Category: My Story

{Tonight I Sat and Traveled Halfway Around the Globe}

Tonight I sat with friends and together we traveled
half way around the globe.  We watched
with awe, and respect and for me no small amount of envy
to be totally honest images of another world in Kenya.

I tasted the grit
in the air from the coal burning fires.  I felt, and saw the sorrow
and anguish in the hearts and eyes of women who have been thrown out, for having HIV/AIDS.  Saw a deep sadness that I have never known. Never.

I saw it and just for a moment felt
pain.  I heard the goats bleating, the children running barefoot
in the dirt, saw their wondrous angelic smiles.
I was there. Tonight

I sat with friends and travelled halfway around the globe and then I came home
to my air conditioning, my working fridge, a room for each child
and more.  Stuffed with a great meal,
I sit here with awe, respect and no small amount of envy

And wonder what’s next?  How am I to respond?
I am a doer.  Is it just that I like change?  I am used to going places, making things happen and
I want to make a difference.  What’s next?
I can’t help but wonder.

{a midstream update on “ch-ch-ch-changing”} part 2 of “I Hate Being Fat”

Sometime in May I admitted to myself and “the world”  in a post that I hated being fat.

It’s now late June and I want you to know that I’ve been busy.  More importantly, I faced something about myself that I don’t like, I can even admit that I hate about myself, my weight.  I wrote about it, which was cathartic just in itself, and it was a kick in the pants for Tom and for me to do something! 

There’s something about our culture that has your average person (I am including myself here) convinced that we can’t do anything about our appearance.  And if you’re not already thin, or already beautiful, or already in shape, stay out of the fitness clubs.

I had myself so talked into a pathetic corner of apathy, that I thought I shouldn’t even be seen on the streets exercising because I was such a joke.

I had my head so full of excuses that I felt hopeless, and worthless, and hated the sight of myself.

I’m here to tell you that I started exercising!  I read a book and stopped eating wheat.  I no longer have acid reflux.  I have lost (since March) thirteen pounds. More importantly I decided that I want to be around when my grandchildren get here. (No, this is not an announcement.)

I get out there and walk or walk/jog with my Couch Potato to 5K phone app cheering me along.  I do it five or six times a week, and have now going into my third week.  More than anything I decided that it was possible to change.

Do you believe you can change things about yourself?  There comes a point in “middle age” when we must either give in and give up OR do something.  I don’t think very many people believe they can change.  The stories of successful exercise or weigh loss or even giving up something like alchohol are too dramatic, too flashy, too much turn-your-life-upside-down unbelievable.

But this is a story mid stream — to tell you that if you want to you can change anything!

In March of this year I was the heaviest I have ever been — I was 179 pounds fat.  I felt horrible.  In May I decided perhaps I could do something about it.  I’m 166 pounds now and I won’t tell you my goal because I don’t want to jinx myself.  I am changing habits.  Changing lifestyle.  Changing the way I look at myself.  I am changing my future — likely extending my life, certainly I have more energy and optimism and hope for the future.  There is a power that comes from doing.

But I just want you to know that if you decide to, you can do anything.  What I have learned (at least about myself) is that it is a lot like being an alcoholic, in this way…

All I need to think about is today.  

All I know that I can change is today.  

Will I choose to go and walk/jog in 90 degree heat today, because this is what I decided to do? Yes, I will.  Yes I did.

What will you choose?  What will you decide to change today?

{On Parenting and Being}

Parenting is undoubtedly the most difficult job I’ve ever done. It’s not instinctive for me or intuitive, though Tom frequently argues with me on this, the fact remains that I do not feel like a good mother.  

I’m a perfectionist. I’m hard on myself. Most days I fear I’m such a f-up that I can’t raise healthy kids.  I fear that things that made me the way I am will be repeated in my children.  I vacillate between fear that I am too hard on my kids and fear that I’m not hard enough.  And I know that no matter what I do, kids ultimately make their own choices. How does one become a good parent before it’s too late?

If we look at how we were raised we can compare but there’s so much left …

to sheer randomness,

to the personalities of parents and each child,

to the context or environment,

to the spirituality of every person involved.

So we observe others.  We learn from our friends. We work on our personal shit. I find myself hoping  that the days will s t r e t c h out.  And that time will slow down.

Who doesn’t need more time to improve upon themselves?   With life moving so quickly and my children dashing into their teen years, I suddenly want to press the slow motion button. I see how quickly we got here, If only there were more time.

If the Bible were a parenting manual (which it is not) I think perhaps it would say work on yourself (character) first and the fruits of your life (spirit) and then perhaps God will add to these things, but there are no guarantees.

One thing I know. The more you try to control the outcome, the less likely you’ll get it exactly the way you want it.

So what’s a person to do?   Getting my kids report cards, I felt as if I was back in middle school.  I want so much more for my kids than what I had, everyone does.  I don’t want their choices in life to be limited by their current lack of imagination, or willingness to work hard, or the incentives as they perceive them.  And as I rail internally against my own feelings of failure, I relive my wretched school years and I cry a bucket of tears, full of my own regrets and feelings of failure.

