Bathtubs and Warm Water: The Genesis of Faith

By Dorothy Dettmering

Bathtubs and Warm Water is more than a memoir. Its a personal transcript of one womans journey from an unenlightened youth, through the tragedies and trauma of adulthood, to a release from alcoholism, and ultimately to an understanding and acceptance of the role of the divine in her life. Author Dorothy Dettmering gives the reader an insight into the divine interventions and divine connections that guide and protect all of us as we navigate the circuitous route from birth to death. In her story, there is hope for redemption and enlightenment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Feb 3, 2016
• ISBN: 9781512725827

Dorothy Dettmering

Dorothy Dettmering—Gramma Dottie to friends and family— also published a memoir, The Uncommon Journey of an Ordinary Woman, and a children’s book, When Charlie Coyote Lost His Cool. A retired home economics teacher, Dottie has filled her ninety-five years with exciting pursuits that have brought inspiration and Christian education to thousands.

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Prologue

Something startled me––a noise, distant and faint, like the tinkling of a tiny bell swaying on a Christmas tree. It was a man’s voice––and it kept getting louder and louder until it woke me. Apparently, I had dozed off for a moment while watching television.

Fully awake now, I heard the words, divine connections. A television evangelist was explaining how God put people and situations into his life so that he could accomplish his goals. He was the son of a pastor, and was taught to pray for help whenever he was at a crossroads. It worked for him. It got him to where he is today.

Often, a person can spend a lifetime without seeing the big picture. I, myself, was so overwhelmed by the mundane aspects of just getting through every day––going to college, rearing children, and earning a living––that I missed the importance of spirituality. No, I didn’t really miss it, I just kept putting it off. I was scared of it.

At a very young age I became aware of this constant gnawing in the pit of my stomach, like the feeling you get when you know you should do a school assignment but keep delaying it. I interpreted it to mean that I had been assigned to do an important task. It was always there, undone, because I didn’t know what this tremendous thing was. Unconsciously, I started searching for it. I tried many activities, went down various avenues, but still wasn’t free of this uneasy feeling.

One day I noticed that everything I was touching, seeing, and hearing at that moment was related to the spiritual. My neighbor had given me a book to read written by a young preacher. A DVD that arrived in the mail was titled, The Spiritual Brain. My daughter, Virginia, phoned and told me that her husband was urging her to get back to attending church regularly. Everything around me was reminding me to think about spirituality. This time I did, and all of a sudden I realized the uneasiness had left me.

I thought about my life, how God had woven everything together to bring me to this point of quiet faith. If I tell my story, will it be the inspiration for readers to examine their lives and experience the joy of discovering their own journey? I hope so.

To help readers get the whole story, I must start at the beginning, so…

CHAPTER 1

A Child’s View

That was naughty and God puts black marks on your soul when you’re naughty!

My mother said that to me as she sat at the sewing machine making a dress. She didn’t even look up at me, just kept right on sewing. My stomach tightened and my throat became parched. I was terrified as I stood transfixed beside her with many questions running through my three-year-old mind, but I didn’t know how to ask them. God must be someone very important but I had never seen Him. And how would He know when I was naughty? And what is my soul? I had visions of it as a big black book full of things about me and my naughtiness. And what did I do to deserve that scolding? To this day I don’t know what I did wrong, because her frightening remark erased it from my mind.

As I remember it, this incident was the beginning of my confusion, fear, and dislike of thinking about anything pertaining to religion. It was too frightening, and I knew I would never be good enough to please God.

Although my father never attended church, my mother was an active churchgoer. She was raised in a very religious family. Her mother’s father, Anders, was a lay preacher and had preached his last sermon at age ninety-nine. The only time I heard him preach was at my maternal grandfather’s funeral, but it was in Swedish, not English, and I didn’t understand a word he said.

