I try to keep my content positive, but you know, sometimes we just need to bitch about reality, since life continues to be so real and at times, really hard.
And since I’m writing about life in general – the good, the bad, and the ugly, today’s topic is My Shitty Health. Consider it a little vent sesh about struggling with chronic illness. So, really fun content, I know. But perhaps you struggle with health issues too? You are not alone, friend.
Friday night was my pumpkin-turned-carriage moment as a person with chronic illness. My husband treated me to my favorite fancy restaurant for a delicious dinner.. I had the energy to go, and the ability to EAT and digest, even (which sounds like a given, but is not for me.)
Toward the end of dinner, I started feeling puny, and by Saturday lunchtime, I was sick as a dog. My carriage turned pumpkin before I even had time to lose my glass slipper. Dadgum it, here we go again.
Apparently, I picked up a sinus / respiratory bug, and it’s kicking my booty. Part of my plethora health-related genetic mutations is that my immune system sucks.
And ANYTIME I’m functionally sick, my body responds to it with an attack of major inflammation, which causes my systemic pain to skyrocket. So I’m stuffy and coughing, and the coughing subluxes my ribs. This is no fun at ALL.
Also, I’m sad and disappointed. You see, we missed the John Crist comedy show last night, and we’ve I’ve had the tickets for MONTHS. It’s my birthday week (the 24th) so we had all kinds of fun stuff planned this weekend and week, none of which is happening now. And
I’m trying to be a good sport. I am grateful for all the blessings I so richly enjoy in this life, and I take nothing for granted – not even digesting. I realize so many others are fighting so much worse with illness and injury. I get that.
Like anyone who battles chronic illness, I miss out on things. And by proxy, my husband misses out too. The worst occasion was the time I missed the wedding of a young lady you is like family to me. I just couldn’t rally, and it made me so sad.
So as I lay here, salty about being ill, I’m going to what my therapist recommends, which is baby myself. “You know to expect pain flares and ‘down’ days,” she advises. “So plan on taking a self-care day when that happens.”
In other words, don’t fight it on those days. Lean into it as you would in taking care of anyone else. Comfy blankets, streaming movies, and writing. (Always with the writing, because it’s the only way I can get out of my own head.)
So, I eat nourishing food, sleep extra, and for Lord’s sake, let go. Letting go of unrealistic expectations is half the battle, and anger at my own body doesn’t help – it is doing the best that it can. .
If you struggle too, this is your reminder to take care of yourself during the bad days as you would take care of the people you love. Because you and I are worth the effort, even as the pain of hard days cohabits with the gratitude for good days.
When your carriage turns into a pumpkin, well…make pumpkin pie, I guess.
Today I celebrate 23 years of continuous recovery from alcoholism. That’s 8,395 days. And I can finally look back on the woman I was with only compassion now. No bitterness or resentment. She was just trying to numb the pain and heal the trauma, she just picked an awful way to do it back then.
The whites of her eyes were yellowing. Her body was starved for actual nutrients. She thought drinking made her more “fun,” because it dulled her big personality and gave her false confidence.
Worst of all, She was not the mother she knew she could be. A less chaotic one. A clear-headed one.
She was terrified of a life without drinking. So she did it afraid – quitting. It was time.
I don’t know her so well anymore, but I love her still. She got me here, in spite of my own best efforts. She went to countless meetings, drank hundreds of cups of stale coffee, and got to know others just like herself. She found new coping mechanisms, built healthy relationships, and let her big personality out – all things that would be impossible in active addiction.
Twenty three years ago today, I didn’t pick up a drink. And the next day (when it rolled around and not a moment before,) I didn’t drink that day either. I only conquered one day at a time, and truthfully, that’s still how I do it.
Some days are a breeze to get through without drinking, and honestly, I rarely think of it anymore.
Other days, it tells me it’s my default setting. It tells me the physical pain is too hard to do sober, and who would blame me if I picked up?? (See? justifying…the oldest trick into book.) Half of a good recovery is calling yourself out on your own BS. The other half is learning to actually comfort, soothe, and cope without drinking.
But that’s the sneaky thing about addiction – the thing you think you need tells you you need MORE of it. I had to learn how to shush it without invalidating it – that voice.
Recovery has to be a way of life, otherwise it’s just NOT drinking. I had to unlearn a crap ton. Toxic behaviors and coping mechanisms don’t POOF! go away because I drink mocktails instead of cocktails. Nope. It’s work. I have to dig deep every day.
But I am so grateful for my recovery. It saved my life, made me whole, enabled authentic joy, and challenged me well beyond what I could handle.
Still only one day at a time, even though I’ve managed to string 8,395 of them together with faith, struggle; elation, and triumph.
And that’s a lot of corny words just to say I’m grateful as @&$%# to be alcohol-free.
I have been granted this amazing alternative life. It IS possible. We can and DO recover!
I don’t believe in a literal Hell anymore, and that upsets a great many people. I’ve been wanting to write this piece for a while.
I have lost friends who I would have swore were like family to me, because I threw eternal torment out of my theology. I guess they don’t want to get too attached to me here, given, well….you know.
An alarming portion of the population freaks out if you take Hell off the table. We are very attached to it by a sense of justice (and a little schadenfreude, let’s admit it,) and the concept people getting what they have coming.
And yes, I have read it all the way through. Or at least I tried to. But I’m not really a horror fan, so I mostly spent 45 years ingesting, digesting, and becoming frustrated with texts about the all-loving god who is just itching to send your heathen ass into the fiery furnace. The Old Testament always stuck in my craw, on account of the violence and such. It just didn’t line up with my Jesus (or anyone’s Jesus.)
I mean, he doesn’t WANT to send you to Hell, obviously. That would be barbaric. But you’ve left him no choice. I know that when my adult kids test me and I tell them to straighten up and fly right, I keep the fires stoked. You know, out of LOVE, and just in case they are irredeemable.
Except they are never irredeemable. None of us are.
If this is holy parenting, why do we have an understanding of love at all? If we are not to trust our own hearts, and are taught since birth that the factory settings of our hearts are corrupt and “deceitful above all things.” If we are not to “lean on our understanding,” why are we imbued with understanding? Why are we downloaded with compassion, if we are not to trust it?
What if Hell is really just our egos running the show? I feel like I’ve already been there – used the FastPass and got the proverbial t-shirt. Hell’s address is Planet Earth for most of us at one point or another. Addiction, violence, genocide, loss, grief – the things that plague us here – all of it has an expiration date. But love? That is eternal.
God is love, so then love is God; having no ability (or inclination) to fit into the boxes we design to make him more manageable. He is not restrained by ancient texts. The Holy Spirit will not be legislated. She (yep, I consider the Spirit a feminine energy, nurturing and protective) is as intimate family, and as wide as the Cosmos.
“But you can’t let people get away with half-assing Christianity,” you say. And the former cherry-picker in me would certainly agree. But I don’t have the dualism in me anymore to make following scripture to the letter appealing – or frankly – effective.
Do I believe in Christ as redeemer? Yes, I do. I believe the Universe came down in human form to have intimate understanding of our plight, and that one day, we will all share in God consciousness (which is what the “Rapture” means to me now, but that’s a blog piece for another time.) That’s some woo-woo stuff to some folks. It used to be too woo-woo for me.
But you know what else is woo-woo? But believing Jonah was swallowed by a big fish without dissolving in stomach acid, and that Noah’s Ark was a literal seaworthy vessel? Maybe not so much. (I saw a meme recently that said “God is love!” over a cartoon photo of thousands of bloated bodies floating in a drowned world. That’s a hell of a sales pitch!)
Do I feel like not believing the literalness of Hell impedes my ability to do the #1 thing commanded by Jesus? No, I do not.
If anything, it has opened my soul up, which was taught to be a little stingy with grace. You know, just stingy enough to be righteous and “unyoked,” but not stingy enough to seem judgey. You can’t go spreading grace all willy-nilly everywhere! What about HELL?
To Hell with Hell.
Maybe we be less concerned about what other people have got “coming” to them in the hereafter, because maybe what they have coming is LOVE. Maybe that’s the real scandal of the Good News?
When I find myself in too much pain, and the world is caving in; when my heart is truly shattered, and I don’t think I’ll smile again, I shake my fists at God a while, have my ravings and my rants. He listens to my agony, my “I WON’T”s and “I CANT’S.” I forget that Source knows firsthand because He wrapped himself in skin, and His heart was once a gaping wound just like mine has been. When I’m hemorrhaging emotion, His heart is bleeding right along, when I can hear only chaos, His comfort soothes me like a song. Oh Creator of this worn heart, Source of all that’s pure true, please let my pain have purpose. Let it make me more like You.
I don’t know how young mothers today deal. It’s sad that they feel constantly judged, but even sadder because it’s their mom peers who often instigate it. Then add about 500 of your closest friends from Facebook and let them weigh in on every single parenting decision you make or share, as part of a community and HOOBOY. The insinuation of course is that you’re DOING IT WRONG, the MOTHERING. Everybody is The Mommy Police, and if you’re lucky, you’ll just get by with a “ticket” to Guilt-Landia. It can feel crushing and paralyzing. As a general rule, we moms feel bad enough about ourselves and worry enough about our kids, and don’t NEED the extra “help” with guilt. Am I right? Make peace with this fact: If you’re a mom, there will always, always be something you feel like you should feel guilty for. There will be fresh material every day. Here’s the thing: Bad moms don’t worry if they are bad moms. They don’t agonize over breast vs. bottle, whether to be a stay at home mom or a working mom. So if you CARE deeply about these (and a million others,) congrats! You’re not a bad mom! In addition – as a grizzled, world-worn, veteran mom who is now a grandmother as well, I hold these truths that will become self-evident as your babies grow into little individual people:
You are not the first generation to parent, and ergo, feel like you are failing at it. We got the T-shirts, and they are out of style, covered in dry spit-up, and not what we thought we ordered. Hey mama? It fits you PERFECTLY. You are rocking it.
Remember that opinions are, well…like assholes. And assholes especially have opinions for DAYS. Depending on who volunteers information, you are DEFINITELY spoiling that kid to death / neglecting it / setting your child up to fail / ensuring that your child will succeed / depriving it / indulging it / making it neurotic (just like YOU!) / giving it too much candy / not enough gluten (or is it too much gluten?) The consensus of Online Parenting Experts is in, and your poor kid is suffering because you are doing SOMETHING wrong in their eyes. By the way, you will care less and less what people think and more and more about your actual child as they grow, thank God.
In the days before the Internet (also known as the Jurassic Period,) we did what we felt was right for our kid and whenever someone criticized us for minor infractions / different parenting styles, it was considered RUDE. It should STILL be considered RUDE. People worry about everybody else’s business need to be staying in they own damn lane. Rude is SO DISAPPOINTINGLY ACCEPTED these days. Everybody has to get offended. You are responsible for your own emotions. Everybody else should’ve have to tip toe around you, but neither should they be disrespectful. It’s okay to say, “wow…that was really RUDE!” When it’s warranted.
