rants
seeing the swan
thanks my dear friends for understanding, for the love, the emails, the phone calls, the comments. i of course have felt encouraged in more ways than you know. in case you didn’t notice, i am a verbal processor. something happens inside me when i say things out loud & God moves in in all kinds of random and creative ways to remind me of what i need to be reminded of.
i think i was clear, but i want to reiterate so there’s no mistake: the in-the-trenches-of-real-life part of my day to day is not too overwhelming. is it hard? sure. is it painful? sure. but God’s beauty & hope in the midst of the ugliness sustains me. the draining, overwhelming, sucky part is the lack of resources & support. does God provide? of course. i see miracles every day. i see generosity in the most unlikely of places. i see random acts of kindness & love & help & hope that bring tears to my eyes on a regular basis. do i need to keep my eyes focused on that and not the scarcity that i sometimes see? no doubt. but part of this leg of my journey is to also be unafraid to speak truthfully about what i observe about some odd inconsistencies within the body of Christ. i don’t expect everyone to agree. i know there are some that are like “get over it, that’s life as a Christ-follower, quit your whining, keep your eyes on your own ball, and start praying!” and i will respectfully say to them that we can kindly disagree on what is helpful in this moment. on the spectrum of life-in-the-margins i know there are countless others who doing far more intense work with far less resources in dangerous scary places that pale in comparison to denver, colorado. i pray that nothing i am saying diminishes the magnitude of their sacrifice. but i do not for a minute think like ministries like home-pdx should be having these kinds of struggles financially (please oh please read pam hodgeweide’s recent post on the mystery of home-pdx, it couldn’t have come at a more appropriate time,) they don’t need that much and i don’t think they should have to beg for it each month. more stable churches could be saying “ken loyd, dear lover of people without houses, we will support you to do this ministry because it is important. the least of these deserve it. we are not equipped to do it, we don’t have the stomach for it, but we have people with jobs and houses and we will use their money to make it happen. you are our brother and we will share generously with you.” as you can see, i just can’t get off my soapbox! every time i think of ken battling for the simple needs to sustain such a small and important entity, i can’t help but get tears in my eyes & a burning sense of ‘something has clearly gone awry, people!’ deep in my heart.
but back to what some might call an ugly duckling, the refuge, the beautiful faith community i am part of. i have called it that since the beginning & i am now officially going to recant! it’s a swan. now. not “when we get this or that or become this or that”. i’m talking about now. yes, it’s a lovely swan. at first glance you’d never see it. there’s not that many people in the room. there’s chaos. there’s a mix of people who don’t look like they go together. there’s someone talking when they’re supposed to be listening. there are kids running around wreaking havoc. there’s a beautiful piece of art in the middle of the room that has crumbs all over the floor. there are people crying when they’re supposed to be laughing. there are people laughing when they’re supposed to be crying. it definitely doesn’t look hip or cool or, honestly, all that inviting. but underneath, its heart is filled with love and grace and acceptance and hope and help. and, at the same time, its heart is full of doubt and anger and fear and pride and pain. you see, to me, the refuge is just a reflection of all of us. we’re good, we’re bad. we’re beautiful, we’re ugly. we are thankful, we are disappointed. sometimes we notice God, other times we are sure he’s left the building. we hope, we doubt. we do some things right, we do some things wrong. we are brave, we are afraid. we give, we’re selfish. we’re confident, we’re insecure.