I am left with more questions.

How do we teach our children that we love them unconditionally – that no matter what they EVER DO, seriously I mean EVER — That our love is irreversible?  This is a super power, this unconditional love.  If they get this one thing I believe all the rest will fall into place for them.

I never believed I was unconditionally loved growing up.  I thought love I received or didn’t was connected to my behaviours, choices, failures and successes, “the B should have/could have been an A” because nothing was ever good enough to make my father happy.

How do we make it absolutely clear to our children that no matter what job they do some day, or what grades they get or what degrees they accomplish, or what hobbies, interests, sports or other talents they choose or naturally have, no matter, they are loved!

And I think perhaps parenting is a daily laying down of my life — giving up my rights — my power — my control, and sitting with the Holy One, admitting my weakness, my brokenness and that I cannot do it alone.

For a perfectionist it is hard to admit there is no perfect parent, that mistakes will be made, are made daily.  And ultimately I am not in control.

For a perfectionist it is hard to let go and accept that who my children become is entirely up to them!

Celebrate them.  Enjoy them.  Affirm them.  Give them every opportunity.

And also give them space to find themselves.

Just as I am.


{A Cautionary Tale of Sobriety}

When I first began this blog in 2008, it was (in many ways) a place to process my alcoholism and recent sobriety.  I felt very alone and thought, why the hell not?  One of the first things I wrote was a poem (of sorts) titled It’s Lonely Here on The Wagon.

That poem chronicled the lonely place of being an alcoholic and a Christian who had lost her faith.

At that time, I knew that I had to stop hanging out with my “drinking friends” and even had one tell me she couldn’t help me with my sobriety.  She had enough problems of her own.

I know she didn’t mean to reject me, but that’s what it felt like.

And I began to tell myself that my friends with whom I had sat around late at night smoking and laughing with, drinking to a buzz, then way past a buzz, didn’t like me anymore and that I was unlikable.  I told myself that the only reason they hung out with me was because I’d drink with them.  I convinced myself that they didn’t like me, sober Melody.  To be quite honest I don’t even have answers to speculation like that, but I know this.

In the light of day I was a manipulative bitch sometimes.  I was petty.  I could be petulant.  I constantly needed affirmation that they liked me.  I even did things to prove to them that I was “cool.” If it sounds like the emotional needs of a high school aged kid, it’s because that is what it was.

I was emotionally stunted and didn’t know how to be a good friend.  In fact, sometimes I don’t think I really know how to be one now.  Perhaps I’m a little better at boundaries. 

I tell myself that I’ve come a long way from those days of drunken insecurity, but something hit me just this week.

I pretty much live my life expecting pain. 

I expect rejection and so I keep people at arm’s length.  I assume others won’t like me and so I stay aloof thus proving I’m unlikeable.  I assume that I am uninteresting, so I don’t engage in conversation.  I believe that I’m incapable of deep intimacy and so I stay standoffish, even remote.  This is what I do.  Now that I see it, perhaps I can begin to change.  Why assume people are going to hurt you by rejecting you?

Today I have to go to a school picnic and see a few of those same friends that I pulled away from four years ago.  My head and heart are telling me that they rejected me, but I know it isn’t true.  I’m feeling afraid.  Later I have to go to a graduation and see more of those old friends.  I’m sick to my stomach, afraid.  My shyness, aloofness, insecurities are flaring and for just a moment I think that it would be easier if I could just have a drink.

Yes, four years in July I’ve been sober and those thoughts return just like that.  Even though I know it’s a lie, the weight of social, emotional, and historic pressures are great.

I won’t drink.  But I want to and that is a cautionary tale for me.

MELODY

This is a part of a series titled: A Different Kind of Real, where I just write what’s on my heart without a lot of self editing or worrying about what you’ll think.

Some of the things I have written about my alcoholism:

I am not Ashamed
The Slow Crawl Of Healing
What Can I Say About Two Years of Sobriety?
Choose Joy
For Everything There is A Season.
Eulogy to Life.
Letting Go.  Thoughts on Being An Alcoholic
ReThink Everything
My First AA Meeting
My Crooked Heart
It’s Lonely Here on the Wagon
The Place of Nowhere
A New Way to be Human
Eulogy to Life
Winter Comes
Splintered Truth
This Epic Grief
No Dignity
I Need a Filling
Addict

{When Did you First Believe that God is Male?} #mutuality2012

Where do we form our ideas about God?  And more importantly when?  How young does it begin to register in your head and heart, your idea of God as a masculine figure and that your daddy is also male? How did they become so mixed together, mingled and intertwined?

And I asked myself today.  How do you pull them apart, which you must for a variety of reasons but most of all because you don’t know how to pray to that God. You don’t know that God.

What if you grew up feeling that you will never measure up, never have a day in your small, inconsequential life of being good enough, no matter what you do.  What if you grew up believing that your life, whatever you become, whatever you might

Hope for, dream or wish, whatever you might be today isn’t enough? 

