Tag: Fear

{Dust to Dust}

This is the week I learned that our children do not belong to us.
We are not gods, to create a small being in our image.
They come to us

needy and helpless, and we are
Caretakers.  Lives, made up of
oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium and phosphorus, even
heart, mind, and soul;
each are but dust returning to dust.

Arrogantly we live
day after day, with these small persons
believing that each meal, healthy or otherwise,
each book carefully chosen and lovingly read,
each activity selected so diligently,
each pastime and hobby, talent nurtured,

each word spoken into their small world

will stop them, and

start them,

make them
do; our Possession

to be molded, shaped, crafted
carefully controlling every encounter while they are young.
As if it changes anything.
Eventually they will choose Life or Death.

Unthinking, we are judiciously creating a small being
In Our Image.

This is the week I lost.

I knew,
I gave,
I wept,
I died,
I let go.
This is the week everything changed forever;
Inside me something broke
open;
the illusion of control.

This is the week, I gave them back;
to be “mine” is to lose them forever.

Yes, this is the week I lost.
And yet, here they are. Still
living and breathing, asleep in their beds.

and I am (still) full of hope, leaning on it

confident of this:

They are not mine, they are
released from my sweaty grip.

This is the week everything changed forever,

as mother became
helpless, child became

person, and everything changed, forever.

{a house comes tumbling down}

Strange how life works, I didn’t sleep – and because of it I am in a bleak, dark place.  I’ve had two nights in the last few weeks where I quite literally lay awake all night long – not awake enough to do anything productive, but not resting deeply either. The result is I’m sick at heart and physically shaky; short-tempered, and irritated by everyone.

Old and ugly insecurities are having their way, messing with me.  This makes me sad, so very sad.

I ran this morning out of pure conviction, blaming and shaming myself the entire way.  You should be running longer, you should be faster by now, how silly to be your little 2.5 miles, why do you bother? What’s 27 pounds, when people will always be younger and fitter than you!? To them, you are fat.

I can tally my mistakes so quickly when I am tired.  I am full of self-doubt, as a writer certainly and especially.  I wish for a career again.  Or even simply an office to go to or perhaps a paycheck to make me feel I’m making a contribution to something tangible on the planet earth   I wonder why I cannot ever feel resolute and worthwhile in my role as a mother, caretaker, home maker?

My chest is heavy with fear and doubt about my path.

My chest is also heavy too for my children.  I want so much for them, but I am learning that they must be “allowed” to question, make their choices, voice their doubts, express their ideas, have problems that I do not solve for them.  I cannot always defend them to other or be defensive about their choices.  I have to let my children become.  I have to let them fail, perhaps.  Bailing children out isn’t the answer. Pushing is okay, at times.  Encourage and buoy up, even reward and bribe, a carrot, for a future which is full of possibilities they cannot yet imagine.

I am learning about boundaries, mostly that I am terrible with them. I do for others until I resent the doing ending up with no time to write or think or pray or sit with the Holy One.

I resent those that have been to seminary and are clear in their understanding of theology and can write out of those assurances.   I resent those who knew early on who and what they were.  I resent that I lived in a gray, lost fog for much of my life, and then that I became a drunk, and then … just managed to survive.  Yes, I am a survivor but what else am I good for?

Yes, most days I just persist on, hoping that the future is better than the past. Today I’m having a hard time believing in anything.

I feel empty and invisible in a world where stature, and statuses, and lists and mentions matter. And then I feel utterly ridiculous for looking, for caring about those things at all, for being the sort of person that needs assurance of others, the esteem of men in authority, the likes and tweets of writers whom I admire.  Perhaps if I get another degree I will finally feel okay.

I sit in church and I am filled with doubt; traversing into the land of agnosticism, as my husband likes to say – he takes day trips, I am living there today.  I feel angry, skeptical, pessimistic, fearful and tired.

No, I cannot prove there is a God to satisfy my children.

No, I do not know why some people are so happy, successful and life seems to be so easy, for some.

No, we do not live in the perfect house like so and so, nor am I the perfect homemaker, like so and so’s mom. Nor am I handy, to create the perfect anything.

I need sleep and some days that’s all that it takes to push me over the edge into an ugly place of fear and skepticism.

I read this morning in the book of Psalms, David asked for a sign of God’s favor to help against his enemies. 

