Why My Evil Sister Is Responsible for My Good Life

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine asked me to tell about how I became a Christian. As with all things, no good story is worth breezing through unless you can build the right tensions and climaxes. Before I barely got the first word out, we were interrupted, which has turned into a blessing. It occurred to me that 1) I haven't reflected on the momentous improbability of my salvation in a while and 2) I've never processed all the details fully myself. It was a perfect opportunity to write, and write I did. (The following is nearly 2500 words, totally inappropriate for a blog post, I know. But it was worth it for me to write, and I hope it's worth it for you to read.)

Why My Evil Sister Is Responsible for My Good Life

It could be compared to a water slide: the twists and turns feel at once wild and unpredictable but tame and designed to make you feel caught up in the safe chaos of the thing, exhilaration to be had without losing the sense of complete security.

***

I had been a younger brother all my life at the time this story takes place. A younger brother to an older sister. Now is not the time to recount how an older sister can so stunt and hinder a young boy’s quest to manhood, as she is so cruel and standoffish and will not let you flirt with her friends, who, she reminds you often, are much cooler than you’ll ever be and you better not even look at them.

My family had just moved from the mid western city of St. Louis to the southern hub of Memphis. I was ten then. The day we left I sat cross-legged on my bedroom floor, expansive without the bed, desk, or dresser, throwing cheese balls into the air and trying to catch them in my mouth. I couldn’t force myself to eat the ones that I missed, a decision I now interpret as intentional distancing with the room whose floor was once perfectly fine to eat my junk food off of.

It was a tough day for all of us; we had lived in St. Louis our whole lives. And my sister took the difficulty out on me in spades during the ride to Memphis. Her teasing was especially cruel; her only form of healing was transference. But like a callous formed from so many years of rubbing, I was accustomed to her sisterliness and got on with my life, my Gameboy, my great solace in the shared, small backseat for hundreds of miles.

We had seen our new house before and liked it quite well. Arriving lacked a certain tension and anticipation. Still, though, we were excited to be out of the car and noticed immediately that people noticed us with our big moving truck. A car passed by and a teenage girl with wiry brown hair stared at me a full 180 degrees of a swiveling head as the car drove past. I held her stair for as long as I cared to and followed the family into our new reality. Three years later we would kiss, and I wouldn’t know any good technique. In the house, the rooms were roomy, the backyard full of trees, the street full of neighbors, and the side yard—the one that wrapped around our corner lot—would become the platte of land where I would set my all-time soccer juggling record. It was a normal sort of place, so normal that you’re not even triggered to think of how normal it is.

These were the new hallways, this the kitchen, that the porch, and this the bathroom where my sister would find new environs through which to abuse my young, developing self. And the same goes for school, which was a particularly luscious bed for her because it involved the delicious multiplier of on-looking peers. Ignoring me at school and (I’ve always suspected but could never confirm) spreading rumors about me were her two most practiced weapons. People would snicker and point while I stealthily hugged the lockers during my brisk walks from class to class.

This went on for some time, my sister exploring her new territory and the natural resources available to belittle me, when an interesting twist happened. A new friend of hers, someone who seemed benign enough and would prove to actually be so, was a Christian. (Looking back I wonder if this friendship wasn’t some evangelistic crusade initiated by the friend via the local Girl Scout chapter to reclaim evil older sisters for the Kingdom of God.) This new friend convinced my sister of the merits of church, dangling the benefit of older boys in front of her, the perfect tactic, recruiters were told, to entice new membership in the youth group. My sister attended church from that point on, every Wednesday, religiously.

Maybe it was osmosis, associating with people who were genuinely nice and caring, that my sister began treating me a smidge better. Not enough, mind you, to be called a transformation but enough to give me some relief in my irrecoverable “social life” at Junior High.
Perhaps the lessened attack at school emboldened my sister to think herself in good standing with me and started inviting me to church using the same selling tools that were familiar to her, the promise of cute girls beyond my wildest imagination and friends, lots of friends, and the ability to dunk a basketball, which I desperately wanted to do. She was the devil showing me the extent of my prepubescent kingdom—if I would but attend church.