What if you have believed since you were a very young girl, that all your striving will make Daddy love you more and yet it doesn’t work? Did not work.  What then?

What if you learned that God isn’t male?  What if God isn’t just a daddy or a father but a mother, a healer, even a lover?  God is something beyond our comprehension, wild and incredible, beyond imagination.

How are we to pull those ideas apart, with their

Deep Roots that have grown up all over us, entangled

with one another, clinching our chest tighter year after year – strangling,

smothering,

killing you.

I know that I cannot separate these things.  In my human effort it’s impossible to make my shouting, critical, mean-spirited, controlling, effortlessly (it seemed) horrible and cruel daddy to stop.

I have to throw that idea away.  I have to toss that idea of human daddy being God or or God being like my daddy, toss it far into the ocean with all the other idols I have collected in my life.  I’ve got a few, but this one is a huge Monster of an idol and in my power I cannot even lift it, to toss it away into the vast murky universal ocean.

I cannot.

So I sit here, on the beach.  My feet sandy, my toes getting wet just a little, I pick up a pebble and fling it as far as I can.  I do not see how far flies, but I know that it is gone.

My hand is empty.

I imagine that I hear it fall, then swirl down into the waves, the tide pulling it out, further and further away

from me.

That’s how far I toss the idol of my human daddy being my God.

Out of my mind.

out of my heart,

out of my life,

daddy’s gone.  Human-daddy-formed-god, to be replaced with …

Something New, that I do not know yet.

“God is not limited by gender because God is Spirit.” – Mimi Haddad

I want to know that God.

So I am going to stay here on the beach a little while longer waiting, hoping, dreaming, believing that this God, who I cannot even comprehend yet, wants to know me.

Melody

“The point of the incarnation was that Christ represents your flesh and mine. Perhaps for this reason, Christ’s self-appointed name was most frequently Son of Man (anthropos—humankind) not Son of Male (aner). Gendered deities were part of the Greek dualistic system, which Jesus, as your flesh and mine, stands against.”  – Mimi Haddad, CBE

{To the Elders and leaders of X Church, fellow believers in Christ} #mutuality2012

I believe this letter to my church’s Elder Board could have been written to almost any Complementarian church’s elder board.

To the Elders and leaders of X Church, fellow believers in Christ:

If anyone is in Christ they are a new creation.  The old had passed away, behold, the new has come.  All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.  2 Corinthians 5:17-18

I am writing today in response to the request for Elder submissions.  Understanding that your responsibilities as elders are to guide an enormous church made up of a diverse population, I want you to know that this letter is ten years in coming and has been written with respect for the authority of scripture and for your roles as leaders. Your responsibilities, I am certain, cause you some “fear and trembling” and I believe that you have a sincere desire to listen well to many people with unlimited perspectives.  I have utmost respect for “authority” both within the church and in life and I hope that you will consider these thoughts prayerfully, before God and one another, and with the full congregation of X, both men and women, in mind.  Young and old, educated and less knowledgeable, Conservative and liberal, Black, white, Asian, international and US citizens, we all make up the beautiful and complex church of X.  What a daunting task you have.

I am writing about the roles of women at X.  I have been in dialog with Pastor about this topic for years and always appreciate his frankness and perspective.  I respect the need to be aware of the climate in X, the Church at large, as well as within our culture.

As you know, many Christian denominations continue with the practice of male-authority.  And others are open to change.  Though a clear, Biblical viewpoint was preached recently about how men and women are to treat one another, I know there are many at X, perhaps some of you, who believe in the universal male-headship principle. Obviously if it were simple, things would have changed with cultural and societal changes.

But it is a complex thing to parse through scripture to find what is Core Truth and what is cultural truth, of a time.  There are dozens of perspectives on the place of and roles for women in the church.

I appreciate the women who do serve at X church, though support staff in the church is dominated by women and the leadership is dominated by men, which I find strange and a bit backward and tells me that things haven’t progressed as much as I would wish.  What speaks loudest is that there are no women on the teaching team.  And, though perhaps this is even more difficult to change, women are still not considered for the leadership of being an Elder (who lead, manage, govern) and Deacons (who serve, care, guide) are invisible and do what?  I don’t know.

In my conversations with pastor, it has been clear to me that some of you over the years (I realize you’re a revolving door of men) do feel empathetic to the changes in the Church at large.  Perhaps you have even studied this on your own?

The New Testament church thought that the Lord was coming in their day and therefore did not very courageously attempt to speak to the injustices of their time.  Paul backed away from it so much that he prefered to be single than complicate his life with a woman and family.

But today, more than 2,000 years later, it is quite clear that Christ is yet to come, and I find it imperative that believers in Christ individually and corporately, with the power and influence each has been given by our Lord, speak to the injustices that plague humanity — war, poverty and hunger, and sexism are just a few as well as prejudice, bigotry and racism.