My father’s mother had changed churches after her husband died and she became a member of a very strict sect whose Sabbath was on Saturday. When I stayed with her on the weekend, I had to go to church with her, and the service frightened me. When they prayed, the congregation knelt on the bare wooden floor facing the backs of their chairs. The walls of the meeting hall were unadorned, as were the church members. I assumed it was because they were too poor, but I later found out that they did not believe in any form of adornment. Everything in their religion seemed somber and sad to me.

I had to sit quietly after church for hours while Grandma read the Bible. I was not allowed to play or go downtown for an ice-cream cone, even though the ice-cream store was only a couple blocks away. She insisted this was the day to rest and reflect.

Grandma talked about hell and damnation, that the end of the world was coming, and how we were all such sinners. God is a jealous God, and we must atone for our sins! I didn’t understand any of it, and I didn’t want to hear it. I imagined God to be a giant with long white hair and beard, in a flowing white gown, sitting on a throne high on a platform holding a big wooden staff and sternly staring out above everything.

I have never been able to rid myself of that image. I’ve tried, because I’d rather think of Him as kind and loving.

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I attended Sunday school all through my childhood, and was the recipient of a black leather-bound Bible for perfect attendance. I sang in the choir and sometimes played the piano in duets with the organist. I usually attended two Bible classes in the summer––one at my home church and another at my step-grandmother’s church, where we were required to read the entire Bible. I paged through it but I don’t remember learning anything about Jesus, God, or one thing religious. I only remember some silly incidents that occurred.

One time we bowed our heads while the minister led us in prayer. I heard a muffled thud. I raised my head only enough so I could peek to see what happened. Without missing a word of the prayer, the minister leaned over, picked up his toupee, placed it back on his head…and went right on praying.

I also remember one of the girls named Abby Bauer. She was homely as a hedgehog, short and pudgy, with a huge bun of blonde hair on the top of her head. She always wore ankle-high leather boots and a long dress that came to a couple inches above her shoes. She looked more like an old lady than a young girl. She may not have been pretty, but she was the model caretaker of her younger brothers, and her mother was proud of her. I’ll always remember how my step-grandmother made fun of Abby’s mother because Mrs. Bauer had once remarked, I don’t understand how Mr. B. and I had such beautiful children.

I certainly believed there was a God, because my mother told me so. But the stickler was that I didn’t understand––even after all the years of my association with the church––that Jesus was my Savior. I didn’t know what a savior was, nor why I needed one. I wasn’t dumb; I just didn’t have the answers, partly because I was too afraid to inquire and thereby appear stupid, and partly because I had not been taught properly. Is there a proper way to teach the very young about something as abstract as religion?

Children do not understand anything spiritual, even when parents try to explain it to them. For example, the first time my grandson Jeff attended church with his parents he was only two or three years old. Because they feared he would become restless and noisy, they brought a plastic bag with something for him to eat when he began to fidget. When his father gave him a cookie, he softly told him, This is God’s house, and when you are in God’s house you must be quiet.

Jeff obeyed and silently nibbled on his cookie, but finally leaned over to his dad and whispered, Do you think God has any milk?

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In high school, when I did let myself think about spirituality, I remember worrying that if I worshipped Jesus it would make God angry. After all, Grandma had told me that God was a jealous God and I was afraid to worship Jesus for fear He would punish me for preferring Jesus to Him. And my church never mentioned the Holy Ghost. Only the Catholics knew about the Holy Ghost and only the Catholics had miracles. I wasn’t Catholic so I was destined never to see a miracle. And I was deathly afraid of the Holy Ghost. I was truly confused––so confused, in fact, that I didn’t want to think about religion at all. It was too frightening. If I could be as good as I knew how, maybe I wouldn’t have any more black marks on my soul. That was all I could do.

I believed that when the end came and I died, that was all there was. You see, when I was six years old, my mother became ill. She went to the hospital and I never saw her again. I was told that she died, and that was all there was. She was gone. So, when I die, I will just be gone, too. That’s all.