but like people, if we let the world define us, we will only see the negative, the things we aren’t. the ugly duckling just couldn’t see it. and the others couldn’t see it, either. but i am fairly sure that God could see it all along. Jesus always saw it. in the leper, the prostitute, the adulterous, the tax collector, the disciple. we see the ugly duckling, he sees the swan. and i believe he wants us to see what he sees. i want to see what he sees. in God’s economy, his reflection in us reminds us of what we are, who we are. our identity in Christ regardless of worldly measures is not something to ignore, dismiss. i do it often & sometimes i just need a little rattling of the tree to shake me back into sense, a reminder that the upside-down ways of the kingdom are totally counter to everything i have been taught not just by the world, but even more so by the church. answers, stability, security, put-togetherness, moving-on-ness, growth that’s visible and measurable. all these things are subtly & overtly valued & perpetuated in more ways that i am guessing we’d like to admit. and even though i know they totally contradict so much of what i believe, these weird “here’s what’s good & valuable” messages are somehow still etched in my memory. we have associated these things with beauty. the new imprint i want tattooed upon my heart, my mind, my hands, my feet, are the beatitudes. poverty of spirit, feeling, advocating, seeking justice, giving our lives away, humility, gentleness, backwards-to-the-worldness, crazy hope & peace & deep relationships in the midst of a real & honest life. and those, my friends, will look utterly stupid, ugly, to the world and probably to a lot of christians, too.
there’s so much i don’t understand. i am working out all kinds of things out loud, for the whole world to see (sometimes not the best idea!), and i think the biggest truth i am learning is what looks to one person like a tuft of misshappen feathers & bulging eyes is to another a vision of beauty & power & grace. and that underneath all of the crumbling rocks & sinking sand & hazards to our health & faith is something far more sure and solid and true than we ever would have imagined.
yeah, i see the swan.
Read Morewhy sometimes i want to throw in the towel
i was about to post something else that i have been wanting to get up here, but i just couldn’t skip over where i’m at today & why i currently feel so undone. it will also help you understand why i have so much frustration in my heart toward “the church” & the systems and philosophies that tend to go along with it. yeah, i’m in the tank. i’m tired. i’m angry. i’m a bit confused. i want to throw in the towel but know that i won’t. i am deeply committed to the work that we do & i am not going to give up, but i guess i would love for others to know why i want to now & then and just how hard living out what i passionately believe about the body of Christ really feels like sometimes. when we planted the refuge 2 1/2 years ago we had a dream that “church” wouldn’t look like pretty much what most of us know “church” to be. we kept the word “church” because we believe deeply in our hearts that church the way it is and the way it should & could be are two different things. i wonder sometimes if keeping the word “church” has been one of our biggest mistakes because we are often misunderstood. you see, in so many ways (but not all ways) we probably more closely mirror a nonprofit christian agency. we are in the trenches with friends both in and outside of our community who are sinking, desperate, tired, lonely, struggling, and ready to throw in the towel on life, on God and call it a day. our weekly gathering on sunday eves is just one small place of hope each week in and amidst other gatherings & the much bigger picture is the scope of relationship after relationship after relationship both in and outside of “the refuge” that is cultivated and nurtured over the other 6 days & 22 hours of the week. all of these relationships are extremely life-giving to me no matter how intense they sometimes can be; it’s not the relationships, the pain, struggle, or intensity that drains me.
here’s why i get overwhelmed: we rarely get any extra outside help, some relief. we have tons of people who tell us how much they respect the work that we do, that they have a “friend they’d love to get to the refuge” (aka, they would never cut it at their church) & “think it’s so cool what you are trying” (and i always want to say back to them, umm, this is not supposed to be that out of the ordinary folks). but very few people outside our community actually show up and say “what can we do to help you live this out? how can we help relieve some of your pressure? how can we serve some of these single moms, dads, and struggling families? what do you need?” people inside our community do & the spirit of generosity is amazing, but honestly our needs are so great, resources so few that we just need new wells (and i’m not just talking about money). i do not want to sound like a whiner, i am sure that some will think i am. i am just trying to say out loud that sometimes i realize we are “first responders” and sometimes first responders get really really tired & need some extra love and encouragement. i also have this weird feeling we’d get some if we weren’t a “church” but actually a para-church ministry because somehow it just easier to wrap ones head around. aren’t churches about worship services & offering boxes & sermons & competition, but “ministries”, now we understand that. another issue is that so many supposedly “mature” christians (the kind that tithe & serve & show up regularly) want to be “fed” and get their “church needs met” (aka: great sermons, bible studies, kids programs, being with people like them, and a chance to ‘serve’), they really stay insulated from real relationship with diverse, equally-messy-but-maybe-just-a-little-more-honest-about-it people who not only need them, but they actually need, too. want to know the number one reason people have expressed to us why they couldn’t hang at the refuge: “we just want to be around less broken people” and “i don’t have the issues these people have” and “we just don’t feel comfortable” and “we just need more.” i get so confused on this because i am pretty sure the kind of spiritual transformation Jesus was talking about was going to come through being uncomfortable, sacrificial, and radically challenged in the love-relationship-people department. i have no idea how the system has become so far-removed from this, but it’s there, it’s pervasive, and it’s so obvious that the average american church culture places a much higher value on christian studliness, strength, power, and pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps than on honesty, vulnerability & weakness (just stroll into the christian bookstore or flick on your tv to see which pastors have made it to the bigtime and it’s kind of hard not to notice).