I ask therefore: Do you believe that women must not teach Biblical doctrine?  Do you believe that women are unacceptable for Church governance or pastoral and preaching roles?  Because that  is the current example being set at x.  And I would press back saying, if women are not to be in teaching  and in authority over men, why are women encouraged to be missionaries and managers at x?  This inconsistency implies that women can have authority over men in certain circumstances, just not over men of their own race and in their own church.  This I do not understand and ask if you see the conflict?

I urge you to consider the message you are sending to young people in the church, men and women who are considering how they might serve God with their lives.  And this has rampant implications for the relationships between men and women, boys and girls, as they see this conflict of ideas.

Church historian Janette Hassey, in her book No Time for Silence, talks about the fact that American evangelicals before the turn of the century and after, advocated and practiced women in pastoral ministry.   My own grandmother, a missionary in the 1930s, was an evangelist and preacher in upstate New York, alongside my grandfather.  Together they were missionaries in Tibet before the war.  Returning home because of WWII, they continued their work here.  I don’t think my grandmother would have been encouraged to use that gift if she were at our church.  It is sad that the twentieth century took such steps backward for women in the church.

I would like to ask you, individually, if you prescribe to the concept of male headship – or not — as heard in the recent sermon?   Whether you think headship is a part of the created order or merely a necessity in wake of the Fall it is not good thing for women.  And perhaps you say, “So what?  The Bible says what it says. Live with it.” I would push back asking whether you knew that next to alcohol and drug abuse the most reliable predictor of wife battering is “zealous conservative religiosity?”   This is just an example of how this policy within the Church at large has hurt women.

As I said before, I believe one call for Christians is to resist chronic injustice – to speak out when it is seen.  I see women being subjugated in the church, being kept from being elders when their full gifting, experience and knowledge is toward leadership. I see no women being encouraged toward teaching, serious scholarship and study of theology even when God has given them an ability, a passion for and a call to scriptural truth and teaching.  I see women who outside of the church are being affirmed and are leading faithfully and well, within the Church not even being considered to serve with the full capacity of those God-given abilities.

It seems to me that the current perspective takes parts of scripture and holds to it as if it were a Universal or Core Truth, while rejecting many other parts of the Old Testament and New Testament, that are cultural rules and are obviously outdated.

I don’t think women’s subjugation is any part of the core Truth of scripture.

The Church has changed its stance on many important things in the last 2,000 years: like strict or flexible observing of the Sabbath, pacifism vs. a just war, Christian’s cultural involvement or separation from culture, but gender roles remains set in what has “always been” especially in denominations, especially in ours.

Change in something this important is difficult and tumultuous, I understand.  To be different than your denomination, to think for ourselves, to study Scripture openly looking at original text with a heart for all people — all this is messy and painful and even unfortunately divisive. It is much easier to ignore it until the culture and climate change so much that you don’t have to risk.  I get that.  But it breaks my heart.

I would agree that on gender roles, the Bible is less than clear.  Just like the NT church was ambiguous about slavery, but we never question that change on Biblical grounds.  It is obvious today, that slavery is an ugly and abhorrent part of the Old and New Testament times. And in the fifties it was believed in the church that women are better suited for parenting and that idea has been rejected over time ,seeing clearly that children need both parents involved in their upbringing.  There are many things that we reject, as the culture and as times change.  But though the Bible isn’t clear it isn’t silent either about gender in the church.

And Jesus was not silent, he was constantly affirming women.

As Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen so beautifully describes, it is more like an …

“… unfolding drama in which salvation is made available to more and more groups that were previously considered marginal.  Salvation and equality of access to its privileges and responsibilities, is not just for Jews, but for non-Jews;  not just for free persons, but for slaves; not just for men, but for women – and so on, in keeping with the principles of Paul found in Galatians 3:28.”

So, if the Bible is ambiguous about gender roles and headship, how can I be confident and so sure that my belief in changing the roles is sound?  For me it comes down to our hermeneutic.

Willard Swartley in Slavery, Sabbath, War and Women asks the following questions, which I most respectfully pose to you, asking you to consider, as it relates to the issue of Women in the Church:

  • How are the two Testaments related to each other?
  • How is the authority of Jesus related to all Scriptures?
  • What is the relationship between divine revelation and the culture in which the revelation is given and received?
  • Does Scripture mandate, regulate, or challenge certain practices such as those associated with slavery, war, and the subordination of women?
  • Does the Bible say only one thing on a given subject, or does it sometimes show differing, even contradictory, points of view?
  • What does it mean to take the Bible literally?  Is that a vice or a virtue?  Does “literal” signify the intended meaning of the author or a meaning that seems natural to us?
  • To what extend does an interpreter’s predetermined position, even ideology (such as patriarchy or feminism) affect the interpretive task?

I think we can all agree the Bible is the incarnate revelation but one should also be taking into serious consideration the audience, time and place to which each book is addressed. Would you not agree that the Bible tailors its message to real people in real, culturally diverse situations?  This is the strength of, the power found, in Biblical revelation.

