Me & Myselves
Deconstruction feels like I’m moving away from the person I always thought I was going to be. Anymore, I don’t know about a lot of the things I used to lean on.
I used to be so full of this super-charged “faith” that was convinced of answered prayers, absolutely positive of exact interpretations of the Bible. (I’m sure you know the type.)
I think it’s easy to be sure of something until a real life situation occurs and it’s an outlier to expectations and, frankly, God’s promises.
With all the changes I’ve been facing, with all the honesty I’ve chosen over suppression or perfectly calculated answers, I’ve decided to embrace and accept these doubts on my journey. And to make all of this one hundred times more sticky, at my own discretion, my life and process of the Christian faith have been on display for at least a decade now, since I decided to sing on a stage in front of hundreds of people, become a poster child for a “godly teenager”, an example of a “woman of God”, and especially since I’ve decided to narrate and promote my spiritual findings on this blog since I was 15 years old. If you go back far enough into this WordPress archive, my words and thoughts on faith have changed drastically. And while many would applaud that truth and remind me kindly, that change means growth means health means life, my personal response to it all is usually an odd bipolarity of shame and indignance, of defensiveness and embarrassment. I feel it all.
In the past year, I’ve had some interesting conversations with family and friends. When I reflect on them, I am confronted with a heavy contrast of who I used to be and who I am now.
I feel like a disappointment.
I feel a bit of dark dye start to stain my wool—in many of my circles, I am becoming the black sheep, with all my questions and ideas and interpretations of Scripture.
In an instant, I’m looking back down that old road behind me, with such a sad sense of longing for yesterday, wishing I was who I used to be, wishing I could believe the way I used to believe.
Was I a more “affective” Christian when I didn’t entertain so many doubts?
Is God surprised or offended that I have become guarded against too many answers, and open to too many questions?
Does he wish, like I do somedays, that I wasn’t this way?
How does He see me now, after all the dust has settled and I feel so different from the woman who walked the path behind me?
Enter COVID-19.
Alex and I are on three weeks of social distancing and self-quarantining here in New York City. It has been strange, and sad, and scary.
It has been difficult.
I don’t get to walk to the dog park or my favorite bar nearby to meet friends. Probably most important to note here, is that I don’t get to distract myself from the unknown, from the anxiety, from the fear, and from this odd spirituality I’m trying to work through/utilize. In this time of quarantine and lock down, my old frustrations with faith are amplified. Everything I just explained above this paragraph is what I carry now, into a global crisis, a pandemic, an economic fallout.
For example: I know prayer is important. It’s a part of who I am.
I read the news in terror, and I pray.
I see the empty streets of the city, and I pray.
But, as they say, wherever you go, there you are:
the pain of doubt and worry still sting with every supplication I utter.
When bad stuff happens, sometimes you get stuck with a limp as you move forward.
Damaged goods. My prayers are limp-y.
A few nights ago, I didn’t know what to say to God about all these tragedies, as darkness crawled over the skyline. I felt stuck and without words. Then, I was suddenly accompanied by my Younger-self –the one who has all the faith in the world, raised from that rich, charismatic Christian soil.
Usually when she comes around, I roll my eyes at her like she is my nerdy little sister who never got out much. But tonight, I was feeling up for anything in a desperate moment. She sweetly reminded me that I can pray in the Spirit when I don’t know what to say.
So I decided to hear her out and give it a try.
When I did, it brought me such comfort.
“Don’t think so much.” she said. “Just let go.”
Later that week, my sister sent me some worship songs by artists I haven’t cared to listen to in a very long time, I guess because songs about faith and promises cause me more pain or frustration than peace. But I was drawn to those rich roots of mine again. So I listened. And I felt the presence of God so quickly, so deeply, so tangibly…in a way that is hard to come across by other means. I couldn’t stop the tears from flowing. There she was again, my Younger-self. Teaching me how to get lost in the beauty and simplicity of music and honest words and tested scriptures of God.
“Don’t think so much. Just let go.”
We have friends and friends of friends who either have coronavirus or are fighting it now. Some at home, some in the hospital. All asking for prayer. “Oh no,” Now-self thinks. “Prayer. Prayer for HEALING. I can’t do the disappointment again.”
Don’t ask me to pray. I am complicated. I am damaged goods.
My Younger-self fades into my thoughts again.
“Don’t think so much. Just let go.”
So, I get up the courage to pray for the ones I love, for the ones I don’t know. I pray for things to get better. I pray when I feel a spurt of faith, and when I feel nothing. I am glad I have my Younger-self to help me keep praying.
I feel, spiritually speaking, like I am two people.
Like I have to choose which one I’m going to be and then respond accordingly.
But last week, slowly and surely like dawning light,
I felt like God said to me,
“You’re both. You don’t have to be one or the other.”
