thirty people or so, radiating kindness and warmth. During the time when people hugged and greeted each other, various people would come back to where I stood to shake my hand or try to hug me; I was as frozen and stiff as Richard Nixon.



"I went back to St. Andrew’s about once a month. No one tried to con me into sitting down or staying. I always left before the sermon. I loved singing, even about Jesus, but I just didn’t want to be preached at about him. To me, Jesus made about as much sense as Scientology or dowsing. But the church smelled wonderful, like the air had nourishment in it, like it was composed…of warmth and faith and peace. There were always children running around and being embraced…I loved this, but it was the singing that pulled me in and split me wide open.



"Eventually, a few months after I started coming, I took a seat in one of the folding chairs, off by myself. Then the singing enveloped me. It was furry and resonant, coming from everyone’s heart."



In April of 1984, Anne became pregnant. "I had published three books by then, but none of them had sold particularly well, and I did not have the money or wherewithal to have a baby. The father was someone I had just met who was married and no one I wanted a real live baby with. So Pammy took me in for the abortion one evening, and I was sadder than I’d been since my father died, and when she brought me home that night, I went upstairs to my loft with a pint of Bushmills and some of the Codeine a nurse had given me for pain. I drank until nearly dawn…On the seventh night, very drunk and just about to take another sleeping pill, I discovered that I was bleeding heavily…I thought I should call a doctor but I was so disgusted that I had gotten so drunk one week after an abortion that I just couldn’t wake someone up and ask for help…Several hours later the blood stopped flowing, and I got in bed, shaky and sad and too wild to have another drink or take a sleeping pill…After awhile, I became aware of someone with me, hunkered down in the corner…The feeling was so strong that I actually turned on the light for moment to make sure no one was there – Of course, there wasn’t. But after awhile, in the dark again, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was Jesus. I felt him just as surely as I feel my dog lying nearby as I write this.



"And I was appalled. I thought about my life and my brilliant hilarious progressive friends, I though about what everyone would think of me if I became a Christian, and it seemed an utterly impossible thing that simply could not be allowed to happen. I turned to the wall and said out loud, ‘I would rather die.’



"This experience spooked me badly, but I thought it was just an apparition born of fear and self-loathing and booze and loss of blood. But then, everywhere I went, I had the feeling that a little cat was following me, wanting me to reach down and pick it up, wanting me to open the door and let it in. But I knew what would happen; you let a cat in one time, give it a little milk, and then it stays forever. So I tried to keep one step ahead of it, slamming my houseboat door when I entered or left.



"And one week later, when I went to church, I was so hungover that I couldn’t stand up for the songs, and this time I stayed for the sermon, which I just thought was so ridiculous, like someone trying to convince me of the existence of extraterrestrials, but the last song was so deep and raw and pure that I could not escape…I felt like their voices or something was rocking me in its bosom, holding me like a scared kid, and I opened up to that feeling – and it washed over me.



"I began to cry and left before the benediction, and I raced home and felt the little cat running along at my heels, and I walked down the dock past dozens of potted flowers, under a sky as blue as one of God’s own dreams, and I opened the door to my houseboat, and I stood there a minute, and then I hung my head and said…, ‘I quit.’ I took a long deep breath and said out loud, ‘All right. You can come in.’"



It sounds silly, but this story tells us there is a loving God who can open the winning chapter of our lives. When the going is tough, there is someone to take us on to better times. You may think it irrational, or a crutch, the belief of simple minded folk. I call it the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

anyhoo, i liked this-do you? i hope to "find" my story.