How Anna Got Religion

FICTION How Anna Got Religion Rita Sims Quillen EVEN THOUGH I WENT TO CHURCH all these years with Daddy— every Wednesday night for prayer meeting, every Sunday morning, every night of every revival—I wasn't like the other faithful. I just didn't "have the spirit," whatever that was. I never felt moved to speak out "Amen" or clap my hands the way some did. I have always believed in God, the Creator of heaven and earth, the one who sent his only son to die for my sins. I definitely believe in prayer. But I guess I hadn't really been saved like others. When I was in church, for some reason, I would often think of everything but what was going on there. My mind wandered like a lost lamb. Even when I was trying to pray or to listen closely to Preacher Smith's sermons, I would find myself thinking about something else. I would watch others go to the front of the church to give their testimony, tears streaming down their faces, saw the joy on their faces when the congregation would move down to the Holston River to baptize them. I wanted God to speak to me. I called on him again and again. But you can't will something like a conversion to happen. I'm not sure what "the spirit" is, but it is the opposite of will—I do know that. When God finally did call on me, I wasn't in church, strangely enough. I was just in the back aisle of a local hardware store looking for a new lock and key for my mother's old trunk in the attic. I wasn't sure exactly what to get or where to look, and I was just standing there in an aisle and staring. James Worley, a quiet man I'd known all my life but never really talked to before, worked there and saw the lost look on my face. He stepped up and spoke softly to me. "Can I help you find what you need?" When I turned to answer, our eyes met and we both blinked and looked away at the same time because we both knew instantly that there was an answer to that question. James slowly took my hand then and guided it up towards the top of the rack. He kept his hand on mine until I had wrapped my fingers around the heavy cardboard package. This was the first of many, many times he would take my hands and guide them the way they should go, and I did the same for him. 56 Over the next few months, he taught me how to square dance and fish and build furniture, though I never did have his touch for bringing out the shape and beauty hiding in the wood. I taught him how to weed flowers and stitch a torn hem properly. But the most important thing I learned from James is what love really is. He was love, a living example of it. That's unusual in a man, in my experience. Women more often come close to what I'm talking about when I say love. What a mother feels for a child is the closest thing to it. James was capable of that great a love, I found out, and it almost got him killed when he was in service. I knew James had been in Korea, but he never really talked about it, and I didn't press it. I didn't really think it was all that important; I figured he'd tell me in his own good time. Evidently, the Good Lord, in his wisdom, decided to intervene and help James and me grow even closer. Leastways, that's what I think about the strange dream I began having. We'd been married a good while, about eighteen months, when God sent me the dream. At least once or twice a week for several weeks, I had the same dream, right down to the smallest detail. The sky in the background was always dusky gray. I couldn't tell if it was daylight or dusk. I...