Who are my enemies?  Today they are self-doubt and lack of surety about the purpose of my life. My faith is weak but does this mean God has failed me?    My children doubt, push on my beliefs, even fail to thrive, does this mean we are failing them? I look at newborn babies and I am filled with dread.  For we all grow up and live lives full of disappointment.

 It is amazing how sleep holds one together or lack of it brings a house tumbling down.

{on feeling the crazies and hoping, still}

some days just are.

crazy that is,

when you wonder how to catch your breath.  and realize
in a shocking moment that you may not be taking in h20.  and yet miraculously you’re still

alive.

panic, dread and fear threaten to consume. some internal, perfectionist voice screaming: this can’t be right?
how can parenting

be so hard?
early, before the dawn you rose up out of bed.  in the dark, sipping

hot coffee, you read about being called. and you prayed to be wise. knowing.

a steward of the precious lives, entrusted.

my head says, poor me.  life is so difficult.  wisdom scarce. challenges too many,

i want to flee.
bail. feeling hopeless, helpless but God promises
to be a SHIELD.

you read: “He lifts my head.”

i am shocked, perplexed by these words, from Henri JM Nouwen who said he was “impressed by the enormous abyss between my insights and my life.”

some days

are about longing for wisdom, dreaming and hopeful, still

in the midst of the crazy years.

Longing for Miracles

Image

I had a moment today.

I whispered it out loud.

“I wish I could turn off my brain.”

It races you see.  It pushes and collides, a pinball machine. It drives me. It’s in frequent turmoil, or is that my heart vibrating?  I think so much, I think so hard

about things that my head hurts, building into aggravation and strain.

Becoming anxiety

inside me.  And I hate anxiety!  Trapped inside a sticky web of lies, that swirl all around.

To me it means I’m not trusting.  That this faith thing that I purport to live by, just maybe it isn’t real.

I had a moment today,

when I longed for a miracle—A book of

Acts, Upper Room, Pentecostal filled with the spirit, holy ghost kind of Miracle.

Yes please, just one.

Then I got to thinking.

Faith is

believing without seeing.

I had a moment today.

{What it means to FEAR HIM}

Fear has always chased me and won.   It clamors at me through perfectionism and anxiety to the point that my reflex response to life is to fear it.   I’m certain it is the crux of my depression. Even so, it was some kind of miraculous act of God that brought me Tom to share my life.  For in my human response I would never, not in a million years, have been bold enough to commit to my frail heart to love or marriage. God intended this and somehow intervened in my heart. If it were up to me I would still, today be very alone.

Each intake of breath and out is accompanied by anxious thoughts.  I have to daily surrender it to God. Even today, it chases me as I run for exercise trying to get this sorry 45 year old body in shape.  Each step chased my anxiety. 

I am one who craves routine — what can be expected, anticipated and known. I find spontaneity amusing, but not quite enjoyable.  My father went on uncontrollable, inexplicable rages.  It had no logical connection to our day-to-day life as far as I could ascertain.  He was often exploding or riding one until she gave up on whatever it was that she wanted.

The result is that she lets go of her own passions, and purpose and understanding of the world and her life.—her own call and purpose, her own dreams,—

That was my mother I watched as her imaginings were crushed. Her life turned into a frightening nightmare. And in small ways that story became my own legacy.

I felt crushed like a bug, only to come back to life over and over again in the same home, with the same father.  Stuck in a hell of his making, afraid of living, afraid of people, afraid of risk, afraid of my own thoughts and ideas.  Afraid to make a life of my own.

“The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him and delivers them.” — Psalm 34:7

The command to FEAR HIM strikes something deep in me, the humming chord that is more than a little bit beautiful, and yet  there is a lot that I don’t understand about it. This kind of fear is confusing to me.  Knowing that  God deserves my fear, but it is not because he intends

to crush me

or to humiliate me

or destroy my soul. 

He intends me to fear him in order to be set free! {This requires trust.}

I once told an erratic and fickle boyfriend “Treat me well, or treat me poorly I don’t care. Just be steady! My father is never consistent or predictable.”  I just couldn’t stand the bitter torture of his inconsistency.

And so, I am setting out on a journey to understand my own fears and more importantly to discover THIS GOD WHO PROMISES so much to those who “fear him.”

If there is anything that you know, that you have learned ,of this HOLY FEAR, I would love to hear from you—books, Bible study resources, scriptures, poetry, preacher’s sermons or personal experience.

What does it mean to FEAR God?

