here's my 11.

I was sitting at the kitchen table with my best friend, Terri.

I remember that as though it were yesterday. I can still see her at my mom's "place" at the table (I was sitting at my stepdad's), smiling and joking with me, as we talked about how lame church was going to be. She was pretty proud of herself because she had somehow ducked the entreaties to go, made by our friend Steph.

We were anti-church. I'm not entirely sure why. I had felt slighted after being laughed at years before by the other kids at my grandmother's Methodist church--I was the only kid who didn't know the Lord's Prayer (ironically, the recitation of that prayer became my favorite moment of Episcopalian services). Terri had been raised catholic.

I told her Steph's mom was picking me up by 6:45. I didn't want to go. I remember whining and making faces, and her repeatedly rubbing it in my face that she had said no.

I remember running out to the car when Mrs. DePasquale got to my house. The church was (and is) about 10 blocks away, in the center of our little suburb of Zion--a lakefront community founded by Reverend Dr. John Alexander Dowie, a faith-healer from Scotland. Hence the name of the town. I've since learned that he is intimately linked to the beginning of the Pentecostal movement, though the church he founded, the same that founded my own faith, now bears no resemblance to Pentecostalism.

It was Halloween, 1999. Steph had convinced me to go to Sunday night youth group, then called "Big Stuff," at Christ Community Church (clearly not the name that Dowie had christened it with). God intervened. I said yes. I had Terri come over beforehand because I was so not enthused about going. I got in the car. And from the entire evening I remember only one moment: creaming Steph on the nose with a chocolate-covered marshmallow. Youth ministry is so great.

We played this game that involves partners--one standing on a chair, one lying down underneath the chair--a teacup full of sticky chocolate sauce, and a handful of marshmallows. If you've ever gotten within ten feet of a youth group, I'm sure you can figure it out.

I don't remember when I first said yes to Christ. I don't have a journal from that year. I've got a couple of letters or writings here or there, from a few months later, in which I'd clearly felt like the decision had been made.

But whatever happened that night, or that year, it set the course for today, and tomorrow. I've heard often this phrase about how some people have enough church in them to never really be at home in the world. People tell me that growing up in the church never really leaves you. Studies show that there is a window of years in which the gospel should be taught, if kids are to carry faith successfully into adulthood.

I wasn't really very young when I first met Christ. But though I didn't "grow up in the church," I think I've always had just enough Christ to ruin the world for me. That first encounter, though it was brief, and though it led very shortly to a complete dismissal of all things Christian, was enough. It was enough to hold me for life. To bring me back. To leave me at every altar in Galesburg, IL. To keep me at a megachurch. To make me accept once, fall, then accept again and finally.

Oh, Father. You didn't have to bring me back, but You did. You didn't have to bring me at all. But You did. You have brought me every good thing, and my whole soul is grateful. My whole soul is Yours.