And I began to feel whole.
Richard Rohr talks about the three vital phases of our Christianity: construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction. He says that it’s easy to get stuck in the deconstruction part of our faith. When this happens, we essentially live forever as skeptics, never building on anything again, only questioning and pontificating for the rest of our days.
I think, and hope with all my heart, that my conversations with my
Younger-self, and my acceptance of my Now-self, is proof that I am being reconstructed.
Maybe this is what God means when he says that he is making us whole.
The government and the world is asking all of us to live an incredibly slow paced version of life right now during all of this catastrophe. And within that, I have been offered something gentle and lovely.
I have been given the wonderful and painful opportunity to sit still, face both of my “selves”,
and let God put them back together again,
let Him make me whole:
a holy matrimony of my younger self and my now-self.
and maybe even something more than that.
The truth is, I will never be able to go backwards down that road that I see so vividly in my mind. I can’t un-know, or un-see, or un-do all that life has tossed my way. And anyway, I don’t want to be my 17 year old self again. She thought she knew everything and she didn’t. Especially in terms of spirituality and Christianity.
However, I’m learning that I do still need much of what she has gathered along the way. I’m realizing that especially now, when the hardest times of life ask me to dig deep and pull from what began my Christianity in the first place.
My roots give nourishment and comfort like nothing else can.
Of my Now-self, I am proud. I am proud of the ownership I have taken of my curiosity, my questions, my pain and the pain of people I love. From the honest recognition I’ve befriended to the weird books I’ve picked up, I have laid it all out before God and I have been brave enough to say “I don’t know.” My Now-self is also better at loving like Jesus would, because of the steps I’ve taken down this new road. By letting go of harsh dividing lines, by listening to other stories and other sides, I have learned what it means to feel and understand the suffering of others on a far greater level than I could’ve back when I had all the answers. Some happenings in the lives of others are just too terrible and difficult and complex to be explained away; I’m glad that my Now-self knows better not to try anymore.
Younger-self and Now-self: I’m both. And, turns out, both need each other.
If I am going to move past the shame of what’s behind me and where I am currently, if I am going to survive this insane moment in history, sticking a mask on my face before I go out anywhere, Good God —
Then both versions must work together.
Sometimes, I still ask God,
“Did You like my faith better when it was pure and new?
When I was young?
Did You like me better?”
I think it makes Him sad when I do.
I think about the story in the Bible of the disciples having fish on the beach with Jesus.
When Jesus was alive and in the climax of his ministry, I’m sure the disciples felt invincible (like they had all the answers, or at least, knew the guy who did.)
But at this point in the story, Jesus had died. And his friends were in hiding: afraid of being murdered, confused about the point, the message, all of it. After some of the disciples decide to get together and go fishing, they see Jesus– the body of Christ, alive, cooking them breakfast over a fire.
I think it’s fair to say that, in this moment, who the disciples thought Jesus was before He died was a fraction of the truth.
It was a one-dimensional way of seeing, how the disciples first encountered Jesus. A lot of really ugly hardships came and completely transformed what they saw, who they saw, and how they were seeing.
Who they were seeing him to be in that moment on the beach, cooking them fish, not dead, was just the beginning of who he is.
I think the disciples finally realized that he is both— the revolutionary King of the Jews (as they knew him in their earlier days) and the Savior of the whole world (as they are seeing him in that moment, on the beach).
Yet, also, in all the wonder and awe-stricken-strange, they know he is so much more than both.
Like me.
I am so much more than one or the other, than “both”—
because I am not done changing, or becoming.
And in it all, God is making me whole.
And this part I feel deeply in my soul:
Even if the current process makes some people uncomfortable,
and even if sometimes, I miss the simpler days of “faith it till you make it”,
God really likes every part of who I am.
He also loves who I was
and he loves who I am becoming.
Maybe all our childhood faith and the roots of our pure, unblemished belief was a beautiful beginning to discover who God is, and who we are.
A beginning that we need to hang onto, and look to for comfort and hope and wisdom. But it was just the start of this adventure, the opening of the door into so much beauty and unknown, into now (warts and all).
Wide open spaces are ahead,
with mercies and mysteries new, yet to behold.
And maybe all our tragedies and horror stories and fears are not just the makings for dents and the damaging of goods. Maybe they are a vital part of our becoming who God wants us to be. We are better and more beautiful because of them.
Maybe we can trust God when he says we are so much more than who we used to be, who we wish we were, who we are now.
We can trust him when he reminds us that we are unique and wonderful, that we are so much more than any version of the selves we can remember or imagine.
So, here’s to being more than what we’re looking back on, forward to, or wishing for during this time of global crisis.
I pray that in all this solitude and time spent tucked away at home,
you can let God make you whole,
and I pray that you know that you are beloved every step of the way.