for the past 11 years the one ongoing difficult conversation i have had with “the church” is to try to help us recognize our brokenness & see that we are all in the same beautiful boat in need of God’s grace, that spiritual poverty is a good thing not a bad thing, that Jesus came for the sick not the healthy, that the outside of our cup means nothing but God is concerned with the inside, that becoming a more loving human being is more important than how many bible verses we know or how many programs we handed out. i have stood on tables & utterly humiliated myself to fight for this theology of brokenness to be lived out in more than just words. unfortunately, over and over again, i have bumped up against a “we’re well, they’re sick” mentality, a subtle & not so subtle “go get fixed and then you can come back & be with us” when pain starts entering the room, a “you need to stop using words like messy, desperate, broken because they are making ‘some people” uncomfortable (as in, big donors)”. at the refuge, i don’t have to deal with political players that need to be pacified or they’ll stop giving money or worrying about keeping someone in our hip pocket; we’re all in the same beautiful boat & i am thankful for it, but the truth is often it feels like there are leaks everywhere & we’re bailing water as fast we can but we’re absolutely nowhere on the coast guard’s radar.
yesterday was just one of those days from start to finish that was filled with friends in despair & mental illness & brain tumors & safehouses-to-escape-abusive-husbands & divorces & suicidal thoughts & brutal church woundedness, and i only had one thought running in my head over and over and over again “people have no freaking idea that this is what an average day at the refuge looks like” (that was right after the “i just got paid all day what some therapist friends get paid in 25 minutes“) and then it was followed by “where in the $!^#)%$*@ is some help outside of us?” and then i just cried all the way home. i am not working alone, don’t worry about that, we have a great community that shares the load and radically cares for people, but what we are missing is stability, help, and resources. and what’s so brutally painful for me is that i am aware of several new church plants that basically are completely funded & have no money worries. guess who they serve: white, evangelical suburban christians. yeah, there’s a good ol’ club with lots of money & power floating around out there & i’m definitely not a member. and yeah, i know the suburban poor & marginalized & invisible & really really hurting & church burnouts & fringers aren’t too sexy…
some of this is our fault, i recognize that, part is that we are always so caught up in the current crises that we don’t have time to get ahead of things, tell our story, and cultivate proper help. but at the same time, i will say, many many many people know our heart & the work that we do & praise our names and tell their screwed up friends & neighbors about us but very very few have actually said “we will help you.” i need to say something so important here: some of our/my closest most amazing supporters have come through this blog & a few other wonderful networks. you cheer us on from afar, you send me/us emails that support & encourage & keep me in the game, you send a check now and then & have absolutely no idea how much it means to us in a tangible way. please know i am so grateful for your love, your help, your hearts. please know none of my ramblings are meant to diminish any of that.
tonight, i just feel a little extra tired & frustrated at “the system” and wanted you to know where i was at instead of pretending like everything around refuge-kathy-land is hunkey dorey. thanks for listening, for caring, for understanding (or at least trying to, i am sure some of you disagree with some of my church ranting, that’s okay. just be nice to me, please, at least today?)