MELODY

I am honored to have some of my poems included with a collection of essays in the book Not Afraid which is scheduled to come out in August, 2012.

{Forgiving is a Miracle: Courageous and Holy. “When Daddy’s Rage”}

We are not too old to take courage.

We are not too late to sacrifice.

We are not too lost to reach out to each other and linger on the rim of time.

– Ann Voskamp

As I read those words this morning I was thinking instantly of my relationship with my Dad — gone since May, 2003. He was a tortured soul in many ways or perhaps I just didn’t understand him.

It was when he was dying that he admitted to me that he often felt righteous in his anger and raging at us.  All this reminded me of something I wrote several years ago. I share it now.

———————————————————————————–

Forgiveness of grave acts of injustice can feel like an abstract concept to those who have not experienced those acts. (PRISM magazine)

My pastor said yesterday … that anger and the need to retaliate when someone has hurt you is “normal” even as normal as the reflexes a doctor checks when she taps on our knees during a check-up.  Normal.

I hate that word – “Normal”.  I don’t understand the use of it.  It is a bit reckless to say anything is normal these days when people have such diverse experiences and upbringings. But think I understand what he was trying to say, that a wish for vindication when you have been hurt is a healthy response.  But even that doesn’t sound quite right.  It is a human response?

But what response should one have to being hurt or abused or rebuked or shamed or yelled at — retaliation?  No, I think he means a human response to lighter stuff.  If you are being gossiped against it is “human” to want to strike back.

When I think about my childhood, I think the healthy response is to shrink and cower.

One learns to hide, to disappear, and to not be the object of Dad’s attention.  Perhaps this response is not “normal” but it sure was reflexive for me. That’s why it is hard to hear that wanting revenge is a normal, human response.  If that is indeed what my pastor meant.

Then, as I look back, I see that THERE HAVE BEEN TIMES when I wanted a sort of revenge with my father and mother.  I have carried fear of my father for as long as I can remember and an anger at my mom for not protecting us.  And a kind of fury.  I used to have rage dreams all the time. On the really rare occasion I will have them still, but they are thankfully now years in-between.

The powerlessness that comes from having a father who never admitted he was wrong creates that anger and sense of worthlessness.

It is not worth trying to explain yourself.

It is not worth having your own opinion.

It is not worth expending energy because nothing really matters, nothing really matters at all.

I am so glad I am past that.

It’s just too bad my father had to die for me to come to this place.

I carry a huge feeling of loss that I never knew sweetness in my relationship with my dad.  I loved him out of fear and a wish to please him.  I know he loved me.  But he just – couldn’t – help himself? If it is true he couldn’t help himself, I wish he could have let God help him.

I miss him now, as I ponder what could have been.  He really was a dear man, loved by so many around the world who were his friends and never knew the secret rage he carried inside him.  I’m glad that many people didn’t know – in a way – because Dad accomplished many good things, helped many people, was loved by many.  God why did you take him so young?  Sixty-two?

I hope it wasn’t simply so that I could live. No, I don’t really think God works like that.  It was a convergence of events coming together to give him cancer and take him.  And my ability to heal, to forgive — I have to believe that I might have come to it even if my dad was still here.  Perhaps it would have taken longer, but it would have come.  Eventually.

I have forgiven my father and then I think of my mother who still has a story to tell.  I don’t know if anyone would believe her, but she has so much in her life story that could be helpful to others.  Surely we can’t be the only ones in this situation, caught between a person who does good things and has their secrets.  A Christian leader who means well but whose home life isn’t right, isn’t right at all?  That’s our story

IN THE END what needs to be said is this: Forgiveness is what each Christ follower is asked to do in response to the forgiveness Jesus extends to us.  It is not easy.  It can take a long time.  It often depends on the emotional health of the person doing the forgiving.  It always depends on all the factors surrounding the situation and each person has to sort that out, often with the help of a pastor or a counselor.

I have been in therapy of one sort or another, off and on, for twenty-five years!  Wow, that’s crazy sounding but it’s true.

Pulling back the layers of pain,

the years of stagnation and lack of healthy growth as a human being,

the crazy mixed up ideas,

the strange perspectives and opinions picked up over the years.

The times of resisting God.  Or not being willing to obey God.

And finally, I came to a point of decision, for myself – without the guilt, or fear or coercion of others, but in complete obedience to God.

