Healing

Waiting for the Advent

Healing, Living

Last week I found references to women being silenced everywhere I went. I kept sending picture after picture to my husband – who never makes me feel unheard – and sending all caps texts about synchronicity and the Goddess and whatever other rant came out in the process. Both of us are moving away from trauma, but leaving church has left empty swaths across our identities which I, for one, am letting lay fallow before I rush to fill them. Every day, the Universe reminds me that finding the self-I-have-always-been is a process which cannot be rushed.

Recently, I began searching for an alternative way to observe Advent, the season of waiting. For years, I have quietly held space for the year’s winding down, the pause in time when we wait for something new to spring forth. This observation and anticipation appeal to me. I am a marker of seasons and change and a lover of ceremony and ritual. But this year, I need to divorce the observation from some of its more painful associations. I’m not interested in the churchy, patriarchal aspect of Spirituality, and the Bible, by and large, is men telling the story of God. Although to be fair, women get a larger voice than usual in the celebration of Advent, the Goddess has always been subversive in that way – allowing women a prime position in singing the song of the Kingdom breaking through.

Basically, I’m standing in a large empty space, looking at the wide open sky and waiting.

When we first left the church, God blew doors open right, left and right again, challenging us to make bold decisions and making it easy for us to ‘get the hell out of dodge’, as it were. We welcomed this unmistakeable Presence, even as we wondered if we could keep up with her. It was exciting and exhilarating and a distraction from the immediate pain of the emotional blows we had just suffered. It gave us just enough room to begin processing, but not enough room to wallow. For a time, it was exactly what we needed.

However, the real work of healing from emotional and spiritual trauma is slow and deep. Learning to relate healthfully to people and situations around us take time. I still flinch often, waiting for the blow to fall. I don’t always know what triggers this feeling, but six months later I sometimes find myself walking around with an impending sense of doom. I trust I am healing, but I don’t always feel like I am.

I’m learning to listen to those feelings; they are trying to tell me something. I can only determine if feelings are a true message or a shadow voice left over from abuse by allowing them to have their voice. Those shadow voices have become to me like small, wounded animals, recklessly hurting whoever and whatever they touch simply because they are in pain. If I can get past the initial bite, sometimes we can overcome the pain together and be transformed into Truth.

These are all advent feelings, the waiting, the longing, the hard work of healing the damage to our souls while we wait for the light to break through.

I haven’t read Scripture at all this year. Not in any intentional way. Sometimes Craig talks about what he is reading, and more often pieces of scripture enter my mind unbidden, rising from the depths of myself. Sometimes I welcome it, and sometimes I shove it back down where I relegate things that make me uncomfortable until I am ready to deal with them. I am not ready to deal with my feelings about Scripture. That’s what I tell myself. I’m tired of men telling me what to think, how to feel and all the things I can’t say or do. Scripture is all tangled up with men who took control of the Divine story and made it about them, their plans, their wars, their power. It’s why God is Father but not Mother. It’s why the Goddess disappeared. She may subversively reassume a position in the Catholic Church as Mary, but evangelicals quash even that, making Mary an anathema and putting her soundly in her place of pious silence.

I simply cannot incorporate these cruel patterns into my new/old way of being until I learn to elevate them to higher ways of thinking and understanding. I believe Scripture can transcend the narrow confines Church has placed upon it, but I haven’t learned how to do so within myself, yet. I’m leaning on other voices to lead me back around to sacred understanding. Voices which don’t glorify violence towards women and the suppression of female voices as the heart of God. In other words, I want to learn to elevate bullshit to understanding my true sacred position in the Kingdom of the Divine, but I don’t feel I have all the necessary tools yet.

There is holiness here in the waiting place, in the anticipation of a long-expected breakthrough. The Divine has not abandoned me here to my own devices, She keeps reminding me of this time and again by dropping perfect gifts quietly into my life day by day. She is here. I am here. We are here together, and when the time is right we will take the next step into this new life. The next step closer to the Herself I was always meant to be.

Prescription for a weary soul

Healing, Loving

We can climb mountains with self-love.  – Samira Wiley

For someone who has never been terribly invested in politics, the 2016 election played an enormous role in many of my recent shifts. Perhaps it’s because I want a better world for my children and their children then the one I see coming to pass, or perhaps because this new season in my life I have more freedom to widen my scope to a more global and less individual focus. Who knows why things shape us as they do. I only know those events, and so many since, have rendered me unable to be silent. I promise this whole post isn’t going to be about politics. I only mention it because since then, I have had to work very hard to maintain a healthy emotional balance, which is what I want to talk about today.

I awoke the day after the mid-term elections feeling soft and fragile, like a bruise. Here in Georgia, things still aren’t fully decided, which honestly, is a miracle in itself. I battled my inner idealist in the weeks leading up to the election. I didn’t want to lean too hard into hope, but couldn’t stop myself from getting swept up in the emotional wave of change. When things didn’t go as I anticipated, I experienced the giant emotional deflation that accompanies large-scale events. Expectations – such a bitch, eh?

Every so often lately, I have to step off the current events train if I want to maintain any form of sanity. Look, I love the internet as much as the next person for near effortless communication and information, but it’s easy to become buried in the never-ending stream of news, opinions, and vitriol. Sometimes I have to let the world move on without me. It doesn’t hurt that it’s November now, the month that makes me want to pull in, and sip whiskey in my flannel pants and pretend no one and nothing else exists outside my own home walls.

That tender, bruised feeling, where my emotions are held back by a blister thin covering, is a warning sign that I have reached the healthy balance threshold. I can keep going, but not effectively. My soul is trying to tell me something important now.

When my emotions fray and snap, I become someone I don’t like. While I am (mostly) no longer concerned if everyone else likes me, it is very important that I like myself. My integrity matters more than a self-righteous rant, a biting comeback or the micro-aggression meant to make you understand just how put-out I am. I’m far from perfect on a good day, but when I lose my focus on loving kindness because I’m swimming around in martyrdom, it’s past time to make adjustments.

