The Long Road
Last Sunday I had an experience that is still troubling me. I was shopping with my Mom, Melissa, Baby Grace, and Joyce at Dillard’s. We were just leaving the little girl’s department where we had been trying to find some new clothes for Grace, when some lady came up to my mom and asked if she could pray for her daughter (that would be me). My mom said she should ask me, and I said sure. See, I thought she was going to go home and pray for me, but no. She proceded to put her hands on me, in the middle of Dillard’s mind you, and asked the Lord to “MAKE THIS POOR CHILD NORMAL”. She quoted part of the bible that says if a believer lays their hands on the sick, they will be healed.
I feel a bit like a heathen, but I was MORTIFIED. I guess my biggest problem with this was that I know if anyone is a BELIEVER, it is my mother, and she lays her loving hands on me every day, so for this lady to think that she believed more than my loved ones… well, it seemed self indulgent to say the least. And I will be the first to admit that I have taken the long road towards finding my Faith, but I have reached a point where I DO believe in Christ, and I feel confused now because I wonder if I am wrong to feel as I do about her, but to me Faith and Religion are very personal issues. Maybe I’m just irritated because she used the term “normal”… doesn’t she know how many years I wished/prayed for that before I realized that I am just the way God wanted me to be?
posted by danarv @ 7:46 PM
9 comments
9 Comments:
I can't begin to express how much this experience disturbs me, and I'm so sorry you had to endure it. Of course you're still thinking about it! How could you not be?? How ANYONE thinks they have the right to come over and lay their hands on you (in a PUBLIC PLACE!!!???) is beyond me. I agree with you. Faith and religion are very personal, and I think it was wrong of her to violate your privacy in this way. If you had asked her to pray over you, I guess she would have every right to do it, but that obviously wasn't the case. Ugh.
Who is she to tell Him what He needs to do?
I could go on forever. Just know that not all Christians are that crazy and insensitive. I love you just the way you are.
oh. my. gosh.
I would have been mortified along with you. FIRST of all, how incredibly insenstive and self-righteous of her to ask God for you to be "normal". You are NOT abnormal. Ugh! I don't know what I would have said to her if I had been there... SECOND of all, I cannot BELIEVE she touched you! Did she think that by making a scene in Dillard's so that everyone could see her "praying for you" that she would be rewarded in some way??? I don't like it at all. It is Christians like THAT, that turn non-Christians off in the first place.
Who is she to say you aren't normal? I can't even begin to think of all the nastiness I would have wanted to "bless" her with. I wholeheartedly agree with Wiebke and jeb, and you handled it very well and you are so entitled to feeling a little disturbed. She's the one that ought to be feeling abnormal with her nasty assumptions! Taking a perfectly wonderful day and trying to ruin it, all in the name of faith.
I'm sorry you had to experience this; I know it is upsetting and, while it doesn't make it any easier emotionally to accept the experience, it is born out of that woman's ignorance.
Coming up in the Baptist Church and being born the favored white male, I have never experienced anything like this personally. But I've seen it happen to others over and over. I've also seen others, in the name of Christ, treated with such disrespect that it makes my stomach churn. This sort of ignorance is one of the reasons that I struggled with Christianity for so long and why I do not attend church now.
Ultimately, I have had to find solace in the fact that, no matter how stupid, ignorant, and short sighted others choose to be, I am comfortable in my beliefs and know that Christ would never, ever, ever, ever treat someone like this.
Like Jennie I could go on forever but I won't. Just remember that you're cool, don't let some woman's ignorance make you forget that.
i think that you are in the right, honestly, a lot of showy christians are turd eaters that try to use their faith like it is a Burger king Drive through. it don't happen our way people.
keep in mind that i am a christian that, for all intents and purposes, really dislikes a lot of other "glam / showy" christains because they pull crap like you described; now we can get into the issue of faith and he who has enough faith can do limitless things and believe me, i believe in prayer, but for these turd eaters to walk around randomly "healing" those that they feel are not like themselves, well screw them...they give everything that Christ preached a bad name...
-----KEY POINT COMING UP------
because one is a christian, that DOES NOT MAKE ONE Christ. the last time i checked all of those a$# holes like benny hinn and all of those big-buck televangelists don't have any more power to heal my scraped knee that the squirrel running across the street, unless the squirrel is armed with neosporin and a band aid.
they (benny and his boys) put on their song and dance and pass that crap to their followers and the kicker is...people actually believe them and even worse (as you know now)try to do this in public!!!! and this is not the first story of something like this that i have heard.
-----HARSH COMMENTARY COMING UP----
i got an idea, lady in dillard's - when you find that magic time machine where you can go back to the beginning of time and somehow morph yourself into God's being and actually become Christ, then you can set out healing anyone that you want; please keep in the somewhat small frontal lobe that you try to call a brain that if you were able to do this, then you would be forced to grow some respect, decency and somewhat of a conscience that would curb your inabiliy to judge right from wrong and you would also be forced to follow a little thing that you might have heard of - tact, or anything else that might fall within those parameters.
i know that Jesus was not alway socially acceptable, in fact he was a rebel, but He darn sure didn't make a show of the healings that He performed and they sure as shite weren't on people that were perfectly healty, that just didn't happen to look like Him - but i digress.
lady in dillards, until you do grow a morsel of true concern for those that are truly sick, i.e. 1,000's of people in the city that aren't at the mall but instead forced to live out on the street, eat out of dumpsters, or in aid's house, etc...and don't just want to "perform" your faith for the masses, then leave everyone else alone and for goodness sakes, keep your hands to yourself.
and in the meanwhile, if you want to heal something...start by releasing the opossums into your woodshed in the backyard that you call a "worship center", dance around, chant in tongues, tear your clothing and when you feel that your hands are all warm and ready to deliver some healing....put them on your own head, 'cuz you are a nut bag.
one last thing lady in dillard's - you really need a crap sandwich and i cater and deliver...just let me know.
sorry if the grammar, spelling and punctuation are not what they should be - i was so angered by this that i was kind-of shaking while i typed...
i have a feeling that all of you will have to pray for me after this - warning to others out there....do not mess with my family or friends...ever...
Thank you all for your suppotive comments. I guess the thing that made me feel worst was the awful things it made me think about her. That afternoon I kept wondering what would happen if I met up with her and asked her if her healing had a time frame 'cause I didn't feel any change yet.
You all are what I think of when I think of Christians, and your kindness is the best illustration of Devinity (to use Citizen D's terminology) that I could ever imagine.
I love you all :)
what a bitch.
words are not enough to express how angry this makes me...NO, you are not wrong to feel that way about that terrible woman.
i SO WISH I COULD'VE BEEN THERE.
i mean, did she get to finish her prayer? because she wouldn't have if i would have been there.
YUCK. :(
-----------------
okay, i just read everyone else's comments after writing mine (i always wait to do that)...and here i am in my office, on the edge of my seat about to give a literal standing ovation to jennie, wendy, david, julie and ESPECIALLY J for their poignant, pretty-close-to-perfect words. wow.
dana, i love you.
(as a side note, it was so wonderful to see you last night...i have really missed you!)
ok. I finally started a blog. yep.
-keith.
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