Forgiveness, it’s messy.  It’s damn difficult. But it is so sweet, when finally healing, forgiveness and the mercy of Jesus come down.

And you begin anew. And your story continues…

I am still left with where rage comes from? What makes a daddy hurt us so bad?

I have pondered my father’s strange rage for many years.  I cannot pretend to have answers and obviously I cannot ask him.  But I have a friend who works with incest survivors.  She has a very special ministry. My father always said that he was sexually abused as a child, by a minister in his church.  I never believed him.  But I asked my friend about this and she said:  “When a person admits to this as an adult, they are telling the truth.  They have no reason to lie.”

No reason to lie.  She also said very often anger like that comes from abuse in the past.

I don’t know if it is true but I cannot ignore this about forgiveness, about following Jesus into radical loving.

Paula Huston says: “Regarding the tender souls of children, Jesus says in a passage that can be read as referring either to young human beings or to “baby” Christians: ‘Things that cause people to sin will inevitably occur.  It would be better for him if a millstone were put around his neck and he be thrown into the sea than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin.’ (Luke 17:1-3)  The roots of our adult sin patterns are often to be found in the still-gaping wounds of childhood.”

So perhaps my father was hurt as a child.  And I was a child, crushed by his pain and hurt, as he took it out on his family in his rage and anger.

At some point we are each responsible to work through our experiences and get to a point of healing.

Again, from Huston:

“Then, and only then (after the process to be sure) we can see the other person as “a human being, no matter how degraded, a fellow soul made in the image and likeness of the God we adore.”

“God causes his sun to fall on both the good and the evil, and his rain to fall on both the righteous and unrighteous.” (Phooey, I can’t remember the reference.)

The longer we shut up our heart against the one that has hurt us the closer we come

to losing our own heart,

our humanity,

even our life.

And for some even our minds.

These things happened to me in the form of depression, alcoholism, and self-loathing and disgust; a misery of life, abject poverty of soul. I was a dead man walking.

There is hope, found in Jesus at the cross.  Laying those things down, the heavy burden of pain, of picturing yourself putting your pain at Jesus’ feet.  If you truly give it to God, release it when you can and

be ready for miracles!

MELODY

** Some people have a hard time picturing things in their mind’s eye.  If that is true for you I would urge you to watch the movie THE MISSION.  That movie changed my life.  I believe it will give you a picture of your pain and lack of forgiveness as those heavy pieces of armor that the priest dragged up a water fall as penance.  Whenever I begin to forget what my bitterness and anger, lack of forgiveness are doing to me, I can see in my mind’s eye that sack of armor.  No one can live that way.  No one should live that way.  No one needs to live that way.  I did for so long.

{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.  

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.

I Hate Being Fat

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, (Yes, I’m starting with one of my secret obsessions) I’ll write honestly without 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? Perhaps I can learn to have a little fun?  This my first excursion into a different kind of real. It’s supposed to be casual.  We’ll see. It may be my last.
It’s not fun yet.

It’s true. I hate being fat.

No, I don’t glory in my magnitude and mass.  I don’t recognize myself and constantly avoid mirrors, but that is not why I don’t recognize myself. In my mind’s eye I have remained twenty, even thirty years old –  a skinny sometimes cute girl. (Okay the truth is that I was never skinny exactly, but  this is my dreamy memory, so I’ve perhaps fudged a little.)

I was a healthy 5’6” and 130 lbs most of my life. That has been true since I was fifteen years old — until about a decade ago. I am now 45. That old adage about gaining five pounds a year after forty if you’re sedentary, the thing they try to scare you with when you’re young, it is true!  Yes, I am now whining profusely but it’s absolutely so unfair to find out now that it is true.

I was warned.  I didn’t believe.

I never worked out and I could eat and drink anything I wanted. I just didn’t over indulge with food because I figured that if I did, then I would never be able lose it.  You see, my mamma has been a food binger all my life — yo-yo diets, juicing, fasting, starving, giving up entire food groups, … You name it she has tried it.  And lost her body’s weight more than once. And gained it too.

I have never believed it was possible to actually maintain a healthy weight. So the key was to never get fat.  Yeah you see where this is going.

You were either thin or fat. And I had no respect for fat people. I know, I’m horrible.

Now I’m that fat person.

And I think about being fat all the time – with a sense of loathing, dread and failure — and it brings with it a “wanna slit my wrists” depth of misery, because dieting never worked for my mother.  Driving around town I watch people out walking the dog, or running, and wonder is my butt bigger or smaller than hers?

