Excerpt From a Personal Essay

The sepia-colored photograph of a curly-haired girl sitting in the grainy sunlight of a wooden-framed window is exactly how I recall myself at age five.  When I happened upon that photo in one of Mother’s old albums, I was there again, half remembering, half supposing.   

For the most part, my early history is pretty foggy.  All the more surprising that one of my clearest memories was God’s admonition to me at age five: “Jonnie, I have given you all of these talents because I have plans for you.” 

I responded:  “Okay God.” 

Certainly I do not remember whether I heard a voice, an actual voice, or whether the thought just appeared fully formed in my head, but I did not then, and do not now, doubt its authenticity.  Whatever, whoever God may be, he had set me on a purposeful journey.

* * *

In my earliest years I remember growing up in an ordinary blue collar neighborhood on the east side of Ft. Worth.  Mrs. Blalock was the friendly neighborhood lady who owned the corner grocery store, where my brother Delbert and I fetched Mother her cigarettes and other sundries, and curiously wandered through the crowded, towering maze of aisles.   

When I was about six, Mrs. Blalock invited Delbert and I to walk with her to the Baptist Church on Sunday mornings, when she exchanged her apron for a respectable although rumpled gray suit with a lace pocket handkerchief that hinted of lilac powder. 

I can still feel my childish rapture as I was gathered into the Sunday School fold.   I loved the tiny black Bible they gave me, and the stickers I earned for the back pages by memorizing weekly verses.  I believed the hugs, and the hymn: 

               Jesus loves the little children,

               All the children of the world,

               Yellow, red, black and white,

               They are precious in his sight. . . 

The sanctuary was an awe-inspiring structure, with towering mosaic windows that soared far above the miniature congregation,  and functioned as prisms for the morning light.  The sturdy oak pews were so tall my tiny legs did not reach the floor, but there I quietly sat nestled against Mrs. Blalock’s ample arms, in rapt wonder.  

The podium was imposing on its high gallery and from this divine throne the preacher in long black robes shouted out our sins.  On one fateful Sunday morning he raged against the evils of liquor, and rigidly pronounced that any man that took a drop of drink was doomed to hell-fire-and-damnation! 

My body snapped to attention.  An icy resolve framed my thoughts:  “No, preacher, you are wrong.  My daddy drinks beer, and he isn’t going to hell.” 

At six years old I did not understand theology, but I knew my dad— that six foot giant who labored on a roof in the Texas sun, and came home late every night, tired and burnt and hungry.  A cold beer at day’s end was one of his few pleasures and I knew that no God worth having was going to condemn him, and if that was how God actually operated, then I wasn’t going to love him.