When my girls were born, I promised them – audibly and whist they were still covered in vernix (look it up…or maybe don’t…) that I would always be the BEST Mommy for them I could possibly be. And I meant it. But you see, it wasn’t really a fair promise because I wasn’t ALWAYS the best Mommy I could have been. I made a lot of mistakes. Some of them were doozies. If I could go back in time, I would have promised them that I would always love them like CRAZY! That’s about all the promise I can reasonably be expected to keep. Because no matter how we screw up, or how many teenage “You’re ruining my life!” screaming matches you have with that cherubic little wee one you cannot IMAGINE fussing with now, no matter how many times your kid poops up the back of their Onsie as you are strolling them down the long, post-church K & W Cafeteria line (true story…), no matter WHAT, that’s a promise your heart will hold in highest esteem. And really, it’s all that matters.
Your kids will likely turn out NOTHING like you thought they would, no matter how many of the “right” choices you made for them. They will be different from you, as they are their own humans and not an extension of you. Don’t be surprised if they deplore every value you hold dear. Never, ever, say “Not MY child!” That shit WILL comeback to bite you in the ass every time. Don’t be surprised if they choose a lifestyle you don’t agree with (they might even grow up to be conservatives / liberals! It happens, folks!) You will love them anyway and be proud of who they are because after all….didn’t you raise them to be free-thinkers? You brought a human into the world who is on their own path – and God loves a seeker. And allll the advice / shaming / guilt-proddings from the masses will matter not one tiny bit. Here’s the secret: every mom falls short, verily I say unto thee even that one mom who seems to have it all together. I PROMISE you she doesn’t. God chose YOU for your particular child, and you’re KILLING it! (Killing PARENTING, obviously. Hahaha.) Hugs to all you mamas feeling like you don’t measure up. You’re doing swell. ❤️
“The Prodigal Son Returns: The Art of Soichi Watanabe,”
By: JANA GREENE
If no weapon formed against me shall prosper, I can only infer that includes the ones we use against ourselves. Words can be weapons sure enough.
God, where I am bent on warring with myself, help me to remember that you are not the one calling the battle cry.
When the sword of truth is forged, let me remember not to use it as an implement of pain; but instead know it protects my peace.
When I want to throw self-righteous stones at wrongdoers, remind me that I live in a glass house myself.
When I turn the pistol of shame against my own heart, remind me that you have emptied the weapon’s chambers, and filled the chambers of my heart with your love.
When life cuts like a thousand knives, you are not the one holding the hilt, nor did you forge the iron.
Nor did you authorize pain, but gave us a tool with which we ourselves can use to cut out the cancers of hatred, bigotry, misogyny, and condemnation.
Words to ourselves can be jagged, and stunting; tormenting and choking. Believing the worst things about ourselves is not the humbleness God has in mind, but a misguided martyrdom to feel holy.
“Woe is me, I’m such a screwed up human. Who shall save me from ME?”
But God had says, “No woefulness required. You’re such a well-loved human. Lay down your weapons; love is a much better tactic. It’s time you realize your identity, oh anxious one. Go tell the others too.”
We are taught our minds are evil above all else, so we collect an arsenal to keep our egos in check. Words can be self-harm.
We are told we are lost and wretched, unworthy of love on our own merit. Why wouldn’t we arm ourselves or protect our own value with harsh words, heavy-handed self-righteousness, and “heavenly” battle preparedness?
Them’s fighting’ words!
But I myself have had enough war.
I’ve learned that the armor of God is soft and comfortable, a suit of protection, a covering of pure love.
It is not only worn, but woven into our very souls. It’s part of us.
It fits like peace, and is tailored for Truth. It isn’t heavy or uncomfortable; unwieldy, or confining. There may be chinks in our armor, but that’s okay.
I’m enough, chinks in my armor and all. And so are YOU.
My heart is heavy today. I wish I could fix so many things for so many people I love so deeply. Life is so hard at times. We got to lean into one another. The storm is coming. Can you feel it? How to best prepare? When people are kind to you, they are literally expressing the God within them to you. The force of the entire universe is bending to reach you with every soft word or strong hug you’re given. We need so much tangible manifestations; otherwise it looks like roaring din of chaos is winning to a hurting and raw world. We ARE the tangible manifestation. I pray we can remember that through all the nasty pettiness in the world right now. To withhold kindness is to be stingy with the love of God. Your political opinion upending God’s message to love is just clanging symbols. A lot of noise that demands to know “ BUT WHAT ABOUT MEEEE? What about MY rights? MY piece of the pie?” Imagine the loaves and the dishes were pie, then. Would he have multiplied it so exponentially if he were deciding who actually DESERVED pie? Matter of fact, I’m pretty sure he would expect us to feed ALL, without regard to who we personally feel is worthy? Listen, I was a conservative Christian nationalist for most of my life. I get it. It took getting SHOOK for me to understand another point of view. We are taught to WAR against powers of darkness, but either “it is finished,” as Jesus said, or it is NOT finished. If it’s not, war your little heart away. As for me and my house? I don’t have fighting in me anymore (and Jesus was a promoter of peace himself, dang hippy!) It takes too much energy for my body to exist; I ain’t trying to expend it on national panic. Too much hate. Period. PS: I am preaching to MYSELF too. Because I believe this with ALL my heart, but I’ll still probably yell “asshole!” In my car to people who cut me off in traffic or drive slow in the passing lane. I am pretty good at expounding LOVE, while still hollering, “Nice turn signal, %#@&$-face!” It’s a process y’all, and we aren’t perfect at it. We will never be perfect at it. But now is not he time to give up trying. ANYWHOO….just some thoughts this morning.
Gather ‘round, kiddies. I’ll spin you a yarn about a time when need reporters didn’t posit they’re own opinions in reporting the news. Even 20 years ago, you were much more likely to get “just the facts.” They presented those facts, and nobody had any idea the reporter’s political affiliation is. Because we thought for OURSELVES. And we expected others to do their thinking for themselves, too. It is year 4 of avoiding the news – almost entirely. If something big happens, it will come across the feed of a social network, and so can decide if I want to know more about it, and seek it out. I get the whole ‘MURICA phenomenon, it kept me glued to the tube too years ago. I watched/read/ate/ slept religiously watching the news was after 9/11. That’s where the obsession with current events became neurotic. But the 24 hour news cycle is just a train wreck on its way to a Doom City, always. We just weren’t made to absorb so much negative information constantly. No positivity. And you are powerless against the vast (and I mean VAST) majority of situations in the news. There’s nothing you can do, except grow your own paranoia and anxiety over it. So no thanks. Letting things flow (that you can’t change anyway) is the rawest form of trusting in God, I think. Plus, I don’t want to be continually grumpy for however much time I have left earth-side. and I assure you that if I became a news junkie, I would take the grouch cake. There ARE things we can do to better our mental health, like not nibbling on the fruits of the media. Fruits of the Spirit are tastier! The government ain’t telling us anything anyway, and the little bit they DO let out is probably May as well be happy, and protect your peace. P.S. Your quest for peace is always worth protecting.
Ladies over 50, since time immemorial, we have been told that our attractiveneess and worth have expiration dates.
Be thin, but not TOO thin. When you lose too much weight, the fat can’t fill out your wrinkles.
But don’t gain weight either, even though metabolism will fight you every step of the way.
Have invisible pores – nobody wants to see your actual human skin.
Thin lips? Ew. You need filler. If you don’t look like a whole-ass bee stung you square in the mouth, you’re doing it wrong.
Paint the barn door, for crying out loud. You need makeup.
Women aren’t supposed to be hairy. Are you trying to look like a caveman?
Natural eyebrows? Where are your forehead caterpillars? They are all the rage now.
Your eyelashes are too sparse. If you aren’t gluing them on, what are you even doing?
Yoga pants are a privilege, not a right. (Ugh.)
The wrinkles you got for laughing? You probably shouldn’t have found so much joy in life.
Speckled chest from sun damage? You should have worn more sunscreen religiously, lady.
Fat upper arms? They keep waving when you have stopped.
Stretch marks? *GASP*
Cellulite? There’s a $1000 cream for that.
Smile lines? That’s what you get for having the audacity to be happy for 50 years.
Face showing “character?” That only applies to men, silly.
We have “fupas” now, so you better get a tummy tuck. Never mind that your body grew and housed and birthed entire human beings.
And natural boobs? Ghastly. way past their prime. Again, never mind that they fed your babies for 4 1/2 years of your life, for their intended purpose. Stuff those puppies in a push-up bra.
Touch up those grays. Your roots are showing. And while we are on “hair,” older women should never grow their hair long.
Hey, what’s with the turkey neck? Good GOD, that’s unattractive! Lift that jawline.
Get your saggy butt lifted. You’ll never be a Kardashian at this rate.
Don’t wear anything sexy. People will tsk-tsk at you and say you’re not acting “your age.”
Bleach / wax / lift/fix / fill / Botox / work out. Be “more” and try harder.
Otherwise, you might as well be an old lady that nobody sees.
Ah, but I see you.
You are beautiful in your aged-ness.
You’re not “old” like the world wants you to think you are.
You are not old like Tweety Bird’s frail grandmother, tottering around in small, arthritic steps, made grouchy by that damn cat and life in general. (Although, is it any wonder we’re grouchy?)
No.
You are “old” like “The Oracle” in The Matrix.
Soft.
Strong.
Wise.
Regal.
And like her character in the Matrix, you represent the prophesies and victories – not over machines – but over the expectations of a shallow world.
You provide assistance to the freed, when you can free your mind.
And by being free to be yourself, you will be the pied piper of the Sisterhood.
And when the world insists or insinuates you have somehow lost value?
Screw ‘em.
Be glorious, ladies of “a certain age.” Do not go quietly into the most liberating era of your life. Do not let them tell you that your value hasn’t appreciated. Because OH, how it has!
You matter. You’re a very big deal. You bring strength and beauty to this world; thanks for that. May we lean into each other and look out for one another. Blessed be.
When people ask me what was the catalyst to reconstructing my faith, my genetic conditions top the list. There is nothing like “casting demons” out of a person who was born with a disability. It really adds insult to (literal) injury. You must be spiritually lacking, if you’re not getting well! You’re “under attack.” You’re oppressed by the enemy.” If you just prayed harder, believed harder! Surrender more!
And I didn’t get physically better. At all.
So it’s obviously a problem with my faith! I’ve been told the metal in my ankle had literally turned in to bone, and that I had already “gotten my healing,” it’s just not “manifesting” yet because there is some COSMIC LESSON in it for me that I’m not quite getting, so God is giving me the business. In a LOVING way, of course, but it just feels like pain to me, so what’s up with THAT kind of love? His ways aren’t our ways, to which I say: Why did he imbed the ability to love or be loved in us? We know what feels loving, and what feels cruel. Its love that makes the (fallen, broken) world go round.
People with disabilities maybe don’t need your judgey insistence that they are sick spiritually defective people, demons inhabit them. Powers of darkness aren’t making me sick; I was born making faulty, mutated collagen that my body cannot effectively use, and a host of other 100% genetic conditions that no amount of speaking in tongues, laying on hands, and fervent prayers will fix.
