Sunday Morning Gospel and A Proper Vacation

Sunday Morning Gospel Hour

While growing up, every single Sunday meant going to church. When I was about 8 maybe, it was a new-fangled thing that Catholics decided that you could go to church on Saturday night, instead of Sunday. Saturday night mass was early, like 5:00 pm. I think the Irish Catholics decided that. It worked out great if you were going to party Saturday night after mass, then you could sleep in. Have your party and your hangover with your faith intact. Well, I digress, I’m trying to put together a coherent piece on Sunday morning. Cause it’s Sunday morning, I’ve got the radio on and the jazz, gospel and Jesus songs are playing away.

Jesus will be there for you, he will wipe away every tear for you, he will be with you there in the hard times, just ask, just look, look to Jesus. I’m going with Jesus all the way.

These lyrics take me back to well, when I used to believe that stuff. For a while. Now I think maybe Jesus was my rebound romance after my marriage and then a brief engagement ended. Hey, He was there for me, He promised to love me forever, forgive me too, and then let me into heaven when the time came. For a while, but then, after a while I’d say things like, “If I hadn’t got religion, I’d get religion.” The balm of Jesus being there all the time was wearing off. You know why? Jesus wasn't there. Not ever, really. Jesus didn't talk to me. Jesus didn't tell me how to make all the long hard decisions I had to make as a single mom with three kids with lots of needs in a complicated world. I'd talk to Jesus, ya know, but He didn't talk back. It was lonely.

So, maybe I’m stuck on all this because I’m in the grieving period for this lost love. For this romance I’ve had since childhood. A romance where it was all about love and devotion and songs and lyrics and death on a cross and a glorious looking toward heaven. All for a girl who’s never even had a proper vacation. How could you imagine heaven, when you've never had a proper vacation? What good is heaven, when life is hard now? Come on everybody, clap your hands, lift up your hands, say yeah, say yeah, for Jesus, lift me up Jesus. Lift me up.


A Proper Vacation

I’ve been doing some introspection, well, more than some. I’ve been feeling resentful about people going on vacations. It’s part of my shadow self that I’m trying to befriend, OK? If you can’t take the dark stuff, don’t read any further. It gets bad. I was with my mom and sister and brother last month and we talked about our family ‘vacations’ on the farm of my dad’s friend Fred Moser that we'd take while growing up. 8 kids crammed into a station wagon, complete with barf can for my sister who always got car sick, fishing poles and minnows, driving up north for hours. My dad would be resentful if he had to stop for us to use the gas station stinky bathroom. There we sat, talking about the great times, about the freaky dog, about the electrical fence, and how Fred would trick my brothers into getting a shock from the fence. There’s all these photos of me, all of maybe 5 years and 30 pounds sitting on horse, terrified. Good memories, like being stuck on a tractor, in the middle of cows.

While in grade school I met my friend Mary. Every winter they’d take a vacation to the Bahamas. Every summer her mother would take her and her brother to Madeline Island, for real proper, vacations. It sounded so fun, and exciting, and relaxing. She was a good friend and would bring me back gifts from her vacations. Then it dawned on me just last week, at 51 years old, I’ve never had a proper vacation. Sure, when I was a teenager I took a couple of trips to Europe, that I worked and paid for myself. When I married, I looked forward to real, proper vacations, like other people took. Not going up north to visit scary farms or relatives. This, along with most of my other ideas of adult, married life didn’t happen.

So here I am fifty-one years old and wondering, when, if, I’ll ever get a proper vacation. Raising my girls, and all the bills that having a child with a chronic health condition puts on the plate, made vacations seem impossible and improbable, besides, I’m not sure I know how to have fun on my own. So there it is, the dark ugly truth. This week, a good friend of mine is taking a short vacation with a friend to California, she’s talking about all the fun they’re going to have, and it does sound fun. They're booking hotel rooms, making sure there's time to sit by the pool and read in between visiting fun places. It’s a new turn for me, to not feel horrid and sad and jealous inside. I’m happy for her. I’m hopeful for me. One day, I too, will take vacations. Proper vacations, don’t give me any of these crazy dog, electric fences, sitting on a horse scared kinda bullshit vacations.