Chapter 1: Aliens, Church & My Mom's Wedding Ring

My church had long wooden pews and a slick cold linoleum floor. I distinctly remember the Sunday when my family moved from sitting on the right side of the sanctuary to sitting on the left side. There were four seating areas including the two center sections. We were always late and there were more empty pews on the left. My mother was never going to sit in the center pews. The back was where the old people sat and the front two benches seemed invisibly reserved for one of several families who helped at every event.

It was during this season of sitting on the left side of the church - that my mother lost the diamond from her wedding ring. It was before she got sick, but I was old enough to wonder if we could replace it.

My father always insisted on sitting on the end of the aisle so he would get the wooden arm rest. Usually, the order was my brother first and farthest from my father. He would slide all the way to the end of the pew and make cardboard computers out of the green attendance cards. My mom would sit next to my brother to separate us from fighting. I would sit alone between my mom and dad - unless my brother needed to avoid strangers - in which case we'd both end up sandwiched between the parents.

When we got up to take communion, the usher would stand next to our aisle and motion to my father. The entire row would rise and file out, my father stepping aside for my mother and I.  I would go first, then my mom would stand behind me and put her arms around my waist or shoulders and we would wait in the aisle until it was our turn to walk up the steps. I didn't like being first, because this meant I had to pay attention and make sure I lined up on the correct side of the aisle. Sometimes there were two lines and too often I ended up being the line leader for the entire string of adults and children behind me. I never messed up.

The pews were a dark wood and upholstered with olive green material that was hard and made impressions on your skin when you sat one way too long. I always attempted to pay attention, but I had difficulty understanding how the Bible verses fit with the topic. I don't believe I got much useful information from the sermon. I learned that Jesus died on the cross and he called the fishermen to be his disciples.  But the pastor would also speak about not being able to set his VCR, about the baseball glove he was going to give his grandson or even the score for the Padres or Chargers.  I would hear the story, but I couldn't make the jump to determine how it applied to my life. In Sunday School I learned the basic stories but they were like a dot-to-dot page in my brain that I could never quite tidy up.

Every Sunday I would sit in church in my nice clothes with my legs crossed and my hands neatly folded and I would daydream. My brain harbored multiple ponderings... Are we aliens? If there are aliens, how far are we from them? Are there alternate earths out there where similar earth-like things are going on? Are we the only ones out there?

I knew my mom had the lost the diamond out of her wedding ring. I don't remember how I found this out but I remember looking under the pews, putting my eye next to the hard slick linoleum floor - in hopes of seeing it. I think we all knew it was gone, but we looked anyways. I wondered if my father would replace it, or what you do in this circumstance.  I am sad I never asked to try on my mother's ring. I had never seen it off her finger, but I think soon after she lost the diamond she stopped wearing the slim gold band - its little claw now clutching only air.

At church we had the standard Christmas production, requiring a costume and the ability to show up on a couple Saturday mornings. At least twice I was offered the choice between playing an angel or a shepherd. Most of the girls were angels and most of the boys were shepherds. It took little thought for me to make the decision. On a surface level I didn't like what the angels wore - white gowns like dresses, sparkly gold halos and cardboard wings like butterflies. Who are these people?

I think the shepherds appealed to me because I pictured them as honest blue collar workers. The shepherds walked out around the altar, rubbed their eyes to show they were tired, then laid down and pretended to sleep until an angel appeared to them.

The shepherd’s costume of  bath robe, bare feet and towel with rope around your head was something I could literally grasp. Who would imagine you would ever be allowed to wear your father's bathrobe in church?

Although the story of Jesus's birth in a manager called for angels, I didn't believe they really existed. Like Jesus and the disciples, angels seemed more like characters in a story and less like real people. I had never seen an angel. The Bible could have just as easily stated that Jabba the Hut and Luke Skywalker walked with Jesus. I was never asked to be Mary. But in one production, I did get to ride my skateboard across the stage.

How was I going to apply the Bible to my life, if like a movie - I wasn't sure it was true? I believed the Bible because I was supposed to.

Yet as a young teenager, I gave a sermon in this church not once, but twice. The first time, I won a speech contest and they asked me to speak  in the evening chapel. There were not more than a dozen people. The second time I spoke was youth Sunday and I gave my sermon along with several others, in front of the entire 300-400 attendees in the morning service.

In the first sermon I spoke about how my faith had been changed in the summer between sixth and seventh grade. My mom had let me go to beach camp and I was one of the youngest kids there. We slept in a church classroom in San Clemente and each day we hiked what seemed an endless sidewalk down to the beach. I was known as the kid with the green shoelaces, and from the older girls I learned I was at the age I should be shaving my legs.

On one of the final evenings of the San Clemente beach camp, the pastor who was teaching us told us his baby boy was very sick at home that night. He said he would appreciate if the group could spend a few minutes in silence and pray for his son. I prayed because I was asked. I was familiar with prayer, but unfamiliar with the visible results. The following day the pastor informed us that his son's fever had cracked shortly after 9:15pm - the exact time we had prayed. I held onto this proof and this was what I spoke about in the first sermon.