My mother's vision of God was intensely personal; a friend who forgave all and loved unconditionally and spoke to you on a daily basis whenever you wanted to take the time to listen to him. I think it can be said that people tend to pattern their concept of God after their own personality. How often do you meet a stern, severe,unsmiling person who goes to a happy, hand-clapping church and believes in a joyful God? Thus it was that my dad was a Lutheran and my mom, more of a born-again charismatic type. His god saw what we did and disapproved- every unkind thought or rude action was noted and dutifully written down against you, to be replayed on an overhead screen after your death when you stood before the judgment throne with the big, faceless Father. Her God was a Jesus with long flowing hair and tears of happiness and love running down his face, full of emotion.

My mom described how Jesus had appeared to her once, after she'd seen a seven foot tall demon standing behind my dad. Jesus talked to her all the time. She led her life through his guidance and was prone to stopping what she was doing quite suddenly and taking off to do something entirely different, because she had a feeling that the Lord wanted her to. She didn't usually explain this until after the whole incident was over and done with, leaving the rest of us confused and disoriented in the meantime. Often the Lord warned her of other people plotting against her, or who weren't true Christians, or who might be praying against us or trying to curse us.

We went to her church, which was more of a bible study group held in a room of the pastor's home. Actually, I don't remember them reading the bible veyr much, now that I think of it. The meeting began with prayer (all eyes are closed, all heads are bowed, but I just watched everyone alertly even when the pastor repeated it several times- I was afraid of other people watching me with my eyes shut), then we sang a lot of songs, most of them either very emotional or happy, and testimonials and sharing of troubles or whatever had happened to us, a call for those of us who hadn't been saved yet to give their hearts to the Lord and ask Jesus into their hearts, and more prayer, which again I used to observe the other people.

My mother's superstition had a marked effect on me: even at 14 I was still a child in many ways; I still believed that unicorns were actually prancing around somewhere in some remote, hardly discovered part of the earth, for example. All her talk of demons scared the living daylights out of me, especially since she said that my dad had a whopper following him around. Pretty soon I was dreaming of them and imagining that I saw them, and I was scared. Then there were the constant warnings of Satanists making animal and human sacrifices (this was where all those missing children ended up), and a list of signs to watch for and places where the Satanic rites were being held. One of the places was a favorite hiking place of mine. After she told me I avoided it like the plague. If we fell, we thought we'd been pushed- by a demon. If we glimpsed a shadow from the corner of our eye, that was an evil spirit, hanging around just out of sight, lurking, waiting to get us. Bad thoughts? They weren't ours- Satan had put them there. We were constantly praying desperately for God to rescue us from Satan getting into our heads and making us think mean things.

Without Jesus, what would we do? He was our rock and hiding place from the fiery tongues of evil lapping at us, ready to reach out and grab us up, away into hell if we strayed even the littlest bit.