OK, so I’m not a son and to be honest I haven’t been off spending my father’s money on riotous living either but I sort of feel like the prodigal son coming home. When I was a child our family was very involved in the community of the local church. We were on the cleaning roster and the flower roster and my mother’s cousin who lived with us was one of the Sunday School teachers. We were involved, we belonged, we were part of the family. Alright, so my family didn’t actually attend church as regularly as some but then I guess they probably didn’t have a household of ten people including two elderly, bedridden parents. My mother and aunts looked after their parents in their own home until they died and I think around that time my father was probably working long shifts six days a week while trying to take my grandfather’s place on the family farm. It didn’t leave a lot of time and energy for things outside the farm for anyone but we were still raised in the faith and the family were involved wherever they could be. The people of the church knew us and we knew them, we belonged.
When I was a teenager my parents started attending the church more regularly, a different church but the one they had been married in so still a community they had a connection to. We were again part of a community, part of a family if you will, we belonged. We did the flowers, my mother went to the craft afternoons. I didn’t go to youth group but only because I was the only youth in the congregation. Then I got married and we mostly kept going to the same church or to my mother-in-law’s church, we still knew everyone and belonged.
When we moved to another town to be closer to my husband’s work we found a new church and a new church family. We attended bible study groups and briefly volunteered to help run the youth group. And then, my husband started pulling away from the church and managed to take the rest of us with him. I tried to make sure that the children were still raised in the faith but it was a constant battle to be able to take them to church. My husband often wouldn’t go, leaving me with the choice of going without him and facing the questions or staying home. More and more if I went to church without him our older son would choose to stay home with dad. When he did agree to go, he would often do something to make sure we were late because he knew how much it bothered me. I no longer felt part of the church family, in fact I often had people ask if I was visiting and never really worked out how to answer them when I’d been a member of the church longer than they had. It was embarrassing and, to my shame, it got easier to stay home with my family than to worship with our church family.
About four and a half years ago God started prompting me to get back into fellowship with others and then my son and my husband both hit rock bottom mentally and I took the kids home to my family and we ended up back at my first church. We were part of a family again, the children went to Sunday School, we knew everyone and everyone knew us.
When everything settled down and I moved home with the younger children we insisted on going to our church fortnightly, which meant a 45 min drive each way, and went to our old church, five minutes down the road, with my husband the other week. It wasn’t long before the delaying tactics and excuses began. The children and I didn’t feel comfortable at what we increasingly referred to as “his church” and my husband made excuses to not go with us to “our church”.
Earlier this year we decided to go to the other local church of our denomination just to see if there was somewhere a bit closer that we could attend if we were pushed for time or energy. The children and I almost immediately felt at home, my husband went once before our separation. After our separation I’ve been going most weeks. We’ve been getting involved in working bees, attending congregational lunches, volunteering to help out at the church market. The children have been experiencing what it means to really belong to a church for the first time in their lives. This week I was approached to consider taking over as the Market Co-ordinator next year. I’m gobsmacked.
I have come home.