I scrunch my forehead and wait for more. Apparently, there isn’t any more. That’s it? That’s the litmus test for liberalism these days? Who hasn’t preached against homosexuality from the pulpit?
“Or abortion,” Bridgette adds.
Right. We can’t forget abortion.
While this snippet of conversation opens more questions about those who run CU and the parents of my fellow students, it leaves me worrying less about the possibility of Roland saying something completely insane.
“Ready?” Eden asks, giving her lips one final coat of gloss.
Gloss and soft colors are allowed. Deep red isn’t.
Once we deposit our toiletries into our room, my roommates and I make our way to the UC.
It’s bigger than it looks online. Not quite as large as New Life Church—which could easily fit the 6,000 enrolled students of Carter University—but certainly enough to hold the 1,500 in the freshman class.
As we spot the guys we ate with last night, including Bridgette’s brother, Silas, and my social savior, Jonah, a question brews in my mind.
“Hey,” I ask anyone in the group who is listening, “is R—Pastor Roland preaching four times today?” I know that each class has their own service on “Welcome Back Sunday,” but this is the first time I’m considering the potential stress of having to give four sermons in one day.
I hate that I care.
Silas shakes his head. “No, that’s why this is extra awesome.” He smiles as he claps his hands together once. “It’s like hitting the jackpot on commencement speakers, but this isn’t even commencement.”
“Fan of his?” I chuckle and take the first open seat I spot. “What’s the big deal? Can’t we go to New Life on Sundays if we want?”
Bridgette sits to my left, her brother next to her. He leans forward to speak. “You’re right. But the thing is, the university has asked him to address their new students. The incoming class. It’s like they’re accepting him on a whole different level. Trusting him to talk to the most vulnerable minds on campus.”
My scrunched eyebrows appear to give away my confusion. Bridgette deciphers Silas’s excitement. “What he means is…there’s talk that this is a signal that the university is loosening up a bit. If they’re letting a left-ish evangelical pastor address the freshmen—the first Message we’ll hear at Carter—maybe they’re ready to take a look at some of their outdated practices.” She shrugs and pulls out a Bible and a pen from her purse.
Uh-oh.
Seriously. Of all the ways I planned for this moment—my first service as a CU student—I couldn’t remember my Bible? Granted, bringing one’s own Bible to church where I come from is unnecessary. We use the Book of Common Prayer and scripture readings are printed on a leaflet handed out at the beginning of the service. I knew Bibles were used during these services, but thought they’d be provided. Looking around, though, I see that was an error in judgment on my part.
I look to Bridgette almost pleadingly, only to find her scribbling notes along the edge of one of the pages in her Bible. I didn’t even realize you were allowed to write in that book, let alone in the purple pen Bridgette seems to fancy. Wiping my dampening palms down the front of my skirt, I begin looking around, certain a Bible will turn up somewhere. I mean, of all the places in the world for one to drop from the sky, you’d think this would be it.
“Is everything okay?” a familiar voice to my right questions.
Looking up, I find Jonah, who had been in conversation with Eden and someone else they seemed to know from summer camp, taking a seat next to me.
I take a deep breath.
He smells like soap.
Stop.
“I…uh…I forgot my Bible,” I offer as I press my palm into my forehead and close my eyes.
He delivers a soft chuckle. “Hey, it’s okay. It’s kind of a big day.”
“Everyone keeps saying that,” I remark with a sigh.
“Aren’t you excited? Pastor Roland is like a rock star.”
My eyes open wide. “What?”
Jonah’s face turns serious as he puts up his hands. “I mean… I don’t… I don’t like idolize him, or anything. I just… I respect the way he’s helped the students here, and across the country, reach Jesus.”
It takes me a minute to realize how nervous I’ve made poor Jonah. His intensity around the word “idolize” reminds me that these kids aren’t supposed to hold anyone or anything in higher esteem than God.
