Grounding

My heart is sore. My mind is whirling. Shoulders are hunched up around my ears. It's been a brutal week at work. Crazy busy, demands coming from every side, every corner. Just when I thought I might be catching up to myself - more demands came pouring thru the cracks. The kind of week when I enter the weekend feeling like I've left pieces of myself behind.

Yesterday as my workday wound down I found myself at odds with the world. Feeling like I was walking thru some kind of dystopian world. Everything was off-kilter, as if my feet were on a heaving ship in a whirlwind storm.

Knowing this would wind me up to an inevitable (and likely inappropriate) explosion, I went outside in the sanctuary of my backyard. Communing with nature - listening to my beloved songbirds, inhaling the unique scent of grass warmed by the late summer sun, gazing at the lush gardens and greenery - is a surefire way for me to come back to myself.

Grounding. 

Letting my feet rest in the grass, feeling the sunshine on my body, clearing my head with fresh air. 

And praying. Praying ceaselessly.

Praying until I think God must be tired of hearing from me.

Then - praying some more.

In that space, the Holiest Mother - Mary - sent me the most divine message of love and peace. 

A beautiful Ruby Throated Hummingbird. Not the male you see here but a sweet female. She buzzed around my head, twice. She let me watch her while she sipped the sweet nectar of the abundant flowers around her (and me). In those moments, Holy Mary showed me the way to slow down my frantic psyche, to embrace the solitude of the moment.

And today - as half my house is being torn apart in a long-awaited renovation - my shoulders are not hunched around my ears. My mind is still whirring away but that's more about the happy chaos in the house than anything else.

Prayer. Is powerful. For a few moments my heart was calmed thru a simple conversation with God.

Sunday Prayer

My God I come to take your touch before I begin my day. Let my beautiful eyes rest upon your beautiful eyes for a while. Let me take into my day the assurance of your friendship. Fill my mind to last through the desert of noise.

Let your blessed sunshine flood the peaks and valleys of my soul, so that I may be loving and strong for anyone who may need me this day.

In the name of our Lord & Savior, Jesus Christ, amen.

On Being Christadelphian

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I am starting to explore writing about my faith journey. As with any experience it requires context.

There are five overarching areas that I hope to cover:

1. Family Life
2. A Profound Death
3. We All Fall Down
4. I Rise
5. I Fall and Rise Again

As I write that I realize I've just come up with the structure of my journey/book. It will be something that, with God by my side, I can "write into". The more I pray on this the more I'm coming to believe this is the right time for me - to recall some extremely painful experiences, emotional & physical, with the nearness of God. He is certainly closer to me now that he was even 10 years ago. Noting that my faith journey spans nearly 50 years.

I know writing this won't be linear. Which will be helpful because, as I approach anything in section 5, I will need God to tell me when to write what because that is the most painful part of my journey and where I really start to welcome God into my heart.

And so I give you another part of what it meant to be Christadelphian in my formative years.

[Recap from Pt 1] - It (Christadelphian) is a strict faith with unyielding rules and beliefs. Not unlike many others. However, Christadelphians believe in a vengeful God even while believing in a benevolent God who gave us our ultimate savior, Jesus Christ. There is also much hate and bigotry taught in Sunday School. That will become important later. Overall, as I look back on it with decades of distance, I can see how my earliest traumas were a result of this hateful, vengeful faith. My inevitable low self-esteem and sense of unworthiness can be traced, in part, to my activities with and belief in being Christadelphian.

On Being Christadelphian, Pt 2 - A Family of Faith

And so, we were a Christadelphian family. We went to church school & services every Sunday. Attended special talks on Sunday nights. Participated in church events and socials. We were not allowed to join in things like voting in any political election or serving in that capacity. We were forbidden from being police officers and military service was a big no-no. Conscientious Objection was the only appropriate response to a wartime draft. Being unequally yoked, meaning married but practicing 2 different faiths, was strictly forbidden with harsh punishments. 

My father was deeply faithful, once declaring that serving his church was the #1 thing in his life, more important to him than his family. He served in several capacities in our church, including as a leader of church services, public speaker, religious guide and counselor, as well as business and  financial advisor. My mother was more agnostic and went along with my father as all good 1950s housewives did. She did what all Christadelphian women were allowed to do - played the organ, served with all the women in their “womanly duties” as defined by the 1950s and 1960s (meaning cleaning the church building, preparing meals and serving them to hungry Christadelphians, and then cleaning up after them), and lent her considerable vocal prowess (she was a trained Mezzo Soprano opera singer) to Sunday services. As a child and even as an adult Christadelphian I followed my mother’s lead, cooking, cleaning, and ministering as a good little woman. Eventually my brother would lead church services and be a speaker. And so too would my husband. At least for a little while.

Being part of a fringe Christian faith was intimidating as a young child. When you are in school, learning who everyone is, the inevitable question about faith comes up. Until I was 10 years old, I applied my young mind to explaining my faith to any friend who asked what brand of Christianity I observed. I spoke with all the passion and eloquence I could muster to share all the ways in which my faith was better than anyone else’s. You see, Christadelphians also teach that they are the only ones who can inherit the Kingdom of God. And if Christadelphians don’t convert others to our way of thinking, then we ourselves are sinners who will be dealt with on judgement day.