And here’s the thing: That’s okay.
I’m okay with that. I am NOT okay with perpetuating this mindset to the disabled community. It’s one thing to pray for healing (I pray all the time,) it’s another to perform a sort of exorcism on a person who is just simply born in a sick body.
But I have been healed in other ways.
All the years of being told I’m healed by Jesus’ “stripes,” I truly believe I was receiving another kind of healing, just as profound. My identity as a broken person has been fixed, in that I’m not begging God 24/7 to make me whole. Maybe I’m already whole and wasn’t defective in the first place. My sense of surrender has been healed. My acceptance of my humanity – and my differently-abled body? I’m getting that shit down.
Maybe the church (and world) are being called to love disabled people where they’re at. Maybe ask what help they need, instead of making their already difficult lives become about their eternal souls. We already feel like shit. We don’t need the layers of shame, guilt, pity, and fear that comes with this kind of religion. And for God’s sake, leave demons out of it altogether, holy cow!
Love people where they’re at, just as you love and accept the able-bodied. We can do better. We must do better.
A dear friend recently said to me “I don’t know if I can believe in God anymore.”
She said there is just too much evidence that a supreme being has checked out, or never existed – or worse – is dead.
“The whole ‘God is love’ thing is a crock,” said she. To which I agreed. “There’s too much suffering,” she continued, selling past the close. Her heart was in distress.
God is love has been embedded in us, we are taught nothing less all our lives, and where does that leave our idea of love those times we feel thrown to the wolves?
So I asked her:
“If you cannot believe that God is Love,” I replied. “Can you believe that LOVE is actually GOD?”
There is no denying that Love itself exists.
It swirls around us, and flows through happenstance and doubt, overcoming both.
It is in every hug, good wish, faithful intention. It is being seen. It is being valued. It is in valuing others.
It is sitting with the hurting, grieving alongside them so they are not lonely.
It is miracles, yes; but it is also in pain. Love often piggybacks on pain.
If your cognitive dissonence disallows you your old belief system, can you worship love and live by the tenants of a loving life?
Not just your understanding of love, but the truth that it is the force behind the details in the microcosm and glory in the vastness of the cosmos. That love?
Love itself is God. When app other things pass away, it’s still standing, open-armed.
Because whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – go towards that. Be willing to get messy with it. Spread that stuff everywhere. Dole it out like there is a never-ending supply. (Because there is.)
When you find manifestations of love, you will find a God who won’t tell you he’s running out for cigarettes, only to never return. Or say he’ll give you something to cry about. Or any of the other hurtful things human fathers do.
Yes, we are raised being told that God is love, but we have been taught incompletely. We are the incarnation of God on earth. When living out love has a heretical flavor, it’s time to take another look at ourselves.
Maybe you’ve been hurt by the “church. Perhaps you have trauma. “God is love” not ringing true to you as a whole? Old Testament giving you wrathful vibes of a vengeful overlord?
I understand. But can you believe in LOVE my friend?
Love that will sit in that dark hole with you, because it’s not allergic to our shadow selves.
Love that comforts the broken.
Love as a force that rises to meet the victim.
Love as the catalyst for every simple contact we have for the hurting.
Where there is confusion, it’s the thing we can hang our hats on.
Where there is bigotry, it’s the force that overcomes.
Oh yes. I believe that all things loving and lovely, and pure of intention, are of God.
And that includes US!
I wish you peace, joy, and comfort today, dear reader. I wish you rest in a safe, warm Source of Love.
May is Ehlers Danlos Awareness Month, so I’m … um… spreading awareness. I saw a meme the other day that referred to it as “Bendy B*tch Disease” and I laughed so hard. BBD! But there is a whole lot about living with this condition that isn’t funny in the least.
A few of my friends have had questions recently, and I thought I’d use this platform to educate about Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and its related comorbidities. And y’all can ask me anything, I don’t mind answering questions! (Please keep in mind, this article addresses my own experience with EDS, and it can manifest differently among patients. Please consult your doctor for correct diagnosis and treatment option pertaining to you as an individual.)
Can you develop the syndrome over time?
No. Most of us suffered for years – sometimes decades – without a correct diagnosis because symptoms can seem obscure. And the medical community tends to think of horses when they hear “hoofbeats” (i.e. causes of injuries and illness,) and not zebras. Which is why the “mascot” for this condition is the zebra. It is 100% genetic. You cannot ‘catch’ it, develop it (although you can develop more obvious symptoms,) or “cause” it in any way, shape, or form. We are born with it. Genetic and clinical testing is often required for accurate diagnosis (do a search for the “Beighton Score” for further explanation.)
Can holistic approaches cure Ehlers Danlos Syndrome?
No. Although I do love holistic remedies and believe in their helpfulness in many ways (and I try to treat my overall health with eating clean when I can,) the truth is that I require many Rx medications every day. Each one has proven itself necessary, as I have tried at different times to stop most of them at one time or another, with disastrous, sometimes life-threatening consequences. So, I’m a big fan of natural medicine, but a bigger fan of survival. I hate that Big Pharma is a big part of that survival, but it is what it is. Part of my constatation of illnesses show up in that my body cannot do the things your body does automatically. My unmedicated body cannot control my blood pressure, temperature regulation, heart rate, or digestion – as I have gastroparesis, which is paralysis of the entire digestive tract, which is why I’ve lost 50 pounds in a short span of time, and why I’m malnourished (which causes even more symptoms and pain. it’s an awful cycle.)
What do you use for pain management?
Ice packs. Voltron. Tiger Balm. And tears. Oftentimes, the course of pain management for my condition and the severity of it, can be opioids. That’s how brutal the pain can be. I have seen pain management doctors, who put me on CBD oil because other than opiods, there are not too many meds I can add to my already-vast Rx repitoire without complicated side effects. I’m glad CBD works so well for some folks, but it may have well been snake oil for me. I cannot (rather, will not) take opioids, as I am a recovering alcoholic with 22 years sobriety and taking opioids would be extremely risky for me, addiction-wise. I do take cannabis gummies – and honestly, because I take the totally legal kind, they help but only so much. I long for the day cannabis is legalized so I can achieve better pain relief. Truly, people, it’s medicine God himself planted in the dern ground. Its medicinal properties are scientifically proven. So, legalize in it my state already. Okay, off my soapbox.
How come you dislocate and subluxate your joints all the time? Because I’m a super-athlete. JUST KIDDING! Because completing everyday tasks can be like running a triathlon for a healthy person. We tire easily. Subluxations are just partial dislocations of joints – mild or incomplete dislocations. And they happen all the time. Every day, something on my body subluxes; it’s just part of my reality. Our ribs can sublux due to coughing or sneezing. Barfing is the worst for subluxing ribs. My left thumb shifts out of joint at least twice a day. Braces – elbow, wrist, knee, ankle – you name it – are a part of our everyday existence. Every morning I take a “pain inventory” to help me know what needs to be braced for the day. I have a vast collection of braces for my joints and it’s a rare day I don’t need any at all. Speaking of EDS stability paraphernalia….
Why do you use a cane sometimes and other times, you do not? Because some days we “flare” worse than others, and also because many of us also have Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), which causes dizziness, and a cane is a good stability aide on unstable days. There are days I don’t use my cane at all, and there are days I can’t walk to the kitchen without it. This will, unfortunately, worsen as I get older, and as my joints become less stable as well. That’s the bugger about this condition – we will not improve as our bodies age. Wear and tear on the joints from everyday life will become more prominent. (PS: It’s an unfair assessment to pass judgement on someone who uses a mobility aide only on “bad” days. One day, we need help getting around, and another, we can walk upright unaided.)
Have you tried yoga?
*Rubs temples*. Yes, I have. Ended up subluxing my hip. Different patients have different opinions on yoga- from what I’ve experienced and been told, is terrible for people with my type of EDS (Hypermobility Type III) because our joints are already ridiculously loose and stretchy. Bending them more in those positions only increased my pain and caused damage. Our joints are too lax already.
What is a “flare” and why are some days worse than others?
According to that Big ‘Ol Brain in the Sky – Google – it is explained thus: “The term “flare” can mean several things, but could be increased pain, GI distress, MCAS reactions, dislocations, subluxations, cardiovascular challenges, dysautonomia symptoms, insomnia, fatigue, brain fog, a sense of being “wiggly” or dangerously clumsy and more.” And easier way to think of it that my dashboard lights go off at once. ALL SYSTEMS are “off.” Flares can result from being sick (with a virus or other, and that’s constant, as I also have a degree of immune dysfunction,) being over-tired, pushing past my limits, or not sleeping, eating gluten, and about 50 other possibilities.. Flares are miserable beyond words, and you feel like you will never feel decent again. EVERY time, so severe flares are also pretty good at triggering depression. On our “good” days, it is natural to want to do ALLTHETHINGS, because we never know when our pain will be manageable again. So, we push past what we should, often resulting in – you guessed it – another flare. Supremely frustrating.
Have you consider EDS may be caused by childhood trauma?
I believe the mind, body, soul connection is imperative to consider. But to me, this, to me, is an old spinoff on the question: “Is it all in your head?” Although I do have significant childhood trauma, Ehlers Danlos has zero to do with it – other than the fact that I was constantly injuring myself doing the simplest things as a child and was considered “clumsy,” not having had any idea what was wrong with me. Also, the emotional days can contribute to overall flares, just like any other trigger. I have – thank God – worked on my trauma through several years of therapy, and I will probably go to therapy for the rest of my life. I will goto therapy forever -not because of the trauma – but because my therapist gives me tools to deal with the fact that I am losing mobility slowly, must deal with awful pain on the regular, and not being able to do the things you want/need is depressing, frankly. My therapist imbues me with hope, coping skills, and encouragement. I am not going to get “better,” (barring any unforeseen miraculous new treatments which may come along due to increased research, which is why I am spreading awareness. Here’s hoping!)
In conclusion, thank you for asking questions, my friends. I will answer them as best I can! Ehlers Danlos Syndrome is a spectrum just as many conditions present. Some people with it lead normal lives and just experience a little pain here and there. But for some of us, it’s debilitating and progressive. And we need the compassion and understanding to thrive through chronic illness and pain.
“If you are spiritually deconstructing, you never knew Jesus in the first place.”
I hear this refrain over and over again. It’s the most invalidating thing you can say to someone who is rebuilding a faith life, because it requires no questions asked. A quick, pat explanation to justify one’s traditional beliefs that people who deconstruct are fallen. Deceived.
No fuss, no muss. Easy-peasy. If you are questioning the inerrancy of the Bible, you were never a “believer” in the first place. Which is both harshly judgmental – and frankly – nobody’s call to make about someone else’s person’s personal faith.
But that would be a wildly assumptive dismissal, because it’s for my love of Jesus I began questioning.
It’s because Jesus is SO real to me that I started this journey.
Either Jesus was who he said he was, or he wasn’t.
Either God is a god of warring, or of peace.
Either God is a god of unconditional love, or none at all.
Either God is a just god, or a corrupt one.