According to Willard Swartley:

“Scriptural diversity is the natural result of the one true God’s graciously relating to humans, drawing humans into a relationship, inviting free response and full engagement … Biblical truth is concrete, shaped usually by specific contexts, needs and opportunities.  Interpretation should affirm and celebrate this feature of divine revelation, communicated through many different writers in different linguistic, cultural and political contexts.  The variety itself becomes the missionary’s textbook [for] the biblical text spoke God’s word in a variety of cultural, economic, political, and social settings.”

And then Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen whose book Gender & Grace has profoundly changed my perspective on men and women and the Gospel says this beautiful and profound statement:

“For the sake of the advancement of God’s kingdom in a given time and place, temporary compromise can and often must be made with the societal status quo.  … Therefore Scripture is accommodated to the cultural setting of its varying audience, constantly being augmented by a move toward the vision of God’s coming kingdom.  Indeed, Jesus’ elimination of the sexual double standard was so surprising to his disciples that they concluded it was safer not to marry at all! “

Van Leeuwen continues that “the basic impulse being the Fall – the wish to be independent of God – is no respecter of persons.  Feminists and patriarchalists are equally in need of redemption.”

Again, theologian Willard Swartley with a good test of the degree to which our ideologies warp our reading of Scripture.

“Our willingness to be changed by what we read, to let the Bible function as a “window” through which  we see beyond self-interested ideologies, and not a “mirror” which simply reflects back to us what we want it to show.  Biblical interpretation, if it is worthy to be so called, will challenge the ideology of the interpreter.  It can and will lead to change, because people do not come to the text thinking as God thinks, or even as the people of God thought in serving as agents of divine revelation.  Interpreters [must] listen to the text carefully enough not to like it.  [When they do so] it powerfully demonstrates that the text’s message has been heard and respected.”

This is challenging because I am full of self-interest when it comes to being a Christian woman — that is a tribe that I belong to and feel a responsibility to care for — not because I crave authority, but because I long to see women carrying out every gift from God in their lives, not just in the marketplace, but within the church!  I am hopeful that this will happen in my lifetime.

I must ask you, individually, whether God is challenging you to reconsider your thinking on women’s leadership, governance and teaching roles at X, and whether the time has come to face that the current roles are stifling more than half of the church to be heard fully and uniquely.

But even more important (to me) is that this stance just may be holding back the fullness of the Kingdom of God from being revealed in our generation.  And my heart weeps with that thought.

Gretchen Gaebelein Hull, in her book Equal to Serve sees Scripture as pointing toward equality and mutual submission between the sexes and I’ll leave you with this quote from her book:

“Today, like James and John, so many people pluck at Christ’s sleeve: dogmatists, traditionalist, egalitarians, feminists, liberationists, all sorts of activists.  They all say the equivalent of “Seat me nearest You, Lord; show those other people that my system is best.” As they pluck at Christ’s sleeve, thinking that places at His right and His left will bring them honor and power and worldly recognition, He looks at them – and at all of us – and still asks: “Can you drink my cup? Don’t you see that whoever stays nearest me must … go where I go, serve where I serve?  Don’t you see that, loving the world as I do, I must serve it to the uttermost?”

It may come down to this: Can you personally serve under a woman, at work or at Church, and why not?  Could you accept that your wife, sister, mother, friends have gifts that make her more visible, knowledgeable, or experienced than you?  Could you dare to be like Joseph, step-father of Jesus, playing a lesser role than Mary?  What prevents you from rethinking, studying anew these things?

Fear? Ambivalence?  Prejudice?

I am incessantly asking myself over the last ten years at X, would I put aside my perspective if the time isn’t right for this church?  Would I work for change in a patient and loving way, rather than sinking into anger or bitterness?  I do feel that as an active participant (not a member) at X Church I have done that, meanwhile praying for the timing, the hearts of the church members, that God’s revelation on women would come.  And asking what part I should or shouldn’t play in that.

I have participated in women’s ministry here and seen women teaching who do not have the confidence that they been given the authority to speak definitively about scripture.  This undermines their ability to open scripture and speak prophetically.   This saddens me.   I have seen many women serving in various roles and respect them and know that they are listened to, but I still am not hearing anyone speak to this central issue.

I don’t know why God has given me such a burden for this but I carry it. 

Over the years I have written and sought clarity about why this practice of male elders and teaching team continues?  And since I do not feel confident that the issue is being discussed fully, openly or seriously (being sidelined for many other important issues of the church) I send this to you, asking for you to consider it now.

Each of us must ask ourselves, male and female alike, are we living as an old person or a new creation?  In the flesh or in the Spirit?    And what are we being called to, as we serve together?

I hear God’s call as a voice for certain voiceless populations, including women in the Church. 

I am constantly clarifying, are you sure Lord?  And at times I have been unproductive, and not very Godly, allowing myself to be anxious or angry or even bitter.  I have experienced a lot of pain.

In these years, I have come to a certain amount of peace with simply speaking up from time to time, meanwhile to be in study and prayer.  And then to been in a place of seeking the rest of the time.  But as the spirit seems to speak (or as elder nominations come up) I ask God what I should do, again  — do this time.

