T-Shirts

You know the feeling you get when you walk into a second hand shop and find the perfect shirt? If you are a Value Village fan like I am you’ll know what I am talking about. The shirt fits just right, it is some outrageous color and the design on it pays homage to Mr. T or to some company’s opening day 24-hour uberpalooza extravaganza. Well, that is how I came across Christianity.
I have been blessed with two amazing parents who, each on their own and as a couple, have incredible faith. If it weren’t for them, their guidance (and sometimes force) I wouldn’t have the walk with God that I have today.
I have been attending Church since before I could even hope to remember. However, my first memory of Church is hearing the Easter story. I don’t remember actually being able to grasp the concept of the greatness of Jesus’ sacrifice but I remember being enthralled in fact that He rose from the dead. No one I had ever known who had died did that, so I decided right then and there that Jesus was cool and if He could defy the clutches of death then I would be His girl.
I had, lets just say, a (way) less than normal childhood. About a year or so before my little brother was born my dad fell in love with a little community called “Queensborough”. When he proposed we move there, my mother put her foot down, she refused to even set foot in a community with the name Queensborough. “Think of the kind of people that live there, Rodd”, she would say. “I’m not leaving this wonderful neighborhood for some dumpy shack in Queensborough!” I can only imagine the persuading my father must have done to actually get her to go there and I can only imagine the persuading my mom must have done to get him to move there within three months.
Queensborough was, at that point, a tiny community. Affectionately called the “armpit” of New Westminster, it was there that I spent a great deal of my childhood and grew up. The school that I attended was named after Queen Elizabeth and the students were truly diverse. I remember from day one that I was different from the other students. School was never one of those places that I found friends easily. I remember lying awake in my bed at night wondering what made me so different from the other students.
I quickly learned that it was this man named Jesus that separated me from the other students and it was my perfect attendance at Church that left others puzzled and confused. Whenever I was lucky enough to have a sleepover with someone I was always the first one to leave Sunday morning because I had an obligation to fulfill.
Once I got this figured out I realized that if Jesus was as cool as I thought He was He wouldn’t mind it if I pretended that we weren’t friends during school hours. I was sure He would understand if we could just catch up on the way home from school. To a child in elementary school, you have to understand that this plan was utter brilliance. I got the best of both worlds, Jesus on the way to and from school (on the weekends too, if there wasn’t a sleepover) and my school friends during class and recess. So it was there in my elementary years that I first learned and perfected the art of deception.