Kindness isn’t about “being nice” and remembering I “look prettier when I smile.” That’s just more bullshit. Kindness remembers the counter to gaslighting, greed and rhetoric is being fully grounded in our integrity, recognizing the humanity in each of us. The way to shut down the rage machine isn’t with more rage, but with a strong spine wrapped in gentleness and compassion. When my sharper edges begin to cut people, I’ve allowed the anger I carry become bitterness. Anger is a vital fuel and a necessary tool these days, but bitterness is only ever destructive. I want my flame to burn brightly, not rage out of control destroying others and myself.

One of the concepts I have been so struck with lately is that of being an embodied Creator, a bringer of life. I, personally, have an inherent nurturing streak; it’s always been part of me, not because I am a woman necessarily, but because it is part of my personal nature. Now that my children are grown, I still love to care for people, but I’m thinking about creation and nurturing now on a deeper level. What sort of world am I creating through my actions and interactions? What is the generative force of my time, my expression, my money, and my relationships? What am I giving birth to with my life?

I’m amazed every time I watch my daughters make themselves present in the world. They are boldly creative individuals. The world is made better by their existence. I am not the cause of this creative force, but for a time I was the keeper of it, both inside my body and later inside my guidance. But my sending forth love and generosity into the world embodied by these women isn’t the sum of my contribution to the universe. I want to continue to create environments and opportunities which promote this bold and beautiful self-expression. But I can only bring forth this possibility if I also give life to creative, nurturing spaces for myself when I’m feeling like a small tap might make me shatter.

There’s a difference between other people labeling me hysterical – which they always will – and knowing that my emotions are entirely out of control and causing damage. This is the edge I am walking today, for many reasons, not all political.

So how do we care for ourselves when loving the world has worn us down? That’s not something I can answer for anyone but myself. For me, it includes flannel pants and whiskey sipping, twinkle lights and Christmas music. Not leaving the house for days. It means puttering and organizing and watching movies while crocheting and definitely staying away from news and the internet. It means putting my phone in a drawer, telling FOMO to shut up and snuggling with my husband. These are things which make me whole and promote wellness within. I can’t predict what will work for you. If you aren’t certain, it may mean you’re well overdue for a self-check and some serious self-care. Fear tells us the world can’t run without us, but love tells us there’s more than enough room for self-awareness in the expanse of time.

When I was training for a half-marathon, there were days when I pushed very hard. I ran long and exhausted myself. Then there were days when I rested – and ate a lot of cake. The rest periods were absolutely critical in order to heal and strengthen my body for the next long run. Without rest, everything begins to break down and deteriorate, causing fatigue and injury. Eventually, if we don’t surrender to rest, the body will push back, forcing us to give it the attention it needs.

This Divine work of creation is a marathon. There are days, weeks where we show up and give. Simply being present to see and hear another person is a holy act which draws on the energy of our souls. Most of us have days filled with interactions and activities which slowly deplete our energy and creativity. We then come home and fill our loved ones and living spaces with more of our energy, sleep for a bit – usually not enough, even I am guilty – and repeat the process. This is stressful, even eustress eventually demands a period of rest and regeneration.

This weekend I will be taking a restorative late fall rest. We have a three day weekend which I plan to fully inhabit without interruption from the outside world. Retreat is how I restore my emotional balance and my ability to see and be love in the world. These necessary pauses are how I ground myself again in the type of being I choose to embody. Have you listened to your soul recently? What’s one thing you can do to restore peace and healing to yourself this weekend?

2018: a year with no name

Healing, Living

I can’t remember the first year I felt a word – a theme, a concept, a guiding principle? – drop into my soul, naming the season to come. It’s been more than a decade since it began. I follow the theme, sometimes closely, sometimes loosely, as a way of living intentionally and of understanding the shape of my days. I’ve had all sorts of words from the fun and exciting, to the difficult and unwanted. Year after year, I receive a word from the Universe and start another trip around the sun.

Every year until this year, that is.

Usually, in autumn, I begin to feel a sort of low key anticipation, an opening in my soul. I begin to meditate on the ways the current year has shaped me, and how I have shaped it. I lean into the possibility of what may be coming next. Last year, I did the same things I always do as my journey drew to a close. But each time I consciously grasped for a theme, a flame would ignite, fizzle and then fssst…immediately burn out. My creativity and openness felt buried. I was so walled up and guarded I couldn’t listen. Honestly, I didn’t even try very hard or very often. The idea of living another year like the one I was already in was numbing.

There is so much about awakening that is difficult. Sue Monk Kidd likens it to crossing a deep, unexplored gorge, a descent into the unknown. I have likened it to razing a building down to the bare concrete foundation and then sleeping on it naked in a storm. Awakening is these things and more. I understand why we, as a species, would rather remain where the environment is comfortable and the terrain is known.

But for me, sleeping is not an option anymore.

I finally gave up the idea of giving the year a name. I wandered into January with no idea where we were headed, which is probably the only reason I walked forward at all. I still don’t have a name for this year. It’s easily the wildest, weirdest, hardest, most amazing, miraculous, hysterical, unbelieveable year I have ever lived. Nothing – not one thing – about where we are at the end of this year is anything that I would have envisioned at the outset.

And yet, I feel happier and healthier than I have for nearly a decade.

In retrospect, if I were to name this year it might be the year of Initiation. At first, I thought Awakening would be a good name, but it isn’t an accurate one. My awakening has been going on for far longer than this year. But it took the events of this year to cut all the lines, and send us on a new adventure. Had I received a word for this year, it might have changed my thoughts or my trajectory. No, this was a year I had to navigate without external leading. Even though I believe my year names come as much from within and from any Divine force without, I needed this year to be guided only by my inner voice. I haven’t been listening to her nearly enough. This has been her time to shine.

When we left our old life in March, everything happened very quickly. No sooner did we make one drastic change then another door flung itself wide open waiting for us to step through. At one point Craig wasn’t sure about making so many quick decisions so quickly, but for once I was. I was absolutely certain. I knew each door opened right on time and all we had to do was step through, and step through and step through again. Each step taking us farther away from the toxic morass we’d been swimming in.

I’ve second guessed every thought and idea for two years, but my certainty in these moments never wavered, not even one second. I don’t know what’s going to happen next from moment to moment. But after years of only closed doors as we waited in a dark hallway, my soul is suddenly well able to see Divine Providence when She beckons. There is light everywhere, dazzling me with its brilliance.

