There is no place for women like me at church. Which is a damn shame, because I’ve actually found a church that I really like and I do dwant to keep going back. But I don’t think I’ll be welcome there, in the end.
It’s honestly a crying shame. The pastor of this church is humble, open-hearted, and takes scripture down to its most basic premise: love your neighbour, love yourself. He tells us that rules about communion are man-made, that Jesus himself invites us to the table, and if we want to join him, we are welcome. End of uncomplicated story. This pastor is concerned with potential sexist remarks. He took questions from the congregation during the service last week. He is humility personified and today I bawled my eyes out because I don’t know how long I can keep going there.
Eight years ago I sat a friend’s kitchen counter, coffee cup clutched in my hands, and I heard myself say words I didn’t know lived inside of me: “I just don’t think I’m as happy in my marriage as I thought I was.” Nobody was more shocked to hear me say it than I was. I felt time slow to a stop, and it felt like the room around me picked itself up, spun around me several times, and dropped back into place. Everything looked the same, but I was dizzy, and nothing really was.
Over the next few days I observed myself. I didn’t quite believe what I’d heard myself say, yet I knew I had said it. I was curious, and so I started paying attention. Looking back, there were so many reasons I wasn’t happy in my marriage. I was responsible for some of them. I was not responsible for others. Regardless, that moment of shocking realization at the kitchen counter initiated a dark night of the soul that has lasted eight years so far, though I feel instinctively that I am at the tail end. I hope so, anyway, because there isn’t anything left for God to take from me, other than my blind faith, and even that is running dry.
During the first few years of my spiritual awakening, I experienced more miracles and inexplicable spiritual experiences than I did for the combined rest of my life. 97% of the experiences that I can’t explain happened in the time span of three or four years. After I met my second husband and my religion “broke,” I stopped experiencing anything akin to miraculous. I said in another post that God left the room and didn’t come back. I’m still not sure where God is, but the supernatural experiences have not returned, and that’s disheartening because I could really use them right about now.
Truthfully, I know that things don’t just break. They eventually crack under the strain they have been under, whether it’s a religion or a relationship or a dream. Things don’t just suddenly shatter.
The end of my faith as I knew it actually started with a miracle. A few months into my first separation, I got a text message out of the blue, inviting me to Thailand with a group of people from church. I had hardly ever travelled, and the invitation came at a time I felt the most unseen. I got home and laid on the floor at my front door in disbelief. It's so funny to think about now.
The trip wasn’t a missions trip per se, but it was a trip designed to learn about what certain missionaries were doing in Thailand. I went with an open-heart, a grateful heart, a heart willing to be transformed. It was, but not in the way it was supposed to, I guess. One of the first things I noticed in Thailand was how profoundly beautiful the spirituality of the Thai people was. Christians looked down on the spirit houses that sat outside every building, but I saw honour and respect in the open bottles of Fanta sitting in the sun. We were taught how unholy it was that the Thai people revered the crown chakra and didn’t touch another person on the head, but I saw worship. Thailand is a land of spirituality. It is not confined to a church or a wat, it is an integral part of every person’s daily experience. My faith began to strain on that trip, because I could see how hollow Christian culture was by comparison.
Evangelism has always felt uncomfortable for me, even at my most religious. Over the past few years, as I’ve learned to listen more and judge less, I see that the call to, “make disciples of all nations,” has killed more people than it has ever saved. Evangelism and colonialism are synonyms, and as powerful as Jesus is, I’m fairly confident that plundering and enslaving and killing and assimilating was not his vision. That’s why I’ve sought to evangelize with Love. It’s far more compelling than fear, and however you experience Love is the right way for you. This, by the way, is the reason that there is no place for women like me at church, despite how fiercely I’ve fought for this faith.
Anyway, miracles. There was a time that I experienced things regularly that can’t be explained. Sometimes it happened in group settings, like that time I got the shakes at Bethel, but more often than not it happened alone during the darkest moments of my life, crying alone on my bedroom floor while my husband went missing for a weekend after, “going to the bank,” on a Friday night. I’m not throwing shade. I am over it. He is a good person now. But life was hard back then. I had two small children, and God was there for me. Until he wasn’t.
Sometimes I wonder why I am still attached to church. I’ve obviously done a lot of processing over the past few months. The institution of marriage was completely tied to my understanding of God and church (the bride of Christ, after all), and I had a lot of patriarchal beliefs to undo. I’m pretty much done with church now, as heartbroken as I am, because I can’t keep subjecting myself to rejection in the name of Love. That’s the lesson I’m currently learning, after all. I guess I just wonder sometimes, why all the miracles? Why then? Why not now? Skeptics will say they were not true miracles, and that’s fine. It was my experience and I know what it was for me. It was the Divine reaching through my pain when I could not extend my hand for help. That, to me, is a miracle. And maybe one day it will happen again.
I don’t have an ending to this post. I’m just transcribing my thoughts for the five people who read my posts (thank you, by the way, whoever you are. You’re five more than I expected). I guess I just get caught between heaven and earth sometimes, and I still haven’t figured out where my home is. Maybe that will be the next miracle, who knows.
✌️❤️