Read Moreassuming is dangerous
well i had some other thoughts mulling around in my mind that will come later this week but i couldn’t resist sharing a different one today after a few emails i received last night that got me all riled up. i have friends all over the map when it comes to politics, religion, socioeconomics, age, you name it. i love it, diversity is one of my favorite things, but i realized something yesterday that really bugged me–the assumption people make that since i am on their “email distribution list” i must agree politically with them & appreciate their icky anti-obama emails. i’ve gotten a few here and there over the past few weeks, but last night before i was hitting the hay two of them were in my inbox, and i think the double whammy just pushed me over the edge. i usually hit delete but i decided to send back these replies:
hey ______, thanks for the email. i know there are lots of people against obama but i’m not one of them. i really don’t like emails like this that slam someone when we don’t know the whole story. i wouldn’t like them about john mccain, either, just saying thanks for taking me off any political email lists you send. hope you are good, kathy
hey _____, i understand if you are against obama, but i am not really sure i appreciate the spirit of this email and the assumption that this is true. i love to hear from you always but don’t want to get stuff related to anti-obama, it doesn’t feel good and i never, ever get anything kicking john mccain around like this. that wouldn’t feel too good either. thanks, kathy
i am not sure if these responses were right or wrong, i am sure i could have worded them better in all kinds of ways & you can probably pick them apart. but, hey, it was midnight & i was just glad i didn’t hit delete this time. these people are not close personal friends that i ever see or hang out with, so it’s not likely i will be sitting across the table having a conversation about it. all’s i know is an automatic assumption is made that because i am a christian i must be voting for mccain & am not into obama. (this came on the heels of being at a coffee shop yesterday next to the christian school my kids used to attend; i ran into a parent from the school & church who started talking about politics & religion and 100%-without-a-doubt assumed that i see things exactly like she did (she is a kind person, i am just pretty sure it never crossed her mind that i could possibly see things differently as a “christian”).
assuming is dangerous. i think we do it all the time in weird ways and it would serve us well as christians, as people, to be very careful about it. i am not just pointing the finger. i do it, too, but i am trying to become more aware of it because it can be hurtful, rude, insensitive, judgemental, and unloving.
here are some of the things i have seen first-hand that we, as christians, make some dangerous assumptions about:
politics – enough said on that one. every christian is not a republican and every democrat is not immoral, anti-military, anti-american.
homosexuality – people sometimes assume that no one in a group or situation actually is or used to struggle with it. some think that all christians must believe it’s the worst possible sin next to murder & one of our nation’s (& church’s) top priorities. a few months ago someone with a very conservative faith experience was over for a visit with another friend. in response to my comments about the big shifts in christianity currently underway he said: “the only problem is that so many churches have become so liberal that they actually embrace homosexuals.” umm, yeah, not a good moment. especially when my dear friend who happens to be lesbian was in the next room doing her laundry at my house like she does every week. i did my best to be kind & honest & understanding and didn’t completely freak out in the moment (although i was on the verge) because i know that is just a prevalent teaching in the church culture he comes from. (praise God jose was there, too, and sort of neutralized my potential craziness!). trust me, though, i lost it when he left & couldn’t stop crying for some reason and jose, my friend, and i processed it for a while afterward. it rattled me more than i can say, i think because it somehow violated the safety of my house. all because of some weird assumption that because i am a christian (and maybe a “pastor” on top of it) that i would certainly 100% agree with that statement. it took no consideration that maybe he was talking about my child, my brother or sister, the person he just met, me, jose, you name it. it is dangerous to assume.
mental illness & depression – in any given room, more people than we think probably struggle with it in some shape or form and are on meds for it. just because we don’t doesn’t mean someone else doesn’t.
abortion - well, i have been honest about this one, how horrible it feels when people start going off on the issue without any respect for the reality that a huge number of women (and men of course, too) have this in their experience. it perpetuates the shame & ugliness & keeps people in hiding (for good reason, insensitive remarks give us good data that it’s not safe to share!)