This is the year which sets us off on new paths. Craig has his and I have mine. We are walking together but loosely which sounds as though we’re drifting apart, but somehow the effect is exactly the opposite. Growing into myself has only deepened my love and admiration for the amazing human who chooses each day to remain in my life. His presence is a gift I never take for granted, even when I’m engaged in my own adventures.

What I believe now is that this year couldn’t name itself. It simply had to unfold moment by moment, and I had to decide within each moment what I would make of them. My stagnation gave way to tremendous creative force bursting forth from my body and soul. Like Eve at the cusp of creation, I’m naming and naming and naming, like God Herself, I’m breathing my own life into being with every choice and every step. This year was mine to name and rename. I am the Creator of my existence by Divine right.

I have an inkling, already, of the shape of my next year, I may even know a name. But she’s not quite ready to be born yet, so I’m holding space for her inside my body until she’s ready to breathe on her own. I’m excited again, at last. I’m pleased and relieved that my inner/outer voice is singing over me again. And I’m filled with hope for a new year in this new life, even while I name the remaining days of my present.

Diving into heresy

Healing, Learning

“Some say I fell from grace; they’re being kind. I didn’t fall –I dove” – Sue Monk Kidd

Last weekend I reconfigured a room in my house, one which I have barely used since we moved here. I didn’t purchase anything new for the room, except some white Christmas lights which use year-round, but somehow simply shifting the furniture made the room warmer, more welcoming.

I’ve been sitting here all morning watching the shadows play across the walls and listening to Mo snore next to me on the sofa. It’s Sunday morning, and I’m not at church. I am grateful for this grace anew every weekend. I suppose eventually the novelty of it will wear off and it will feel like this is how life always has been. But currently, this peace is a gift from the Universe full of emotional rest and safety, and usually a steak and eggs breakfast. Falling in love with Sunday is a treat I will not hurry through. Perhaps this is how Sabbath is meant to be experienced. I only know my soul feels still on these long lazy mornings.

Strangely enough, I’m also thinking about heresy as I sit here. Perhaps it’s the recognition that a few simple shifts can change everything. As I reread my November prayer, I contemplated how moving on so often also means letting go. But I think sometimes we confuse letting go with acting as though a thing never happened. When our lives are drastically altered, whether the transition is “good” or “bad,” (this binary sorting of experience is a blog for another time.), we often work very hard at putting the event behind us so that we can get back to being “our usual selves.” It’s true, our usual selves are known and comfortable, but they are also often a false construct since we are always evolving and changing. There is no putting an event behind us. The circumstances of our lives mold and shape us, physically and spiritually. For better or worse, we are changed. A wise person incorporates these changes into their understanding of themselves and the world.

Which brings me to the heresy.

Over the weekend, I added two important pieces of writing to this space. They are concepts I have been exploring for several years and eventually are what led me to split from evangelicalism entirely. This split happened spiritually long before we actually left the church, and in retrospect, it was foolish of me to think professional ministry would ever be a fit for me again. I am constantly grateful for Divine intervention closing the doors to all the church jobs Craig applied to. Even last fall, I was still trying to get back to an old, familiar self, and not incorporating all the ways my faith and my worldview have changed. I was a heretic in sheep’s clothing.

While the manner of our leaving church was abusive and soul-crushing, the actual leaving was a Grace I do not take lightly. I forfeited church but gained back my soul. Even the hard work of returning to wholeness is a gift. I know and love my soul so much better now that I am able to see it clearly as a beautiful, deserving, creative part of my whole Self.

I didn’t share openly all the things I was feeling at the time because admitting them aloud makes me a heretic.

In my fifteen years experience with professional church, doctrine is the holy throne upon which the Lord is seated. This doctrine may or may not be strictly Biblical (many of our modern church traditions have their roots centuries after the nascent period of the Christian church), but once you wrap the Bible itself in an unquestionable layer of authority, there is no room left for interpretation or discussion. Doctrine is as holy and inerrant as scripture itself.

“This is the way God/the church is. There is nothing to be said or done about it.”

Years ago I stopped putting so much faith in traditions, layering heresy upon heresy.

Inerrancy of scripture? Nope.
Existence of eternal fire and punishment hell? Don’t believe it.
The primacy of Christianity to any other spiritual expression? Not having it.
Penal Substitutionary atonement? Forget it.
Patriarchy? Hell no.
A god who commands genocide and rape? Monstrous.
Original sin? That’s a hard pass.
Scientific accuracy of the biblical creation account? I just don’t think so.
End times rapture and apocalyptic theory? Are you kidding me? That’s not even ancient tradition. It’s 1990’s Jenkins and Le Haye pop-culture claptrap the church has used to whip up fear and furor.

I never dared admit any of this lest the church ladies clutch their pearls and call the priests and Pharisees…err…pastors and elders. Which they did anyway, even without saying these things. And now I suppose all the worry and flutter was justified. Look at the near miss they’ve been given. There was a heretic in their midst! Oh, the destruction I might have wrought.

You can see how I was fooling myself that any sort of congregation we were considering would be a good fit for me for long. I simply grew another direction from that sort of faith and thinking. I ask too many questions and draw too many aberrant conclusions. Also, I research and read a lot, both of which are threatening to the men in power. I don’t subscribe to the ideal Christian feminine template. I wear leggings far too often.

However, while I definitely have my issues about the church, I don’t think it’s a terrible place filled with terrible people, quite the opposite. My personal experience is with small men of great insecurity, but I also know some wonderful, generous, courageous women and men who lead and love and serve in beautiful ways. I admire them, even though I may not be like them in the ways I understand and express spirituality. But we don’t have to view the Divine the same way to love well together. Just ask the Jewish and Muslim communities in Pittsburgh.

I’m thinking about all these things this Sunday morning because it’s time to finally let go of my religious identity. It wasn’t all bad, but in the end, I was far more damaged than helped by professional religion. We were fervently and well loved by individuals, but the church as a business is crueler and more calculating than most “worldly” companies I’ve been part of with fewer people to answer to for their cruelty. Religion has changed me; this is undeniable.

