Sunday Service

Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in.

Robert Frost

Sometime during my teen years, my dad came home with a mimeograph machine which he had bought at the air base’s version of Goodwill or Deseret Industries. He loved prowling around the shelves of stuff left by airmen and their families when they got transferred. Once he brought home my first bicycle. I think he paid $5.00. It irritated my mom when he came home with his treasures because it just meant more work when it was our turn to pack up and move.

But the mimeograph machine turned out to be invaluable. Every Sunday morning he typed up the church program for that day, headed out to the garage, primed the machine with fluid, and printed out copies to be passed out to members of the congregation at the meeting that afternoon. Most Sundays when we pulled into the parking lot, my mom would check our fingers to be sure we’d managed to wash off the stains left by the purple ink when we kids were pressed into service folding the programs semi-neatly in half as preparation for distribution.

We never missed church. In Dallas, we lived almost an hour away from the meeting house, so dad bribed our cooperation by promising ice cream on the way home. I still remember the taste of my favorite lemon custard on a hot, dusty Sunday afternoon. We went to church in blizzards in Michigan, traffic jams in Baltimore, and through golden orchards on winding two-lane roads in Sacramento–among others. They were mostly small branches with a dozen or so families, but for military folks, they were “family.”

At one time or another all my siblings and I balked about having to sit through Sunday services, but it was one of the few things about which my parents were inflexible. We showed up. And we volunteered—whether we wanted to or not. We put up and took down chairs, we raised money for building funds, we participated in roadshows (actually traveling on the road to several locations in most of the places we lived), and we sang in the choir or spoke from the pulpit. By the time I was an adult, church attendance was simply part of my life pattern.

When I moved to Utah, the congregations were much larger, but the people always drew me in. One Saturday afternoon after I’d been here a couple of years, I was volunteering in the kitchen at a very large stake budget dinner in the days when the burden of financial support fell directly on individual church units. We spread every table in the building with paper cloths, plastic silverware, napkins, cups, and centerpieces. I spent most of my time working alongside a woman from another area whom I had never met before. We each filled a sink in the large kitchen and washed dishes, talking about our lives as we scrubbed and stacked serving bowls, pots, and pans. It was a long evening, but it was relatively easy work, and I enjoyed talking to her to pass the time.

I didn’t run into her again until many months later when I walked into the chapel for a women’s fireside and passed by her sitting by herself on the back row. “Marsha,” I said. “How lovely to see you!” She smiled in recognition and clasped my hands in greeting. Then I moved on to my seat. When I walked out of the building, her seat had already been vacated.

Once again, it was months before I encountered her. But I will never forget what she said when I saw her. She pulled me aside, telling me, that she had “something she wanted to share.” We found a quiet spot, and she told me this story.

“When I saw you last at that women’s fireside, I had decided to go home and take the prescription pills I had been hoarding for a long time. I knew I wanted to die, but I had two sons. I had lived on because of them. That night the pain overcame me. I was lonely and desperate. I didn’t believe I could go on. Then you walked by, and you remembered my name. You remembered My Name. No one had noticed me in years. I left the meeting early; I went home, and I threw away the pills. I’m here today because of you.”

Time stopped for me. I wish I could tell you that I had the perfect reassuring words on the tip of my tongue to respond to her, but I was shocked and speechless. Silent, I held her hand for a few minutes until her tears stopped. “Thank you,” she whispered as she rose and walked away.

I sat alone on that bench long after the room was empty. What if I hadn’t bothered to go that night? What if I had passed her by without speaking? In a flash of unexpected insight, at last I understood what my dad been teaching me all those years ago. Showing up matters. I had no idea how much.