struggles with porn, drugs, alcohol, food - same thing, i have been in moments where people go “well, ya know, those people who are addicted to pornography….” again, you just never know who is in the throes of their struggle & what it does inside when people are talking about you with shame & judgement attached in the most insensitive of ways.
money – no doubt, we can never know what’s going on for a person related to money. i know plenty of single mommies who are well put together & go to work every day and live below the poverty level. i know other people who live in nice houses they are probably going to lose soon. we just can’t assume we know where people are at on this one. another thing that always bugs me in churches is when they charge for things and just assume people can pay. yeah, to me $10 is no big deal but to another friend it is food for a few days. i don’t have any problem asking, i just think we should be so careful about assuming that that just because we can, others can.
kids - sort of the same thing. those married with kids doing our thing need to understand & respect that there are people who can’t, never will, and what that might feel like.
bible knowledge & language & being into God – okay this is my last one, there are all kinds of people who don’t know stories of the bible or the language we christians toss around like it’s nothing. i am in a community of straight shooters & someone from the refuge said something to me a while back that i will never forget: “just so you know, i resent it when you go ‘well, you all know the story of david…’ and i am like ‘well, um, no i actually don’t’. please don’t assume just because you know, i know.” umm, yeah, i am with some really cool people who are willing to call a spade a spade! at the same time, worship, sermons, oh all kinds of conversations assume that people are actually “into God, love him, like him, even.” that is so not so many people’s current experience & i think we need to try to take into account that all kinds of people “in and around church” are pissed off at God & are feeling guilty & confused about it. i want to continue to develop sharper eyes & ears to what God platitudes must feel like for my friend who just lost a child or is beginning to be honest about sexual abuse or just filed bankruptcy.
oh these are just the ones off the top of my head. i know there are so many more you can add. please know this: i don’t think we can be totally politically spiritually emotionally “correct” all the time, that would be way too exhausting. i say stupid things all the time with no harm intended & constantly need grace, grace & more grace.
but my point is that we need to be very careful about making assumptions & applying our experience to everyone else’s. it is precarious ground & i just think we need to be aware of it, that’s all. some of have heard the old adage: ”we all know what assuming does. it makes an ass out of u and me!”
yeah, assuming is dangerous.
Read Morethis kind of jesus is too small for me
i know i sometimes sound like i am dissing the evangelical church and its rigid ways. please know i recognize there are so many good, lovely, beautiful sincere people in conservative traditional churches who truly love Jesus and are serving him in amazing ways. at the same time, i am sometimes struck by how pervasive the “truth” culture is in these systems and how dangerous any potential threat to their systematic theology is. so here’s something that just happened to me this week. when i first read it, i laughed out loud. then i sat with it a little longer and while a chuckle was still under my breath, another feeling slowly pervaded—sadness. sadness for how small and limited Jesus can become and how elevated and worshipped “the Bible” is. this is a letter from a women’s ministry leader who was considering using refresh at their church. here’s what she says:
“there was concern that arose when i presented this bible study as a resource…the quoting of oprah and ghandi. both are good people but not someone we would want to give credit to as knowing or having spiritual insight. we feel it would stumble some of our ladies especially new believing women who would take it as a stamp of approval, especially of oprah. our question to you is why you felt a need to include people who are not spiritually minded to reinforce biblical truths? “
i call this throwing the baby out with the bathwater in its finest form.
gandhi doesn’t have spiritual insight worth passing on. oprah has nothing worthy to say because she isn’t “christian”. their words will actually cause someone to stumble. the message of peace, love, valuing yourself, compassion, dignity, caring for others, being a good citizen—these i guess aren’t Kingdom principles unless they are attached to someone who professes to be a Christian. they don’t count if they don’t somehow come with a scripture chapter and verse. come on! many systems only feel comfortable if “biblical truth” is shared in a specific way but one small smack of “worldliness” and we’re getting deceived and in big trouble. to me, biblical truth is meaningless if it is just words and not practiced in relationship with each other.
