To begin with, the only reason this post has come into existence is that my daughter, the angel baby, is currently sucking on a pacifier in semi-content sleep while I remain awake unable to keep from writing this entry in my mind. (Feel free to pick your jaws up off the floor; I promise I'll try to keep her from becoming the 4 year old with a binky)
Not that I've ever been concerned with the readership this blog garners, but I've found myself afraid of sending posts like this out into the blogsphere. I'm going to be preaching (oh, yes! It's gonna get preachy up in here) about trying to spread tolerance in a very controvercial light. That's right: Let's talk about religion! I would promise I'll try to keep money and politics out of it, but as long as I'm potentially offending people, what have I got to lose?
And that brings me to my main point: Why are Christians so dang offensive? And why am I afraid of being seen as one of the offensive ones? I think it's fair to say that most people who know me are aware that I'm a 'God-fearing' woman. I hope I give credit to the Big Man upstairs enough for people to realize I'm in love with Christ. But it doesn't stop there: I want everyone to know that he's my everything. My relationship with God comes before the relationship I have with my husband and my children and my family--because they are all His children as well. I believe he has control of those relationships; that he brought John and me together and made us one unit because there's no one else in the world I could fit so seamlessly with, that he gave me those two amazing girls to take care of for Him because he knew I could love them more than anyone on the planet and that he gave me my parents and my siblings because he knew no one else could love and influence me in the ways they have.
I feel like I just came out of the closet and I'm thinking I probably just lost quite a few people with those statements. Is it because I used the cliche phrase 'All His children'? Are ya still at least with me Mom? Ok, good.
That's exactly what I'm afraid of; I know I can't get away with using phrases like 'His children' or 'non-believers' without offending people--I know because I used to be one of those people rolling their eyes. Let's start with a little background, shall we?
I grew up 'in the church'; my parents attended, so I attended. As a child I remember vividly latching on to the idea of the ever-loving God and, oh, what blind faith I had. It was beautiful. And then I grew up. And somehow I lost it. It probably got mixed in somewhere with the teenage angst and my concern with my own appearance. I grew up in a beautiful area in Arkansas, but the unfortunate thing about that half of the state is there are a plethora of racist, bigoted, intolerant people. And I know that can be said for pretty much any area of the country, but speaking from the crunchy side of the fence, I see the other side to be my hometown. Don't get me wrong, some of the most loving, caring beautiful human beings I know also hail from Northern Arkansas, I just particularly remember the amount of intolerance and prejudice I encountered; the KKK held a public rally in our town square for pete's sake.
Needless to say, there weren't many non-Caucasian people in my town; instead there were kids flying confederate flags the size of Texas out of their trucks, slinging verbal vomit around to anyone who'd listen. Amazingly, they didn't manage to run everyone off; I had several gay friends in high school whom I loved dearly and had to see them struggle not only with the rightness of their own sexuality, but with the intolerance and persecution of others. This made me question religion. A lot. Because those confederate flag waving folk? Those people judging and persecuting my friends for feelings that felt wrong for them to suppress? The kids going to the Southern Baptist youth group and then getting high, drunk and gettin' jiggy with it on the weekends? They were all adamantly Christians. And I sure did not want to be one of them.
That's not to say I lost my faith over those issues, I was more afraid, having shed the beautiful skin of child-like, blind innocence, that being a Christian meant I had to find fault with others and seek to right it as my service to the Lord. I was confused. Meanwhile, I had a heck of a lot of tolerant, well-meaning, God-lovin' folk around me; they just weren't my peers--they were people like my parents who, at the time, it was un-cool to model myself after. So, I went to college and drifted farther from God.
I definitely won't go into detail, but I made a lot of dumb decisions in college. I also tried to make 'good' decisions by doing things like attending hip college-kid Christian jam sessions and I sat in those coffee houses, listening to Phil on the djembe, slurping my smoothie, thinking I was lost because my connection with the Lord no longer felt tangible. Lost was definitely the word.