Sometime later I was told that when one is good, she goes to heaven when she dies. If she is bad, she goes to hell––not a good place. I didn’t want to go there.

Confusion ruled my life. My mother had been very active in the church. However, after she died and my Aunt Ella’s family came to live with us, what was left of our family became divided. On Sundays my sister Evelyn and I were left at the Congregational church, while Aunt Ella’s family went to the Catholic church. My grandmother’s Sabbath was on Saturday. My dad was an atheist and didn’t worship at all.

After Daddy remarried, our stepmother attended church only occasionally. Saturday night was the time to party, so she slept in most Sunday mornings. But, because she was at least a member of the church, it brought a little more stability to my life. I was growing up, in high school, and attending the adult services. I began listening…and thinking.

Why am I here at all? I began to wonder.

Again I became aware of the feeling that I was put on earth to accomplish something. Mark Twain once said, The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.

I did not know what it was I was supposed to do nor the reason. I just had this uneasiness in the pit of my stomach that wouldn’t go away. I had to do something!

It was during one of the reverend’s sermons that I heard that in order to be in favor with God and go to heaven, I must give myself to the Lord. One redeeming feature was that I could put it off until later, maybe even just before death. But, how did I know when that would be? I might die suddenly, like in a car accident. I was afraid to wait…but I did. Actually, I didn’t know how to give myself to the Lord anyway.

One of my high school girl friends definitely gave herself––she went away to become a nun. My only association with nuns had been in the hospital. I knew they didn’t have a very exciting life. I didn’t want that, but if I gave my life to the Lord as I was supposed to, I thought I would be like a nun. There would be no more fun, no freedom, nor any control of my own life.

Oh, my! Oh, my! said Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, and this little Dorothy felt the same way. So much to think about.

Like Scarlet O’Hara, I’ll think about it tomorrow!

CHAPTER 2

Honor and Obey

A tall, blond, bashful boy blushed when he passed me in the hall every time we changed classes in seventh grade. Someone whispered to me, He likes you. I had not paid any attention to him before. But obviously he had found out about me, because the next time we had band practice he was there.

I asked my dad for this trumpet so I could sit next to you, he volunteered as he showed me his brand new shiny horn, and I felt my face get hot.

Do you know how to play it? I didn’t want to ask his name. I thought it would be too forward. But, he offered it anyway.

My name is Howard Wurl, but everyone calls me Gus after my father. I know your name. It’s Dorothy Mae McCormick and I know you play the trumpet. I am learning how to play it, too.

I had to say something. You’re in Miss Paul’s room. I’m in Miss Gaffney’s.

When the band teacher entered the room, Howard whispered to me, I’ll see you after school, and I stifled a smile.

That afternoon he walked with me the mile from the school, through French Town, to where I lived on the lake, and continued to accompany me home almost every night after that. Sometimes we sat on the lakeshore at the back of my house and talked until Mom called me in to dinner. It was a long way back to his home on the other side of town, so he finally asked his friend, Dyna, (short for Dynamite) to accompany him.

On Friday night, April 8th, 1932, after the school carnival, when we were in eighth grade, Howard and Dyna walked with me to my dad’s office. I phoned for my father to come into town and pick me up. Howard and I had planned that while we waited for my ride home, we would have our first kiss. We hadn’t planned well enough, because Dyna was witness to this very memorable event that was supposed to be private. He stood in the shadows and didn’t utter a sound.

The following summer, the senior high school boy who mowed our lawn asked my dad if he could take me to the movies. Dad wanted me to be nice to the boy, so I went to the show with him, and he gave me his class ring that same night. I was too young and inexperienced to know what it meant, but Howard did, and became very angry when he saw the ring. Although I gave it back, the fact that I had accepted it at all caused Howard to break up with me.

When we were juniors in high school, Howard received an accordion for a Christmas gift from his parents. He invited me to his home to see it. The rose of