Now I need to incorporate those changes into the new self I am becoming, one who is more whole and more honest than she’s had the freedom to be in a while. Apparently, this is the space for working that out. So here’s where I admit, we’re about to leave the map. If heresy isn’t your cup of tea, maybe it’s where you get off. And that’s okay. It’s about to get sort of feminist and Goddess-y and messy in here because that’s where I’m going next. Finally, all the doors are open; I have stopped holding my breath.

Welcome to the dark woods. Here there be wolves and witches and wild women and dancing under the moon. At last.

A Prayer for November

Healing, Loving

Hello November,
I’m so excited to be back with you again. As one of my favorite months of the year, I feel you are underlauded by much of the world. Please know that even though your first day marks the beginning of the Christmas music season for me, I am in no hurry to race through your golden hours. I love everything about you, except the time change – why do we still observe that shit anyway? But I digress, I love everything about you. I love that you begin with brilliant gold sunsets and end with slippers and flannel sheets. I love that for the south, you are the bearer of the leaves changing and the first frost. I love your quiet heartbeat of gratitude which thrums under it all.

Every year I approach you by saying to myself, I will be industrious and handle all the Christmas details this month. And then I never do. I spend long grey afternoons in pajama pants with a blanket, a book, and a warm drink instead. You hold all the promise of productivity, but you also keep pretending we have all the time in the world before the holiday rush. Once that bird hits the table it’s all GO GO GO!! FESTIVITIES COMMENCE! But those first four weeks are like a warm lullaby. Thank you for that.

I have some plans for this month, November. I hope you’ll work with me on them. I want to walk through you for a while each day and contemplate all the changes this year has brought. Who knew when I stepped out with January that we’d travel so far in just a few months? I know this is generally July’s song, but I keep finding new freedom everywhere I turn, and I don’t want to take a moment of these revelations for granted. Just like you always remind us, I am grateful, grateful, grateful for this life I’m building/ receiving – I’m never very sure which one it is. You make a lovely backdrop for this type of meditation, November. Here’s a little more gratitude just for being you.

I hope you’ll bring some new lessons for me, Nov – can I call you, Nov? I’m trying to learn to balance anger at injustice, oppression, and cruelty with openness and vulnerability. Maybe we can work together to keep knocking down walls while maintaining safe boundaries, and to be transparent without remaining a victim. There’s so much I want to do. Help me not race ahead blindly, but ground me in mindfulness and compassion, especially self-compassion. This healing thing isn’t for the close-minded and reckless.

Let’s take a moment to talk about books, ok? Your sister months have delivered some amazing reads. I’ve discovered wisdom in the most unexpected places. I’ve experienced a great deal of joy sharing my bookish discoveries with friends and strangers alike. I even have a growing number of regulars who come looking for suggestions for the next read. I didn’t expect this lovely addition to my life, November. I hope you’ve got plans for me on the shelves and in the stacks. We’ll spend a fair number of hours together there. Let’s make them lovely.

Most of all, November, I hope you’ll remind me to slow down and breathe. Of all the lessons I am slow to learn, this is the one I need the most. Remind me to open the sunroof, sit on the porch, light the fire, have the wine, meet a friend for dinner and laugh. I really hope you remind me to laugh, it’s my new favorite thing. I know it may seem I have high hopes for us this year, but I believe all of these things and more are possible. We’re going to have a great thirty days together. And maybe next year, we work on ditching the time change, eh? But for now, I think we’re just about perfect.

Here’s to a great month!
D.

Reclaiming Anticipation

Healing, Learning

When I was a child, we traveled every summer to my grandmother’s house on a lake in Michigan. I didn’t have a perfect life – no one does – but I can tell you those Michigan summers were absolutely idyllic, cousins everywhere, in and out of the water all day long, the soft Michigan grass which even on the hottest days still feels cool under the trees. My grandmother was a big believer in the thirty-minute rule: no one gets back in the water for thirty minutes after eating. This meant we’d swim and play until our stomachs were caving in, and then after eating we’d hover at the end of the dock, daring each other to put our toes in, our legs in, to jump in and get right back out without being caught. Meanwhile, Grandma yelled random threats through the screen doors.

I used to plan for these trips for hours. I loved to make packing lists and activity lists for the long car ride. To this day, I still love a car trip. To me, interstates and rest areas mean something soul healing and wonderful at the end, even if, in reality, they don’t. I don’t know if these summertime trips are where my joy of anticipation began, but it is something I have carried with me all my life. Many people love surprises, and I do too, but I love surprises so much more when they are sprung in advance so I can anticipate through the time leading up to the experience. When Craig scheduled a session in a shark cage at Sea World for my birthday, he told me months ahead of time, longest lasting gift ever!

Gretchen Rubin, one of my favorite happiness researchers, posits that anticipation, experience, and revisiting are all equally important when it comes to gauging a happy/memorable experience. Even things which are difficult in the moment, like running a half marathon, can be encapsulated as a joyful memory when paired with the anticipation of the event, and revisiting the highlights often. My own half marathon, which was excruciating, remains fixed in my mind as a fabulous weekend. Although, I’m not sure it’s a weekend I want to repeat except as a spectator.

Lately, I haven’t been able to enjoy anticipation like I used to. Trauma and abuse usurped the lovely expectant glow and turned it into a sort of dread. I learned to fear what might be coming next and to believe that most events I enjoy would be met with repercussions. Even worse, We would experience a surprise emotional ambush directly preceding an anticipated event which would taint the rest of the experience. This happened the day before we went on vacation more than once, establishing our abuser’s power, as if it were ever threatened, and effectively overshadowing the joy and relaxation we’d been anticipating.

Because I never knew what might trigger the next attack, anticipation turned into anxiety. I couldn’t escape the undercurrent of dread that something painful was coming. I looked forward to trips as an escape from a poisonous environment and dreaded returning. There were certainly moments and events which I enjoyed, but none of them were free of the shadow of abuse. Like a greasy oil slick, it covered over and tainted everything with a slimy, noxious sheen.

This pattern of emotional abuse and response didn’t happen overnight. It escalated gradually for years. Even though the direct abusive influence ended months ago, I now have to do the hard work of relearning how to be myself. It’s a long journey.

