I have history with the Eastern Orthodox parish in my hometown of Vancouver, Washington. When Mom was looking into Orthodoxy, the closest parish was in Milwaukee, Oregon. The Vancouver parish was founded well after Mom moved to California to live with us. Still, even after Mom left, there were reasons for me to return. That was the parish where I sought solace during the weekend I came up to bury Dad, and I’ve worshipped with them a couple of other times.
I emailed the new priest to let him know I was coming with Xenia, Justin, and Xenia’s friend Tara. He emailed me back with a welcome, and I made a note of the service times and the address of the new building they purchased last October. On Sunday, we arrived in time for Matins, an hour before Liturgy started. The kids ran up the hill from the parking lot and raced inside, completely comfortable in any Orthodox Church.
I walked behind them at a leisurely pace, looking all around me. The white church building with a steeple on top looked vaguely familiar in a way I couldn’t place, in the same way everything in Vancouver looks the same but different. The kids had disappeared by the time I walked up to the cement steps leading to the front door. They weren’t there to see me stop mid-step, paralyzed.
A voice in my head said, “You can’t go in there.”
I didn’t belong. I wasn’t allowed. I was turned away.
The story of God turning St. Mary of Egypt away from the church where the Christians venerated the true cross ran through my mind, but I knew this was different.
I called out to a man who was walking up to the doors and asked, “What was this building used for before you bought it?”
“It was a church called Unity of Vancouver.”
Then it all came back to me. I was reliving a memory. That was the first church my parents brought me to when I was five years old, before we were Christians. There was no Jesus taught there. The only Sunday school story I remember was The Giving Tree. Still, I yearned for the spiritual as young as I was. I used to ride my bike to the locked church on weekday afternoons, wanting to be in the place where I thought God was to be found.
They didn’t allow children to enter through the front doors. My parents would take me through the basement entrance to the classrooms and leave me there. I wanted more and thought it must be found in the big room with all the pews. One Sunday, I tried to sneak up there only to be turned away at the very doors I was now standing in front of.
“You aren’t allowed here. Go back downstairs. Wait for your parents.”
Faceless adults pointed to the back entrance.
I stared at the door again. I wasn’t a child anymore, and this was now an Orthodox church that welcomed all ages to worship together. Look at how my children had run into the sanctuary, safe in the knowledge of the acceptance they would find. They were home, and I was home too. I boldly walked through the doors and lit my candles.
Being there brought up so many memories. Two other stories came to mind, old wounds that I’ve dwelt on again and again over the last forty-five years. The first time I remember a kid making fun of me was in the Sunday school room, where the teacher read us The Giving Tree.
A little boy who must have been my age pointed at me and asked, “Why are you wearing unmatched socks? Doesn’t your mom care about you?”
I felt so ashamed and ugly. I can’t remember my reply if I even had one. Tears filled my eyes. The teacher said something, but her words came from far away as if I was underwater, drowning in my hurt feelings.
At home I confronted Mom, “Look how you sent me to church? Don’t you care about me?”
Poor Mom, who never cared about socks a day in her life, couldn’t see anything wrong with me and couldn’t fathom why I questioned her love. In fits and starts, I told some version of the story. She was sympathetic, but I realized that I couldn’t trust her. I picked out my own matching socks from then on and felt the heavy weight of wanting to look right without knowing how.
If younger me could have seen me at church in 2025, what would she think? That Sunday I was wearing a jean skirt and a long-sleeved green shirt. Even more fun was my head covering, which was a silk scarf with a white background and a Monet-type flower print in many colors. Under the scarf, I wore a volumizer cap over a bun with a fat scrunch,y which gave me a high princess cap kind of look. I dressed like no one else, and I loved it. I did, however, wear matching socks.
I told Justin, Xenia, and Tara about the boy who made fun of me and pointed out which classroom we had been sitting in.
Xenia looked down at her feet, which were encased in one gray sock and one purple, and looked up at me as if to say, “What’s the big deal?”
It was like a healing balm to my soul. Mom couldn’t protect me from the fashion police, but she protected me from so much more. I am thankful for her strength and example in so many other areas of my life. Unmatching socks are kind of in fashion, I hear, or at least no one cares, though you won’t catch me doing it. Seeing Xenia wearing her unmatching socks in the same space that I was once taunted for doing so, healed that particular hurt of my inner child.
The next memory involved a lost tooth. For a previous lost tooth, the Tooth Fairy had left a long letter detailing the precise wall where she would place the tooth in her Tooth Fairy castle, along with a one-dollar bill. That Sunday morning, the baby tooth I lost on Saturday was still under my pillow when I woke up. I felt devastated.
After church, when Dad came to pick me up from Sunday school, an old lady stopped and talked with him and asked me, “How are you doing today?”
I tearfully explained how the Tooth Fairy hadn’t come.
Dad mumbled something to her.
The lady looked at Dad, pulled her wallet out from her purse, and handed me a five-dollar bill, more money than I had ever had at one time. I felt happy at getting so much money but anxious too. Something has always felt off about the memory, blurred with an onslaught of feelings. Even at five, I knew that my family had secrets that weren’t to be shared with outsiders. I questioned whether this slip of the Tooth Fairy was another example of the wrongness that I need to keep quiet about. I feared betraying the family. I felt shame in accepting charity from the woman. A newborn awareness of poverty warned me that my Tooth Fairy might be out of funds, which scared me, and part of me questioned the lady’s motives. Nothing stopped me from wiping my tear-streaked face with my hands and running off with the money in hand to buy brownies and cookies at the afternoon bake sale.
I showed Xenia, Tara, and Justin the hill that Dad, the lady, and I had stood on when she gave me the money. Justin reminded me that I had given him five dollars in the airport the day before for his previous lost tooth. I didn’t do the Tooth Fairy with any of my other kids, but Justin, being the baby, got both the Tooth Fairy and Santa. I don’t take his teeth, but I do slip him a fiver. It’s a lot less expensive than the teeth I have to pay the dentist to pull.
Justin isn’t upset when the Tooth Fairy doesn’t visit at night. He writes a message on the family whiteboard reminding me that I owe him money. He knows I’ll get around to it and trusts me to take care of him.
Suddenly, the story was a nice story about a kind lady giving me money to make up for an earlier disappointment. Justin showed me that it feels good to get the Tooth Fairy money, no matter how it’s delivered.
God is so good. I told the priest at the Vancouver parish all about these memories and how they were redeemed that day. I am in awe of a God who would bring me back to that place in his providential care to make those small, broken pieces of myself whole. If someone had asked me about those memories last week, I would have said that they hurt but were so small, they hardly mattered. As it turns out, I feel a new lightness about myself after being healed. I feel loved. I feel like every detail about me matters. I am curious what God will do next in my life.
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