Heavy stuff, especially for a little kid trying so much to fit in. My faith made that extremely difficult to be sure. By the age of 10 I had found a new way of answering the question about my faith – we were Protestants. Period. No more uncomfortable conversations, no more strange looks from my friends and classmates. My parents were extremely displeased to learn this is how I explained my faith. They tried to give me words that a 10-year-old would be able to relate to; I listened and did as I pleased anyway. As I look back, I see this as my first rebellion against the constrictions of a fundamentalist faith.

But I would continue to be an obedient Christadelphian daughter, attending services and events happily (at least as much as I could muster so my parents wouldn't make my life more of a living hell than it already was). I’d like to say I made friends in church, and I suppose I did, to a point. We had nothing in common beyond our church identities. Plus being in a fringe religion it’s not like there are tons of others like you in your town or school. The friends I had at church were only seen at church and church events. My parents took the snobbery of being Christadelphian to an enormous degree, feeling that we were better than all the others in our own ecclesia. They saw us in an elevated status, despite that being 100% against the rules of being Christadelphian. We didn’t associate with all those people outside of church. A position which severely hindered my ability to make friends with a common ground.

Up Next: On Being Christadelphian, Pt 3 - Rebellion

I pray to God to keep me safe during this journey, to be with me with every word I type, to guide my voice to conform to his will for me. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Spotlight

As I continue to consider putting pen to paper about my faith journey I am butting up against some seriously dark places along the way.

The journey I took started with one of the most disastrous moments in my adult life, taking me on an unwelcome whirlwind into deep forests of fear and pain.

And on the other side of all that - came God. Shining thru like a beacon, like the supreme being he always was and always will be.

Indeed. God's grace was always there as we are never alone. And his grace brings with it illumination into the dimmest reaches of our lives.

God's spotlight makes it impossible for the pain to hide in the shadows. And even better - that spotlight banishes the pain.

All you have to do it bend your knees - and ask.

I know I used this image last week. Hit me just as hard today as it did a week ago.

Contemplation

Something big has been on my heart for a long time now. I've approached it many times and each time was rebuffed by my own fear and trepidation. 

I have now dipped my toes into the vast ocean that is...my faith journey. Meaning putting it in writing. A memoir of sorts.

I don't pretend to be any sort of writer at all. Except that I do enjoy it and there can be healing in the action of writing down your own story. Even if it's only ever for yourself.

Yet there is this part of me that thinks - maybe my story can help someone else navigate theirs. 

Is that ego? Or hope? 

And so it is with my story. God is at the center of it - even though for two thirds of that time I was utterly unaware of his presence in any real way. God remained with me during the deepest, darkest times of a young life thru the darkest times of an adult life - and every weigh station in between.

I feel like I need to honor him by speaking my truths. Even if my voice shakes a bit.

Right now my thoughts are a jumble of what to write and where to put that bit of history in relation to the other bits. For now it's just isolated experiences. At some point I will need to combine them somehow, or at least that's what my research tells me.

My prayers - well right now I'm asking God to help me get it all out; we'll sort it out when the times comes. And yes, I mean "we" - God and me. With every chapter, paragraph, and word - my prayers will be ongoing for God's love & grace to guide me.

And so - without further preamble or excuses - I bare it all with the first few paragraphs of my faith history. 

On Being Christadelphian - Pt. 1

My faith history needs a bit of context. My mother grew up in the Congregational Church, my father was a Wesley Methodist. I remember being told they went to church every Sunday. I am not aware of their involvement beyond attending services.  After they got engaged, they met someone who introduced them to the Christadelphian branch of Christianity. Something clicked for them and together they took the necessary classes, converted, and were married in that faith. They even brought in my father’s parents after their wedding. My mother’s parents didn’t convert. Their reasons are lost to time.

Christadelphian - Brothers in Christ - are a special breed of Christian. In the most basic terms, they are a fundamentalist faith observing a strict interpretation of the Bible, which they believe is inspired by God rather than written by men. Their churches - ecclesias - are independent of each other, managed by a group of elected men - brothers - who handle everything from building maintenance to investments of donations. They reject the idea of a Trinity, they believe Jesus Christ, in his human form, was not divine, and they wait for that day when Christ returns to Earth to establish his Father’s Kingdom. They believe as strongly in the Old Testament as the New Testament. Believers call it “The Truth”. Salvation is thru reading scripture alone, or sola scriptura.

And they believe The Truth is for just them. No other Christian, or other form of faith except the Jews, will have the opportunity to inherit God's Kingdom. With regard to Judaism - as the favored people of God, they get a "free pass" from Christadelphians. Any other Christian faith will be found lacking on Judgement Day per Christadelphians. Because these other branches don't read the Bible to the strictest degree that Christadelphians do. Plus no other Bible study is good enough when compared to the Christadelphian Bible reading program, wherein you read the Old Testament once and the New Testament twice per calendar year.