***

I imagine it could be compared to orbiting the earth in a space suit. You feel like you’re floating somewhat not at all though you’re moving, technically, at thousand of miles per hour. You glance at the earth and know the immutable properties of physics will keep you safely in orbit. You actually scientifically believe that you could float here in this same track, uninterrupted, until the end of all things unless, of course, you’re struck by a meteor. But you look around at the expanse, the lack of firmament, and can’t stop the instinctual switch from sending fear-triggered adrenaline.

***

For a year and a half her church invitations continued. It’s hard to express how annoying my sister was, how desperately I wanted her to disappear and stop asking me to come to church. Every week—every week—for seventy-eight weeks this conversation or some variation occurred:

“Hey Bryan, wanna go to church this week?”

“Nah,” I blandly grunt, playing Nintendo.

“There are gonna be girls and you can meet my friends,” she pitches with an inflection ascending through the appeal as if, by the end of it, her offer would be beyond refusal.

I sit silently, concentrating on Mario Brothers.

She stands there, falsely cherubic, until she realizes I don’t give a rat’s you-know-what and her demeanor changes in a way that even surprises me with its complete grimacing metamorphosis. She storms off, the Doppler effect coming to my aid as her litanies of my younger brother stupidities trail off in the distance. There were seventy-eight weeks of this. Seventy-eight. It’s annoying to recall even now.

I am sorry to say that on the seventy-ninth week my spirit broke. I don’t know why I’m sorry. I think it’s because I never wanted my sister to think her attempts to ruin my life had any affect on me. My annoyance at her offer was peaking, and I struck a deal with her.

“Hey Bryan, wanna go to church?”

I’m playing Nintendo and fuming. The usual long pause takes place after the offer is given, and as soon as her weekly pshaw of dismissal was about to fly, I speak up.

“I’ll go . . .” I murmur, my chin in my chest as if dejection and defeat were weighing me down, my eyes staring just under my eyebrows to show that wild beast in me that, if pushed one more time, will go absolutely lord of the flies, and I continue “under one condition. If I go tonight, you can never, ever ask me to go again.” I’m staring her straight in the eyes. “Deal?”

“Deal.”

A thin smile breaks over her face and she about faces.

***

For the longest time I was deeply convinced that my true name was Felix. My birth name is Bryan, but I don’t think it says much about me. Felix, however, means “happy” in Latin, which I could translate quite fluidly long ago but can’t now. I really liked the thought of having a name that meant “happy,” that by virtue of having an adjective as a name I could somehow get a directly tapped into the power of the word. Encountering God is like learning your true name. Except when you mention this “true name” to people they won’t tell you that it’s the name of a famous cat.

***

You would think after seventy-eight weeks of build-up that I would have some anticipation for the first time I went to church “willingly.” But there wasn’t. I was most eager to get it over with and move on with my life.

Going to church was sorely disappointing. The harem I had been promised and the popularity were especially underwhelming. My sister had oversold and under delivered. The “girls” was really just one girl who I had known from school (who I would also kiss three years later). And the “friends” were my sister’s friends who accomplished the amazing feat of annoying me more than my sister did. Going to church that night felt like an amplified continuation of my torturous junior high life. Factions, cliques, the searing and unspoken judgment that inevitably comes when you don’t dress right . . . church had it all. And part of me was glad. I was getting great ammunition for my argument to never return.

The Wednesday night youth group, like most youth groups I’ve ever attended, began with contemporary Christian songs that had the potential to make kids sing (rather than the Sunday morning ones that were targeting adult Christians, the ones you needed the hymnal to sing because the old-school tunes had way too many notes peppering the clef). I remember everyone else singing “Our God Is an Awesome God.” But I had never heard that or any other youth group song before. So when we were all directed to stand and sing—and at times perform mild choreography—I just stood there, awkward.