Not their parents, not their future spouses, and not their future children. No one.
Well…we. We aren’t to hold anyone higher than God. I wonder when my “me vs. them” mindset will change.
Do I even want it to?
Shaking my head, I try to calm Jonah’s nerves. “No, I didn’t mean that. It’s just…I’m from Connecticut,” I concede with a sigh. “We don’t hear much about…all of this. I’ve never had to bring a Bible to church before, either, which is why…” I hold out my hands, which are spectacularly empty.
Jonah’s easy grin returns. “Here, use mine.” His tanned hand extends toward me, grasping a thick soft-bound Bible with a black leather cover.
“What will you use, then? Do we share or something?” I take the heavy book and set it in my lap.
Jonah reaches in his bag and produces an iPad. “I got it.” He smiles and leans back in his seat.
“Right,” I mumble. “There’s an app for that.”
Jonah laughs louder, his shoulders shaking as Eden sits on the other side of him. “She’s funny,” he says to her.
Reluctantly, I make eye contact with Eden.
You see, it’s clear to me she has a thing for him. At least, it is when looking at their interactions through my “regular people” standards. She blushes when she sees him and laughs a little longer at the things he says. In Secularville, USA, even the hint that your friend likes someone means that they’re 100% off-limits until a relationship decision has been made. And, most times, after that.
Here, though? I don’t know what the rules surrounding all of that are. When my eyes connect with Eden’s, there’s nothing but elation there. She’s nodding along with Jonah’s assertion that I’m funny, and there isn’t a hint of a claw coming from her buffed and polished nails.
I hold up the book. “He lent me his Bible,” I feel the need to explain.
She waves her hand in the air. “He’s always prepared.”
I have so many jokes on the tip of my tongue, but before I can spit any of them out the lights over us are dimmed and lights facing the stage-like area are turned on, revealing a band.
“Welcome to Carter University!” the lead singer bellows into the microphone.
Everyone around me goes nuts, clapping and cheering as they rise to their feet. I follow suit, noting the band’s name on the bass drum: Water on Fire. Having thoroughly researched all things “Student Life” at CU, I’m not surprised to see the university’s main worship band taking the stage.
The band is made up of a mix of male and female CU students, and the roster of the group changes as members graduate and new members join the fold. There’s a percussionist, a couple of guitars, and a keyboard, along with several microphone stands. But that’s standard instrumental stuff. What’s not so standard is the large projection screen behind them displaying the words to the songs they’re singing.
They start with what I take to be a very common contemporary worship song, given I hear it on the Christian music station daily covered by many different artists. I sing along and feel electrified by the talent of the group and the energy from all of those around me. Most everyone in the room, including my roommate and Jonah, has their hands raised. Some all the way up to the sky, some out to their sides, some only lifting one hand—or both. Either way, there’s lots of open praising around here.
And I’m uncomfortable. It’s not even that I can’t lift my hands. It’s that I don’t want to. What’s the point? Can’t I just sing along? I happen to know this song by heart so I
’m able to close my eyes and rid my sight of the raised hands and focus on the words.
Blessed be the name of the Lord…
There’s a slow bit in this song that leaves Bridgette sniffling as she sings through whatever emotion the words have brought up. During this portion, I hear prayers springing up around me. Some in whisper, some in talk-volume. I tune into the voice on my right.
“Thank you, Jesus,” Jonah prays in a fierce whisper. “Thank you for leading me here. Guide my words and actions, Lord. Help me be a light. Let me hear you, Lord Jesus…”
It’s the most I’ve heard him speak since I met him yesterday, and I’m wrought with emotion. I feel like I’m violating his privacy somehow, though he’s well aware we’re all in public. Permeating my discomfort is a heavy sense of love. Love. Capital L. Not for Jonah, but for his clear passion for God, felt not just through his words but in the way they’re delivered. Among his young friends, next to a relative stranger, as he embarks on something he’s waited years for.