I cannot take “selfies” any more for fear of the dreaded double or triple chins, which I  honestly forget are there, (remember I’m 20 and skinny in my mind’s eye?)  Most of the time.  Until I take another picture and then POW, the fact that I’m fat is right there in front of me. Delete.

I’m fat. I’m. just. b.i.g. Overweight. I am a portly, tubby, middle-aged, large, woman of girth. I actually had a fitness person at the Y tell me I am obese.  Bitch.  That’s supposed to motivate?  I never went back. (To be fair, I signed up for a fitness assessment.  I guess I really didn’t want the truth. Or I just despaired of changing it is more like it.)

I’m as big as I was after I popped out each of my three kids. (I lost all the baby weight each time, except ten pounds. And at that time, blowing up from my 135 pounds to 170 lbs, I thought I was huuuuuuge.  And I was.  And I am. Sigh.

I am fat.

I hate being fat because it makes me hate clothes and I used to love everything about clothes.  The outfits, the not too matchy matching, the edgy pushing of style that you just can’t do when you’re fat, without looking like an idiot.  Or perhaps you can but I refuse to try.  Now I dress in full-camouflage-mode, dress to hide, to cover up, to disguise the tummy, and the ass and the white, pasty legs.  I don’t even like wearing sandals when I’m fat, because my feet are too much like two little sausages. Yuck, it’s just gross.

My face is round.  Nothing looks good on me. Everything is buttoned up and covered up.  Now I look for sweaters and scarves to hide my bulbous boobs that used to be a quite average sized 36B, normal and cute.

When you are fat you have to worry about bras.  You think about eating in groups and you never snack (the verb) in front of other people, at least I don’t because I don’t like people to see me eat.  I’m sure they are thinking “She should stop.”

When you are fat you worry and fret about seasons changing because a) you don’t have clothes that fit. And b) you don’t want to buy new clothes.  Oh my gosh, I have become my mother.

When you’re fat you have no style.  You can never be cool, even with cool glasses.  Even with cool hair.  You have no respect.  People look down on fat people.

Now, perhaps we have come to the truth, I am fat phobic.  I think being fat is gross and now I am that person who clearly lacks self-control or they wouldn’t be that large.

But actually, this fat person evolved over time.  This fat person came to life from sitting too much, from a lazy lifestyle. Lack of energy from being fat, only contributes to lack of action!  Fat people don’t go to the gym!  We have nothing to wear (to cover up the fat.) Do you know how many times I have told myself I cannot go for a walk because I don’t have any comfortable tennis shoes? Ackh. Hundreds, at least.  And people might be analyzing the width of my ass.

And I know, believe, even fear that being fat is a terrible example — to my kids, to other people, this “temple“ I’ve been given is being frittered away because I am too lazy, too fearful, too disgusted  with myself to do something, anything about it.  And I imagine to myself s o m e d a y, when I am thin again…. I will…

what?  Be cool, how dumb is that?

I know this is entirely my fault.  I think about it every day, dozens of time a day, hundreds even, that I know how to change this.  I know how to lose the weight.

I must not want to change, no matter how much I hate being fat.

What keeps you from changing something about yourself when you really, really want to?

When I’m Scared

Scared. Scared shitless and no plan to make it better, makes for a very hard week. 

Too much comparison with others’ lives, careers, talents, jobs,  kids, health, weight, even others’ sense of humor.  It all kills all my joy.  Not enough trust kills my ability to enjoy my incredibly blessed life.  Constantly thinking about all the ways that I am frequently scared. Knowing how often I am just plain terrified to breathe.

I used to be a pretender.  (Not so) confidently white-knuckling my way through leadership, creativity, people  and their problems, service.

I thought I could to anything. And I just about did. Though there was always a price.

But I was scared and my faith, well that was missing.  I didn’t have faith in anything and I worried endlessly that someone would find out just how little I believed.

Jesus loves you, this I did not know.

It wasn’t until I lost everything  (I thought) and I fell down, down, down into depression, and alcohol, and isolation from good people and into what was for me deep depravity, that I knew Jesus as my source.  It was days without God, stretching out for what seemed like perpetuity – no, it wasn’t until I was living those hopeless days and nights that I came to know and believe.