Following the songs comes “the talk.” You have to call it a “talk” to rhetorically differentiate it from a “sermon,” which all teenagers are gifted at ignoring. The youth minister’s talk was forgettable, which I know experientially because I can’t remember a thing. Listening to him was like sitting in a class whose subject held no interest. The only redeeming feature of the man was his full mustache and wavy hair that made him look like Keith Hernandez, the New York ball player, but only if he were less famous and a tad more bohemian. Keith finished his forgettable talk. And it was just after when the trajectory of my life completely changed.

Just after his talk, Keith undertook what I now know is a very common Baptist recap of the gospel of Jesus Christ—the “when we were sinners, Christ died for us” bit that follows every sermon and talk. It lasted two to three minutes and ended with a call to action, to “accept Christ into your heart and if you have, please pray this prayer with me.” You could almost say it was an afterthought of the evening, a perfunctory obligation a highly evangelizing denomination feels compelled to do. The led prayer began, “Dear Jesus, I invite you into my heart and life now” followed with some platitudes of promised obedience, etc, etc.

But what is so hard to capture is how arrested I was in the two to three minutes that Keith’s suburban doppelganger explained who Jesus was, what he did for the world, and how that relates to me. It reminds me of how the kids in the Narnia books get swept away to the other world from the real one. It’s unexpected, unstoppable, and complete. The difficulty in the language to capture a moment like when you encounter Christ is similar to Shelley's challenge of capturing the instant her creation is brought to life. Listening to the Gospel, I found myself in a river of truth when, for the evening, I had been wading ankle-deep in the weak stream of social Christianity. When I heard the gospel story, something in my heart leapt and belted “Yes!” It was equal parts of God’s love for me, my acknowledged need of him, and the stunningly unconditional and proactive love of Jesus to do for me what I could not do for myself. In those two to three minutes, tectonic shifts were happening in the way I was willing to understand the world and myself. It took me completely by surprise.

As a social reject with no prospect of upward mobility, you live inside your own head quite a lot. And when something strikes you, whether it’s a cute girl, a good movie, your favorite video game, or a spiritual proposition, you take it to your familiar, internal, reclusive place. You extend it a personal invitation because it meets the criteria that the majority of your life doesn’t. It’s beautiful, affirming, enlivening, strengthening, engaging, challenging.

During the explanation of the Gospel, my heart and mind immediately recognized the goodness of the Christian story and invited it in. I wanted it, not as a consumer wants a gadget but as a human wants connection that taps into the great capacity for beauty, truth, and love. It was a very significant snippet of time where I felt, believed, and acknowledged that I had somehow encountered the God being described to me. And in a rash boldness, I accepted the offer of accepting Jesus into my heart and life. The acceptance was not a tentative you-have-to-prove-yourself beginning. No, the facts of the Gospel coupled with the actual encounter with God had sealed the deal. I was simply giving voice to what had happened, like closing on the house you already bought and know without hesitation that you want it. In that moment, I became Christian.

***

Becoming a Christian is a rather uneventful event. It’s almost confusing how normal things remained in that moment. I don’t know what I was expecting. Visions maybe, or superhero powers as a “sign-up” gift like the pen you get when you open a new checking account. But nothing happened (though later I learned I did receive the Holy Spirit, which is most like a superhero power). If the evening prior to this moment had been any indication, I was still going to be me and I would still be largely invisible to those whose criteria for acceptance I fell laughably short. Though, I know inside I was a different me. And I was right.

My night at church ended with a confession to some adults in the room that I had accepted Christ. They grilled me with a few questions to confirm my experience was legit—I mean, you can’t up your church’s salvation stats without due diligence—and I rode home in silence. Upon my arrival, I approached my channel-surfing mom and casually announced “Mom, I became a Christian tonight.” She replied in the fatigue following a day’s work, “That’s nice, honey.” A Murphy Brown re-run was on.

The day after my conversion and many days after, all days after, I began working out my salvation with diligence and a deep desire to know what I had gotten myself into. That process is a different story altogether that’s even more uneventful than this one. But like a long novel whose overall story will bring you tears and elation both, each sentence along the way strikes you as somewhat unimportant. Except, like every story worth reading, my encounter with Jesus were riveting opening lines. The moment God found me was not only the beginning of my story but the moment I was edited in as a new character into His ongoing story.