Am I the a**hole for standing up in the middle of a church service and saying what I said?
My grandson Denny is nine years old and has cerebral palsy. He uses a walker, he talks a little slower than other kids, and he is the funniest, most loving child I have ever known in sixty-two years of living. His mom – my daughter Kristen – has been a single parent since Denny was three. I help her with everything. Church is one of the few places we thought Denny had found his people.
We’ve been members of Calvary Baptist for eleven years. Denny has been in the youth group since he was six. Every Sunday, Kristen drops him off at the fellowship hall and picks him up after service. She never had a reason to worry.
Until last month, when Denny came home and told me the other kids had a bowling trip.
He didn’t go. Nobody called us. Nobody sent a form home. When I asked the youth director – a woman named Pam, mid-forties, been running that group for six years – she said the venue “wasn’t really accessible” and she “didn’t want Denny to feel left out by struggling in front of the other kids.”
She made that call without telling us. Without asking us. Without giving Denny a single chance.
I asked her how many other trips had happened that Denny missed. She looked at the floor.
There had been three.
THREE trips over the past year. A fall festival, a movie night, and now bowling. Denny sat home every single time while kids he calls his best friends went without him. He never knew because nobody told him. He only found out about the bowling because one of the boys mentioned it by accident.
I went to the pastor, Dale. He listened, nodded, said he’d “look into it.” That was two weeks ago. Pam is still running the group. Denny still goes every Sunday because he doesn’t understand yet why I’m so angry, and I am not taking his church away from him on top of everything else they already took.
This past Sunday, Pastor Dale gave a whole sermon about radical inclusion. About how this congregation opens its arms to EVERYONE. About how Jesus sat with the people nobody else would sit with.
I sat in that pew and I felt something leave my body.
When he asked if anyone wanted to share a reflection, I stood up.
My daughter grabbed my arm. “Mom,” she said. “Don’t.”
I looked down at Denny in his seat next to me, his little walker folded up beside him, his church shoes on, his clip-on tie crooked.
I looked back up at three hundred people waiting to hear what I had to say.
And I started talking.
What I Actually Said
I want to be clear that I did not yell. I did not cry, though it was close. My voice was steady in a way that surprised even me, and I think that steadiness is what made people go so quiet so fast.
I said: “Pastor Dale, I appreciate that sermon. I really do. But I need to tell this congregation something, because I’ve been sitting on it for two weeks and I don’t think I can sit on it anymore.”
I told them about the bowling trip. I told them about the fall festival and the movie night. I said Denny’s name. I pointed at him, sitting right there in the third pew, and I said, “This boy has been coming to this church for three years. He calls these kids his best friends. And for the past year, someone in this building has been deciding, quietly, without a single word to his mother or to me, that he didn’t need to be included.”
I did not say Pam’s name. I want that on the record. I did not point at her. I didn’t know exactly where she was sitting and I wasn’t going to turn around and hunt for her face.
I said: “We were told the venues weren’t accessible. We were told it was to protect his feelings. Nobody asked us what Denny could handle. Nobody asked Denny. He’s nine years old and he has opinions about everything, including whether he wants to try bowling. You don’t get to make that call for him. You don’t get to make it for us.”
Then I said the part that I’ve been going back and forth on ever since.
I said: “You cannot preach radical inclusion on Sunday and practice quiet exclusion on Saturday. Those two things cannot both be true. One of them is a lie.”
I sat down.
The Three Seconds After
Kristen had her hand over her mouth. Denny was looking up at me with an expression I couldn’t read. Not upset. Not scared. Something else. He reached over and patted my hand twice, the way I used to pat his when he was little and had to get a shot.
Pastor Dale said, “Thank you, Judy,” in a voice that was very careful and very flat.
The service moved on. We sang a hymn. There were announcements about the potluck. I sat there with my heart going about twice its normal speed and my hands folded in my lap like everything was fine.
After the benediction, three people came up to me right away. Two women I’d known for years, Carol and a woman named Bev who I mostly see at Christmas. Carol squeezed my hand and didn’t say anything. Bev said, “My son has ADHD and they did something similar to us four years ago. We left. I wish I’d said something first.”
The third person was a man I didn’t recognize, maybe forty, and he said, “That was inappropriate. This is a house of worship.”
I said, “Yes, it is. That’s exactly why I said it here.”
He walked away.
