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Her Name Was Sarah And Her Story Bears Telling

The Source

Her name was Sarah and her story bears telling. Without any editorializing on the my part, I’ll tell you what she told me. You decide. Sarah moved to Jacksonville two years ago. She was an attractive gal in her mid-fifties, a professional, recently divorced and looking for employment and a new life. She found the employment, she found a house suitable to her income in a pleasant Jacksonville neighborhood and her final task was to find a church. “I’ve been in church all my life,” said Sarah. “I thought that after finding a job pretty quickly and a nice house, finding a church would be easy.” Not so. She began her congregational quest with the larger churches in the area. “Being a single woman, I guess I wanted to get swallowed up,” she said. “I thought maybe I wouldn’t stick out so bad in a larger congregation.” Far from it, Sarah soon found that simply getting noticed would be her major concern. Sarah was fair. She gave each church at least four months worth of faithful attendance. “I know that I’m not always at my best on any given day, so I wanted to give each church a decent chance. They shook my hand at the door and that was it. From then on, it was like I was invisible. Here I was afraid of sticking out and instead just the opposite happened. It was like I wasn’t there.” Seating became her first and major problem. “Like all churches, the folks pretty much had their pews staked out so I had to be careful where I sat. And you know, all I really wanted after the first month was for somebody to simply say, ‘Why don't you come sit with us?’ It would have been such a simple thing. I really don't want attention, but when you’re a single lady and you sit by yourself Sunday after Sunday…well…it’s hard.” Sarah looked for another church. “I thought that maybe a more mainline congregation would be better…more established programs, I don't know…I was just searching.” She gave her second church five months and this time she took a new approach. “I wondered if it was me. Maybe I needed to reach out myself instead of expecting others to come to me. That’s when I made the call.” After attending her new place of worship for two months she called the church office and asked if they had any small fellowship groups she could join. “They directed me to a little group that met in people’s homes. All couples. And they were nice but they talked about the concerns of couples. I mean, they spoke to me, but in my four weeks with them no one asked a thing about me. I was starting to get a complex.” Her third attempt was less successful than the first two. “I don't know what I was thinking in the third church,” she said. “I attended for awhile… sitting by myself again… and then called the church office to volunteer. For anything…I just wanted to be around people and doing the Lord’s work.” She was directed to the minister who first asked if she was a member of his denomination. She said that she wasn’t but that she’d do anything they needed. “He saw someone out in the hallway and said, ‘I need to see those people before they leave for the weekend,’ and he excused himself.” I left. Sarah was tempted to take a week off. She was shattered. “But I kept reminding myself that it wasn’t about me. At least I hoped it wasn’t.” Then her fourth church nearly did her in. “I went to a Wednesday night service at this new church, figuring maybe the atmosphere would be more informal…more personal. The church had three sections of seating. I sat in the right-hand section. I didn’t realize that everyone sat in the middle section on Wednesday nights. At the end of the sermon the preacher asked us to get up form little prayer groups of four or five people. It suddenly got really awkward.” She said she stood there for minutes that seemed like hours, waiting for someone to ask her to join their group. “Even the minister walked by me. I was invisible again. Finally a lady in the back of the church came up and asked me to be a part of her little circle. That was nice of her but those moments standing there alone made me just want to run crying out of the church.” Sarah now attends a very small church in a neighboring town. “I like it,” she said. “I’m the only white person in the church and some Sundays the whole service is in another language, but they practically mob me when I come in the door. They’ve called twice asking me to join in on various activities and I’ve had a ball. Me. The white, English-speaking, middle aged gal… a part of them.” Is Sarah bitter? “I wouldn’t exactly call it bitter…a little hurt, yes. But I’ll tell you one thing… It’s actually helped me. No one will ever come in a church where I’m attending and be left alone. No one will sit by herself. No one will be invisible.”