Finding God

Mary Alice Hostetter

When I was five years old, God was all about love. He took care of the birds and made the sunshine; he had fireflies blink off and on as if by magic. He gave me parents who made sure I had food and clothes, brothers and sisters to play with. He let me walk barefoot through puddles in summer.

When I was 12, God started laying down a lot of rules. With a whole firmament to run, he took time to enforce rules about fashion details, about entertainment. He wanted women to wear seams in their stockings, capes over their dresses.

He did not want those dresses to be red, even though he could do red, with his geraniums in the flower boxes, American beauty roses in the flower beds, and beautiful ripe tomatoes all over the field. You’d think with planets to spin and seasons to cycle, you’d think he’d have better things to do than damn me to hell for not wanting to look different from everyone else. You wouldn’t think he’d have time to watch in case I sneaked out to a movie. I didn’t know what I had done to make him so angry.

When I was 25, I knew I was doomed. My church attendance was sporadic, and God had to know about the gin and tonics. I tried to be good but knew it couldn’t count for much, rules being what they were. It wasn’t that I didn’t care about God. I just didn’t understand him and knew there was no way I could follow all of those rules. So many of them didn’t make sense to me.

When I was 36, it felt like it was my time to be punished. I believed that good things happened to good people. I was kind. I was generous. I was responsible. No reason I should be the one singled out, but I was. Was it punishment? Did the rules really matter? I read the books and tried to understand why bad things happen to good people. I went inside. I searched outside. I hid from the darkness. I went into the darkness. I survived the darkness and came back, often grateful for the journey.

When I was 50, God started popping up everywhere. I found her in the silence, in the music, in the laughter of friends, in the words on the pages, in the memories, in the ever-changing trees, in the songs of the birds, in the beauty of wood and rock and glass. I found God again in the twinkling firefly and in the eyes of a child as she chased the firefly.

—Mary Alice Hostetter, Charlottesville, Virginia, after a career in teaching and human services, has now chosen to devote more time to her lifelong passion for writing. Among the themes she has explored are reflections on growing up Mennonite in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, during the 1950s and 1960s.