Reading to pass the time, in the hospital, Mom read a book called “Pray” and was struck by a story about Jesus who from an early age showed great interest in spending time in the temple in Jerusalem—calling it His Father’s house (Luke 2:49). In this story Mom sensed a picture of how her own Spiritual Life Began. She told me to write her words down and share them with you (at some point Dad also came into the room and joined in to share parts of the story where their lives intersected in marriage).

From a very young age little Nancy loved to go to the church with her mom, Bami, not just on Sunday but during the week as well, to water the fresh flowers (that the flower committee brought in). The flowers would be given away each Sunday to a family, so little Nancy & her Bami would clean up the empty vases and water the new flowers that came mid-week. St. Ann’s In-the-Fields Episcopal Church was “an outlier church”—a small non-mainstream church, quaint & humble with beautiful stained glass windows, pews with maroon cushions and kneelers, and Mom felt an immense sense of God’s holiness in the church; she just felt overwhelmed. “I just wanted to be where that was true as often and as closely as I could.” The seeds of her spiritual passion were planted there.

As a child she wanted those liturgical prayers to be wrapped around her so she could know God. So, reading the ‘Pray’ book, she realized she identified with Christ before she knew anything about His power and His glory, and she never knew why she was chosen like that. It always felt to her like a chosenness. She always remembered the common prayers as desperate cries of our need to be on the right team with God. “And when you say them over and over again Sunday after Sunday what else can you know about God except his deep living powerful holiness. If you grew up on no other prayers, you got the whole story.” At that point, she and my father recited—there in the hospital room—one such prayer from memory.

“Almighty and Most Merciful Father. We have erred and strayed from Thy ways, like lost sheep. We have followed too much, the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have offended against Thy Holy Laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done, and there is no health in us. But Thou O Lord, art the same God whose property is always to have mercy. Grant us, therefore, Gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of Thy dear Son and to drink His blood, that our souls may be washed clean in His most precious blood. In the Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” (1928 Book of Common Prayer, Episcopal Church)

Odd thing was, they didn’t do a very good job teaching her how to appropriate those things (i.e. really meet God and hear His voice). The adult church was feeding this little girls soul with a hunger for holiness, but the children weren’t really learning about a relationship God wants to have with us, except by repeating that and many other prayers just like that—“and all of them in that high minded language, the quality of which is to point out the great sinfulness of man and the great mercy of God, without leaving you paralyzed and thinking that you could never ever become anything important or valuable to God.”

Besides the serene beauty of the church, the other detail she remembered was that the Reverend had had polio as a child. And so one leg was shorter than the other, and to compensate for that he wore a boot-like-shoe that had a great thick soul on it. And then he always wore a robe, but when he walked the robe always went, swish-swish, it had a rhythm to it—based on his limp. “All the people would sit down in their pews, you’d pick up your hymn books and start singing and the choir would approach from the rear in their robes, hymnbooks and lovely voices singing. I used to just sing along and be listening for that swish-swish which took on a certain holiness because the man was so humble, and he always smiled. I had no idea what he taught because he taught according to the liturgical calendar and it was over my head.” The family service at 10 only had holy communion once a month and that was the only time the gospel according to Saint John was read. The lectern was for the regular bible story (epistle) and was also where the message was preached. But before The Reverend taught from the gospel he would travel across the stage to the other lectern where there was a beautiful silk bookmark was opened to the word of God. And this hour every Sunday was completely set-apart from the rest of her life.

She erred and strayed from that life as she got older because there was no pastoring of young people. After they were married, Mom and Dad had searched for a church to go to, after just reunited following Dad’s service in Vietnam. Susie, Mom’s sister, wanted her to be a Christian, but Mom was a liberal graduate student and did not want to be a slave to the opiate of the masses. But, then her sister had a car accident, and suddenly, Mom needed someone to pray to. “O Dear God, I don’t know who you are but I’m praying to you because Susie knows who you are.” And that was her first genuine prayer of desperation. Together with Dad, they met a group of Christians who asked “can we pray for Susie?” and Mom was stunned… “you would pray for my Susie?”

Jeffrey Marks led Dad to Jesus, explaining what it means to be saved in the back room of the house church, taking him down the “Romans Road” (Romans 3:23, Romans 6:23, Romans 10:9-10, Romans 10:13). Three days later, Jeff and Marjaen came over for dinner, and at the dinner table conversation Jeffrey asked Mom, “when did you meet Jesus?” And as if her life flashed before her eyes, she felt herself watching a movie of her own life, like the hand of God—the Hound of Heaven—insisting across time that she reach this point of decision. Mom said, “I don’t believe I have.” Jeffrey took out his King James Bible, and took Mom down the same “Romans Road” he led Dad down, and though she had no recollection of what was happening at the time, she did notice and was mesmerized that “here was a young [Jeffrey] my age who handled the word of God without bookmarks”—he never had to look at his bible because he knew so many verses from memory. He didn’t need a silken bookmark on a lectern to make his points. She had never really met someone who could do that before. She was convinced in her spirit by the words from Romans, but in her heart by the behavior (authenticity) of Jeffrey’s faith.

When Jeffrey asked Mom to confess her sins, she didn’t really understand what that meant. So he asked, “well, how bout the ouija board?” And instantly Mom remembered one time she and her college classmates had all played together when they were about to take a biology test and they were asking the board what grades they were going to get on the test, and it spelled out the word “Cheat.” And all the girls were freaked out and left the board, “but low and behold, two days after, four of the five of the girls were accused of cheating.” All the girls got off the hook because they had not cheated, but in the light of Jeff’s question, Mom considered that there was certainly power out there, and an evil power to boot. And so, she confessed her sin and acknowledged that she had played the ouji board and had been frightened, and he told her to pray a prayer to receive Jesus. “And I said ‘Dear God, You know I would like to see You before I believe in You, but just this once I will believe in You without seeing You if You promise to show Yourself afterwards.’” And that was how Mom came to Christ.

That night she could see doves of light fluttering in the room with her eyes closed. She opened her eyes to see if they were there, and though they weren’t, when she closed her eyes they were back. So Mom believed those doves were God’s answer to her prayer for proof. Soon after, Mom ask to receive the Holy Spirit in her life, and she began to speak in tongues and became part of a group of charismatic believers. Dad recounted the experience of seeing Mom afterwards, and acknowledged that “she lit up like a Christmas tree, and she was never the same.” Mom was flushed with new life instantly. But she remembered how it all started from a very early age. As she reflected on her story she said “I always figured someone must have been praying for me, and it must have been the Reverend,” but she marveled at this revelation—as if it were a sixth sense—“but, how would I know that?”