Untangling

It’s been a while since I have written here.

This summer has been a time of deep untangling for me. Untangling my faith. Untangling my approach toward God. Just a lot of processing what I have learned growing up in church. The problem is, I am an internal processor. I retreat deep inside of my head and heart when I am working things out. The problem with that is that the dialogue starts and ends there. When I try to move it outside, when I say the words out loud it NEVER comes out right. It sounds jumbled and weird and when I get the questioning look, sound, statement from the person I am talking to I am tempted to mutter something like “I guess you had to be there.”

But I think I want to talk about it. I think I want to share. It’s not going to be pretty and it’s going to be bumpy, and I am just going to have to be ok with that.

I read a book at the beginning of the summer called Stop Calling Me Beautiful by Phylicia Masonheimer. Spiritually it stopped me in my tracks. All I could think about was how little I enjoyed being a Christian. Not in the “we can’t do what everyone else does” way. But in a way where my faith had been riddled with anxiety, anger, and shame. My Christian walk was one of despair, depression, and despondency. This is mostly due to a transactional relationship I had developed with God. My prayers had been ones of demanding and commanding God to my will and wants. When He didn’t “answer my prayer” (i.e., didn’t do what I wanted) I got bitter. Why didn’t He listen to me? Why is God silent?

Then it became an issue of maybe I am saying the wrong things. Maybe by accident I had said something negative to cause my prayer to not be answered. A careless word, a moment of desperation, anything that I said out loud would undo the hard work of my prayers. So, I became hypervigilant. My conversations with some people would be guarded to avoid the landmine of speaking the wrong things into my life. God had become someone who was just LOOKING for a good reason to not answer my prayers. I was afraid and resentful of God. But then you realize that if God is good and He is not answering my prayers, I must be bad. Clearly there is something wrong with me to not get me the results I desired.

My churching had told me that the success of my walk was measured in the answered prayers. The things, healings, and other tangibles were marks of a victorious walk. According to this, I was an utter and complete failure as a Christian and I was ashamed.

Can you see how this made Christianity a joyless pursuit for me?

But the book. The book! It turned on so many lightbulbs for me.

I saw that my demanding relationship with God was no relationship at all. It was loveless. It was about making God bend to me. Never recognizing the sovereignty of THE CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE! It seems so ludicrous. To make HIM do what I want.

Man, I am here to tell you that when I realized that God’s will WILL be done and not mine, it was freedom. Pure freedom.

Because I saw that there is a chance that me not getting my way or a prayer denied, or even delayed is not my fault. I didn’t make it “go away” by saying something wrong. God will do what He wills and it’s my job to align my prayers to that will. I do that by knowing Him better. I do that by loving Him. I do that by understanding His definition of a successful life as a Christian. I am working that out.

What I am doing is becoming very picky about who I let guide me about God. People who may have had my attention growing up, don’t get it anymore. If I can’t find what someone says in The Bible, I move on. It has made ALL the difference.

So, this is where I am at, this is where I have been, and this is where I am going. It ain’t gonna be pretty and it might get weird from time to time, but I think I am on the right track.