I’m still scared, and I still can’t believe that there is something good out there for me.  I sit and sometimes I cry.  I just cry hopeless tears and the fear flows out of me, and I ask God for something that only I can do, but then I do the only thing I know.

I lean into the Holy One and rest.

This me, the one you know and see today, she’s no pretender because she’s got nothing left to hide.

Still scared, yes but down low with Jesus, resting in him.  Sometimes, when your fear is clutching your heart tight, you’re blinking back the bitter taste of anxiety and you think you cannot bear it another minute, that’s when you must sit and rest in the Holy One.

I’m not saying I know how to do it, only that I know I must seek the sweet release of Jesus.

He took it all, already.  The pain, anxiety, addiction, sin, crappy self-esteem, fear and disbelief, lack of self-love, lack of trusting others, lack, all my lack!  He already nailed it to the cross.

Why do I keep taking it back down and walk around wearing it like a heavy armor, dragging it through my life, making my days slow and painful.  Why?

I know I must give it back to him.

Still scared, yes. But down low with Jesus.  Resting in him.

The Offering. (A poem about our words being an offering)

I have always known that words have power
to disappoint and even threaten.
They so often offend and injure, colliding with others
perceptions

of me,
of themselves,
of life together in this messy place.

And words heal,
offered as a rich confession that brings one to the edge of truth
and back again to our plain old lives.
Sometimes it’s a sweet and holy thing,
words.  The offering.

If I didn’t choose to put pen to paper, finger to keyboard?
What if, what then?  If I didn’t fight to get
this very moment down through distractions, through issues and problems of my day.
What if I stopped fighting for these words?
Driving along, I feel that anxious gnawing in my stomach, again.
I am full of self-loathing, doubt and fear. I hate this weakness, but I am questioning every word put down,
wondering how and why.
Why try so hard?
But then I know.

I would write even if no one tells me I’m good.
Then it’s said to me: “you’re good” and I don’t believe.  Or I wonder,
is this enough?
These thoughts, do they change
anything
anyone
for
the
better?
This not merely about purpose.
It’s not simply about being good or even great at this craft.

I don’t know why I write, except that I was made for this.
Each thought, scratched out on a piece of tattered envelope is an offering.
Each confession a piece of me. My flesh, my hopes, my mind
are all there on the page. I write.
This is what I was made to do.
And I will have to leave the rest up you.

———————————————

Something else I wrote on the negative power of our words, Hatred’s Sweet Kiss.

Let your Fear Fly Free

So often, if I find myself returning in frustration and anger, again and again, to a subject.

When this happens I know that it has become an area of idolatry for me. Or it’s an area that God wants to heal in my life.   Or both!

I’m a slow learner but I’m learning this about myself.  About God.  His Truth is a beautiful thing.  Opening my heart to God’s voice in my life not easy, even unnatural.

How to you do that?  How do you listen well?  And when you know that you need healing by Him, how does this usually occur?  That’s something else I’m learning to allow space for in my life.

For the longest time I drank to try to make that Ugly Thing (you name it) go away. I ignored God’s regular, persistent call.  His knocking was gentle, consistent, reliable true.  But I chose to numb myself with alcohol or shopping or other idols.  But by self-medicating, aren’t we simply postponing the inevitable?  Running from reality.  Ignoring truth. Letting the Ugly Thing win.

Areas where I have seen this in my life recently, where I am letting go of my vice grip of control.

I’m letting fly free the issue of women in my denomination.

I’m letting fly free my need for a “paying job.”

I am letting fly free my need for significance and accolades.

I am letting fly free my self-loathing.

I am letting fly free my wish for my children to know Jesus as their Savior.

These are all things that I have tried to ignore how much they hurt, yes my big gut wrenching fears that control my mind and heart.  And in the end the weight of them crushes my spirit.  I cannot bear the weight of them any longer.

So I open my hands and I see them fly away knowing that the universe is God’s and he is in control of it all.   He loves me, he loves them, more than I ever could.  His desire for justice and truth to prevail  in the Church is stronger than mine.  And in fact he gave me this heart, that breaks and so easily comes undone.

And finally, his desire for me to be useful to him is less than his wish for me to know, fear, and love who he is, the Holy One.

He made me and he’ll carry me and all my fears.

May we be people open to God and able to let go of our need for control whatever it is — it’s so different for everyone. Let them go free into God’s hands, because is it not true that the Holy One is so much more capable than you or me?

What do you need to let fly free?