Last week, Craig and I went to Atlanta to see Rob Bell who has been a voice of sanity, for me especially, over the last few years. Because he knows me, my husband told me we were going well in advance so I could enjoy the anticipation. This is when I began to really notice that looking forward to this event, which would definitely not be approved of by church leaders who once governed our lives, (if you are outside the arena of over-blown religious drama, Rob Bell is definitely a heretic in fundamentalist circles), triggered fear and anxiety, even though those men no longer have the means to exert any control over our lives. My ability to anticipate has been so warped by trauma, that I am in danger of losing it entirely.

But knowledge is power, right?

One of the gifts writing and sharing my spiritual abuse experience is that it helps me be a better analyst of where the deepest wounds to my psyche are and to recognize the best ways to reverse the effects of trauma. I believe distance and time will bring healing, but I want to accelerate the process, to leave the taint of oppressive religious systems behind and enjoy the gift of being me again. I want to anticipate good things without fear of the inevitable painful response. I am learning how to be a vulnerable human again, and sometimes it hurts. But like childbirth, it hurts in a way that brings forth life. I can survive this labor, knowing what comes next.

Recently, Craig and I attended a show, which was officially my professional coming out as his wife. Until now, everyone has known about me, but not met me. I don’t really figure in to his work experience – so different from ministry where I couldn’t escape scrutiny and expectation if I tried, which I did, desperately. Even though I had no prior experience with most of the people I knew I would meet, I carried a little ball of fear and dread around with me the entire week before. I tried to anticipate with pleasure but the switch kept flipping to a low-level anxiety, creating a familiar nauseous thrum in my body.

But I went. I actually had fun. I met people, delightful people, people who were warm and welcoming and happy to meet me. People who have no expectation beyond meeting again at the next social event, which I am now able to anticipate, if not fully, at least without the anxiety triggers I experienced with the first meeting. When I see that bitch Anxiety rise up in my mind now, I have a good memory to draw on to put her in her place.

I want to anticipate good things fully, the way I used to. I’m taking back my power to look forward to what happens next.
My abusers can’t have it.
I am the keeper of my own soul, and I’m taking back all the power I foolishly traded away for a lie.

I’m really looking forward to the whole experience.

This I believe

Healing, Living

I didn’t spend much time with the news this weekend. In my life, I have never experienced such widespread hate. From the dehumanization of our transgender community to the murders of two black people in Kentucky – after the gunman was thwarted by locked doors in a local black church, – to calculated hate and terror disguised as mail parcels, to the inexplicable mass shooting during shabbos worship.

I am speechless.
I feel helpless.

I remember when I was diagnosed with cancer, and all around me, people were carrying on with their every day breathing and eating, walking around, healthy lives. I wanted to stand in the street and scream, Can everyone just stop a moment and recognize that I am living a nightmare today? I didn’t do this, of course, but my soul cried for some form of recognition that darkness had come and I wasn’t sure I could survive to see the light.

I feel this way today. I had a post ready to share, but it feels wrong to just go on with life as usual without taking a moment to recognize that the darkness is here, to grieve and to consider how to help others live to see the light again.

As a white, cis-gender woman who isn’t in school, the day to day possibility that I will be the victim of a hate crime or random killing spree isn’t great. It would be easy to send “thoughts and prayers” and go about my day as usual. But I don’t want to do this.

It is also easy to vilify and dehumanize political groups and figures. Easier to shift blame, and point figures and name call, to let rage fill me with labels and epithets. I believe that anger is a powerful weapon and so I will hold on to my anger at this unbelievable tidal wave of hate, but I will not succumb to the same sort of rage and unthinking, uncaring demonizing that enable a person to put a pipe bomb in the mail or enter a synagogue with a human-killing machine. I don’t want to do this either.

I need to remain human, and I need to see the human not only in the victims but in the perpetrators of violence. It is the only way to keep my heart whole and intact.

Richard Rohr talks about a third way, a third space, a way of holding two conflicting ideas at one time and existing in the tension:

‘Some prefer to take on the world: to fight it, to change it, fix it, and rearrange it. Others deny there is a problem at all; it suits their needs as it is. “Everything is beautiful,” they say and look the other way. Both instincts avoid holding the tension, the pain, and the essentially tragic nature of human existence…We stand in the middle, neither taking the world on from another power position nor denying it for fear of the pain it will bring. We hold the dark side of reality and the pain of the world until it transforms us, knowing that we are both complicit in the evil and can participate in wholeness and holiness.

I cannot change the world, not alone, not as myself. I will not fight power with power. The ‘if we had more guns we could prevent violence by guns’ argument is bullshit. Nor will I deny that we are in a dangerous, chaotic state currently. One where extremism and hate are normalized and denied. I won’t create enemies of people, nor will I deny that there are enemies of humanity. I am sitting in the third space, and it’s strangely filled with tension and also peace.

If I cannot change the world, then I will set about changing myself. I will love deeper, and I will show this love by being kindness and patience in a world desperate for a different way of being. I will see humanity as it is, and risk loving it anyway, even knowing I will be disappointed, wounded and rejected. I will not see human beings as the enemy even if I will not find common ground in their hate and oppression. I will believe there is a best in people that love can unlock, if only they will let love in.

Perhaps it’s all a bit Pollyanna. It’s certainly easier said than done. The binary part of me says: I am right. They are wrong. I am good. They are bad. I am different. They are all the same. But the third space says, We are human. We all matter. The world needs us.

So I breathe in deeply and breathe out the rage and the hate and the demons that infest my own soul. And I do think and pray, but I also consider what I most want to see in the world, and how I can embody this image most fully. When I am transformed, then perhaps others will be as well, but I can only open myself to be transformed. I cannot force it on unwilling others.

I will not add rage and despair to the world today. There is plenty already with some to spare.

When we know better, we do better. We know better by seeing it, hearing it and becoming it. This is believe.