So thank you for reading this and hopefully giving it serious consideration.  I have purposefully not tried to write a treatise for the Biblical interpretation of all the key and most controversial verses — I’m no biblical scholar and you have one on staff.  I would ask you to free him up to study this if he hasn’t already.  Listen to him.  Then give space and time for your own study and careful deliberation.

God will speak.  God has a plan.

With respect and gratitude for your sacrifice of service,

Melody Harrison Hanson

October 7, 2010

The major ideas that persuaded my thinking and inspired this are from Gender & Grace: Love, Work & Parenting in a Changing World by Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen, ©1990, IVP.  She did the scholarship, I just happen to agree with her.  Also, Call Me Blessed: The Emerging Christian Woman by Faith Martin.

Other things I have written on these topics search for Women in the Church or Feminism.  I have written a lot.

I have intentionally removed the name of my church, though it wouldn’t be hard to figure it out, because I think these issue are relevant to almost any Complementarian church.  

{When You’re Not Qualified to be Alive}

So I’m trying something new.  Picking a subject at random that I seem to obsess about or fixate on, something that grips my imagination in compulsive and ugly ways, (I started with one of my secret obsessions.) I’ll write honestly without  a lot self-editing or controlling “the message” to see what comes out.  No answers. No over spiritualizing.  Just the real, gritty, sometimes awkward me. I’m trying to push myself in my style to loosen up a little. Have you noticed that I take myself a bit too seriously? This is my second excursion into a different kind of real. 

Parenting surely is the most difficult job I’ve ever had.  Many times in a day I think “I am not qualified.” But it’s too late, for those regrets.

No one is qualified to be a parent, not really. 

Yesterday, I was reflecting on our exceptionally verbal, strong as steel, at times tyrannical daughter  who is so like my father!  I just wanted to fall down on my knees, humbled by my own lack.  Again, as if a prayer, whispering this time as a lament: I am not qualified to be a mother.

I went through most of my life in some strange, surreal auto pilot. 

I went through forty years utterly afraid of life.  I sometimes think back, strange as it sounds and wonder aloud how I even survived the catastrophes of living in our home.  My father’s spirit and soul crushing rage destroyed me, my personality and I spent many years just grieving who I might be, might have been.  That sort of grief is debilitating.

Oh there were moments, especially outside of home, where I found  parts of myself.  I loved my youth pastor; he listened to me and allowed for my incessant questions about the Bible. He listened to my ideas and fears.  He never once yelled at me, or told me my sarcasm or sense of humor or quick thinking and verbal sparring was bad.  He somehow validated me and I loved him.

But for the most part I went through my tens and twenties and thirties heart-sick, depressed, and afraid.

So when my daughter rages at me (I told you she is like my dad) or the world, or she stands up to me, or questions … every little thing, a small part of me is cheering inside!!

She is alive.

She is breathing, kicking and screaming, going into the world believing that her thoughts, her questions, her jokes, her ideas matter and for that I am so pleased.

She is alive and I am slowly coming alive too.  I believe my father had to die for me to begin living.  A new friend, after hearing about the childhood that I had said to me yesterday “It’s a wonder that I have any faith at all.”

I am simply grateful I am alive.  Yes, this life of believing is really hard; harder for me than it seems to be for many people I know.  I’ve come to accept and understand this to be a part of what makes me, me.  And yes, this is something I embrace.

I may not be qualified, but I am grateful to be alive.

I’ve Been Quiet

I’ve been quiet, because the world is so loud. So many days I just cannot do anything more than put my hands over my ears and shut it all out.

This world where exegesis and hermeneutic and “being right “are more important than generosity and love.

A world where the decision of the Church or the Government feeding the hungry becomes intellectual and spiritual sport.

A world critical of mystical devotion of Henri Nouwen whom I revere.

A world where conviction over sexuality and what is or is not love makes people hate one another, aren’t we all God’s creatures?

A world where your or my “place” and opportunities depend on being born a boy or a girl; where little boys refuse to let a little girl play ball. just because she’s a girl.

The world, even the Church that cannot agree on much of anything.  And sometimes I think how Jesus must just weep over us all.

This world is upside down, crazy and it just makes me sad, even deeply wounded by it. 

I’ve been quiet because I have been writing. And I find that blogging makes me want more clicks, and comments, and there is never enough attention.  It feeds the part of my soul is ugly, that longs for significance.  Blogging doesn’t suit this heart .

Empty, shaken, longing for solitude, then I know.  I need more of Jesus.

I’ve been quiet because I’ve been writing and when I write I doubt.  I doubt my Call.  I doubt my talent.  I doubt that these things that tug on my heart, these words that seem so clear, that wake me up from a dead sleep, that dance around me like pixies while I mow the straight lines of the lawn, that chatter inside me telling me I’m stupid.

Yes, I’ve been quiet because when I write I doubt myself, and

this too is a challenge of a person who finds herself committed to words — to creating and giving them away.

I don’t know enough.

I don’t have a big enough audience.

I don’t say things that matter.

I don’t know much of anything.