The Christadelphian faith was founded in 1848 by a doctor from England. In small part this was in response to the Radical Reformation that began in the late 17th century, which was mostly about the rampant corruption in the Catholic Church. Which is so personally ironic given my current and happy home in the Catholic faith. This reformation would create several more now-mainstream Christian branches including Anabaptists (which includes Huetterites, Mennonites, and Amish). Some Christadelphians align themselves, at least in part, with Quakers.

It is a strict faith with unyielding rules and beliefs. Not unlike many others. However, Christadelphians believe in a vengeful God even while believing in a benevolent God who gave us our ultimate savior, Jesus Christ. There is also much hate and bigotry taught in Sunday School. That will become important later. Overall, as I look back on it with decades of distance, I can see how my earliest traumas were a result of this hateful, vengeful faith. My inevitable low self-esteem and sense of unworthiness can be traced, in part, to my activities with and belief in being Christadelphian.

Up Next: On Being Christadelphian, Pt 2 - A Family of Faith

Sunday Symphony

You alone are God
I am Yours and You're mine
And I know the Heavens will call out Your name
If I don't

I close my eyes and I drift away
To a place I remember, to a place I feel safe

Where it's alright and it's okay
'Coz I'm there in Your arms
Where it's alright and it's okay
'Coz I'm there in Your arms

A long-ago favorite. Resurfaced in my playlist this past week and it just - hit me, in all the feels. Things I've been talking about recently. Feeling safe in only a couple of places. Wanting to be closer to God yet resisting at the same time.

Knowing that God loves me no matter what. 

And the songwriters have it - it's alright in God's arms. Everything is alright when you are in God's arms.

Amen.

Carry Me

Just a simple yet, conversely, complicated disclosure about the state of my world at this moment.

It should say "...broke, again..."

I'm not praying anywhere near as much as I should. Truth is - how many of us do?

Conflict is so darn difficult to handle. Especially when it's within a family, coming up against an entrenched, holier-than-thou, thinks they are better than everyone else person. Who has been enabled in this behavior since they joined the family nearly 40 years ago. Excuses made at every turn. Because we don't want to "upset XXX". 

This burden has been upon me all these years. Well - not me alone but I've been the brunt of the bullying for about this long. God knows - truly - God knows how hard I've tried and for how long to make this thing at least be civil.

Jesus tells us:

Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? Jesus said to him, I say not to you, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven. - Matthew 18:21-22

I can do that math. 490 times, if we are to take Jesus literally. While that is tempting I believe he meant as many times as it takes. Forgive over and over again. 

And there is this "gem":

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. - Matthew 5:38-40

Oh boy. Talk about a tall order. As usual, Jesus sets us the impossible task and charges us to make it - possible.

What to do when the person you try to forgive - without the apology given - who you try to approach in good faith over and over...just refuses to bend. No quarter given by this person. His way or the highway. Or rather - his way. Period.

What to do when you run out of cheeks, shirts, and coats? Start with the underwear?

I make light of this but there is so much roiling under the surface of this. 40 years of rip currents that threaten with every encounter to take me under until I stop breathing.

Sounds dramatic.

It is.

And my prayers should ramp up; I should shout them until I'm hoarse. Not because God isn't listening but because I need to hear them too.

When you pray - do you pause at all to listen to what God might have to say? I know I don't. Not always anyway. And how are we going to take in what God wants for us if we don't listen to him. His voice, his actions, those magical signs that glimmer throughout our lives if we'd only top & look/listen. I need to take a pause when this bubbles over...because it tears me apart every single time. Leaves me nearly irrational with anger & pain.

We are at the end of our tether with this family drama. After nearly 40 years and countless side-steps, bending & breaking, the last straw has been placed on the camel's back.

And my heart is breaking at what this means, long-term, for me and my darling husband. It will divide us, permanently, from a core family member. Oh, we will keep up the pretense (after all this time we are very good at it) until hubby's parents are no longer with us. A time which is, sadly, getting shorter everyday.

In truth there isn't much there at this point. What little there is - is for my in-laws' sake. And when all is said and done...there will be nothing left to hold on to. I've had to recover from such losses before - the loss that is like a death...without the death - and it nearly killed me before.

Sometimes I think...I've been broken for so long, what's one more heartbreak - right? I am healing from all that brokenness before. I really don't know that I have it in me to fully heal from this one.

And so, once again, I bow down to God and ask him to hold me up until I can stand on my own. To take control of this and show me the right way to proceed. How to pick myself up, put on that smile again - but this time for it to be real, not a facade adopted to get thru the days.

Honestly, friends, sometimes I do wonder what is the point of all of this? I'm supposed to find the gifts in all this; the things that make me a better person in spite of or because of - all this.

And I do try to find them. Squeeze out the positive from so much negativity. Be the better person; strive to learn and grow thru the pain. To give myself grace for the struggle. To give others grace for whatever their struggles are.

And...damn. Just...damn.