The day I said what I wanted

Healing, Living

” We don’t need to call everything we are doing ministry. Just call it Tuesday. That’s what people who are becoming love do.” – Bob Goff

It continues to be a surprise to me whenever I realize a new sense of freedom. One of the insidious traits of emotional abuse is its subtlety. Power and pressure exert themselves gradually until, like the parable of the frog in the pot of boiling water, you are stuck in a very dangerous situation. There are so many things I stopped doing or saying for fear of the potential repercussions, even when no one overtly coerced me to stop (though that happened as well). It was easier to alter my behavior bit by bit, cutting off pieces of myself, until, over time, I was carrying entire dead limbs around as though they were still part of me. I realize, now, how much of a shadow self I became, walking, breathing and talking, but not as myself. I was a three-dimensional projection of an identity someone else invented.

Fortunately for me, it seems a dying soul can be reanimated.

Even though we’ve been out of church for six months, it wasn’t until the final severance check cleared that I stopped feeling the weight of fear. For the first three months, we depended on those checks as the pieces of Craig’s new career fell – so excruciatingly slowly – into place. After that, I won’t lie, we just wanted to make sure we received every bit of guilt money. We gave a lot to that place, I didn’t plan to leave any part of myself behind, including my money, when we left. Selfish? Probably. I’m out of F—s where that’s concerned.

My rebirth is an ongoing process where I discover pieces of myself in forgotten corners and entire rooms of my soul that I’d closed off and shuttered. I’m rediscovering my love of a daily deep belly laugh. I look forward to Craig coming home from work, not that I was ever sad to see him before, but he always brought the weight of ministry home with him along with an emotional darkness from a toxic work environment. We still have bad days, of course, but these are regular bad days. We know tomorrow probably won’t be more of the same. Six months later, I am still profoundly grateful for this truth.

All of these pieces make up the picture for what happened at Aldi last week. But before I share the story, you should know, I have actively avoided seeing people associated with ministry. I haven’t felt free to talk about my experience, and sometimes, I still have anxiety attacks. It’s better to avoid triggers. But I’m finding my voice again, and the fear is smaller now, much more manageable. My mantra is no longer, “in and out and no one sees me” every time I go into a store. Everywhere Craig goes it’s a festival of reunions, I just want to walk away clean.

But on this particular day, I did see someone. Someone who publicly shamed me in the past for my political views. Not a church leader, another male who felt the right to put me in my place because patriarchy is the theology on which he was raised.

We exchanged the normal small talk; he inquired about Craig’s job. When I responded with a brief description of his career he responded, Mmmmm-hmmmm. Still in ministry.

I couldn’t think of a way to vocalize what it meant for a man to tell me AGAIN what my life centered around, not even someone outside the sphere of abuse. No one gets to do that. We are not “in ministry.” We are most certainly and completely out of “ministry”. If I have my say, we will never “do ministry” again.

These days we love without agenda, coercion or fear. We do not feel the need to convert the world to our way of thinking. If anything, we’ve converted to the “dark side” ourselves, seeing the Divine in more ways and more people than we’d dared before. The kingdom just keeps getting bigger now that we’re outside the walls of religion. No, we are not in ministry, the exclusivism and religious overtones of that word make me want to vomit directly on my shoes.

But I was too frozen to say that, instead I paused a moment and said,

Well, he does still ask people for a lot of money.

He walked away and then? Well, then I laughed. I went out to the parking lot and held on to my knees and laughed until I couldn’t breathe anymore. I texted Craig. I came home and told my children because I dared to look patriarchy right in the face and laugh at its rigid and restrictive definitions. I said exactly how I felt about ministry and I didn’t give a damn who heard about it, or what they think of it.

The problem with religious words is how exclusive they can be. We use them to define who is out and who is in. This person who identifies as an evangelical Christian, when he works with students, it’s ministry. But when this person on the LGBTQ spectrum dares to take a role with students, it’s part of the subversive gay agenda. And if a Muslim should enter those spaces, well then the entire system’s going to hell. Good works are good works only if the “right” person engages in them.

On the other hand, what if Craig’s job didn’t involve college students and education, but instead he opened a bar and bartended for a living. He’s a pretty amazing guy, and his heart has room for all the world, plus one. If he worked at a bar, all the traits which made him a beloved pastor and which make him a fantastic college administrator would be right there with him. But he wouldn’t be in ministry, right? Be honest, what would you call it? What about your religious friends?

It wasn’t long after Jesus departed Earth that humanity began establishing dividing lines: people who eat this way; not people who eat that way, people with this piece of flesh cut off; not people with this piece of flesh still on. We aren’t sure of our position so we put others beneath us as a buffer. You’re in. You’re out. Sheep. Goats. We stopped letting people explore and define their own spirituality not for fear they would get it wrong, but for fear that somehow it might prove to us that we’d been wrong all along.

In. Out. Goats. Sheep.

I know how humbling that oh shit moment is. Oh shit, I got it wrong and I was a terrible person to many people with my rules and my doctrine and my certainty and my exclusion. This is my lived experience so often these past few years.

It hurts to know the hurt I’ve caused, the ways I have misrepresented Love in the name of correctness. Oh shit, indeed. But it’s also so divinely beautiful to know I could be so incredibly wrong, and still so incredibly loved. In response to this, the only thing I can do is try to love better, deeper, less exclusively. I’m not in ministry, with its eye toward heaven, I’m in love with this world and the people in it. I don’t give a damn who’s in or who’s out. I no longer believe in Out. There’s only love, and I’m all in. We’re all in.

Which brings me back to Aldi. Over the past few weeks, the room in my soul where I have the freedom to say what I want, a room which I tightly closed several years ago, has been leaking. I’ve said things behind the anonymity of keyboard that I was terrified to say face to face. I’ve unnamed and named, but safely, within the confines of my own home. Until last week, when I opened my mouth and said NO. Maybe the words weren’t no, but the soul cry was.

No, you don’t get to define my life anymore.
No, you don’t get to elevate anything I am related to with religious underpinnings.
No, I’m not who you say I am, nor is my husband, nor my children, nor my choices.

No. No. No.

This whole freedom thing? It just keeps getting better and better. I’m in for the long journey.

