Eyedea and I Could Never Again Be as Happy as I Was When I Was in the Seventh Grade Lyrics

Repentance

by Kayla Michelle Smith

Ane Friday each fall, Missionary Baptist girls from all over the state of Mississippi were excused from school to journey in their church vans to the cabins of Camp Garaywa for the annual Girls Missionary Auxiliary overnight retreat, which was kind of similar the Missionary Baptist Church Association's version of Girl Scouts. Starting in 4th form, girls completed one stride of the GMA program each year through the end of loftier school. We began as Maidens, and then progressed up through Ladies, Ladies-in-Waiting, Princesses, and so finally the Queen steps: Queen, Regal Queen, Royal, Superior, and Sovereign. For the rest of the year, we met at church every Wednesday night to scribble the answers to the make full-in-the-blank questions in our Bible-written report workbooks and memorize passage afterward passage of scripture. The annual overnight retreat was the pinnacle of our efforts, the unofficial transition from our current programme footstep on to the adjacent, and nearly importantly, the simply night of the year nosotros got to spend with our friends in a cabin away from dwelling. Since my mom often went as a chaperone as soon as my older sister began the program, I got to attend the retreat years earlier I was even old enough to be a participant. There were few things in the globe I was more than excited well-nigh than being former enough to first GMAs and few nights of the year I looked forward to more the retreat.

Between our arrival and the evening worship service, we'd have arts and crafts, dinner, and so reconvene in the motel to put on our favorite dresses and fix each other's hair. At the service, we sang hymns and a preacher gave what felt like a never-catastrophe sermon. Sometimes a guest missionary would speak. We'd recite together our AIM (a pledge promising to keep our minds centered on the Lord, to keep our bodies as temples of God, and to help Missionary Baptist Churches spread the gospel), Fidelity, and Star Ideals, vowing that we would "ever seek to dwell in the realm of prayer, Bible report, faith, honey and service." I didn ' t know much nearly personal Bible written report, service, or what my body being a "temple" meant, merely I knew these rituals were important.

During fifth form, Military camp Garaywa was booked for another upshot, so our GMA retreat was in a different camp for the starting time time with what I assume were unlike organizers. During our evening service, there was a praise band — something I ' d never seen before — with acoustic guitars and a drum set. We sang a few contemporary praise songs, lively in comparison to the traditional hymns we usually sang with only piano accompaniment and the lyrics of which we ' d known for much longer than nosotros ' d been able to read them in the hymnal. We swayed to the soft drum beat and guitar rhythm. Some of the girls from other churches clapped their hands. We hadn ' t known before that worship music could exist fun.

Mrs. Ruth*, one of my church building's GMA Bible study teachers, had come with u.s. as a chaperone. She was probably in her mid-60s, made of precipitous angles, and had tall white hair that reminded me of a bird ' due south crown. She waited until the service was over to tell the states that our behavior was ungodly and sinful, and that we should be ashamed of ourselves. Mrs. Ruth lived her life past the scripture that she surely knew better than we did, and maybe better than any other person alive, and then who were we to argue? Nosotros stood, somber and guilty, simply as nosotros did on the Wednesday nights at church building when she scolded us for wearing shorts in the house of God, telling united states that immature ladies were to clothing skirts or dresses.

Mrs. Ruth asked us to become around the circle and take turns confessing what we ' d done and why it was wrong. Singing the song " Jesus Party " turned out to be our biggest transgression. We each took our turn proverb that Jesus was not a party.

The music wasn ' t the only problem. That twelvemonth, the pastor preached with a contemporary translation of the Bible, and during service the next morning, a magician was supposed to perform a magic show. My mom, who'd also come up with us equally a chaperone, watched Mrs. Ruth demand our confessions, feeling as uncertain and confused as we were. She'd liked the music and didn't remember anything was wrong with our swaying. But she had no feel with other translations of the Bible, and she didn't know exactly what the Bible said nearly magic being evil, then she didn't feel like she could defend us. I don't recollect feeling guilty. I also don't remember feeling like Mrs. Ruth was incorrect.

