Yours Truly, … Emily Christine Davis

by Emily Christine Davis My Dearest Churches, You are probably wondering why I’m writing. It’s been a while since we saw each other, and I know I’m not keen on seeing you again. Because of you I struggle a lot, with people, with trusting, and with obeying. Nothing else could have hurt me in the same way. There is no other person, group, or organization which holds the position that you do in Christianity and in my world, but there is also no one else in the world who could have given me what you gave me. The first of you I remember meeting is the megachurch. You were so big that we took shuttles across the parking lot to attend church; your nicknames were ‘The Jesus Dome’ and ‘Six Flags Over Jesus’. I met you there because we needed a new church, and my grandparents knew you. But you didn’t want me then. You shamed my parents for being from Las Vegas; and you shamed my family for not being Baptist; and you shunned us, locking us out of your world – effectively kicking us out of your home. With your average weekly audience at six thousand people, why couldn’t you overlook me and my family? Why did you have to start our endless journey? I think of you often in this place, and I wonder who I could’ve been if we had worked out then. I might not have been as resilient, but I could’ve been happier. I met you again when we went to a small church. It was nice to see you again, and I really wanted us to get along this time, as you probably remember. I saw you every Sunday morning with my parents and my brother. You were smaller in your numbers and your campus, but

Creative Works… 223 your slow Sunday morning hymnals were the same as they had been before, and your sermons always seemed like you were so much more focused on preaching at me than teaching me or having a conversation. You let my brother make friends with everyone and always have a place to sit – never wandered around, looking for an open seat that wouldn’t put pressure on those around to talk to him, but also didn’t leave him in a cluster of untouched folding chairs. I went to youth group on Sunday nights too, every Sunday night trying to fit in with all the kids my age, with all the kids I knew from school. But every time I came to see you, it seemed like all you wanted me to do was go away. I’m not very good at picking up cues; so, never giving me any friends, always seating me alone, and even making my brother slip seamlessly into your social circle, didn’t give me any clue. I’m sorry for ceaselessly bothering you. When I finally got your message – Go Away, I don’t want you here – I left you alone. Luckily, because I never managed to fit in, it was easy to let you go. I no longer plagued you with my awkwardness, but you left a mark on me. When you told me to go away, that left a wound. A wound that wouldn’t heal well – one whose nasty scar still disrupts my life. I still try to see you sometimes, but every time I do that scar pulls on my muscles, preventing them from stretching properly. It stops my lungs from expanding all the way, makes my heart pound like I’m running from my mortality, pushes the tears to the brim of my eyelids, and it threatens to tear and spill blood out onto the floor of your home, but I wouldn’t want to stain your pews. All of this you’ve done to me, and you have made it so hard to obey God and go to your house, the house that

is supposed to be God’s. I do have to thank you. I don’t know if I can move past what you did to me and what you didn’t do for me, but I must thank you. If it weren’t for you pushing me out, I never would have found God on my own. When you shoved me out of your home, He accepted me into His. I was buried under your thoughts and my own thoughts, but He was there to guide me through the labyrinth. Thanks to you, I found a comfort and closeness with God; even at my worst, I somehow was drawn closer. If I had been able to rely on you as a friend, or as family, I might not have had to turn to Him. If you had been there to catch me when I fell, He might not have been there to stop me from tripping – or rather, I might not have let Him. To be honest with you, I don’t know where we stand, and I don’t know how you’ll react to this. You probably have a different perspective, and not one as bitter. You might not want to receive this letter and be told how you let me down, but it is one that I had to write. I hope one day we will be able to pleasantly accept each other in our worlds, but I struggle to move forward. So, I don’t know if we will ever realistically coexist, but one day, I hope we might both be ready to try again. Yours truly, Discarded Kin