Jesus is bigger than language. he is bigger than our stupid systems and rules and man-made craziness. He can move through people that don’t know a lick about the Bible but know a thing or two about injustice and the poor and marginalized and oppressed. Jesus understood the times and was able to meet people where they were at. i’m not saying i believe in everything oprah or gandhi says. i don’t believe all of what almost anyone says.
but i know this: they have something to say and i can learn from them. to say i can’t is arrogant, rude, and small-minded.
God made clear—don’t make idols and worship them. the Bible has become that—an idol that has been elevated above basic human respect and kindness and a belief that God is alive, at work through the people he created whether they say the “right things” the “right way” or not. this kind of Jesus is too small for me.
ps: this cool painting was done by my friend jenny herrick. yes, God is not in the box.
Read More7.7.07 from the refuge blog…no girl pastors allowed
a few days ago i got sucker punched for having ovaries, if you can believe that. i was in atlanta at the big christian retailers conference to launch a book that I co-authored that is just being released. it is a women’s bible study/journaling tool in a magazine format and it’s pretty cool. check it out here. (this isn’t the actual cover but an older version that ended up going out earlier). anyway, some of it’s me, some of it’s not me, but the essence–a tool for women that addresses our real story, what’s really going on in our relationship with God & others instead of pat, surface answers—is, in my humble opinion, a desperately needed voice in the Christian market that is saturated with simplistic, bumper sticker answers to some complex and painful issues. (plus, it’s kind of fun to have someone want you to write something for them and actually pay you for it!)
during the whole gaggle of getting it ready for promotion in december, it turns out the publisher couldn’t print that i was a pastor in the material because some of the salesmen said they wouldn’t be able to sell it to the by-far-the-biggest christian account (with southern baptist roots) with a woman pastor author. I am not kidding. if I had any other title in the whole wide world it wouldn’t matter. it’s just because I am called pastor, that is the word they can’t tolerate if there’s not a y chromosome with it. I fought the battle with the publisher (new hope, they are great by the way, but really underestimated how crazy the system really is on this one) and ended up losing. they decided to not mention I was a pastor in the bio. there was nothing for me to do about it, really, i used my voice, advocated for what i could, and had to just let it go or pull out of the project, and I had invested countless hours writing the tool part and it just felt too bad to walk away. i understand they had profits to consider and wanted the book to have the best possible shot and without that biggest book order, it was going to be tough.
so, here we are 7 months later, I have mustered up getting excited about it despite how weird it has felt (it’s like telling a teacher, we can’t call you a teacher because it might offend somebody). they paid for me to fly to atlanta, stay in a great hotel, and all of my expenses to launch it. i have been on my best behavior, trying to make the most of being at a conference filled with the marketing of Jesus. it’s been a little hard on my soul but I was so happy being quiet in my hotel room reading eat, pray, love by elizabeth gilbert and catching up on my zzz’s, that I didn’t even mind.
well, i found out toward the end of the conference, that the retailer—lifeway christian stores—still refused to carry it. even though it isn’t printed in the book, they now know I am “one of those women pastors” and it is against their doctrinal beliefs. what is so gross to me is that automatically because I have the title pastor, have something to say to our little faith community, I am theologically anti-biblical and immediately disqualified. it’s ugly. disgusting. makes me want to throw up. but after the initial shock and trauma (1 hour before our book signing where I needed to be extra perky and happy. I saved my tears for later) I just felt relieved. all of my ranting and raving about inequality, injustice, ugly evangelicalism is not unfounded. I am not crazy, I am not making this up. it is alive and well in the year 2007 whether anyone wants to believe it or not.
so what can I do? what can you do? well, I hate to pick on you, boys, but it starts with you. women can stand on the tables and shout out “don’t you see?” but really we need men to understand how engrained this injustice is and intentionally make sure they are not subtly buying into the system. I am grateful for the refuge because karl, mike, john, kevin, paul—as members of the leadership team–have openly embraced that we are equal. girls’ anatomy doesn’t preclude me or any of the other women on the team or in our community from anything. they see the value of diversity, where young and old, women and men, married and single, divorced and widowed, all have something to say. I never, ever feel discriminated against at the refuge. every man who is part of our little crazy community, whether they realize it or not, is changing the tide of an unjust system just by their presence. (thank you guys, I love and respect you all so much….). you can also go to a lifeway store near you (they’re mainly in the south but are a few in colorado & california) and ask for refresh, ask why don’t they carry it and ask them to order a copy for you. new hope would love for them to see a blip get on their radar.