Either “it is finished,” or it is not.
And that’s far more important to me than believing a grown-ass man was swallowed by a whale and lived three days in its body “vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.”
We learn the Old Testament stories in Vacation Bible School, right out of the gate. Horror stories.
Abraham being willing to sacrifice his son, only to have God say just kidding! Just had to make sure you would snuff out the life of the child you prayed so long for, and I rewarded you with. Is God manipulative, or loving?
The nature of God is not – in my travails – sending a catastrophic flood to drown all of his creation – excepting one family he deemed righteous. For that righteous man who would later get drunk and have sex with his daughters to propagate the species (with even more beings that God knew good and damn well would also become corrupt in their humanity.)
I no longer believe it, because of the teachings of Jesus himself. The Bible contradicts itself in the most dangerous way, because it teaches that you’d better get your belief system right OR. ELSE. It’s the ultimate test of “getting it right.” And we humans are not so good at getting things right, as a general rule.
Does that sound like Jesus to you? Examine the humanity of Jesus; not just the divinity.
I am not at all anti-Bible. I am Bible-in-context of history and allegory. And the grace and justice and righteous table-turning of Jesus? I am definitely “pro” that.
“I guess you’ll find out when you die and spend eternity broiling in Hell,” they say, when you deconstruct.
To which I say, the Jesus I study and know is not about eternal conscious torment. “Turn or Burn” is loaded with law, as opposed to grace.
“You can question God about “x” but never “y.” and CERTAINLY not “z.” they tout.
Except that you can, because it’s the nature of humanity. And every good relationship requires excellent communication, why would this be any different?
I have no desire to throw “the baby out with the bathwater” – Jesus out with the organized religion. Lo, I say unto thee, in my quest of soul-searching, he came out on top.
“Love one another,” says he. And everything else he ever says orbits around that one concept.
So question, child of God. Let the Holy Spirit roam around free-range in your soul, unconstrained by thousands of years of human dogma, politics, and legalism. Ask the Spirit to show you what is true and what matters most in the ancient book. Sit with the Spirit as Jesus sat with his disciples, just chillin’ with the homies. Just BEING; not striving.
Oh, I did know Jesus “in the first place,” but not as I know him now.
Not as part of a Jekyll and Hyde spiritual pairing. Not as one whom I will have to hide behind when I get to Heaven, so as not to upset the father with my humanity. Not as one whose grace hinges on us “getting it right.”
But as One with us, whole in love; full of grace. One who sits with me in my darkest hour. One who set the example of turning the other cheek and made repeated declarations that “the greatest of these is LOVE.”
“Tomorrow,” said Mama Bear as she helped the cubs get ready for bed,“you’ll be going to the doctor for a checkup. Doctor Grizzly wants to make sure you are growing the way a healthy cub should.”
“Mommy, you left out some of the words,” said my astute four-year-old. Dang it. Her baby sister, just one year old, pulled away from nursing as if taking notes, agreeing: Yeah, Mommy!
My four-year old continued, “Don’t skip parts of the story, Mama!” She was bossy. Or what we refer to as “having leadership skills.” I was lying in bed with her just like every night, reading scads of books before launching into a playlist of my terribly singing lullabies to she and her sister. (I can’t carry a tune in a bucket, but my kids didn’t seem to mind.)
We were reading from the classic “Berenstain Bears Go to the Doctor,” and this time, I read the lines between those two sentences. “Doctor?” said Brother Bear. “We’re not sick!” “And what’s a check-up,” asked Sister Bear, a little worried.”
My daughter’s small voice sounds out the next line word-by-word “It’s. Just. What. It. Sounds. Like. Said. Mama.” She was reading already. She loved books.
When my girls were little, we would visit the library every week and come home with the maximum allowance of 15 books. We would read them all together, especially in the evenings, to wind down.
As my kids got older and could easily read along with me, their books got longer. Eventually, the books had whole chapters, and by the end of the day, I was tired. I’d read most of the books before and had in inkling of what I could leave out that wouldn’t compromise the plotline or sound like I was reading a condensed version.
That evening – like every other -I was exhausted. I was battling an illness I didn’t have a name for (and wouldn’t for another 20 years.) And I was anxious to get through the reading, do the horrible singing, and tuck them in for the night.
It’s not as if skimming a few paragraphs from “The Boxcar Children” made any difference, right?
Oh, to go back and read all the lines, little ones in my lap, where all was right with the world. To read the fifth book of the night with the same thoroughness as the first book. I would do all the character’s voices on the fifth book too. And I’d do it right.
Right now, I wish I could skip this chapter in my life. Not ALL of it – most of it is lovely. But some of it frankly sucks, and sucks badly. The world is in chaos, my body is falling apart at the seams, every single day is a battle to keep my joints from dislocating.
Every single day is a battle with chronic pain, and much like when I was a young mother putting her kids to bed, I’m exhausted. And the hardest thing going on is that so many of my dearest friends are facing catastrophic situations. Why must everything HURT? So many parts of life hurt.
But unlike the Berenstain Bears – whose issues always resolved within twenty pages and lots of colorful cartoon illustrations – there is no skipping stuff.
When I consider my life as a whole, the stuff I would have rather skipped when it was happening is the stuff that (warning: lofty platitude ahead) made me STRONGER. And oddly enough, had I everything to do again, I’d probably do it the same. But damn. What price for strength!
Had I skipped a chapter, I wouldn’t be sober from alcohol, which was robbing my very life. Had I skipped the part of the story where I came to the utter and complete end of myself, how could I become the beginning of a better version of myself. It was so ugly, my alcoholism. Going through the agony of early recovery? I thought it would kill me. I was so incredibly sick, inside and out. But had I not ridden out the withdrawals, I would have missed the best chapters of my life.
Had I skipped a chapter, I wouldn’t be married to the kindest, most wonderful man on the planet. He is my very best friend, and my personal hero. I would have been stuck in the same situation – one that I settled for because I didn’t think I deserved better.
Had I skipped a chapter, I would have continued to believe the negative things people thought about me. Worse, I would have continued to believe what I myself thought about me.
You know those children’s storybooks that let you choose your own ending? It’s kind of like that. But to know what ending to choose, you have to read the rest of the book with nothing left out. And there’s no skipping parts of the story, whether I volunteer to cooperate or not.
Here’s the truth:
Every part of the story is pivotal.
The crappy parts. Maybe especially the crappy parts. The boring parts too – they prepare you for plot twists and character development.
Skipping the hard parts mean never making mistakes, and thus, never learning from them. It robs the richness of relationships from you and stagnates your growth.
Skipping means you have to start again. Sometimes all over again. “Start again, Mommy!” my kids would say, when I cheated them out of words. It’s hard to follow a tale with incomplete information.
Likewise, life calls for starting over often. “From the top!” it will demand. Not condescendingly, but because it’s necessary to understand the story.
And yes, it is important to understand the story. It’s life.
The choices we make in the parts we’d rather skip are often the steps that afford us a happy life.
And I really hate that; because it seems like a bunch of wrenching awfulness just to get to a good thing. Right now, I’m not dealing with that so well. My anxiety tells me that if things were just different, I would be healthier. More productive. My pain tells me that I don’t care for my family to the degree I should. The struggles make me want to legit give up.
I’m learning to accept hardship as a pathway to peace, as the little-quoted sixth line of the Serenity Prayer – something I “read” to myself every single day from memory. And I NEVER skip any of the words!
God,
Grant me the serenity, to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardship as a pathway to peace. Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it. Trusting that you will make all things right if I surrender to your will, so that I may be reasonably happy in this life, and supremely happy with you forever in the next.”
So cuddle up with yourself, read the whole story. Ride out the hard parts of life, and I will too, and together we can make a reasonably happy life without skipping the difficult stuff. Very good things germinate from very difficult circumstances.
And hey – thanks for reading my words. God loves you and so do I, friends. ❤
I attended an Indigo Girls concert with a dear friend Friday evening. We had a blast! I didn’t think I was going to able to go at all, so I was thrilled to be there. But by the time I drove back home, I was in severe pain.
Some of us chronic illness patients are in some degree of pain 24/7. I’ve had to learn to conduct life with it, love with it, laugh with it, function with it.
People have alluded that we couldn’t POSSIBLY be in THAT MUCH pain so often. A person with chronic pain couldn’t possibly get dressed every day, or enjoy a comedy, or maintain relationships in the misery of constant pain.
But we certainly cannot writhe around on the floor screaming in agony 24/7. We want to, but we can’t, because after the writhing and fit-throwing, guess what? There is STILL pain – infuriatingly, but there is also still life to be had.
I have had too many tantrums to count, over the years, and I reserve the right to have others when applicable. They can be cathartic. But it’s not a sustainable mindset.
At some point you have to stop writhing and crying. The world goes on, and so must you.
So we learn to mask, and we mask the pain constantly; because life requires us to in order to function in society. We have families to take care of, and friendships to give attention. We have chores and duties.
It’s unfair in EVERY level to all parties involved.
But I see no benefit to being Pollyanna about my health – if I’m not transparent with y’all, who does that help?
So I write about it a lot – it’s 4:30 in the morning and I have tears of frustration in my eyes, and it’s the loneliest feeling I’m the world to be in my own body right now. Writing about it releases some of the pressure in my mind.
Just in case any of my chronic pain friends are also up at 4:30 in the morning ina fetal position, fighting nausea, or just feeling alone… please know you’re not alone.
I see you, I hear you, and I love you.
Better days will come – I know because I had one Friday. Sometime I even have a few in a row!
It’s the assuredness that on another day, there will be one more day trip with My Beloved. One more awesome concert. One more beach day. One more delicious meal (when I can eat.) In other words – much like working my recovery program – it’s done one single day at a time.
Invisible illnesses exist. People who don’t look sick can be very, very sick. Always be more kind than usual to folks, please. You never know what another human is going through. Love. ❤️
If we are eternal creatures having a physical experience for an allotment of years on Earth, it begs the question:
Why have a physical experience at all? Especially with all the heartbreak and tragedy raging all around us. What’s the value in being here?
No matter how crazy life gets, I truly believe there is purpose in our being Earth-side. And I recognize that having a human experience enables us to experience things others in the spiritual realm may not.
Take chocolate, for example. Do angels eat chocolate? We do. It’s delicious.
When they hear Led Zeppelin, so they feel the music in their physical bones? We can. (And it’s like climbing a stairway to Heaven!)
We have thunderstorms so rumbly, you feel the thunder in your chest.
Literal water falls from the sky, on the regular. That’s some legit Garden of Eden stuff there.
Water is one of my favorite parts of being human. How would we appreciate the Living Water that is our Creator, had we not known the concepts of thirst and satiation?
We can climb trees that have their own intelligence, and admire flowers that God didn’t need to make so pretty, but did.
We get to host the lives of other sentient beings – little furry forever friends. We get our faces kissed with slobber, and benefit from the vibrations of a purr, and although I know pets go to Heaven, I’m grateful for their pretense in this intense world.
We have telescopes to remind us how small we are, and microscopes to show us how intricately we are put together; for we are made of divine love, and stardust.