The song comes to a close, and after two more energizing and passionate numbers, the lead singer of the band asks us to bow our heads.
“Father,” he begins, slightly out of breath from the singing and moving across stage, “we thank you for bringing us here this morning for the start of what promises to be an amazing, Spirit-filled year.”
Around me, my peers offer their agreement in mumbled words.
“Amen.”
“Yes.”
“Hallelujah.”
I’m finding it hard to focus on the words he’s saying because all I’m praying for is to not fall apart when Roland takes the stage. Part of the reason I kept my eyes closed through the songs was to avoid searching for him. I don’t know how he operates during a service. Does he stay backstage until the band is done? Does he worship next to the parishioners?
I simply don’t know.
The last time I saw him was a week before my high school graduation in June. Mom asked him not to come to the ceremony. She said she was afraid it would attract attention from anyone in our liberal town who might know who he is. Trust me, no one would know who he is. I think she was afraid it would take my attention away from her. So I asked him for lunch afterward. Before that, I saw him in the fall of my senior year when he was in town and I met him for lunch to tell him I’d be applying to Carter. When I was a sophomore we got to meet up—you guessed it—for lunch when he was in town on “business.” I think I was the business, to be honest... Lunches have defined our relationship up until this point.
This morning, though, and the year ahead, will change everything.
“Please be seated,” I hear as my knees give out. I’m sure it was the lead singer of the band who said it, but in this moment I’m having trouble distinguishing between human voices and His voice.
Just because I wasn’t raised like the kids around me doesn’t mean I’ve been deprived of spiritual connection. My heart has felt God since before I really knew what to do with it. All I can do now is beg God to keep me in one piece.
There he is.
Without introduction, Roland strides to the microphone in the center of the stage with his classic charismatic swagger. He sets his Bible and what looks like an iPad on the small stand to his left. He’s wearing dark blue jeans, a short sleeved black button-down shirt—untucked—and the black Converse sneakers I’ve come to assign as his trademark. His sandy hair is longer than I’ve ever seen, and I account this to the fact he returned from Africa only yesterday. The front of his hair seems to stay away from his face with a little help from styling product. I wonder idly if he does his hair or if there’s some Spiritual Beautification Team on his side.
Roland takes a deep breath. His eyes scan over the crowd and I can’t help but wonder if he’s looking for me.
I lift my chin, swallowing hard to keep any overzealous tears at bay as I study him. The man who signed away his paternal rights to me without a second thought.
Sure, I’ve heard the sermons. The ones about his guilt and agony over decisions made in his sinful flesh, rather than under the guidance of a loving Jesus he discovered at the bottom of a bottle of bourbon.
He smiles and I see the dimple. In the cheek opposite the one mine sits in, it looks like we’re two halves of the same smile. It’s infectious—much more so than my smile has ever been, I’m sure—but, man, if it doesn’t look like I’m staring in a mirror… Our hair is different in color—my waves are from him—but that’s where the dissimilarities stop. In appearance anyway.
I’ve not let myself get close enough to him emotionally to see what other commonalities we share. What if discovering similarities in our personalities make me angry with him, myself, or Mom? Or God?
It hits me in the chest again that I’ve enrolled at Carter University to learn just as much about myself as about him, this man of faith preparing to address 1,500 enlistees in God’s army.
If he found Jesus, I find myself wondering, where was Jesus for me? Did Jesus think it was a-okay for me to not have my birth father around? Was Jesus hovering over the moment Mom met Dan, and I was granted a “normal” life I might not have had otherwise? Did Roland ever ask to be an active part of my life? Mom never told me if there had been any conversation about that, and Roland’s never said anything to me.
He’s been nothing but respectful of the strict boundaries my mom set between the two of us. He never talks with me about the relationship he wishes we’d have, always going on about his gratefulness that I choose to let him in even a little bit. And his gratefulness toward my mother for not telling him to take a hike.
