So we just kept showing up.
The people were nice, but it wasn’t like it was that different than anywhere else, really. We made a few friends. I hatched a master plan to make friends by volunteering for a thing here and there (it worked). Some months, we didn’t go even once, other months, we didn’t miss a week. The tinies loved every Sunday, begged to go back, but that’s normal for them, they just love church, they don’t carry an ounce of the baggage their parents seem to cart around about the gathering of the believers.
I got together with some women, sometimes we became friends, other times, we didn’t, it just wasn’t a great fit, we weren’t clicking, but that was OK, somehow. Other times, I did find friends, find a moment of laughter and connection. Even more miraculously, perhaps, I found women that read my blog (if you can believe it) and somehow, even that was a gift.
I could be the same person in every corner of my life, no more masks, no more hiding my questions, my journey, my realness. It was just all out there and life became seamless. I went to Bible study and not a single woman there said a word about The Bachelor, they prayed for one another, and it felt real, like everything I’ve been wanting and yearning for, a bit of a mess, and so full of Love. I made friends. I began to feel like I’d like to be good, good friends with a couple of them.
Loving His Church
I stood in the school gym and I realized, this is church. God has restored me to community somehow; it was sneaky, but now here it is, a gift: loving his church.
All of my reading, all of my writing, all of my rantings and tears and frustrations were real. I felt lost in church, like I didn’t fit there, the whole round-peg-square-hole thing that so many of us feel about faith communities. And I laid it down, surrendered it and just said to Jesus, I have no clue, you figure it out, how can a woman like me be a pastor’s wife again, how we can even go to church again. I haven’t really cared to make a big deal of it anymore.
But on a whim, last Easter, we showed up and somehow I kept showing up and God kept showing up and now it sort of feels like a miracle, like something sacred has happened in my life.
Body of Christ, is that you? You’re not perfect, you kind of tick me off sometimes, but I think I’d like to stick around, to keep doing life together.
And here’s the funny thing: I don’t feel like anyone but me now.