We have books – vast volumes of human history and human frivolity, ours for the ingesting.
And we have tacos, y’all. In all the universe, we get to enjoy tacos!
Best of all, we have one another. That’s really something – relationships. Just two Earthlings who took a shine to each other and become friends for life. What? That’s crazy! And I love it.
We have such grace and grief, both; double-edged swords that clear the rubbish of human drudgery to make room for the fruits of the Spirit.
If you are living under skin and over bone, you are on a quest. Get excited.
The world – even with its trials and tragedies – is one God so loves. It’s messy and painful and sometimes I’m not sure why he loves it. but I’m certain it’s loved because look around us.
May we find love, joy, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control in our human experience.
Better yet, while we are questing, may we BE love, joy, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control.
And May the angels and eternal beings on the other side cheer us on as we throw down the gauntlet, anxious with anticipation.
I was a big, fat OOPS to my family. My parents were teens who hastily got married in my mother’s advanced month of pregnancy, and divorced shortly thereafter, but in the wake of their “sinfulness,” was me. TA DAAAA!
I am from the South and born in 1969. While I was still no bigger than a baked bean in utero, I was scandalizing my entire family. My mother was ostracized to a degree and even more important: WHAT WILL THE NEIGHBORS THINK?? (I don’t know why the neighbors cared; it was just the arrival of a new fellow human.)
My grandparents got past the scandal, and scooped me up and loved me, but the extended family was not as thrilled.
I specifically remember the way one of my great-grandmothers treated me, and it was UGLY. And as I grew, it got worse. She made me feel like I tainted the whole family (like the rest of the family wasn’t batshit insane. Let’s call a spade a spade.)
I was different than the other greats and grands, because in HER mind, I wasn’t supposed to exist (never mind my parents’ shotgun wedding, I guess.) I got ass-whoopings for doing absolutely nothing.
Now my great grandmother – who I will refer to Memaw for the purposes of this article (because I’m Southern, so…) was a tough broad. She came down to Texas from Missouri via COVERED WAGON as a tween with her parents and a zillion siblings. She had the full-on Oregon Trail Experience (Texas Edition,) complete with at least one of her siblings dying of dysentery on the way. She had seen some shit. And I mean literally AND figuratively. Tragedy, toil, death.
And you’d think seeing some shit, it would have softened her heart, but no. If anything, it depleted her tolerance. Going through major trauma does one of the two things: Softens you or makes you strident, it’s always your choice.
I truly believe she felt justified in being horrible BECAUSE she was a “good Christian.” She had RIGHTEOUS ANGER on her side. And in case you don’t know, “righteous anger” can cover a multitude of issues and is in no way compatible with true GRACE.
Grace got lost in the shuffle, almost as if it was an afterthought of the gospel, and not the Gospel in whole. She never forgave me for being born, a product of “sin,” so I became the product of a world that loves a good stigma! I stood for everything that was wrong with the world to her, just by existing.
At her funeral, they used terms like “holy and blameless” when describing her in the little Baptist church she attended. A “pillar of the community!” If memory serves, she even had a Sunday School room named in her honor, because “She so loved the children.”
See this disconnect?
Now I’m not here to roast my ancestors, who I’m sure did the best they could at the time (whatever that even means.)
But I DO think maybe we take a deep dive into what makes a person a threat to the community pillars. Because this bruhaha over Drag Queens right now has me all up in my feelings.
Of course, we no longer treat children born outside of marriage poorly! It’s 2023! Surely, we don’t make others feel “less than” anymore. Surely we have evolved to BE the inclusive love to one another? Maybe we learned a thing or two. But we have a damn thing or two to learn still.
We are talking about not belonging.
We are talking about welcoming the stranger.
We are talking about the most fundamental of all human needs: Acceptance.
We are talking about the least Christ-like of Christian attitudes: Vilifying a fellow human-being who God made in his image. God is not, in fact, made in OUR image – flaky and flighty, quick to anger, with a penchant for smiting anyone different than us.
You see, the question was never did I deserve unkindness because I was born as some kind of counterfeit shadow-self of a child who was born in marriage. I deserved kindness because I was born. All humans deserve dignity and acceptance – red and yellow, black and white, we are ALL precious in his sight..
Next week, I am taking my adult daughters to a Drag Show fundraiser. I can’t wait.
Former Fundie Me would be breathing rapid-fire into a brown paper bag in order not to pass out from the shock! I would have called my future self “backslidden,” “fallen,” and worst of all, “someone who never knew Jesus in the first place.” THINK OF THE CHILDREN! I would say, tsk-tsking. To which I tell myself now, “Well, they are adults, now – pushing 30. And I am thinking of them.”
I’m thinking I want to show them that everyone deserves respect and acceptance.
And for the record, I did know Jesus in the first place. And I DO know him still. And he is the whole reason that I realized my heart didn’t only need softening. It needed OPENING.
What will the neighbors think, if you start loving people who are different than you? Would it be a “scandal” if you became an ally to the LGBTQ+ community? Would your friends say you’ve “turned,” if you changed your mind? Would your church kick you out for standing with that marginalized community?
Because they exist.
I don’t care what the neighbors think. I care what God thinks.
And at the end of the day, I finally care about what I myself THINK.
When you were a child, you weren’t allowed to exist as that very basic thing – a child. And so you didn’t know how to play without furrowed brows and anxiety for the longest time.
Look at you now, playful and free, laughing at the most juvenile humor imaginable. Look at you doing things just for the sake of FUN!
And sweet friend, I know you have suffered life-altering trauma and faced circumstances so devastating, you would have deemed it unsurvivable, had you known it was coming.
You thought, “well, I’d never be able to survive that – anything but THAT – God forbid it ever happened!”
But God didn’t forbid it.
And you’re still standing.
Remember when you let other people define you? A lifetime of stuffing your own feelings out of reverence for the OTHER person? As if you deserve no reverence for yourself?
Sisters, the Universe reveres you; surely you can do the same. Surely you can find that your worth is equal to the ones you make feel worthy.
Your own definition of you is the only opinion that matters in the least. Isn’t that ironic?
For a while, you were bitter; an undercurrent of constant anger running in the background of your ether, which is MOST “un-ladylike” of you.
Patriarchal pish-posh, I say.
Look at you now, with an open heart so cavernous as to swallow up the whole broken world into a wild love, and spit out the bitterness. You’re slaying it like a freaking LADY, and a badass one at that.
They tried to hijack your newfound happiness because misery loves company and you’ve SO over the weeping and gnashing of teeth bit. That’s hard for miserable people to accept – that you have the audacity to let things go.
Yes, now here you are. Has anyone bothered to read you the scoresheet?
You have made it through 100% of the heartbreaks, rejections, and tragedies you have EVER experienced.” That takes some doin’!
You are part of a mighty Sisterhood! Link arms with me and let’s meander through this crazy world together – a place of radical silliness, a penchant for overcoming, and self-acceptance.
A friend I admire very much recently posted a prayer request, shortly followed by this sentiment: “Don’t bother to pray for me if you’re sending good vibes, good intentions, positive energy, etc. only God can heal me.”
It made me sad for her.
Although I am actually inclined to agree with her ALL healing comes from Source. Powers of darkness ain’t gonna heal you because you asked “the wrong way,” because darkness doesn’t heal. Ever. It can’t.
You’re either getting your healing from God or not at all, no matter how woo-woo your friends pray for you.
But advising your friends who may believe differently than you who are wanting to transfer light, love, and healing to you to “please don’t, unless you’ll do it the right way,”
It’s like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Especially when you consider that prayer IS “focused attention” – another human being imploring goodness and healing and mercy over you from the one Power who can handle it.
I’m religious circles, we call that “speaking life” over someone. And it seems a pity to reject how ever one can best send love and light for a letter-of-the-law incantation approved by the church proper.
Eastern religions have a much better grasp on this concept. We, on the other hand, almost take a Christmas Nationalist stand about it. “By GOD there is ONE way to pray for me and the Bible CLEARLY says how to do it, so don’t come in here with your weirdo ideas, which are surely demonic, since I don’t understand it.”
When we eschew good intentions that loving people bestow on us because their way of loving us is considered sub-par to your own religion, it’s a loss.
If “good vibes” won’t heal you according to your theology, where do you assume such vibes originate? Where would good, loving intentions for you come from exactly?
When we throw away their manifestations of love for us because they use the word “energy” rather “than prayer.” … we are losing something very important. The humanity of ourselves, and by proxy, the humanity of Jesus.
You are petitioning the Highest Power that exists in the entire universe for MY healing and wellbeing. And if you do so while on your knees, or with a pretty rocks in hand (even the rocks cry out, remember?) I would be honored.
In conclusion, and with a nod to Dr. Dre (wait, I mean Dr. SEUSS:)
We spend so much of our time trying to gain, when we should also deeply consider what is worth letting go of. Each thing you surrender makes more room in your being for love and light.
Maybe now is the time we let go of:
The weight of your own unrealistic expectations.
Okay, I’m really good at this one. Set the bar so high, I can’t even get a leg over, and then be disappointed in myself that I’m not “good enough” when I fall off the bar altogether and land on my face. Taaa-DAAA!
Believing the negative things others say about you.
This is especially hard to let go of, because I have convinced myself over a lifetime of anxiety that “they” must be “right.” But nobody gets to say what’s right about me, but me. Isn’t that liberating? You can completely ignore the BS people spread about you.
Penchant for people pleasing.
If I know you, I want to make you happy, at the expense of my own happiness, if need be. And frankly, that’s whack. I am not Chick-fil-A. It is not always “my pleasure” to put everyone else’s needs before my own.
That shitty little voice in your head is that keeps telling you you’re not enough.
It has played in a loop in my head for neigh on 54 years now. Whatever I can accomplish with my chronic illness each day is my best. Because giving my best is enough, always. It has to be.
Going beyond belief in angry God.
This shift was a game-changer for me. It reframes the entire gospel, and it is a balm to my soul. Not to mention the God of the Old Testament was very little like Jesus. Very little like Love. And my God is quite literally LOVE itself.
Wondering if it’s okay to have doubts.
Yes, it’s okay, of COURSE it’s okay. It’s faith-building, even.
Attempting to fix other people’s problems.
This is a toughie. But I’m learning. I am also learning to say, “what will be, will be,” and actually believe that things will work out just as they should, although I do this in fits and starts.
The soul-sucking monkey on your back. Or monkeys.
Our addictions hijack our focused intention, dull our shine, deplete our energy, and become a barrier to hearing from God within you.
…And the elephant in the living room.
That thing you need to address but keep stepping over, walking around, or ignoring altogether? Ask it’s name. Get to know it. And then politely show it the door.
A “Keeping up with the Joneses” mentality.
The Joneses have their own monkeys and elephants. Stay in your ring; they have their own crazy circus.
The belief that there is a separateness between you and God.
This one is a humdinger and will make all the other items easier to let go of. You are not disconnected to God, and frankly, you can’t do anything to become separate from him.
The belief that you’re all alone and we are separate from each other.
