an offertory meditation

This isn’t my first time speaking here, or even in big groups, but for some reason I’m reluctant to today. Mia said it’s no big deal, speak from your heart, be authentic. The problem I’m having is that my heart gets dark inside, it’s not something that’s willfully prayed away. I’m not going to stand up here and talk about how my heart was changed because “love.” I know that I can be honest because of the conversations I have had with very honest people in our book group. For everything there is a season – a time to retreat and a time for righteous anger.

So, yeah, you’ll have to forgive me while I share authentically. I’m not a warm, fuzzy person. But it’s from the heart.

At the end of 2016, going into 2017, I had a major falling out with someone who I considered my best friend, effectively marking an end to what was a long, slow decline in my community of adults who were associated in some way to the Baptist Student Foundation. But please remember, I’m over 30, and I haven’t been a student in a decade, so I’m referring to a group of friends who met to play games, shuffle vegetables, eat and drink for our communion. And then, with the loss of that connection, I was very much alone despite being surrounded by a joyful community of cyclists and artists, a dedicated group of veterinary professionals and consistently loved by my husband.

My friend and I were bringing out the absolute worst in each other, and it affected nearly every facet of my life. We all carry these demons around, right? Little beasts in our head that rear up sometimes. I’m not talking about a wee red man with a tail and horns. I’m talking about self-harm, mental illness, bigotry, misogyny, hatred, fear, physical illnesses and disabilities  -  the infinite lists that are parts of us but that are not of the Kingdom, that keep up so separated from God.

My demons don’t have a diagnosis, but it is a dark little passenger that reminds me daily that I am never enough. And should I share truthfully, I will be met with suspicion or with pity. I felt that to be me, I had to apologize for myself, to reclaim the derogatory to reclaim myself.

And so at one point early last year, while raging against the whole misunderstanding of it all, I yelled into my reality:

I cannot believe that God would ever want me to feel this way. This is not how we were created to be.

So, I was done.

I was done seeing myself through the eyes of those who thought I was not enough. I was done seeing myself through the eyes of the people who thought I needed to be skinnier, stronger, smarter, more feminine, quieter, nicer, more accommodating. I was done seeing myself through my own eyes.

I wanted to see myself through the eyes of my parents, who, God love them, raised me to be everything I thought I wasn’t. I wanted to see myself through the eyes of my sister, my oldest and truest friend. I wanted to see myself through the eyes of my husband, who just accepted me despite everything that I hated about myself.

I was done with entertaining the bullshit of other people, because it simply reflected everything that disappointed me about the world. The church talks about wanting peace, but then they fail to speak up for the most abused and vulnerable. They do not love their neighbor, they support rules and laws that ostracize and hurt. They claim to follow the gospel, but instead they throw money at the problem but do not mobilize themselves. They worship false idols and then blame younger generations for a failed environment, economy and safety net.

Does that sound harsh? This is my dark passenger.

Faith is a journey, they say, something that has valleys and hills, and any one person could be on some portion of that path at any given time, if they are even on a path at all. So, I took my bitter mind out into solitude. I worshiped in silence on the banks of the river. I pointed my feet to the woods, but I did not wear goat skin or eat locusts. I let my cycling miles be my meditation, and I pedaled, and pedaled and pedaled for an offering.

So, I leave you with this: breathe life and relevance into the word of God, do not rest on your laurels. Peace is not the absence of violence, but the presence of justice. And, in the song of Lisa Gungor:

This is not the end, this is not the end of us. We will shine like the stars, bright brighter.