Mrs. Ruth demanded that we leave early the side by side twenty-four hours earlier the morning service. That was the last year I went to GMA military camp. My sister, Whitney, left that church for another one a few months later, and I joined her as soon equally I was former plenty to first the youth group at the stop of 6th grade. That same year, my mom joined us in an effort to be supportive. My dad continued to collect the offering each Sunday at our old church, appalled at our expose. Information technology was a couple of years before he joined united states of america, as well. At our new church building, Whitney and I sang in the youth choir, where we were encouraged to sway and clap all we pleased.

***

Things I learned in my first fourteen years attention church:

• How to discover whatsoever verse in the Bible in less than 10 seconds

• How to recite the 66 books of the Bible in order

• How to memorize and perfectly recite dozens of chapters and hundreds of verses of the King James Version of the Bible

• Every word to several dozen hymns, especially if the hymn was over a hundred years old and featured a lot of " Thee ' s" and " Chiliad ' s"

• That homosexuality is a disgusting sin for which one deserves the fires of hell

• That interracial wedlock is unnatural and against the volition of God (according to scripture, they say —though no one can tell you what scripture)

• That abortion is murder

• It ' s non of import to know annihilation near politics, but if anyone asks, you definitely vote Republican

• The world is a terrible identify and we all deserve penalty

• How to feel guilty near everything

***

At my new church, I joined a Bible study form for 8th grade girls. Our grouping leader, Claire, was a senior with blonde pilus and the whitest teeth I ' d always seen. She was captain of the cheerleading squad and had won the Junior Miss Pageant championship for the county the previous year. What this Bible written report really entailed was a lot of male child-talk. During a few meetings, we each wrote messages to our future husbands nearly how we were " waiting patiently for them. " This necessitated the assumption that nosotros would all accept future husbands, which didn ' t seem to strike anyone as particularly presumptuous at the time. During ane meeting, Claire brought her boyfriend, Matt, and had us write anonymous " male child questions " on slips of paper for him to answer. How often do guys really think about sexual activity? How can you tell if a boy likes you lot? Matt must have been 17 or xviii at the time, which seemed old, but non old enough that I didn ' t feel humiliated on his behalf. He was quiet and avoided eye contact as he answered our questions. I don ' t remember writing any.

During a weekend retreat that bound, our youth leader, Dan, preached about the sin of sexual desire. He told usa most the time that the sin of animalism overcame him, but all I could really parse out of the story was that he kissed his high school girlfriend while they were watching Tv set alone. Is he censoring it , I wondered, or have I missed something? We signed abstinence pledges that weekend, every bit I had before and would many times after that at various other camps and retreats.

Making promises made me nervous. How could anyone know how they ' d feel in a year? In five years? What if you changed your mind?

During some other retreat, Dan spoke virtually repentance and forgiveness, which prompted an intense ii hours of public confessions. One of my classmates admitted to cut herself. A guy I didn't know confessed that he'd attempted suicide. One of the most pop senior girls stood. Her friends in the pew adjacent to her and behind her pressed closer for support. " I never told anyone, " she said. " At a party final year, I got really drunk, and I … and …" Her friends reached out to squeeze her manus or bear upon her shoulder. "… I lost my virginity. And I ' m pitiful. I ' m then deplorable. " And and then she was buried by the mob of friends embracing her in a weepy and impenetrable group hug. I watched from a few rows backside her. Who was the guy? I wondered. What did it feel similar? Did you lot like information technology? Does he regret it, too?

I couldn ' t relate to whatever of it. At 15, sex was and so far outside of my reality that it may besides have belonged to a unlike species. The church taught me almost everything I knew near sex — that it was a frightening, sacred, and consuming matter that had the power to destroy a person emotionally, a night form of magic to never stray near until after your wedding ceremony. This seemed obvious to me. My torso was a "temple," afterwards all. Plus, I was too shy to talk to guys, much less to touch them, and it was hard for me to imagine that social anxiety going abroad.

Of course, I was fascinated by sexual practice, in the same way that I was fascinated by all things mysterious and powerful. The Bermuda triangle. Hitler and his Nazis. Ouija boards. I saw what information technology did to my classmates — cached guilt then deep they could never dig it out. I was afraid of sex activity — afraid of whatever physical intimacy — but not equally agape equally I was of regretting it.