We are all connected. Every single one of us. And connected to our Source, too..
If you are struggling, it’s because you are doing the will of God and the devil is coming after you because you are doing the Lord’s work. If your circumstance is difficult, God ordained it. He is “stretching” and growing you. You are obviously on the right track, carrying out his will.
AND /OR
If you are doing what God wills, things will be easier. There will be a “flow” to it. That’s his way of letting you know you are abiding in his will. You won’t have to fight it. There will be a naturalness and ease, if you are operating in the will of God.
Well, which is it?
And please don’t tell me “the Bible is clear..” because it’s not. It’s actually contradictory on a lot of levels.
It’s a subject I’ve asked pastors about, only to be told to just keep reading the “word,” and God would make it clear. The implication of course being “you’re not spending enough time in the Bible.”
To which I say, how did the early church follow the example of Christ for the first four centuries? They did not have the benefit or encumbrance of a book to tell them how to live. Yet they set the world on fire with radical love. It’s all about the spirit, in my estimation.
Here’s the thing; This is life. Messy, wonderful, excruciating LIFE. Live it.
It is full of natural flow, impossible challenges, unexpected events, bursts of assurance, and waves of doubt. There is no one marker that determines if you are going against the will of the Almighty. In the process of deconstruction, I have learned that sometimes, I will avoid doing the “thing” at all, because all those years I NEEDED constant reassurance from Heaven and Earth alike that I was in his will. The paralysis of analysis, if you will.
If things were going great, the underlying sentiment is that God loves me and is pleased with me. But wait – when traumatic events happen, remember that he “chastens whom he loves,” (or if he just really has a cruel streak.)
And I have decided that my whole theology boils down to this: “Shit happens, but God is Love.”
Perhaps we can stop micromanaging the will of God. Perhaps we can marvel at it, wonder at the mystery of a grace so scandalous, we don’t even need to understand the whole plan to know it’s good. We people-please Abba because that’s how we win the approval of people.
Maybe God’s not testing us.
Maybe he isn’t “allowing” difficult, tragic things to happen in order to build up our strength as Christians.
Maybe the fact that everything is going smoothly just means that everything is just going smoothly.
He walks alongside us on the road to Damascus, and down Main Street at Disney World.
Over the fire and ice, both.
He stays near us when we feel robbed in this life, and when we have been given abundance.
Sometimes we get it wrong. But we will either succeed at what we endeavor, or we will learn from it.
When I first started deconstructing my belief system – that is, dismantling all I’d been taught, and finding out for myself what I believe – I felt orphaned. Frazzled.
But the biggest mistake I made was taking on that process in the same vein I practiced religion: Fear. All my life, I’ve operated from a place of fear, and that’s no way to live out Love.
For many of us Christians, fear has been a motivator for faith since the day we hear the sweet name of Jesus. Because HELL, that’s why.
What if it’s not okay to NOT take the Bible literally? What if it’s NOT okay to feel angry at God sometimes? Maybe it’s NOT okay to doubt? Maybe I’ll burn in Hell for all eternity as punishment for expressing the curious mind God himself gifted me?
I want to know God. But I said goodbye to smiting God. And baby-killing God. And bad-mood God. And even disappointed God.
What if, instead of parroting to the whole world that “God is love,” we declare that LOVE is actually GOD. And Love is only ever good. Love looks like Jesus, who looks like God.
But it was scary at first. Like…
Feeling like God had called me into his office and was just waiting to hit the button for the trap door to open beneath me, like in a dang cartoon.
Feeling like a sink hole was going to swallow me up if I ask the wrong questions.
Feeling like I was having to diffuse a bomb without the schematics.
Feeling like I was walking in the wilderness, in a place I didn’t recognize, possibly on another planet.
Shelving my old fears did not come as an epiphany moment, but more like a gradual peeling away in layers like an onion. And like an onion, there was crying involved.
Better yet, it was like a journey into the center of the earth. I didn’t want to rehash the surface stuff – I want to know what’s at the core. And just as the Earth has layers, I moved into deconstruction under the premise that what’s at the core is what keeps everything else stable.
Science says that the Earth’ core is responsible for thew whole planet’s magnetic field, as well as plate tectonics, and many other functions. In other words, we know it’s there. We THINK we know what it’s made of. We are pretty sure what it does. We base our science on evidence, but nobody has ever traveled there and to think we understand it completely is foolhardy.
Ditto God. His ways are (very obviously) not our ways. But what if we trust they are BETTER than our own?
So, what’s at your core, God?
Are you a god of the Old Testament, angry and vengeful?
Or are you a god of unconditional love and justice, like Jesus?
Because the two look nothing alike, and I got tired of pretending they did.
Like the Emporer’s New Clothes, every other believer seemed to be dressed in their faith to the nines, expecting the King to be robed in glory, but you’re the only one who can see that he’s naked. Figuratively, of course. I ain’t trying to be weird. But at some point, I had to say, “Excuse me, ya’ll. BUT CAN YOU NOT SEE HE ISN’T WEARING CLOTHES?” In my own heart, I had to see the emperor as vulnerable and stop listening to how everyone else perceived he was dressed.
I am happy to say that coming out the other side, I choose to believe the latter. And since I’ve lived in the latter, I have peace. I finally have the spiritual peace that “it is finished” means IT IS FINISHED.
I have the ability to love ALL, without taking their ‘inventory’ and determining their worth.
I no longer just tell folks I’ll pray for them. I just DO it. And I try to be emotionally available to them myself, because how else is God supposed to love on us if not through each other? That’s how he gets shit done.
In conclusion, I’ve never physically been to the earth’s core. Nobody has. It is mysterious and no matter how we define it, we have to have faith that it will keep the Earth spinning. We will too.
But I do think I know God a little better now.
He created us to love us, and to teach us to love one another.
He keeps me close like a magnet and draws you near too.
He guides my steps as the circumstances change and shift like tectonic plates.
Excuse me, but God is wearing nothing but LOVE for you. Even if “everybody else” is “hearing from God,” has “a hotline to God,” has read the whole Bible, is a “Super Christian” in religious circles, or sits on a church committee (or seven.)
Grab my hand and let’s journey to the center of the heart of God.
The core has been cooling down since the creation of time, softening, just as his heart is soft for us; just like Jesus.
I am at the core of that heart, and so are you. He loves you to the center of your being.
Photo by Miguel u00c1. Padriu00f1u00e1n on Pexels.com
By: JANA GREENE
A conversation between Fundamentalist Me and New Me:
FUNDIE ME: “Lord, if I ever stray from your will, please just take me home before I disappoint you.”
NEW ME: “Wow. That’s a little dramatic. You are asking God to let you die if you ever start asking questions of a spiritual nature? Isn’t that basically crossing all the “t”s and “i”s, so in case you ever DO stray you can get God on a technicality?”
“No. He’s a good, good father. I will walk each day by faith each day. Because Oh! how he loves me so...”
“He is. And he does love you so. But that prayer is literally the definition of ‘living by the letter of the law. I remember how much you love music. You’ll appreciate it even more in the future. Did you know, all music is worship, by virtue of being a creation of the Universe? Led Zepplin, Indigo Girls….”
“Deceived. Let’s change the subject. This country is going down the tubes! Jesus must be ready to return! Turn before you burn!”
“But ‘it is finished,’ I thought. “To me, that means that it’s a finished work.”
“Speaking of work, this nation was built on…”
“Yeah, in the future, you don’t support blind nationalism.”
“I know that’s not true, because God would have taken me home already if I stopped supporting the nationalist movement. I love my country!”
“Sweet girl, It won’t be the same country by the time you get here, trust me. Better in some ways and so much worse in others. You will care about social justice…”
“Gosh dang! NO.”
“And the death-wish-before-doubt prayer that God will take you right off this earth before he’d let you become liberal….er, um, I mean unholy fallen daughter of the Most High King. You’ll see how whack that is.”
“We are all born unholy. Did you just say ‘whack?'”
“We are all already holy. We are all redeemed. We are all saved. All means all.”
“WELL, I NEVER!”
“Actually, you do. You will ‘never.’ And your heart will be full, because you have no other motive than love. You’ll go to Pride rallies and pass out Free Mom Hugs…”
“No. There’s no way. You can love them without approving of their lifestyles.”
“… And the people there will sometimes dissolve into your arms and sob, because their own parents reject them just on the basis of their sexuality.”
“Well, they shouldn’t. BUT you’re playing fast and loose with ‘grace’ to ‘condone’ all that.”
“What’s to condone? As turns out, that’s not what loving unconditionally is supposed to look like; having ‘buts‘.”
“I mean, love the sinner, hate the sin. You keep saying ‘love.’ Love is discipline. So that’s not what God meant.”
“Isn’t it? Once I filtered the BS out that I feel like Jesus wouldn’t approve of, it made things so clear.”
“Did you just say ‘BS’?”
“Yes. And I say a lot of other potty words too. After repressed for so long. I now know that cussing is not what God meant about keeping our language and hearts pure. He meant don’t use your words – even scripture – as a weapon towards others. Using language for cruelty, exclusion…”
“You don’t say the ‘F word,’ Lord, please say ‘no.”
“Oh yes, you’re quite fond of that word. And the funny thing is, so are many of your ex-evangelical girlfriends who never swore because a Proverbs 31 woman wouldn’t say naughty words, and that was the standard for the godly faith of a woman.”
*Plugs ears* “LALALALALA…”
“Oh, you will learn that Eastern religions have a lot of truth. You’ll do yoga on occasion, and…”
“NOT YOGA!”
“Listen. It’s perfectly effin’ okay.”
“You went and said the ‘F’ word.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“God corrects…”
“Then let God correct, as he is far more persuasive and compassionate than we could ever be. Your job than we can be. Just love one another. He wasn’t just whistling Dixie when he said, ‘love is the greatest of these.”
“It can’t be that simple. You cannot go around willy-nilly approving of people the way they ARE, when they should…’
“Yeah, you’ll learn not to ‘should’ all over other people. And it IS that simple.”
“Well, that’s not ‘love.’ The BIBLE CLEARLY SAYS -“
“Yeah, about that…once you study Christ without 2,000 years of human dogma considered, you’ll learn the Bible ain’t too clear, period.”
“Lord, why am I still living? Oh the humanity!”
“Calm down, you’re going to love God more than ever when all is said and done. Not the concept of God you grew up with, though.”
“Well, I KNOW God, and…”
“You know the absent or spiteful god. God is incredible. So let him out of the box, sister girlfriend.”
“That’s scary. That’s gotta be the devil talking.”
“Yeah, that’s a whole other subject for another time. In the future, Fundie Jana, I’m going to love you, too. Because you strived so hard for a God to accept you, when your very existence proves that acceptance.”
“That’s New-Agey. Please repent. Before it’s too late.”
“I’m extending grace to you. The grace that you have deserved all along, but never claimed.”
“That’s prideful. We don’t ‘deserve’ anything.”
“And you’ll see the bigger picture and realize every single belief you practiced was necessary for you to be free in the end. And you will be free.”
