I have spent the majority of my Sunday mornings in dresses with unnecessarily itchy lining, dress shoes that I swore were a size too small, and an unwavering wish to be back in my bed.

My grandmother has always been adamant that her grandchildren have at least some connection to God. Our respective parents had varying opinions on the matter, but as long as we spent the weekend at her house, there was no question about how we’d be spending the beginning of our week.

My cousins (we were often referred to as GrandAngels per my grandmother) were just as tired and uninterested as I was. Our perfectly styled heads of hair would bob and weave back and forth on the church pews in a fight to stay awake, undoubtedly losing.

It wasn’t until we heard the words instructing the congregation to rise that we’d have to truly look alive, and sing along (and for most of my cousins, guess the melodies) to the hymns. It was my time to shine.

The only part of the church that I truly understood was the music. Talk of eternal life and damnation, the Prodigal Son, and Noah’s Ark struggled to make it into one ear without bolting to the other. But music was something I understood immediately. It was in that sea of voices that I learned what harmony was. It was there that I learned what dissonance meant. In the music, I finally felt the connection that the hour of speaking beforehand was meant to convey. 

There was a holiness in the sound of a cappella voices bouncing off wooden pews and shooting past the stained-glass windows. The way the mix of the shrill soprano and booming bass resonated in the bones of my small body and shook me. I had never felt such a sense of belonging before. 

Our church was adamant about its disapproval of the use of instrumentation during worship. This was an aspect of the church that had to be repeatedly explained to me. It was deemed too “worldly” to involve a steady rhythm or an accompaniment of any sort. I found myself thoroughly confused by this, because the second we set foot outside of the church building and into the both embarrassingly big and too cramped minivan my grandparents owned, the radio would immediately begin to blast, never to be turned down. I decided that, like most things, it was only okay if we did it. That being God’s child meant that I could be absolved of absolutely all wrongdoing.