After having a very candid conversation at church today..my mind got to ramblin’. No surprise, i know. A peer of mine caught me in the thick of “does everyone have it all together here,but me?!” internal ramblings, and stopped my thought train by asking me the coveted question of “how are you doing?”. And before my southern,well mannered self had time to pass my thoughts through the what-you-should- and -should-not -say in church I vomited this out, “well, Seth is struggling with his job and doesn’t really know what he wants to do and feels really down and I’m beyond worried about him. Oh, and this infertility thing is wearing me out. Having mandated sex only to find out that i’m back to square one just feels like I should be the poster child for this slogan : ”making sex boring one failed attempt at a time. ”
It wasn’t a flowery or pretty response. But it was the truth.
As I walked away from the conversation I felt like the neurons of “why in the WORLD did you say that,lindsay??” kicked into high gear. My inner self chided, “don’t you know ..you are in church??!!” I went back and forth, back and forth–like a bad internal tennis match between myself and I. Should I have said that, should I have not?”. One demon on one shoulder taunting me, and one angel on the other shoulder encouraging me that the soil of brokenness is where God can really grow us into who He wants us to be. I just felt frozen in time–like a bad episode of the Simpson’s– with these two little imaginary people waging war on my shoulders.
As the mental banter let lose inside my busy noggin, I stood still for a minute, propped against the wall waiting for seth to come out the restroom-frozen in my own little world. In my static state, I wondered how many people were walking by me, wrestling with their own spiritual sicknesses? Struggling with finances, in an affair they just can’t quit, hounded with depression and hopelessness. But in honor of “church code” they put on their plastic smile and fake it at all costs…even at the cost of encountering the living God. Why? Because church just isn’t the place to be well…real.And God just can’t deal with people until we’re all “fixed” as we say in the south. If you act this way or that way, you might just get sent into “church time out” or even worse..put on the prayer request list…which usually goes down like this:
“Now, i’m not trying to gossip,but i heard so and so is doing “this” so we might ‘aughta pray for them.”
And with all this religiosity going on we feel a little like this:
So all of us, crippled with our own personal burdens walk on, hiding our limps. Because limps aren’t allowed at church. No,no..you have to be well first..then you go to church. right? WRONG.
It breaks my heart to see how many years I didn’t feel the freedom to be open and honest, because being raw and vulnerable was for those that were drunk at the bar..those poor souls that didn’t know better than to be a babbling wreck because too many beers had fogged the lenses of self filtering. Being open and and transparent was for those with an elevated alcohol level, not for those at church…
Nope, church was about pretending you were a “good” Christian–whatever that means? People that went to church never cussed,never drank too much, never doubted, never struggled with depression..heck, they never drank alcohol except for communion…and if they did drink it was hid in the back of the fridge:)
Then God turned my picture of Him right side up and I realized that being broken is a symptom of God’s work in our lives. Church is a place for our cancers of addiction, infedility,pride and whatever else is eating away at our souls to come and find healing. To come and find the chemo of God’s love– a love that knows no bounds.It’s a place where God meets us with no conditions and uses the very things that cripple us to heal us.
I am working on this concept—sometimes erring to the side of TMI, but not for the sake of shock factor, but becasue if we can’t come to church and lay all our garbage out there then what’s the point? Jesus did not come for those that are well, but for those that are sick.
And truth is we are all sick. And truth is there is a HEALER.
Is there anything you wouldn’t say in church? any topic off limits?
May we we find power in our brokeness…and then maybe this world will finally see a difference.
