Thrashing: Day 12: Push a hand away

What is most interesting to me is that though the fear washes over me in waves, there is a bravery i have never felt before. A willingness, a desire, a passion to fight. I'm aware of a commitment to be in the dungeon for as long as it takes. So much so that I am fighting off the hands that are reaching down for me from the lightworld above. "Let us save you," they say. "Let us fix you," they call. "Let us dry your tears. Let us overwhelm you with light once again so you'll forget all of this, and it will be just a dwindling nightmare." Where were these concerned voices when I was drowning in all that light, living an empty religious life?

                                                                                                       - Mandy Steward, Thrashing About with God

periodically, throughout this time of absence from church, i receive a message from friends who want me to return. they promise me it won't be weird, and that the longer my absence, the more the darkness will win. they pray for freedom from my chains, and my heart responds "isn't this the freest i have ever been??"

i know they love me. i know they are well-meaning. but they cannot love me well right now. they are not a safe space for my heart.

for a while, i was responding to their messages, defending my decision to take a break, trying to help them see how this was God leading me away into the wilderness for a time. but they would see only "do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together" and tell me the Spirit would never prompt something that goes against His Word.

maybe so.

but maybe it's possible that the interpretations they are working with are too narrow, even as they try to apply them too broadly.

Because I would never naturally take this course - it had to be divine intervention to prompt me to move away from the expectations and toward his heart (as i have said before, rebellion is a spiritual discipline for me - it is not my bent. i am wired as a "good girl", and am slowly unlearning, rewiring).

i had to quit "stating my case" a few months in, since it always seemed to fall on ears that care about me, but care about being biblical more. 

my heart is not held in that space. 

so, i have stopped responding.

{{but i feel the urge to run just under the surface of that healthy boundary, so i think this silence with them will only be for a time. because i am sick of running, hiding, avoiding their judgments and questions i have no answer for. i am sure i will need to stand, as myself, even in their presence, at some point.}}

but not yet. right now? i run, and run wild.

"Don't you dare!" I yell back. "This is not about you. I'm sorry that it makes you uncomfortable to see me this way, but you're not going to rob me of this richness. I am with God. He is here. Imagine that. In the darkness. There is no place I'd rather be. And I will come out when He says we are done, because I want to be healed this time. I want the holes in my body to be forever mended, even if there are brutal scars to show for it. When i resurface, I want to be able to contain the fullness of God within me without it leaking out all over the place. Down here, I am closer to my life to the full than I ever was soaking up sun on the beaches of pretending and performance and duty and devotion. Leave me alone. This is something I must see to."    

                                                                                                                          -Mandy Steward, Thrashing About with God

Thrashing: Day 3: Create Your Own Church

[maniacal laugh]

this has been the quest of my year, deep down under it all. to find (or create) a space that is "church" for me.

because the walls i was being held in by were not giving life. and i need life.

i stopped attending the church campus we helped to plant two years prior, in february. and i have had criticisms, pleas, and eye-rolls my direction. but never a "what you believe God is leading you into is valid." i only intended to stay away a few weeks, take a breather, get my feet under me, begin to exercise my voice and learn to hear His over Theirs. but the cacophony of their responses has made it feel unsafe for my tender places, so for now, i have stayed away.

but i have needed the body. and i have found the body. i see incarnate love every single day in this space i have found, this online community that refuses to settle for being less than jesus-with-skin-on. i see women loving each other and loving jesus and wrestling their way through the hardest of questions TOGETHER. i have seen people held, and people called out to live courageously into their calling when they were hesitating. we sit with each other in pain, and dance through each others' delights.

we are a varied fabric, woven hopelessly together, for better or worse, so that we are bound to love each other.

i didn't create this space, but i am part of its church. i bring my heart to the table as they bring theirs, and we thrash, and are never alone.

there are pastors among us, offering "church in the wild" for ones who need words of life poured in. and really, that is what we are always offering each other. words of life. we are seeing each other. and we offer our selves, our own courage and hope and light for the others to catch when theirs is failing. we are moving ever closer to our purposes and the One who gave them, each unique.

we wrestle through hard things like family and the bible and feminism and modesty culture and what happens when you have to leave church? (you find church, in the wild). 

somehow we all bring more of our deep selves to this space, pieces we wouldn't dare unveil to the ones who have touched us and judged us even so.

this is a beautiful, amazing thing, this space that is shepherded by ones who love us, who see us deeply.

at its core, church is worship and community.

and, ideally, that community would be able to give hugs, and come over and hold my baby while i nap after a particularly sleepless night, or i could drop one kid off for a playdate while i take the other one in for shots. we could borrow things from each other and share fresh-baked and brewed kind of love. we could dread each others' hair.

i have hope for this kind of tactile community one day, but i wish everyone had a safe and beautiful space like the one i have found.

i wouldn't trade it for anything.