Seeing a theme here, I, I, I, …

I get even more so — I need deep quiet.  And I know again that I need to drink from the spigot that is of forgiveness and true purpose and  being transformed.  When Jesus said “I have come” he meant  come to stay.  He’s here with us.  He’s here by my side, as I tap-tap-tap on the laptop.

More of him,

less of me.

That means deep quiet.

Step On A Crack {A poem about Living}

She drank coffee

at 4:29 in the afternoon but knew it won’t do the job on a soul that’s stopped dead.

And no amount of caffeine

is going to wake it.

It happened a long time ago, so far back in time

she can’t see

it, certainly can’t remember when a little girl of puddles and jumping, cartwheels

and skinned knees stopped dreaming. Mistrust

became more real to her than hope. Forever

uncertain, she lost

Wonder.

Step on a crack, break your Mamma’s back. Did she do that?

When mamma’s don’t dream children are left

to the Monsters — imagined enemies

everywhere. This little girl got scared, petrified and turned to

Stone, too afraid to live. Now she’s the Mamma she’s got to get up,

Dance in the rain, again! See

this is real, the bad dreams are gone.

Find courage.

Live.

{A Miscarriage of a Life – a post Mother’s Day Lament}

Yesterday I told myself over and over — I have had a miscarriage of a life.

The day before, I spent all day celebrating my older sister as she received a doctorate of ministry in preaching from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago.  Yes, I was happy for her but I could not enjoy the day fully because I was so disappointed with my own life.

After the very long ceremony (those Lutherans know how to “party”) I asked her what was next on her list for world domination? It was a backhanded compliment, which had a risk of offending her, but luckily she was gracious. (I get snarky and sarcastic when I’m feeling bad about myself.)

These sisters of mine are capable of doing anything.

Harrison’s seem to have the brains and talent, ability to work extremely hard, a yearning for justice to prevail and the certainty that injustice is, in part, our life’s call, challenge and responsibility.  We are strong, capable, and powerful women. Some days I actually believe that about myself.

I have come to believe that much of the spiritual journey is one of being stripped of all that we would put our trust in, other than God.

Life is found in losing it for Christ’s sake.  The life that God has for each of us, if received–changes us.  There is not one sacred path for all.

My journey over the last twenty years has been a stripping, for I never knew Jesus, before.

I never knew I was beloved. I didn’t believe there was a purpose for my life outside of what I could accomplish, a life purpose that is all about Jesus.

Until my father died nine years ago, I was in many ways “asleep.”  Because of the severe damage to my psyche from his anger, I did not know myself.  I did not know the Trinity of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit in any real way.

I did not know it, but I was bankrupt in spirit.

But even in that absence of belief, God planted questions, passions and strong desires inside me, a prompting that has never left me to know the Word of God and interpret it. I know that I am to receive that– and submit to the unique journey God has laid out, even when I cannot see clearly the road ahead.

Trusting is painful — the stripping away of sin, of selfishness and in many ways of aspects of my humanity, my character, that I thought were who I was.  But there is grace, protection, comfort, provision and shalom in submitting to the Holy One’s purposes.

It is the only safe place. And yet it hurts so much when I feel I do not understand clearly.

In my 20s and 30s I lived for my job, it was my identity and all that I knew.  Strangely, I believed it was all I was good at and I thought that I was choosing to walk away from that work, because the environment was unhealthy, but I see now that God led me away, took everything that made me feel good and strong and powerful.  I thought I knew.

I could have lost my marriage and family because of my addiction to alcohol.  I thought I knew, thought I was strong enough to beat it with will power, but the addiction beat me and I found that I was nothing without the Holy One.  Even if I gave up the drink, without the Holy One filling me, healing, and strengthening me I was nothing. I thought I knew.

I sat Sunday scrutinizing people who had given many years of their lives to learning, thinking, writing, believing, enough to sacrifice time with their own children and partners, to achieve this incredible goal of a masters or doctorate. Some were restrained, some were giddy, and many were just slightly stunned to survive it, it seemed to me as a bystander.

I was so incredibly jealous and sad for myself, even mad at myself.  Though the day wasn’t about me, inside my head everything was about me and my feelings of not exactly failure, but a strange bedfellow to it, a miscarriage of a life.   In that moment, how dearly I regretted leaving my career in my early thirties and staying at home with my kids. Deep down a part of me still believed that I would not have succumbed to alcoholism or depression in the end if I had continue to work fulltime.  I’d still have a great career, I’d be able to leverage it toward other work, and I would be respected by others.   Pretty much bullshit and lies, but I almost believed it again as I sat there fuming internally.

I said all that and more to my mother as we drove back home.  I don’t know if I really believed it.  I do know that who I am, the real me, the person I never knew until I had no job, suffered from major depression and became a drunk – that woman needs Jesus! She believes in the Creator in a way that she never did before she lost it all.

I remembered that my boss, while I was trying to decide about leaving InterVarsity told me to go have babies and come back in five years to continue my part of world domination.  Only, I never went back I was too busy having a breakdown and drinking myself stupid.  That’s what I mean by a miscarriage of a life.

