Purpose

That’s My Church

​​I’ve been going to ‘my own church’ since the pandemic. Not because I haven’t wanted to be there for any reason surrounding the pandemic (masks, fear of sickness, protecting others). It’s just that I have a toddler who is high-maintenance (like his father, definitely not like me…) and if I go to church with him the only thing I get out of it is all my steps to close my rings and more anger in wishing he’d sit still like all those other pretty kids so that I could actually hear myself think. As many of you experienced, childcare was non-existent at church until it was ‘safe’, again.

In going to my own church, I’ve found that I feel more confident asking all of the tough questions. I’ve also felt great relief in not hearing all of those placations that really irk me… you know…

Everything happens according to His plan.

He does all things for good. 

He doesn’t give you anything you can’t handle.

Oh my… these sayings have really, really gotten on my nerves since becoming a mom. As an all loving mother, I just can’t imagine choosing who I help and who I don’t or letting harm happen to any one of my kids in order to ‘be just’ or to teach them a lesson. Unless I wasn’t all loving and all forgiving to those who come to me for help and forgiveness and guidance. And if the Christian God isn’t all loving, then I’d much prefer if He wasn’t described as Father.

I know it’s much easier to believe that God takes care of everyone and rights all wrongs and heals all the sick and that there’s a purpose behind everything that happens. It helps us make sense of our earthly hardships or situations. When Jimmy was life flighted to Nationwide, that’s exactly what everyone wanted me to believe. 

“He’s in God’s hands…” Well that was a scary thought for us while we watched the ER staff shove a breathing tube down his throat and willed his lifeless body to wake-up! After all, God just let someone in our friendship circle die from cancer. Would He let Jimmy die, too? (“If that’s His Plan…” YIKES) God let that guy lose his job and his family struggled for more than a year. Would God let us suffer that long or longer? And if God ‘makes a way’ that didn’t include my Jimmy, well… I couldn’t bear it. So, I don’t even think about that scenario. 

I’ve just finished reading “Everything Happens for a Reason: and Other Lies I’ve Loved” by Kate Bowler. If you don’t know of her or haven’t read it, she is a professor at Duke University specializing in divinity and specifically the prosperity gospel. But she gets a stage IV colon cancer diagnosis and fights for her life. This book follows her journey and unveils her revelations. One of my favorite parts of the book occurs when a neighbor comes to the door bearing a casserole dish and says to her husband ‘everything happens for a reason’. So he says, “I’d love to hear it.” 

Pardon? she replies.

“The reason my wife is dying…”

All I am suggesting is that before you utter those kinds of phrases that most people just say because they don’t know what else to say and they can’t do anything so they hope it helps, maybe just don’t do it. And really, REALLY think about your words. Put them in your own life. 

If someone you love is battling addiction and has nearly taken their life or is so drunk and they choose to drive and they end up killing someone in their car – is that a part of God’s Plan? If you say it is, and you watch that person suffer and the people they’ve afflicted suffer, do you still believe in an all-loving God who gives everyone grace? Or do you place blame?

I am not saying I am ‘right’ at all. I really don’t want to be right, nor do I care to be right. I am only wishing for safe spaces to question these kinds of things and to discover and to learn more than what is taught on-repeat in an institution because it simply sounds good. I long for relationships where we simply hold each other without words – because there are no words for losing a loved one or watching someone you love go through trauma; just let people grieve without applying a band-aid and throwing out useless words. 

In my experience, God is found in the healing and renewal of things. He’s there in the circles of family and friends who say nothing but do all-the-things that keep your life running while you wallow and fear and discover your own strength, again. God is the hope in the uncertainty. He doesn’t simply make a way – He’s only like a mother / a parent:  he’ll always be there to listen and be with you so you don’t feel so alone. He provides comfort while we go through very hard things. He can’t fix these hard things… But, He can comfort us. 

So no, I don’t believe He ‘gives and takes away’ like the song says. A song that obviously was meant to generate reverence for an all powerful being when really it kind of invokes fear. “You may enjoy your life now but ya know I gave it to you and I can take it away.”   I chuckle a little bit here because as a mom I’ve thought these things with my own children! But I would never, EVER enforce a painful existence on them… I don’t believe He says, “You’re going to grow up poor and with nothing. Or, you’re going to get very sick and suffer then eventually die and leave your family in shambles. But YOU over there! You’re going to win the Nobel Peace Prize.” I truly don’t feel it works like that, but that’s our earthly way of attempting to interpret the bible and this immensely expansive, celestial presence we cannot fully understand but that we honor as best we can with gratefulness and goodwill. 

So, I don’t pray for God to change things or fix things or right wrongs, anymore. I don’t believe He’s at our beck-and-call. I pray with gratefulness and thanksgiving, because that’s all that I can make sense of. And I continue to read and journal and reflect and put context to it all while I try to be a good person. 

Our neighbor passed away last week. I asked the boys what they remembered most about him or what they liked about him. They said they’ll remember him mowing his lawn… and that he would watch them (to remind them to keep out of the street! Proof that it takes a village…)  So, I helped them craft a John Deere lawn mower and they wrote a nice note about him on it. Henry and I picked up some treats and we walked across the street in the rain. His daughter answered the door and we handed her what we brought. Do you think I said, “Well, everything happens for a reason…”? HECK NO. I said, I am thankful for him and I said that we’ll miss him in the neighborhood. He was so wonderful to my boys…

I highly recommend this book and I recommend challenging your own perspective, as I continue to do. If nothing else, put yourself in a traumatized or grieving friend’s shoes. And please – please – don’t say everything happens for a reason as a way to help someone. Just be quiet and hug them. I can guarantee you that they need support, not some lesson or unrequited ‘spiritual wisdom’.