Whatever you're facing...
Heaven Can Begin Now

"The church affiliation of the husband will constitute the church membership of his dependents," I quoted our marriage certificate. Since John had been raised in the Presbyterian church, we started there. Then Methodist, Congregational, Baptist, Church of Christ, and so on, some thirteen churches in four towns, a couple of Sundays at each.

At first we tried going as a family, but with children ages five, two, and three months, I spent most of the service retrieving crayons from under the pew. So John started going one week, I the next, then comparing notes.

"Really friendly people."

"They certainly made me feel welcome."

"They couldn't have been nicer."

Sunday after Sunday, outstretched hands, smiling faces, and... "Where shall we try next?" What we were looking for we didn't know, just that we weren't finding it.

What we did find was a new verb, fellowship. "So glad you could fellowship with us today" We were invited to fellowship at coffee hours and discussion groups, potluck suppers and Thursday night couples' clubs. We were pressed to attend men's breakfasts and women's luncheons.

The end of the experiment came for me six months after it began. I was leaving a steepled, white-clapboard, Norman-Rockwell-painting of a church, trying to recall the points in the sermon to repeat to John, when a woman in a red felt hat seized my arm. "The church fair is next month will you make an apron?" she asked. All one sentence.

She must have thought I was either deaf or dim-witted as I blinked at her without a word. The truth was, I was fighting tears. It was not yet a year, at this point, since the days when I'd been afraid even to step past the door of the little room upstairs, and my confidence was still fragile.

Will you make an apron? evoked my losing battle to acquire the skills "every" woman of the 1950s possessed. Sewing especially... when I tried to poke a piece of