The Sacred Myth of the Hysterical Woman

Healing, Learning

A few weeks ago, I planned to drive to Nashville to visit my family. I’ve been in a new-to-me car since the summer, and this was our first road trip together. Unfortunately, the traffic was horrific, including a closure of the major interstate I needed to get home. Fortunately, GPS directed me, and everyone else, down a side highway to avoid the area, but the traffic only worsened, bumper to bumper, stop and go, as far as I could see. I was actually considering turning around to go back home when my entire car shut down. It didn’t make a funny noise; it didn’t flash an engine light.

It all just stopped, engine, electrical system, power steering, power breaks – all of it. One hundred and fifty miles from home.

I womanhandled the car over to the shoulder, activated my AAA (hallelujah hands for AAA ya’ll. We’ve used them enough this year to pay for ten years of membership), and awaited the tow truck. At 4:45 on a Friday evening, I had no hope of anyone diagnosing the problem before Monday, so I also awaited my husband to retrieve me and take me home knowing full well we’d have to return for the car the following week.

Monday morning, the car ran perfectly. When I called the mechanic to get a report, he stated he could find nothing wrong. No codes were showing; no problem cranking her up.  He even took her on a twenty-mile test drive. My response was this: I did not imagine that my car shut down while driving with me inside it. I’m not making this up. He, of course, was gracious, taking the car on another long test run, checking any possible issue, and still finding nothing wrong. We picked up the car, which Craig drove home because I wasn’t speaking to her. We still don’t know what happened on the road that day.

But the words I said to my mechanic are ones I can’t seem to stop repeating in various situations:

I did not imagine my experience. I am not making this up. I don’t want to be seen as one of those raving, hysterical women.

The raving, hysterical woman is a sacred myth culture uses whenever we women make power structures, usually established by men, uncomfortable. It’s used to deflect from the fact that there is a real problem, and those systems are responsible for that problem. When women question the status quo, we are dangerous.

I think of Dr. Christine Ford, who was violated so many years ago and stayed silent, knowing she would not be believed, knowing that naming her shame would only make it possible for others to dehumanize her further by invalidating her experience. She would be held responsible for her own victimization by being too drunk, in the wrong place, dressed inappropriately, too much of a party girl. What I saw on the stand during her testimony wasn’t a raving, hysterical person – Kavanaugh filled that role nicely and was found sympathetic – but a blazingly courageous figure, staring a male-dominated and traditionally androcentric system in the face stating, I did not imagine this violation. I am not making this up.

I also consider Vonda Dyer, Julia Williams and other brave women of Willow Creek Community Church who overcame years of religious cultural conditioning requiring they acquiesce to male authority and protect men as spiritual leaders, in order to speak up about how they were violated – their bodies, their souls, their humanity. In religious circles, speaking out against an “anointed” figure in the church, almost always male, is tantamount to urinating on the Bible. These “divisive, angry, hysterical women” ( the word ‘women’ couched in these terms will sound as though the speaker is spitting as the word leaves the mouth ) with our drama and our fragility and our inability to see the bigger picture for the greater good. How dare they?

How dare we?
They did not imagine this violation. They are not making this up.

It would be easier and more comfortable for me not to identify with these bold women.

After all, I wasn’t sexually violated, not touched, not held down against my will, in fact, many of the violations I suffered happened without even my presence in the building. So how is it possible that I consider myself violated as well?

Ultimately what happened to these women, to women every day when they are violated, isn’t an expression of sexual desire. Sex may be the vehicle of abuse, but it isn’t the motive. It’s also not the only vehicle. Emotional and spiritual trauma are even more common and less recognized because ‘they aren’t a big deal.’ The damage they inflict is invisible. The act of violating a soul or a human body usually stems from a deep need to express power – to show a person he can do what he wants when he wants and there is nothing she can do to stop him (or them).  When women have the audacity to express ourselves, our independent feminine thoughts, ideas, visions, emotions, experiences, sexual desires, identity, or existence, we must be reminded of our place.

This “reminder” can take many forms.

Afterward, women experience a form of gaslighting meant to push us into the stereotype of the hysterical woman. It usually starts with denial: that never happened; you are making that up. We may be demeaned by labeling us in derogatory terms: “emotional, divisive, etc.” We may be diminished by calling our character into question: she dresses like a whore; she’s angry (somehow this is a derogatory stance for women); she deviates from the male definition of a “good woman”. We may be dismissed: our experience isn’t how it really is, we are wrong, it didn’t happen that way. We are often silenced, whether through shame, coercion or direct physical intimidation. I have experienced all of the above.

Even if our bodies are not physically violated, demeaning, diminishing, dismissing and silencing are violations, a type of soul rape.

As women, we have normalized these events, which happen to us almost daily, and we often swallow our anger, pretending it’s not a big deal. We don’t want to rock the boat. We don’t want to make people uncomfortable. If we are in a religious construct, we don’t want to go against a Divine Being who seems to be made in the image and likeness of the very men who violate us.

We don’t want to be seen as raving, hysterical women. Who will believe us? How will we be taken seriously in the face of power systems which have existed for hundreds, even thousands of years? Why speak up at all?

Every day, when I sit down to write, as I dare to share my story, I think about these things. I am angry. I have been violated. What happened to me should not be normalized.

But I know what people will say, they’ve said it for years. I’m divisive. I should be able to overlook the harm to one person by a toxically masculine institution in the face of “all the good things they do.” I’m a troublemaker. I’m a raving, hysterical, liberal, snowflake feminist. Or my personal favorite, “Jesus would want us to forgive them.”

Bullshit.

That’s what I tell myself every single day. That’s all bullshit. The abuse and violation I experienced are real. They are systemically rampant in America and perhaps nowhere more so than in our churches where women are oppressed, silenced, denied and diminished as part of the doctrine the institution promotes. Women are angry because we should be angry. Our sacred forms, our souls, are being violated. We are something less-than-human in the eyes of the powerful.

We are cute, amusing, tolerated, patronized, prized and dismissed as too simple or too fragile to understand the complexity of the dominant male narrative. This theology is a violation of our purpose and our personhood. My body, with its curves and its breasts and its propensity to leak alarming fluids – blood, tears, milk – isn’t an invitation for men to exert any form of control, sexual, spiritual or otherwise.

If it seems I am angry, it’s because I am. Not only for me but for the Bathshebas and the Marys and the Dr. Fords and every woman whose story and body and soul have been appropriated by the masculine power systems to defer to a male-generated norm. We aren’t male property.