I was debriefing the day with Tom, who is extremely smart and has an almost PhD from the University of Chicago.  As his head hit the pillow he exhaled, he said something like:

Higher degrees have their purpose, and there is a sense of personal achievement if it is important to you, but being a parent is three times harder than getting that PhD.

“Yeah,” I said, “but the world doesn’t esteem parents.  Parenting won’t get you a job.  Parenting won’t bring you any real regard or admiration from others.  Parenting is something everyone does.  (Not to mention you don’t get paid and the hours are terrible.)  It’s not enough.” 

My eyes filled with tears so many times on Sunday, I felt like I was choking most of the day.  I was happy for my sister, genuinely — for I know only in part the many sacrifices she and her loved ones have made for her to accomplish this incredible goal.  I know my father was doing a happy dance, wherever he is.  My mother was beaming.

I spent my mother’s day celebrating my sister in part because I believe in doing things even when they are hard.  I want my children to grow up knowing that doing the right thing isn’t always what’s easy, nor is it usually about you. That there will be many opportunities in life to choose yourself over others, but when given the chance to celebrate someone you love, you should take it.

All day I had moments of deep self-pity and self-loathing for my choices and beating myself up about the last fifteen years.  Hindsight is 20/20 and all, still this is what I have come to know.

I know I would be different and horrible person if I had continued on the path of a workaholic and constant striving for external approval. My character has been changed through these experiences.

Through the mistakes I have made I have found a true understanding of God’s mercy and grace in my life. I know that I am loved by Jesus – I didn’t know or believe it two decades ago.

Through the mistakes I have made I have found a daily dependence on God for my health – my mood, my purpose and meaning.

For even as humbling and hard as each day is and how much it feels like a sacrifice to not have a viable lauded career at this time, I’m on my knees ever more.

Most of what I am learning is yet to be understood or written I suppose.  Clearly, I am still broken, still too easily overcome by the wrong motives. I continue to be frustrated and discontented and I am frustrated with myself because of this.

In studying the book of Proverbs (because that is where we are in Eat This Book reading the entire Bible in a year at church) I am being drawn to Proverbs 31.  I look forward to learning what a 21st century feminist wife and mother, a homemaker, budding writer has to learn about being a Proverbs 31 woman.

I am open, and fearful. I am angry and aching inside, deep where no one understands me except God.

I know I should be grateful but everything about me is wired to work hard, to please other people, to get the acclaim of others, to be esteemed and admired; it is the entire human condition without God.

I pray for spiritual understanding and an ability to lay all that down — to trust and obey.

Deep down I know that as long as I keep longing for all the wrong things, I can’t grasp what is good, whether that is understanding of what I already have or whether it is receiving what God has for me next.  I cannot grasp it because I am still so filled with discontent.

I thought I knew.  There is very little that I do know.  But my story isn’t fully written.


I Never Wanted to be Like My Mother

I never wanted to be like my mother.

My mother stayed for more than 40 years in a marriage that broke her heart.  She admits now that she was afraid.

She married in the late fifties, when women couldn’t even have a bank account in their name.  She was a teacher and worked to put my father through college.  In the first year of their marriage, in a rage my father put her head through the wall.  He promised to never do it again.  And to my knowledge he kept that promise.  But  that was the beginning of being manipulated.  He threatened and he yelled.

The man could rage.

The smallest thing would set him off.

I never wanted to be like my mother, because all those years, I thought she was weak.  Weak for staying.

Or so I thought, for many years, until I became a mother.  And when that happened I began over time to see that she did it all for us. 

My mother is strong.  She stayed for us.  She was the buffer all those years between us and my father’s angry raging.  She took it more than we did. (And we took it a lot.)

And in later years as the weight of it became more than she could bear, she began to find comfort in the bottle.  I never wanted to be like my mother, but I became an alcoholic too.  I buried my fears for years in the numbing relief of alcohol.  As is often the case in a family with addiction, I carried it on.  And in the end I realized, I am very like my mother. I hide my pain even now, though I have been sober for almost five years.

I am strong and would do anything for my kids, just like my mother.

I never wanted to be like my mother, but I am.

I am strong, loyal and sober.

Happy Mother’s Day, 2012

Melody

I’ve written about my alcoholism here.

I’ve written about my Dad here. 

MOTHER [a poem about a parent aging]


Something shifted in the cosmos today as I became a giver, her One.

The one who thinks like a pastor, fondly listening inside to her heart which is lonely.
The one who touches like a nurse, open to the clues, simple hints about pain.
The one who creates food to share, serving the body and soul.

Daughter became caregiver to Mother.

And altered who I am.

Only, she isn’t frail, broken down or helpless — not just yet but it’s coming.  Even so she asks and I answer, and I tag along.  In case something is missed, she says.

Even so she still bails me out and listens as my heart bursts open, pooling over the edges of my day.  The “middle school” years, I am tender, raw with anguish.

Oh yes, she is still Mother, but today something in the cosmos shifted, and I became a Giver.

I became her One.

MHH

Other Poems.