What Kristen Said in the Car
She waited until Denny had his headphones on in the back seat. He was watching something on her phone, legs swinging, completely uninterested in whatever the adults were about to do.
She said, “Mom. You can’t just do that.”
I said, “I know.”
“You embarrassed Dale in front of his whole congregation.”
“I know.”
“You could have talked to him again privately. You could have gone to the deacon board. You could have – “
“Kristen.” I turned to look at her. “I did talk to Dale. He said he’d look into it. That was two weeks ago. Pam is still there. Nothing changed. I waited.”
She was quiet for a minute. We were at a red light. I watched her jaw work.
She said, “Denny doesn’t know about the other trips.”
“I know.”
“He’s going to figure out that’s what you were talking about.”
“I know that too.”
She didn’t say anything else. Neither did I. When we got to her house, she unbuckled Denny and he came over and hugged me around the middle and said, “Grandma, why did you do a speech?” and I said, “Because something wasn’t fair and I wanted people to know about it,” and he thought about that for a second and said, “Okay,” and went inside.
That was it. Just: okay. Like it was the most normal thing.
What I’ve Been Asking Myself Since
The question I keep turning over is whether I did it for Denny or for me.
I think it was both. I think that’s okay. I think you’re allowed to be furious on behalf of someone you love, and I think that fury doesn’t stop being righteous just because it also felt good to finally say the thing out loud.
But I’ve also been honest with myself about what I didn’t do. I didn’t warn Kristen. I didn’t give Dale one more chance to fix it privately. I stood up in front of three hundred people and I said what I said, and some of those people are going to be uncomfortable now every time they see Denny walk in with his walker, and I don’t know yet whether that’s better or worse for him than being invisible.
That’s the part that keeps me up.
Not whether I was right. I was right.
Whether right was enough.
What Happened Monday
Dale called me Monday morning. Eight forty-five. I was still in my bathrobe with my coffee.
He said he’d been thinking about what I shared, and that he wanted me to know the church took inclusion very seriously, and that he was going to be scheduling a meeting with Pam and the deacon board to review the youth group’s policies going forward.
I said, “Dale, is Pam still running the group?”
He paused. He said, “That’s something we’ll be discussing in the meeting.”
I said, “Okay. Let me know what you decide.”
He said he also wanted me to know that several congregation members had come to him after the service, and that he hoped I understood the way I’d chosen to raise the issue had caused some disruption.
I said, “I understand that. I also raised it privately two weeks ago and nothing happened. So.”
Another pause. Longer this time.
He said he hoped we could move forward in a spirit of grace.
I said, “I hope Denny gets to go on the next trip.”
We hung up.
I don’t know what the meeting will produce. I don’t know if Pam will face any real consequence or if she’ll get a gentle conversation and a reminder to “communicate better” and keep on running things the same way she always has. I don’t know if Calvary Baptist is going to change or if it’s just going to get better at looking like it’s changing.
What I know is that three hundred people heard Denny’s name on Sunday. They heard what was done to him. They can’t unknow it now. Some of them will do nothing with that information. But some of them won’t.
Bev, who left her church four years ago and said she wished she’d spoken first. I think about her.
The Clip-On Tie
Sunday is coming around again. Denny has already asked Kristen if he can wear his clip-on tie.
He has two of them. One is navy blue with small yellow diamonds. The other one is red and he calls it his “fancy one.” He picked the fancy one this week. He told Kristen he wanted to look “extra good” because last week was exciting.
That’s the word he used. Exciting.
I don’t know what’s waiting for us when we walk back into that building. I don’t know if people will stare or if Pam will be there or if Dale will say something from the pulpit or nothing at all. I don’t know if I did the right thing in the right way or just the right thing in the only way I had left.
But Denny is going to walk in there Sunday morning with his walker and his red tie and his church shoes, and he is going to wave at the kids he calls his best friends, and he is going to sit in the third pew.
And if anyone in that building has a problem with him being there, they’re going to have to say so out loud.
Because I’m done letting it happen quietly.
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If this one got to you, pass it along. Some stories deserve more than one set of eyes.
For more stories about standing up for what’s right, check out what happened when My Son’s Youth Group Told Him to “Sit This One Out.” So I Stood Up., or read about when The Vice Principal Laughed at My Uniform in Front of Everyone and how I Was Recording the Whole Time She Humiliated Me at the PTA Meeting.
