Free Is You Okay? by GloZell Green Page A

someone like Sheila. I understood the words coming out of Sheila’s mouth individually—they were words borrowed from the English language—but the way she put them together was totally bizarre. I was twenty-eight years old, a new wife, a fairly new parishioner, and I could not be any less prepared for this if you dropped me onto that altar from space.
    In addition, I knew that the service was being filmed, and I knew from how people were talking about Sheila before the service started that she was a big deal, and people wanted to impress her. I’m sure some of the people up there with me were feeling it, but I figured everyone else just kind of let it happen because they didn’t want to be the ones to make things awkward.
    As Sheila got closer, I fell into a near panic. What was I going to do? I wasn’t feeling anything, and if she didn’t bring the feeling with her, I was going to have to pretend. I did notwant to embarrass her if I didn’t feel the Spirit. And if she was as big a deal as these other ladies made her out to be, a tiny part of me wanted to make sure I didn’t get smited. I actually thought to myself, I wouldn’t want to make God look ridiculous here by ruining the program . What’s that saying: fake it till you make it? That’s how I felt right then.
    Finally, Sheila gets to me and I am in a full flop sweat. If you didn’t know any better, from looking at me it might have seemed like I was on the verge of being overcome. I wish. Sheila takes my hand, looks me in the eye, and starts her prayer-chant. I’m not feeling a thing. Oh boy, I’m gonna have to go down. Her voice starts to rise and quicken. Here it comes. She booms:
    IN THE NAME OF JESUS!
    Based on everyone else’s reaction before me, I was expecting her to high-five my forehead like a Family Feud buzzer and send me reeling backward. Instead, she just tapped it, like she was Vanna White and my forehead was a Wheel of Fortune tile. Now, I’m a performer, so I’m all about selling the moment, but one of the first things they teach you in acting classes is the importance of making scenes feel real. In that moment, falling to the ground didn’t make sense—there wasn’t enough force behind her tap. Instead, I wobbled and let my knees buckle, and I made a noise that sounded like aghost in a kindergarten haunted house. It was not convincing. And Sheila was not impressed. She went through the chant with me a second time and boomed once more:
    IN THE NAME OF JESUS!
    This second time, she popped me with a little bit more force, and I fell out in a way that I considered to be believable. It wasn’t real—though I would have liked it to be, just to know what it felt like—but it looked real, and at this point that was all I was worried about. There was only one small detail I hadn’t figured out: How long was I supposed to stay down there? Everyone else seemed to have a sense of when it was right to sit up and get helped to their feet by Sheila’s assistant. But not me—I had no idea. The last thing I wanted to do was get up too soon. They might know I was faking if I did that. So I went the other way. I stayed down . . . for the rest of the sermon!
    Sheila sent five other people falling out after me, and I stayed on the ground, captured in the Holy Spirit, the entire time. It was a little ridiculous. Finally people were, like, “Okay, GloZell, the service is over, you can get up now.”
    Have you ever been in one of those situations so crazy that after it’s all over you have trouble describing it to people? Well, this was one of those situations for me. I had managed to make the whole thing awkward, just in the oppositedirection from how I originally feared. A stranger had hit me in the head twice and then I faked passing out in front of my new husband and the congregation out of fear that they might judge me !
    This is a pretty good lesson