“That doesn’t sound right.” *Wrings hands*
“You’re so afraid just to be. Please believe God is not trying to get you on a technicality.”
“But the ‘human heart is deceitful….”
“God wouldn’t have place a curious mind if you weren’t allowed to doubt and delve.”
“I’m so worried I’m going to lose the love of God if I open my mind.”
“Yes, that’s what kept you sick and stuck for a long time.Reconstructed You will be safe. You will be strong. It is truly for freedom that you have been set free.I love you just the way you are.”
As an adolescent, I was terrified of “making purple.”
Those of you in the evangelical world know that kids in youth group are warned on mission trips (lock-ins, religious rallies, the woods behind the church, etc. and so on) to not fool around with boys if you’re a girl, and girls if you were a boy. Blue + pink = purple (get it?) Many a time, a youth leader has been driving a bus full of kids and said, “SHOW OF HANDS!” and all the teens would have to lift their hands to show their hands were not in places they shouldn’t be. Purple places, I guess.
And of course, they weren’t in the wrong for monitoring the kids. They are liable and it is not the occasion for those kind of shenanigans. It’s the subversive idea that your sexual purity determines your worth as a young woman that bothers me.
The youth group I attended (religiously) as a teenager was quite the circus. I was a hand-wringing thinker of deep thoughts, and I wanted answers. At one point, I made an appointment with the senior pastor, (who was later revealed to be having affairs with three women in the congregation, Oh, the irony!) to talk about predestination. What I would later learn is severe anxiety propelled me to find answers, and I couldn’t let it go. I’ve always been a seeker. Plus also, I was scared to death of Hell, so I needed to know these things.
I also carried a Bible to high school with me every day, like an amulet. It served the dual purposes of making me feel holy, and keeping the “bad kids” away, lest I be tempted. I also wore a ring to signify my purity to remind me that I didn’t want to lose value as a woman by fooling around. How awful that is to me now.
All I knew was that the human heart is deceitful above all things – never trust it. And to love yourself? Sacrilege! That’s vanity and placing yourself over God, you dirty heretic. Jesus said to love everyone, but throughout 2,000 years of human dogma, a long litany of stipulations had been applied to loving self.
“That’s an awfully big question,” the pastor said at our appointment. And then he launched into a diatribe about how God chooses who will make the cut BEFORE you are even born. This was very disturbing information. Was I behaving for nothing? “But everyone gets a choice,” he continued. It made zero sense whatsoever but who was I to question? Questioning was especially egregious and rebellious.
I can tell you now, loving yourself is NOT a sin. In fact, it’s essential. You need to have the ability to be tender with yourself, which requires love. And these days, Love is quite literally my religion – I am learning to love myself and actively loving and accepting others.
I will say that I don’t believe “hooking up” habitually is good for the mind and spirit. But you do you, Boo. To each their own. It’s enough to take my own spiritual inventory; I surely cannot take yours.
But purity culture? I instilled that in my own daughters from an early age, as it was instilled in me. In retrospect, it’s janky. Not because teens having sex is a good thing, but because I basically taught my daughters without realizing it that a substantial part of their value hinged on being “pure” for your future husband. Not that I myself made it that far, I did not. (I discovered alcohol, which was a game changer, and is an entirely other story for another time.)
It’s the self-worth factor that ires me. You must stay pure, and none of my kids – all adults now – ended up that way, by the church’s standards.) The message that you are a commodity that has value, but your value can be reassessed if you do naughty things. Again, it seems so obviously wrong now.
The boys are told not to engage but are not held to the same standards at all. Where’s their purity rings? Where’s their chastisement? No bueno. Can you say “Patriarchy Jr?” (And yes, I have apologized to my daughters.)
I know this firsthand because in tenth grade, the youth leader for the church I attended – who had adamantly told us never to watch “The Breakfast Club,” because it was of the devil – had the idea to host a lock-in at the church that was also a TOGA PARTY. Yes, a toga party. We wore SHEETS to the lock-in, because what could possibly go wrong? Hoo boy. These kids definitely needed monitoring!
Animal House had nothing on our group.
I was so terrified of sinning, I sat in the sanctuary for most of the event. But many kids in the gathering space were a’sinnin’. The youth leader fell asleep around 11 pm, and (surprise!) the kids did not.
It ended up being a big scandal, because when parents found out what happened that night, they raised holy Hell. Lots of my friends got in trouble for doing things in the sheets IN THEIR SHEETS. We had a whole youth meeting to address the Purple and prayed the lust away for an hour. Or that was the idea.
And it was then that the seedlings of faith in the church started to grow in wonky. Because the way the church proper took on things was contradictory. ‘Do as I say, not as I do’. Or worse, ‘do as I say because I have the inside skinny on God.’
Still, I would cling to the church for another 30 + years because FEAR. Oh my God I was so afraid to trip up. That people-pleasing follows me around still to this day, if I don’t do my shadow work.
Churches are just made of people – many well-intentioned. They are trying to save other souls from eternal conscious torment (that a “loving” God doles out if your ticket isn’t stamped “Pre-destined” because they TRULY believe we are all bound for Hell at birth. And this is confusing because they very often DO care and harbor no ill will. They, like I was, are mired in the letter of the law.
But to paraphrase with the vernacular of youths today (and I’ll write about what I believe the issue of Hell later,) that shit cray. Also, I CAN’T EVEN anymore with the religiousness. I seem to be acquiring a repulsion of all things church that are not of Jesus. Like, on a primal level. “That’s NOT what he said!” I want to shout. “That’s not what he was about!”
I’m not saying sin isn’t a big deal. I’m just saying love is a bigger deal.
And I want to be what Jesus WAS about. I don’t want to follow rules of an ancient text. I want to accept all and love all. Period.
Truly, I refuse to throw the baby out with the bathwater though. I’m keeping my Jesus, because what you cannot learn from an entity like the modern church, you can feel in your bones. Yes, I know it sounds woo-woo, but we are equipped with spirits conjoined with Christ, he is already there, you don’t have to carry a Bible everywhere you go or bruise your knees hollerin’ on the floor of a prayer room. You are already destined for glory, even here as we travel Earth-side. This revelation is EVERYTHING.
Plus, Jesus came pre-installed in my hard drive before I was born. That was a really nice service he provides for us ALL, as redeemer of all.
And that, my friends, is part of the long and winding road that is this journey. Placing purity over people. Putting the kibbutz on shame and guilt of past mistakes, while showing yourself grace in the future. It’s doing the ultimate reassessment of you value through the eyes of a loving God. It’s revelation of identity.
Since opening my mind and learning to trust that conjoined Spirit, I realize that the church is just wrong about some things, but that doesn’t make them – or the Me of six years ago – bad people. They are just doing what I did as a young mother and for most of my life, a self-proclaimed Christian.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m still angry about all the lies filtered down for ages, but I’m starting to see that it would be really easy for me to fall into giving the anger a permanent home in my heart, as I feel so deceived. That’s the very heart Jesus inhabits. If I am unkind to people in the church, I am no better than when I was a raging fundamentalist with nationalist leanings and an evangelical bent. (Oof. That smarts!)
I pray that the pain of your upbringing and living in religiosity is quelled. I pray that you break off the shackles of believing you are inherently “bad.” I hope you find safe friends to walk this out with you, and that you too try to remain kind to all. And I pray that you learn to love yourself, as you deserve.
Purity culture is really about finding out you are already pure in the sight of God.
My first exposure to religion was as a child was church, like most folks. My grandparents, who had custody of me for a while, were very religious people.
Religion is confusing because it really looks so dissimilar to what I now practice, but it was even more confusing as a kid. In the Baptist church we attended, red was the predominant color. The pews were red. The carpet was red. The embellishments on the pastor’s robe were crimson, as was the cloth over the altar. Still when I let my mind wander back, red is all I see.
Red is what I associate with church, and also sitting still in “big church,” and watching the grown-ups line up to eat the body and blood of Jesus, which was not alarming at ALL to a five year old. I was not allowed to partake. I must be too bad to participate in this ritual.
“It’s because of the blood of Christ,” I learned at Sunday School. The red signifies blood, and to a child who was afraid of her own shadow and full of anxiety, that really tripped me up.
Then I learned it is because I was so bad that I needed to bleed Jesus dry. And that he did it for me, because my heart was deceitful about all things. The Little children who worshipped may have been “red and yellow, black and white,” but it was because of the blood that we are precious in his sight. Every single person was born bad…. a sinner.
Was I a sinner? I did sneak a Mr. Goodbar from my grandmother’s secret candy stash drawer. Also, I really loved music. Did I love music more than God? You must love God more than ANYTHING. And if I did love music and climbing trees and eating candy more, did that mean I didn’t love God enough? Did that blood not cover me? What about the time I told my grandfather “no” when he asked me to do something?
And again, every week, I’d traipse down the hall of the church to Sunday School, excited for the crafts and terrified of the blood.
I learned a lot of things in church through the years. Multiple denominations. I’ve attended many a covered-dish dinner, and youth group activities. But it was what I observed, not was taught, that did the damage. It has taken me years to say the words “religious trauma” in the same sentence. It sounds awfully dramatic, unless you’ve had it instilled in you from birth and it’s all you know. And unless you were born with the anxiety level of a gerbil on crack naturally, and ergo: Your faith naturally becomes FEAR BASED.
Love everyone, but don’t be “yoked” with unbelievers. Yes, even though Jesus chose to yolk-out with the undesirables of his day. Don’t bother asking about this hypocrisy, because questioning God is tantamount to signing your own passport to Hell.
And Hell is what kept us all reined in, because it gets really hot in Houston in the summertime, but HELL IS HOTTER. And it’s forever. It’s suffering forever, so get your sh*t together, chir’ren!
And you must learn the “word of God,” i.e., the Bible. Never mind that the Word is actually a person, and not a historical text translated and translated again, and written by sinners just like you. But again, don’t question it.
Learn all the Old Testament Bible stories at Vacation Bible School! Here’s a synopsis of the acts of a “loving God” that I learned in church:
God-sanctioned gruesome deaths and horrific murders in his name. Including the death of infants. I learned that sometimes God tells you to murder a person you love more than anything because he is testing your faith. Yikes.
He caused a flood to “reset” the world with good people, all the while drowning hundreds of thousands of souls who didn’t make the cut. All the animals too, except for the ones on the ark.
“Thou shalt not kill” and “Thou shalt not steal,” were the rules, except buying and selling human beings as “servants” was sanctioned, and how they should be treated by their “masters” was also covered. So being either a slave or a master was completely justified.
Oh sure. They START with Jonah and the whale, because who doesn’t love marine animals? And camping out in a fish til you learn your lesson is much preferable to many of the other stories I learned. Those stories were:
Misogyny. Human sacrifice. Sexual violence. Infanticide. Genocide.
God caused a bear to maul 42 children, although admittedly, I didn’t learn this until middle school when I was already afraid to exist, so bears were whatever by then.
I kept finding out how harsh the Creator of the Universe is, yet how incredibly loving and inclusionary Jesus is. But they are the same person. So figure it out, kid.