***

Though almost of my peers were raised Christian, not all of them stayed that way. It's sometime during eye school or high schoolhouse that the change oft happens — the angst and pessimism and rebellion. Most of my classmates had a lapse in faith that lasted a few years before they institute it again, even stronger than before. They inundation social media now with Bible verses and prayer requests, pictures of their toddlers in matching pastel dresses for Easter Dominicus, pictures of their husbands/boyfriends with captions proclaiming them "Blessed!" But in that location are also those few who felt they were being brainwashed, completely denounced their organized religion, and never went back to information technology. They are angry however — presumably not at the God they no longer believe in, but at the family unit and civilization that forced faith on them.

Curiosity was my ain form of rebellion. In sixth form at my old church, the Dominicus School instructor told us we shouldn't bring any version of the Bible that wasn't the King James Version to church building, because the other versions were written by "Satan worshippers." Simply then who wrote the King James Version , I wanted to know. God did. No, only I mean, who physically wrote it , I asked. No one knew, and no one cared — God wrote information technology through people . It's wrong to question or doubt. The lack of answers and the discomfort people had with the questions made me want to enquire even more than. My new church building was less resistant to questions than my old one, but as well many were nonetheless left unanswered. I adult an unspoken fearfulness and so that by the middle of loftier school had became likewise overwhelming to ignore — the fearfulness that intelligence and religion were mutually sectional. Church started to feel like a tedious ritual that only made me sad. If being a Christian meant succumbing to ignorance, and so I didn't want it anymore. I never admitted it aloud, but I quit going to church and tried to ignore the expect on my parents' faces when I told them I didn't desire to sing in the youth choir anymore, didn't want to become with them on Sunday forenoon. I kept grasping at conventionalities in God but let become of my belief in the church.

Past the end of high school, I felt trapped in a protective bubble of homogenous thought where I felt I never really belonged in the first identify, and I wanted out. I practical to colleges that emphasized creativity and individualism equally much as cognition. I got into Brown University, which embodied everything I wanted in a school, but as well happened to be 1 of the most aggressively liberal universities in the country. It seemed like the world existed for people both at home in Mississippi and at Dark-brown in blackness or white, and all I could encounter was gray.

***

When I saw men passing out Bibles near the entrance gate at Chocolate-brown the adjacent spring, I felt guilty. Some people stepped effectually them the way they would step around vomit on a sidewalk — averted eyes, pained expressions. Others openly sneered as they walked past. Surely these men knew they ' d be laughed at when they made the decision to come hither. They inappreciably spoke to passersby, just smiled meekly, miniature Bibles extended in wrinkled hands. I stopped.

"I already have one in my room, " I told one homo, " but thanks then much. " His grin didn ' t change equally he nodded, " God bless yous, " and I walked away feeling guilty for not taking it — guilty for my classmates ' scorn, guilty because I knew he didn ' t believe me.

In fact, I had iv Bibles. Two were at home in Mississippi — the leather 1 my grandmother gave me for my 12th birthday and the one my church gave me for graduation, both engraved with my proper name in silverish. The i I actually brought out in public was my copy of The New Testament and Other Early Christian Writings for my New Testament course. And there was the one I didn ' t testify people because it made me await like a religious fanatic — the i I read in its entirety in ninth course, encased in an aqua, flowery Bible cover and highlighted with so many different colors it looked like an 8-year-old tried to decorate every page, with notes in the margins from various summer camps and weekend retreats.

My favorite of those summer camps was called Centrifuge, which for several decades has been considered the official youth summertime camp of the Southern Baptist Convention. The staff and band members at each of the 20 or so army camp locations are practically celebrities in the Southern Baptist chimera. I attended Fuge for the first time the summertime later on seventh form on the campus of Mississippi College, a Baptist college virtually Jackson. It was the get-go church camp I'd been to since the disastrous overnight GMA retreat, and for my 13-year-erstwhile self, zippo could have been more life irresolute. The worship services were like concerts, complete with the cute band members that all the girls spent their complimentary time trying to detect and have pictures of. The staff members were in their 20s, tan from two months of mega-relays and ultimate frisbee, approachable, confident, and happier than anyone I ' d e'er seen. I was happy at that place, also. I imagined attention Mississippi Higher (which I assumed must feel similar Centrifuge year-circular) and being a Fuge staffer in the summers. The campers would love me because I would exist effortlessly cool and non care about information technology. I would no longer take crippling social anxiety. I would fall in love with one of my swain staffers and exist this happy forever.