“Good morning, Carter University,” he starts in a remarkably soft tone. A few students quietly respond with their greetings.
His accent is muddled. Southern, but only enough to catch my ear. I doubt my friends notice. It’s always sounded like this on TV, but never in person with me. His Wikipedia page clearly indicates he’s from the Midwest, but I know too little about that region of the country to know if this is authentic.
That dimple grows deeper and from the jumbo-tron I can see playful mischief in Roland’s eyes as he bellows, “Good morning, Carter University!”
I jump as shouts and applause crash through the crowd at a deafening volume. Roland seems to gain energy form this response, and he paces quickly to one end of the stage. “Who’s ready for a God-filled, Jesus-centered year?” he inquires passionately with the perma-smile I’ve come to associate with his on-stage persona. It could very well be how he is in real-life, too, though I haven’t had the opportunity to study that for any meaningful length of time. A disadvantage I’d planned to rectify as I sent in my application for the university.
“Let’s pray.” He bows his head and everyone around me does the same.
I can’t move my eyes from him. I’ve seen him on television for years and recognize these postures and his order of operations, but now it’s real. And my tears well as his voice petitions God.
My God.
“Heavenly Father, wrap your arms of protection around this incoming freshman class. Guide their hearts and minds, Lord, as they face temptations set in motion by the Evil One.”
Whoa, way to open with Satan…
“Lord Jesus,” he continues as his voice unmistakably starts to shake, “guide their actions. Spare them from the regret of sin…”
I cough as a sob rips through my chest and floods my face. Digging my elbows into my knees, I cradle my head in my hands. Then, anger swirls in.
I’m tired of being a byproduct of sin.
CHAPTER SIX
Move
I missed 95% of Roland’s sermon. This means I missed 95% of the entire service since these churches operate with three or four opening songs, then a long sermon and it’s over. No guided scripture readings or anything like I’m used to.
Still, having heard Roland’s “regret of sin” speech one time too many, I zoned out. I cried through some of it and stared blankly at the stage for the rest. Now everyone
is saying “amen” and standing, greeting each other and talking about what an incredible Message it was.
Weakly, I rise to my feet. The Bible in my hand feels like it weighs ten tons, and I exude more effort than is probably necessary to hand it back to Jonah.
“Thanks,” I mumble, my voice startlingly devoid of life.
Jonah stands and wraps his hand around the edge of the book, leaving his hand in place for a moment before placing the book in his bag. I’m left staring off into space, though when Jonah rights himself after zipping his bag, it’s clear to me that it looks like I’m staring at him.
“Are you okay?” he asks, snapping me to attention in time to see a devastating amount of emotion on his face.
Thankfully, my armor of quick-wit kicks in, and I shrug. “Church, huh?”
He grins and nods along. “I get it. There’s a lot of pressure on us now, and it felt crazy good to have that prayer prayed over us, huh?”
I nod, not knowing if he’s referring to the opening prayer Roland cast over us or another one that I undoubtedly missed.
Jonah slings his backpack on his shoulders and stuffs his hands in his pockets. “Well, I’m off to track down Water on Fire to see if I can score some practice sessions with them.
“The band?” I say, finally focusing on our conversation.
“Yep. My parents are hesitant about their music but, man, if they can stir all of that up inside me…I want to be a part of that. See ya.” Jonah turns and says his goodbye to Eden, who looks animated as he nods to the stage.
I should have had that reaction. I figure the reason behind my social awkwardness for the past two days is due to the anticipation and anxiety surrounding seeing Roland for the first time. We’d agreed to meet at the end of my first week of classes—before I would attend my first New Life service that Sunday.
He hadn’t told me he was preaching today. It wasn’t last minute, even though it was kept under wraps—as evidenced by the mere speckling of students who knew about it. But he knew. He knew and he didn’t tell me. I’m too distracted by that to focus on anything else.
Jesus Freaks: Sins of the Father Page 5
