Pastor Newsome's rules for First Missionary House of the Lord were simple. Every head bowed (mine wasn’t) and every eye closed (nope) while he went on and on with his crazy freestyle prayers.

“Lord!” He gripped his lectern as if fighting a holy tractor beam trying to drag him to heaven right before our eyes. “We know they need to feel that touch from your never-changin’ hand, and we know someone is out there hurtin’ this morning . . .”

Hurtin’? For sure. Between my near-empty wallet forcing me to sit lopsided on that pew-of-steel and yet another infinity sermon, my pain was not in short supply. Newsome was on a roll. He ranted, threw in weird stuff no one seemed to notice, the way he totally did all the time.

“. . . and we see the evil on our TV and in our news reports, Lord. Bless those endangered spider monkeys of the Amazon rain forests!”

Like that.

“Yes, Lord, yes,” Mom mumbled. She squeezed my hand, nearly crushing my fingers with pulsing robot strength on each word. It sounded like she was cosigning on the old man’s insanity, but over the last few weeks I’d noticed her lips moving even when he wasn’t saying stuff. Not repeating Newsome’s lines. Having her own conversation with God, I guessed. The protocols of Mom’s Sunday worship were still fairly new to me.