A year later on, my sister Whitney did get to Mississippi College. She worked at Centrifuge as a staff member and then as banana director for half dozen years. While on staff at Mississippi College, she met her now-husband. They still live near the college, which is coincidentally in the neighborhood where we used to attend the GMA retreat. She chose the life I once idea I wanted.

***

Things I believed I should feel guilty about before I went to college:

• Whatsoever impure (aka sexual) thoughts, curiosities, desires
• Questioning/doubting God
• Non loving people plenty
• Loving the wrong people
• Disappointing my parents/family
• Leaving them to become to Brown
• Refusing to become to church
• Feeling guilty

***

My friends at Brown were atheists, agnostics, and freethinkers — and they causeless I was, besides. People rarely asked me what I believed, and I didn ' t know what I would have told them if they had. Calling myself a Christian didn ' t feel accurate when I resented every connotation that came with the discussion. I didn ' t want to exist pegged as a judgmental and righteous prude. But I wasn ' t sure I could face up the guilt of refuting it, either. If I ' d had strong beliefs, I wouldn ' t take cared if they were ridiculed. If I didn ' t have behavior at all, I could have defied my upbringing completely. But I was always existing betwixt things, always one-half part of them, always on the periphery prepare to step dorsum.

While shopping for classes during my second semester at higher, I wandered into the outset humanities form I found during a spare 60 minutes between 2 other classes — a religious studies grade on the New Testament and the beginnings of Christianity. During the starting time half hour, I learned several things: 1) I knew more than about the text of the New Attestation than anyone else in the room. 2) I also seemed to know more than theology than anyone else in the room. 3) I knew nigh nothing else.

The class would be reading the gospels and Paul ' s epistles in the New Testament also as related texts that weren ' t role of the Biblical canon — gospels that had been left out, texts dating from the same fourth dimension period that had recently been discovered, controversial texts that theologians had no idea what to do with. The class had hardly annihilation to do with theology and was instead well-nigh history — when the books were written, who the authors were, their context in history, discrepancies and contradictions in translation, how " The Bible " came to hateful this item collection of books instead of others, and historical truths that would disprove and ignominy much of theological belief. These were answers I ' d sought for a decade. I registered for the course that day, ravenous for as much every bit I could become.

"I ' m worried near those organized religion classes, " my mom told me on the phone when I rambled for likewise long about what I ' d learned that solar day. " I ' m worried those people are putting weird ideas in your head. " Those people. Those atheists.

"I ' m not interested in believing anything that can ' t stand upward to questions, " I finally told her. She was horrified.

The next semester, I talked my way into an avant-garde senior seminar almost Gnosticism and religious multifariousness in early Christian history. I spent the semester in coffee shops with stacks of ancient texts and Bible translations writing exegeses of the Gnostic texts discovered in Nag Hammadi in 1945. The following year, I took a senior/graduate seminar on the origins of western philosophy. I met with the head of the religious studies department to talk about declaring religious studies equally my second major and to ask almost Ph.D. programs in early Christian history.

"Why don ' t yous discover a church y'all want to become to upward in that location? " my mom would ask. Considering I want this instead , I thought. Because I ' d learned more than about Christianity in iii years of secular study than I had in xviii years at church. I hadn ' t known I ' d been running from anything until I realized I wasn ' t running anymore.

During college, I worked for two summers in Rome, where I walked for miles down the Via Appia Antica to tour catacombs that once hid the bodies of martyrs. I went to a different Roman church every mean solar day — Santa Maria in Trastevere, the showtime place of Christian worship in the city; the Pantheon, converted from a temple to a church in 609 AD; St. Peter ' south Basilica, where Saint Peter is buried. I found a kind of validation in the crumbling buildings. This was history I could see and not only read most. It ' s possible for knowledge to inform faith, I realized. Not eradicate it. What I yet couldn ' t reconcile was the guilt.

