Processing the Path, part 1: blah, blah , past, blah….

I thought that for the weeks following the fiasco at Mardel’s,  I would talk about all the little signs and notes that have told me that I am on the right path.

I thought I would talk about the moment I heard the call, when I had Isaiah 30:20-21 tattooed on my arm and finding that three months later, the first sermon proper I went to was about that scripture, which marked the path and a lesson.

The subsequent sermons that have been summed up thusly… turn around… pray… forgive… and wait for your external assignment. In the meantime, pray… study… be humble… lose the ego… and serve, Serve, SERVE. This is your internal assignment.

I thought that I was going to talk about this. But those words wouldn’t come out.

I want to talk and perhaps process what is scaring me about this entire process. I think that taking a bit of time and meditating on where I have been might deepen my appreciation and clarify where I am going.

So let me open like this: I have always believed in God (but so does Satan, so that’s not saying much…LOL [James 2:19]). I always believed in the power of the ransom sacrifice, deliverance through this sacrifice, and that he heard those called to him through Christ. And for years I thought that he heard me.

No… that’s not right. Well, that’s right but it’s not the complete truth. I was in love with God. I loved the fact that there was a mind that had the humor and sense of beauty to create the dark night sky full of stars, snapdragons, and the mountains and green you see on road trips. I loved the fact that he had created my mind that I used to write, which was and still is one of the things I love to do. I loved that there are flavors that could be tasted, changed to taste a totally different way and that there were so many of them. I love that he gave humans the mind to create Nutella and bacon.

But then I lost that in the haze of disappointment at the things that I saw that I thought that God should have corrected. I was seen and treated like a second class citizen based solely on my sex. I saw the emotional abuse of women by the very men that were chosen to lead us. I saw women do anything, including fight and neglect their children, to ensure that would get attract that man in religious power, only to find out that that man’s eye’s, hands, and other things were on their young daughters.

And sadly I saw myself do the same thing. I felt the desperation and believed the leaders when they told me that the only reason that my children were so well behave because of God because I had nothing to do with it.

I started to believe that if these men were the men that God would choose to lead and represent him, then what they saw and what they said was what God saw and said.  God would not take these away, teach them a lesson and I watched as they hurt people. So I thought that this was what Church was about, and in some ways what God was about.

So I left the Church to find myself… with or without him. I would learn that I couldn’t…

I gotta tell somebody…

This is the first blog I have done in about two years. I wanted to do this because what is happening will mark the great change of my thirties.

The return to the Church.

Not that I wanted to return. I was pretty damned happy with my life. There were no tragedies. No great crisis. Nothing.

Just a call. One that I tried to ignore, but wouldn’t let up. So I answered the call…

And that’s when the shit hit the fan.

But I want to talk about the things that you never think about when you go to church, or the things that people feel would make them seem less Christian. Like being weirded out by the Stepford smiles of the pastor, trying to defend your choice to one daughter while teaching discernment to another or the number of translations of the Bible it takes to make a bad-ass have a emotional meltdown and cry in a Christian bookstore (roughly 42).

And the search for the right level of ‘churchiness’… and a Hello Kitty bible cover.

I’m worried about fucking this up frankly, but I remember that He called me and I know for damned sure that He knew what he was calling….

Or at least that is my hope.

So here we go.

The Path and the Call. Welcome.