Coming clean

I have been looking at this blog of mine with wistful eyes lately. I love that it gives me a place to write (though that once finely-tuned muscle has atrophied a bit). I love that I can document the ins and outs of our family's daily life, to see how the girls have grown and changed, to remember what has been important to us. I love that I've connected with people through it, and have even made a friend a thousand miles away.

Lately, though, it has been hard to balance the good, of which there is so much, when something else has been weighing so heavily on my mind. I have felt like a hypocrite, acting like everything is fine while ignoring the elephant in the room--even if I was the only one who actually knew the elephant was there. And so I've almost stopped writing altogether.  It's a typical Amanda reaction. When Josh and I fight, and I get upset enough, I just quit talking and refuse to engage further discussion (this is one of my...shall we say...less than appealing personality traits, one which Josh loves. Or not.) When I went through a particularly difficult time in Nashville, I saw a counselor who encouraged me to write my way through my battle. Seemed like an obvious solution to an English major who has been filling up journals since the 4th grade. But I just couldn't do it. Grief robs me of words.

But I am tired of not writing, because while I am not writing about the bad, I don't write about the good, either. And maybe there is healing in saying everything, not just the neatly wrapped things. So tonight I am laying it out there.

Deep breath.

For the second time in as many years, Josh and I have walked away from the church we thought would be our "home."

Our last Sunday was in the middle of August, and it is still painful to write those words. I wonder how long it will be until it doesn't hurt. Sometimes I think it always will.

When we left our last church early last summer, we did so quietly, without much fanfare, and we were gone more than a month before anyone even noticed. The reasons aren't important, but it still hurt, but we took some time off to lick our wounds and reconsider what we needed and wanted to get out of a church experience. About a month later, we were invited to attend a church in town by a friend who loves like Jesus with skin on. And so, with a lot of hope measured with anxiety, we went.

For awhile, it seemed like we had found what had eluded us. The people were absolutely beautiful. They loved on our girls, and they loved us as individuals as well as a family. They knew our names. There were smiles and hugs and handshakes. There was community, and there was caring. Elaina and Ellie often raced each other to Sunday school and were welcomed with open arms by people who knew them by name, knew their likes, and had a way of making them feel every ounce of the special little girls they are.

The messages, especially in the beginning, were inspiring. There was grace and humility and challenge and hope. Our conversations on the way home focused on the content of the sermons and its application into our lives. One of the first sermons we heard, in particular, titled "Neither Do I Condemn You," about the woman at the well, has stuck with me all these months later. We even had the privilege of hearing Bob Goff speak.

For many months, going to church was a joy.

And then, it wasn't.

The love and humility that drew us in faded bit by bit. It was replaced with messages that suggested if we prayed in the right way or believed in the right things, anonymous checks would arrive in our mailboxes. When messages were given on how to deal with adversity, there was no grace, no call for reflection, just a simple, well, if you meet adversity, it's them or it's the devil, but it's certainly not you. We were told, on several occasions, that the only acceptable response to homosexuality was rejection, as if it was the only concern Jesus had on the cross. It was that topic, and the absolution with which this rejection was preached as the infallible word of God, which drove Josh, and then me, to explore what the Bible actually says on the topic, to study the evolution of the text, to begin to grapple with what it all means. 

That is what the senior pastor challenged us to do. "If you think I'm wrong on this," he'd say, "look into it, and you'll see I'm not." And so Josh, tired of what he thought was homophobia, turned to scholarship. He told me on many occasions that if what he found jived with what he was hearing every Sunday, he'd shut his mouth and sign on the dotted line. But, of course, it didn't. Josh's heart broke at times with what he learned, like, for example, that the story of the adulterous woman mentioned in the inspiring Neither Do I Condemn you sermon was not original to the text, but was added centuries later by a scribe. But more than that, his passion for knowing the authentic Jesus has only grown. At times I swear I have never been more frustrated with him because he kept challenging so many things I  believed to be true and trustworthy, and sometimes, I just wanted to be left alone where I was comfortable and knew the right way or the right argument. Sometimes I still do. But honestly, I have never been more proud of him.

Even though I agreed fundamentally with Josh's research, I drug my feet in the beginning. I just didn't want to face leaving again, and I knew it would likely lead to that. I didn't want him to be wrong, but I wanted him to be wrong enough that we wouldn't have to change anything. I read some of the scholarship with him, and I learned a lot more than I bargained for. (Josh tells me often that I want to replace Right Belief with Right Belief, and he's right.) I've studied oral history in literature and sociology, and I know how stories morph over time until they are set down in print and even then aren't immune to change, and yet I couldn't wrap my mind around the possibility that the Red Words in the Gospels weren't actually spoken by Jesus exactly as they were recorded.

For months, we went to church on Sundays and studied the rest of the week and tried to reconcile the two. The love kept us going back even when the sermons made us shake our heads. And then, one Sunday in August, even that wasn't enough.

The pastor was preaching on creating our own Ebenezers for places and moments in which our walks with God had reached a new definition. Josh and I were both engaged in the message, and I found myself thinking of places and times that had made the most difference to me. And then, out of nowhere, the pastor threw homosexuals under the bus yet again and said, "If that makes me a hater, well, then call me a hater." People in the auditorium cheered. I swallowed the lump in my throat and tried not to cry. After the sermon, we gathered up our smiling daughters and walked out for the last time.

It was clear on that bright Sunday afternoon that if the senior pator was a "hater" for believing that homosexuality was the cross that crucified Christ, then my Josh and I would be seen not as followers of Christ who had studied and searched and tried all they could to reconcile what  we heard each week and found it impossible: we would be seen as sheep, swallowing the kool-aid of popular culture. There was no opportunity for discussion, no olive branch extended to those who love the same God and want to live the teachings of the same Jesus but who look at things in a different way. Instead, a door was slammed in our faces. And so we left.

The last two months have hurt more than I can put into words. I have cried so many times that we walked out again, and that we were left with no choice. The pain has been at times almost unbearable. And the thing is, I want to go to church. I want to worship God authentically. I want to go somewhere where Jesus has skin on and where I am challenged to love others in the reckless way He did. I want to teach my daughters what is actually right and not just what I want to be right. I didn't want to say goodbye to people I love. I didn't want to say goodbye to the possibility that this is where our family would settle for good. But that is what happened. The wound is deep. I am willing it to heal, but it is slow. And right now, I am not sure when we'll be ready to try again.

I just pray that some day, we will. Until then, this song sums it up.