***

I didn ' t taste booze until I turned 21. I saw a naked man in person for the first fourth dimension when we did figure drawing in my freshman art grade in higher. I was afraid of concrete intimacy even though I craved it. I was intensely private about the things I still feared regretting. I became an good at evading the truth without lying. I stopped feeling the familiar jolt of surprise when my professors used profanities in class, but they still weren't part of my own vocabulary. College was the offset identify I'd ever met Jews and Muslims and people who practiced religions I knew even less about, and I couldn't make sense of the superiority I'd been taught I was supposed to feel — that my beliefs were right and theirs were wrong. By senior year I felt less guilty about toeing the imaginary line of what I had been told was immoral, and instead I felt ashamed by my lack of guilt.

The delineation of faith and intellect continued throughout college and graduate school. One of my grad schoolhouse professors spent an unabridged lecture berating Christianity.

"This book is a keen success amid us unbelievers, " he said. U.s.a.. " Intellectuals aren ' t religious, " he told us. " Religion equips you with a kind of knowledge, only a imitation noesis. Lack of religion frees you of false consolations — it ' s a more reliable criteria of truth to live your life by. " It never occurred to him that anyone might disagree.

I was tickled during grade, simply also defensive. Of my family, mostly, only besides of myself . And and then in that location was the guilt — at that place were truths behind his stereotyping. I made some of the aforementioned criticisms of Christianity myself, even though I didn ' t desire him to make them. I ' d left one kind of persecution only to find another.

***

During my final year of graduate school in New York, I started having chronic pain that no doctor had answers for, and which caused anxiety that was equally debilitating. After hundreds of dollars of lab work, scans, concrete therapy, musculus relaxers, and benzodiazepines, I felt like I ' d run out of options, and so I canceled all my doctors appointments and went to church building. I wasn ' t sure what I was looking for.

I went to a small church in the East Village that sang hymns and reminded me of home. I went to a larger church that met in the ballroom of a hotel adjacent to Penn Station. I signed up to go to one of their minor groups during the week in an effort to make friends. The first email I received from the group leader told us where to run into for that week's "servant evangelism." I cringed. Retainer. Evangelism. I imagined passing out pamphlets on the street and proselytizing. I had no interest in pushing something personal on anyone who didn't desire it. I never went to the group.

I went to a megachurch then big that thousands of people waited in lines that wrapped all the style around the block for each of their eight Sunday services. The church building met in whatever venue they could observe that could agree the congregation — ballrooms, theaters, dance clubs. I went to the Sunday morning service in a theater in Times Square where I had to walk through a metal detector and have my purse checked to get inside. There were no more empty seats, so an attendant directed me to an expanse of the bottom floor where a oversupply was sitting on the footing. The congregation contained both celebrities and people who hadn ' t showered in two weeks. A professional light show accompanied the praise band's music, the lyrics of which were displayed on multiple jumbotrons throughout the room. People around me screamed the lyrics, danced, cheered, and wept with what I presume was joy. After the music, the pastor came onto the stage for the sermon. He was in his mid-thirties and looked like he had stepped out of a Rolling Stone photoshoot. His tank top displayed his chest, and his leather jacket covered the tattoos on his artillery. He stood onstage with the band, and I ' d never seen so much leather in ane identify. He was magnetic. The sight of him would have made Mrs. Ruth ' s heart stop.

Was this closer to what I wanted? Had it been my subconscious goal to hang onto faith while getting as far away as information technology would allow me to get from the make of Christianity that existed in those cabins in the forest? I left before the service ended so I could crush the crowd to the subway. But equally I would the adjacent calendar week.

*Note: Most names in this essay accept been changed.

---

Kayla Smith grew up in South Mississippi merely spent the past decade living in Rhode Island, New York, Tennessee, and Washington, D.C. She received her Master of Fine Arts from Columbia University and her Available of Arts from Brown University. Her work has appeared in The Toast , Deep Southward Magazine , Allegory Ridge , and Gravel .

Featured image courtesy Leland Francisco.

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Source: https://theseventhwave.co/repentance/

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