Luckily among the poor decisions I made was one to become a German major and to spend a year abroad. All the paperwork was filled out, filed and approved and then a letter came in the mail requesting a signature that would commit me financially to this decision: after I signed that paper, there was no going back. And my heart sank; my stomach felt like it was simultaneously trying to escape via my throat and my butt. I've never been so physically ill over a decision in my life. I stared at that paper for days and tried to purge my body of the feeling that something was so, so wrong.
And then I realized that I didn't HAVE to go. I could risk humiliating myself and just choose not to leave. And that, my friends, is the best decision I've made in my life. If I had gone to Germany I never would have become a Hospitality major, married John, and had those two amazing children. But most importantly, I stopped drifting from Christ and began a series of never-ending steps to try to become closer to him. That sick feeling that wouldn't go away had been a slap in the face telling me to just let him take the dang reins already. And the decision to let him lead my life felt good; my stomach stopped trying to make an exit and instead my heart rejoiced.
So, that's where I come from. Are you still with me? Mom? You're probably the only one who's made it this far...especially considering that whole blip was only the beginning.
That brings us to today: God-loving Jesus freak that I am. And I want everyone to know it. More importantly, I want everyone to experience the love and tolerance and grace that is living your life for Jesus Christ. And you know what Christians call it when they try to get others to see that?
Witnessing.
A word those redneck, intolerant folk made seem dirty and offensive to me.
So when Pastor Keith says I should be witnessing every day, I start to cringe. And it's not just because I'm technically sitting in a church belonging to the Southern Baptist Convention. Until two days ago, I truly believed that witnessing was forcing your religion on someone you saw as a sinful 'non-believer' like the clerks trying to get you to sign up for store credit cards. It only served to push people further from Christ in my mind. So I prayed. And I felt guilty for not witnessing. And then I prayed some more. But God is good. Oh, is he ever good.
I was fortunate enough to extend a general invitation for a Mom's night out that only one other person attended. Most people would see that as a failure. At the time, I did. But God made sure no one else wanted to go, because He wanted to show me what it really meant to witness to someone in the most beautiful sense of the word. At this Mom's night out I met with a woman I would have called a mere acquaintance. She had previously told me that she was, if not a non-believer, then at least confused, and for now she had chosen not to believe in God. That struck me hard. Because she's been through a lot of hardships and struggles that I can't imagine dealing with while feeling like Christ was not at my side. Being a member of MOPS with me (a church-based Mom's group) and being open about her religious disbelief and confusion, she has experienced 'witnessing' in the harshest sense of the word. She felt outcast and set-upon by these well-meaning people and ended up hardening her heart toward the church because of it.
Luckily, for both of us, after all of those lost attempts by people trying to 'fix' her, God sent me just to tell her that I knew where she came from; that our pasts were not identical, but our views were alike; that she had an ally in me not because I pitied her or wanted to save her soul, but because more than anything, God wants us to love and tolerate one another as He has chosen to create us.
For the first time in my life I felt the Lord actively using me--to call this woman to him. And it didn't puff up my ego and make me pat myself on the back like I saw those Christians of my youth doing. Instead, it was the greatest high I've ever been on in my life; I literally had to stop myself from singing and dancing and screaming praises to the Lord. Because I eventually had to go home and it would've woken the kids. But God could hear my bursting heart. And if you haven't already, someday I want you to feel that too.
So, after all that initial frustration and prayer for guidance, the Lord answered my prayers in the coolest way possible; he filled me with his spirit and allowed me to realize how he works through me. But more than the amazing high I felt from speaking with my friend, it made me realize that the most effective way for me to 'witness' to others is simply by living my life for Christ every minute of every day; by doing that, I am daily witnessing to everyone around me that the Lord is my life and my salvation.
Now go get a snack and take a potty break; you deserve it for sticking with me to the end.
We got a matching crib for Bailey too!
We got a matching crib for Bailey too!
We napped...
And the girls played
while I folded a metric ton of laundry
We napped...
And the girls played
while I folded a metric ton of laundry