but bottom line is this hub-ub has been a catalyst for me to stay on this journey, to do what I can to just keep being, well….me. i readily admit, some days i just want to give up, throw in the towel, and say okay, you win. i’m out. you can have your church and eat it, too. but i am too much of a fighter and it is so not Jesus’ heart that half of all people, that those with a passion for his message, the Kingdom, for the poor & oppressed wouldn’t be able to have a voice or role as a pastor or shepherd or leader because they happened to have a different chromosome combination.
like racism, the only way to change things is to not stand for it anymore. I believe as Christ-followers, we must visibly show the world that sexim, racism, classism, and exclusion is not the Way of Jesus. God, help us be an instrument of change, hope & healing in this really messed up, sexist, racist, egocentric, classist world (and sadly, church)
Read More3.19.07 from xgcw….get over it
i had someone tell me last week that i needed to “get over it.” i need to get over my hurt and pain related to the white, suburban evangelical megachurch and move on. i read the words several times and wanted to scream and shout at the top of my lungs “don’t you think i want to, you idiot!” of course I want to get over it. do you think i want to waste any more time feeling the pain of this wound? of spending any more energy afraid, angry, or crippled? of course i don’t, who would? but it’s so much more complicated than a simple, “well, it’s time to get over it.” this right here is my problem with the unwritten rules of the evangelical church—if we believe enough, we won’t struggle…if we will our minds to submit to God, it will all be over with…grief is bad…feeling angry is prideful…if we say the right words that will make everyone feel comfortable right, we will get off the hook. i am absolutely positive that works for millions of avid church-goers. they can do it, they can pull it off. but what about those of us who can’t? where does this leave us? i have more compassion than i have ever had for those who are struggling with forgiveness, confusion, and just plain old anger at God. He just doesn’t make sense a lot of the time. He calls us to hard things, He asks us to look at the ugliness in our hearts, He asks us to turn the other cheek….and He also asks us to stand up against the status quo. the status quo when it comes to pain in the church is “it’s time to get over it.” that is nothing new. for years and years pastors and ministry leaders have been telling hurting people that it’s time to get over it. and that timetable always seems to be written by others who somehow have the bead on how long it should take. i heard a story a few weeks ago about someone who was struggling a few months after losing their spouse, and a ministry leader said “is she still having such a hard time?” unbelievable but true. we always presume to know that we understand what is going on inside of a person; and we base that on whether or not they are saying things the way that we feel comfortable with. if we hear words that include “prayer,” “the Lord”, and “oh yes, i have forgiven” then we feel better but if we hear rawness, honesty we start to get uncomfortable, fidgety. i know Jesus wants me to get over it, i am quite certain of it. He and i are working hard on this but it is not coming cheap or easy. i might not ever be able to give some people the exact response, use the right language that will make them feel comfortable that my “heart must be in the right place.” no one knows what it’s like exactly to be me and i don’t know what it’s like exactly to be anyone else. you see, that is my problem with trite spiritual answers like that—they presume. no questions were asked: how is your healing process going? where are you now compared to last year? what do you think God has really been teaching you about His heart through all of this? how can you use some of these things you are learning to build a healthy ministry? what is Jesus really busting you on right now? that’s why i so desperately cling to the glorious people in my life who can do that for me, who don’t expect me to “get over it” but keep calling me towards Jesus, who believe it’s possible to lead and also be wounded, who aren’t waiting for me to say the exact right words so that they know “i’m healed”. they accept that i am getting over it and will stick with me as long as it takes. i think that’s what real spiritual transformation is all about—the long haul, not the quick, right answers that make the outside of our cup look clean.
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