I wanted to mark a day that changed my life.
Our next-door neighbors, the Angelils, convinced Ma to come with them to the first Tuesday night prayer meeting at Church A, which was called St. Luke’s. And I had to go where Ma was, so I got dragged along.
Like I said - that day changed my life. Or, as Ma said many years later, with more than a smidgen of contempt, “St. Luke’s was your big break.” It was. It sure was. If not for St. Luke’s, if not for the people at that prayer meeting and all the years of Tuesday nights after it, I would have never known love freely given. I’d have never gotten around people. I would have never become interested in music, learned to play the guitar, begun to sing; I’d have had nothing to sing about.
Most of all, I would have never gained the perspective of God that shaped my entire life, for better or for worse, to this day.
I had my first crush at St. Luke’s, and my crushee and his then-fiancee sat me down to talk about it, how crushing was completely normal. I fell in love for the first time at St. Luke’s, too, even though I was by myself in it. I met the first remotely normal people I ever knew, outgrowths of the original Jesus People. Although it took a couple years, a few folks figured out that all was not well at home, and supported me however they could.
40 years on, many of those who were middle-aged and elderly have passed on. The young adults are now hovering at around 60, with children and grandchildren of their own. But after that first night, nothing would ever be the same again for a stunted girl of almost 14 who was looking, looking, looking for a big break.
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