We angry women belong to our selves. We are vibrant, bold, powerful, beautiful. We make the male narrative uncomfortable. We threaten the foundation of male-dominated power structures. We don’t stay in the places men put us. We speak truth to bullshit.

I did not imagine my experience. I am not making this up.

Post-evangelical: This is my real life

Healing, Learning, Living

This post is part 3 in a series. Read part 1 and part 2.

“How you do anything is how you do everything.” ~ Richard Rohr

Divorcing church is a messy business. They get to keep the moral high ground and we get mimosas on Sunday morning.

I actually wish it was that easy. Divorcing church means there is a great big hole in my identity now, one I am in no rush to fill. At least weekly someone asks us, Where are you going to church now?

We aren’t.

I can barely stomach the thought. I won’t speak for Craig, but he’s in no rush, either. We spend most Sunday mornings on the front porch with coffee and fresh air, reading, talking, resting. It’s communion enough for now.

I recently examined an idea: love can’t exist in isolation. This concept then became a foundation for the argument that christians must participate with a church congregation, or we aren’t truly learning and experiencing love. Looking at my life now, I am far less isolated than at any point over the last three years. I give love; I receive love-love which isn’t control and coercion wearing an “I love you” t-shirt- on a daily basis. Home, work, friends, family. I have a full, glorious life. I agree we don’t experience love in isolation, but I reject the idea that church is the single vehicle to provide a loving environment.

Because I am naturally introspective, I have to discipline myself every day not to wallow in victimhood or go too far down the rabbit hole of what might have been. I also work very hard not to villainize those who abused me. Mostly they are sadly short-sighted men who believe they are gatekeepers for something sacred, blind to the fact that sacredness isn’t found in form and function but in being. Theirs is a narrow vision.

It’s likely they will never acknowledge the damage they caused or the pain they inflicted. They certainly didn’t see it even in our final meeting, which focused on condemnation, rebuke, and correction, not of my actions, but of my emotions and experiences (an emotionally abusive tactic known as gaslighting). Small men with narrow emotional skillsets make for a cold, small kingdom. They are welcome to it.

I want something bigger, warmer and more welcoming, for myself and for people I love.

At least once I every day, I stop and take a breath and tell myself, this is my real life, and I am my whole self in it.

When I practice this, I feel like I could fill my lungs forever with clean, fresh air. This grounding is necessary after I spent so many years trying to escape reality.

Each day, I remind myself that all men are not ‘those’ men, especially men in authority. I work with a number of very fine gentlemen, who in no way mirror the misogynistic patterns which undergird evangelicalism. Every day I relax a little more. I stop waiting for the hammer to fall. I am respected and appreciated. I am also stretched and challenged which is another great way to keep from spiraling into destructive thought patterns. Working with the public is good for me, broadening my worldview and constantly challenging my capacity for kindness and patience.

I focus a great deal on my physical well-being: sleep, exercise, diet. Being well in these areas supports my mental and emotional well-being. After decades of imbibing the message that our flesh, our physical self is fallen, sinful, broken and of little value How did that become good news in any universe? How did any religion think that message would elevate anyone spiritually?

I’m discovering what it is to love the body I inhabit. The walking, talking, feeling flesh. This body which survived cancer, chemo, radiation, pregnancy, miscarriage, c-sections, injury, repair, mountain climbing, scuba diving, shark tanks, a half marathon, eating, and intimacy, breastfeeding, and letting go, grief and joy and anger and shame – this is my one and only amazing and beautiful body. It is not a polluted mess which holds my soul captive until I finally “go to heaven.” It’s the glorious vessel that translates my experience in the world every moment. The more I love my self, the better I am able to love the world around me.

It’s a damn fine world, let me tell you. I’m not eager to “escape” it for anything.

Every day, I awaken a bit more. Freedom is like that, expanding, unfolding calling us to keep moving further up and further into this reality we call life.

Am I a Christian? I don’t know, and what’s more, I’m not sure I care. So many labels are just baggage, as though they could tell anyone anything of value about our unique and shining selves. I know I trust Jesus – the man, the myth and the legend. I know His narrative will always be my native tongue. I will continue to study other cultures and practices, but it’s likely I don’t have enough years of life left to speak any other narrative as fluently. I am at peace with this. I embrace my love of spiritual and contemplative practices. This is me, wholly me, a silly, nerdy, bookish, questioning, wondering, belly-laughing, contemplative, eclectic gypsy down to my marrow.

I believe we grow up more than once in our lives. Biologically we have no choice. Our bodies and brains will mature with or without our consent and with very little effort on our part. But emotionally and spiritually, these are maturities we work towards. These require our blood, sweat, and tears. We can choose to take the easy path and hang on to the patterns and traditions handed to us as children, and we may be well contented in those. But we will always expend tremendous energy defending and protecting them when they rub up against other patterns and traditions which we see as threatening. We can remain children throughout our lives.

Or we can relax our grip, an act of tremendous courage. Opening ourselves to the value of other patterns and traditions is the only way for our primary experiences to assume their proper place in our lives. These events mold and shape us, but they do not define us. Other traditions and practices have intrinsic value even if they seem strange and unfamiliar. We can learn from them, and those who practice them, without erasing our identity. In fact, it may enhance our identity.

I’m open to the possibility of returning to the church one day, though never one that isn’t inclusive or which has no women in lead roles. But even if I embrace those traditions again, it will be loosely, with the understanding that they do not create or save me. Only the Divine within has that power. I can freely participate in whatever resonates with my soul, understanding that those harmonies exist anywhere I go. I am the incarnation of God (or Source, or Universe, or Buddha or Allah…name your identifier) even if I never darken the door of a church again. Here is where I find peace. I don’t need a label to understand this.

When people asked Jesus if he was the Christ, he always answered with a question: Who do you say I am? We have spent millennia answering that question, in beautiful and horrible ways. Not a single one of those definitions have the power to change the essence of the One who tabernacled with us and in us. He/She is.

I AM…me. And will spend the rest of my life reveling in the experience of being one with the Universe which never ceases growing and unfolding.