In short, everything that Jesus was NOT, God was.
Jesus is who I called on when there was violence in my home. And there was, a lot. He was who I wanted on my team when I disappointed God. I could imagine getting to Heaven and spending the entire hereafter hiding from God behind Jesus’ robe, on account of surely he will smite me.
Even as a youngster, I fell in love with this Jesus, who caused the crimson tide in church, but also gathered the little children around him.
He had stern words for the religious of the day, which is REALLY confusing, because the religious are who I was taught to look up to. Jesus was hugs and kindness, while God was retribution and violence.
Jesus is who I conjured even when I was three, as one of my first memories illustrates. My parents were screaming at one another, and I hid in my toybox, shoving aside the toys and making myself small.
But I knew I wasn’t alone. I knew that kind and compassionate Jesus was hiding with me. I just knew that I knew, and I didn’t feel alone. I still never feel alone because I feel his spirit.
And I knew the God figure who was stuffed into a toybox with me giving me my first taste of spiritual peace, was not into mauling babies via bears or drowning his own creation.
Our religion, however, was about practicing 10 rules, being at the church every time the doors were open, excluding people who didn’t believe like we did to keep ourselves spiritually “safe,” and joining committees as adults.
So the genesis of my faith has been reconciling a belief system that never worked for me, because the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament are the same God, just in vastly different moods because of something called a covenant. God is in a much better mood in the latter, even as it is draped and ensconced in red, focused on blood and sin; and making sure you presented a Christian front to everyone “worldly,” (even as not really following the creed of Jesus at all.)
It’s easy to lose the Jesus in the rituals and rules.
That’s not my faith anymore.
Hi. My name is Jana and I am a follower of Christ. I am still in love with him and try (and often fail) to emulate his actions instead of striving endlessly to please a God who – let’s be honest – cannot be pleased.
I’ve been threatening to write about my deconstruction / reconstruction experience (including the banishment of a literal “Hell,” inclusionary salvation, and all sort of other things I thought would doom my soul when I was younger.)
I used to pray for good parking spots, and HALLELUJAH in praise, as holy-rolled into my divine space at Target. Obviously, I’m super spiritual.
Why, just last week I won $5 on a scratch-off lotto ticket AND I caught that clearance sale at Kohls and the dress was just my size!
*Shaking my head.*
That was my theology… “I can do ALL things through Christ, who – before the foundation of the universe – willed me to receive shallow, trivial things to prove his majesty to me.
God is eithera benevolent dude who puts his pants on one leg at a time like all the rest of us and is moving heaven and earth to make sure you get that good parking space,
OR
God is a cosmic force who knows all like omnipotent Santa Clause, spinning celestial bodies in perfect orbit, and from his mighty throne, waits to call you out on your peasant misdeeds.
Or maybe,
God is like Jesus.
Passing out grace in scandalously copious fashion, all sweet and willy-nilly. Like honey, it sticks to everything and the sweetness cuts the bitterness of everything else in life.
Maybe God isn’t a “sky daddy,” reigning from a throne in there heavens. Perhaps he sits on the actual thrones that we know as our human hearts.
And if that’s true (and I know it is because my soul keeps elbowing me in the ribs to make sure I’m paying attention,) that changes EVERYTHING.
I’m not sure I believe God cares which parking spot I get anymore, and that can seem like a loss of faith when you’ve been begging God for things all your life – from parking spots to healing my illness which has no cure, to fixing my despair.
But it’s not a loss. I’ve learned God is just like Jesus. And Jesus is Love. By association, we are Love too.
And this is how 1 Corinthians 13 has revealed itself to me:
Love never gives up, not even when you can imagine no way out of the pain.
Love cares more for others than for self, and shows it.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have. It in itself is plenty.
Love doesn’t have a swelled head, it is a pouring out, not a showing-off.
Love doesn’t strut; it’s prowess doesn’t say “look at me!” but reflects in a humbling contemplation.
Love doesn’t force itself on others, spreading the dry-bone, legalistic “gospel” for the sake of evangelizing.
It is rarely “me first,” but rather “how can I be of service?”
Love doesn’t fly off the handle, but keeps its calm.
Love doesn’t keep score of the sins of others, even when we are really sure someone deserves their comeuppance.
Love doesn’t revel when others grovel, it shall always be preeminent.
Love is pleasure in the flowering of truth.
It puts up with anything,
Love trusts its Source.
Love never looks back, it lives in h the now.
Love looks for the best, especially when nobody else can seem to find it.
Love keeps going to the end;
Way past the parking lot.
Long after our Earth Suits are finally healed.
Continuing until we are one with the celestial bodies in perfect orbit…
I’ve been wanting to write this one for a while. Last year, I had sent a Facebook friend request to a long-lost uncle.
I have been no contact with my family of origin for over ten years now. It was either my sobriety, or the emotional f*ckwittage, and I chose the former. I still have so love for my family, but not at the expense of love for myself. And from a distance. I am finally FINALLY at peace with this decision, having had much therapy and lots of grieving the living, which is so much harder than grieving the dead.
I heard nothing back, and that’s okay. I knew he led a life as a Buddhist monk in the part of the country I was raised in, and that he too had much family bitterness.
Now let me just say that I’ve been doing some light study of Buddhism, and I find it to be a LOVELY belief system. Beautiful in its simplicity, practical in its application. I really enjoy the teachings.
So I sent this uncle the request because I was curious – he is only 8 years older than me, and I lived with him with my grandparents in early childhood. As anyone who is estranged from family will tell you, you get pangs. You are homesick for something which never was, which makes no sense, and it’s all very confusing.
Fast forward to several months ago. I had found his YouTube channel, where he talks about the Buddha and how it is the only religion he has ever really loved.
And he should know from religion! Raised Southern Baptist, he also built a literal altar to Satan in his bedroom when I was six. “Oh, that’s just him being weird,” my grandparents said. I heard inhuman noises at night coming from his room, and sometimes I’d wake with his dark shadow in my doorway. Still, I always felt bad for him. He was a seeker in a time and place where seekers were heretics and people on the spectrum were treated awfully.
In due time, he tried Hinduism, atheism – everything from Norse Mythology to Pentecostal.
I received a lot of love from my grandparents. They passed many years ago, but I truly loved them. But they had NO idea what to do with a weird kid worshipping the devil in their home where even dancing wasn’t allowed.
So they beat him. A lot. He took the “short bus” to school, because of behavioral problems, even though he was plenty bright. In those days, the “short bus” was a rolling can of stigmata. Other children wouldn’t play with him. He had no friends. And he was an outcast, in his own family, and I DO love me an underdog, so I always tried to be kind to him.
I guess that’s why I looked him up on that glorious new opiate of the masses – the internet.
What I found both broke my heart and finalized the peace.
One of his videos – a pretty nasty one – was about me.
Keep in mind, the last time I saw him I was 16 years old. A child.
And this Buddhist monk – who purports to seek peace and find the good in people – lambasted me, first for “not helping him” forty years ago, and again for reaching out to him. He sneered and snarled for what seemed an eternity about “supposed family members” and “I don’t even want to call her a niece. She is dead to me.”
He wants nothing to do with me. Take a number, Buddy.
Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever been told to F*CK OFF by a monk, but I have! It’s quite the experience!
“I got a FB request from a someone in my family,” he says on the video through seething vitriol, betraying his uber-serene countenance. ” I don’t even want to call her family. She wasn’t there for me when I was young.”
My first reaction was pain, because I thought every possible nail had been put in the coffin that is my upbringing, but no – here’s a spare, one – because LOOK! There is a tiny opening where I had hope. Better nail that shut.
I DID need to see it, though, to make that final seal.
“I read her bio,” he continued. “And she calls herself a ‘Jesus Freak.” His lips scowl. “JESUS.” Ah. There it is. Because even though I do not align with the evangelical church anymore and don’t associate with fundamentalism on any level, I will ALWAYS love Jesus, and just having the word “Jesus” in my bio pissed him off.
But see, he doesn’t know I’m not a fundamentalist anymore, because he couldn’t even get past my bio.
And it occurred to me that nobody in my family gets past my bio. I have been on this crazy, amazing, passionate journey of discovery for a dozen years, but they don’t know me. At all.
What was my next reaction to the video?
RELIEF, to be honest.
I was a little girl when I knew him. And I was a deeply hurt little, girl walloped by trauma from the beginning. I already felt like I had to “take care” of all the adults in the family. So even as a child, I’d try to make sure everyone was okay, when in reality – NO ONE was okay. Not a soul in that dysfunction was alright on any level.
Nothing was ever resolved because “Well, no family is perfect,” which is about the most invalidating thing you can say to someone who has undergone years of trauma.
My childhood was dark, I can’t explain it any other way. There was emotional abuse, constant screaming and fighting. Physical abuse. It was a sick way to grow up, so when I myself became a teenager, I (God I hate to use this terminology,) “found Jesus.” Mind you, I didn’t, because he has already found all of us and is not playing hide and seek.
I took all the pain and darkness and decided that I would just be a super good girl and not upset the precariously full apple cart.
And I don’t think this uncle ever forgave me for clinging onto a religion that had used as weaponry against him. So, for that, I have compassion.
But I’m not a “good girl.” I’m a regular girl. And at sixteen years old, I couldn’t save a 24-year-old man. I could barely save myself. I mired myself in the Bible and was determined to undo all the damage done to me. But the Bible never undid the damage in me.
But do you know what DID?
It’s not religion, of any sort. It’s LOVE.
And love? He won’t let that in.
I feel very sad that he has never experienced the kind of love that heals. He has so much to heal from, and is so bitter. He spoke about me with such disdain, because to him, I am just another family member who let him down. Just another Christian full of it.
I decided to show him grace by not contacting him any further. And as painful as it was to lose the last possible link to my family, here is my post-fundamentalist take on it:
Good.
I don’t feel like an orphan anymore.
Something CLICKED in me when I saw it and took in all the hurtful words.
I feel like I escaped the CRAZY.
I got OUT.
I got OUT!
Not only did I get out, but I am also thriving in so many ways.
I chose to break cycles for my daughters.
And I needed to be told off by a Buddhist monk to come to terms with that. I needed that final blow to have utter peace about letting go.
Because…
You can wear a habit. You can shave your head for religious reasons or wear it shikha. You can be modest as a polygamist bride or as proper as an Episcopal priest. Call yourself an atheist. Consider yourself a Child of God. Refer to yourself as Holy. Identify as a Jesus Freak.
Heck, you can even ride in the Popemobile and make people believe you have the power to absolve their sins.
But if you have NOT love…
And I have LOVE now. In my life, in my heart, overflowing abundantly.
I wish light and love on them all, in the meantime.
This piece is a labor of love. Life is so heavy right now. I choose to believe that God is up to his old tricks or radical grace and wonder. I just have to keep choosing that every day, sometimes moment by moment.
Although I’ll still be posting here from time to time, I have fresh content at my new blog, “Words by Jana Greene.” I’d love to see you there! Thank you for all of your support over the years!
Musings of a Gypsy Soul 