Being Seen in the Dark

In the previous blog I talk about how God is present with people, including the stories of persons who have been assaulted or harassed.  I talk about regardless of whether people are believed, God is present in the dark moments and will be made known.  I end the blog with this statement:

"God was present in these stories when people violated the sacredness of other persons' bodies...."

I thought I should honor such a statement with a full blog post.

God being present in the darkest moments of the human experience is a truth I believe in.
 

God's presence is attested to by Scripture and affirmed by my tradition (Presbyterian U.S.A.).  While preparing for ministry, in my internship and a class called "Pastoral Care" it was emphasized to us that part of our job was to be present with people in order to represent that God was present especially during the moments filled with the most pain and most darkness.  These moments usually meant pain and suffering of the body, the loneliness of assisted living and nursing homes, and the death of loved ones.  As pastors we were to be the calm presence and hopefully remind people that they were not alone or forgotten or forsaken, but that God still loved them and was present with them.

At the same time I was going through therapy to deal with a set of memories that caused me to have crippling panic attacks and struggle with trusting in relationships.  A set of memories that made me super sensitive to stories of rape and assault, especially when dealing with young persons.  A set of memories I did not want to have and spent my entire life trying to repress and making myself believe that I had made up. However, I had to face the reality that a child could not make stuff like that up. No matter how creative.

I am not going to go into details of what happened to me. I do not owe them details to you and the purpose of this blog is not to prove to you that what happened to me is true.  First because it will be distracting from the point, and second because I cannot prove it beyond memory and my story.

Balancing the work from therapy and the work of seminary created an interesting and difficult sandwich of introspection.  Eventually I realized that if I believe God is present in the darkest moments and if I am going to tell other people that God is present, then I needed to see God present in my darkest moments.  I needed to work on seeing God where I literally could not.

I would not suggest doing this unless you are in partnership with a certified therapist.  Because I spent so much time being angry and feeling betrayed.  How come no one saved me?  How come no one knew what was happening?  How could God let this happen to me?  I hated the exercise of sitting in a moment that was so repulsive and gross I almost vomit every time just so that I could look around from God.

I would love to say that it only took a day or a week.  It didn't.  It took a good year of actively working on imagining God present with me for me to begin to see God there. And when it happened it caught me off guard.  I remember the first time it happened because it made me gasp out loud.

 I would love to say that now those memories don't hurt anymore and that I never deal with panic attacks or depression anymore. I can't.

I would love to end this blog with a great token recipe of how to turn dark moments into an evangelical fix, filled now only with light and no more darkness.  I can't, and I won't.

Seeing Jesus present with me doesn't make the darkness disappear or the dark moments good. It doesn't make it easier to stomach or any less repulsive.  It didn't take away the triggers for my panic attacks. Rather, seeing Jesus present with me makes me feel less forgotten, alone, and unloved.  It reminds me that I am seen. 

I do not see light, but I do see that I am not alone.

So to anyone who had dark moments or is currently swimming in one, I have nothing to say that will make it make any sense.  All I can say is that somehow, somewhere, God is present. You are not alone.  You are seen.

Believing is Seeing

It's a line from one of my favorite Christmas movies.  In the movie "The Santa Claus" starring Tim Allen, he becomes the next Santa through a series of events.  At the beginning of his introduction to the North Pole on the fateful day he becomes Santa Claus, an elf by the name of Judy is discussing with him the reality of magic, the North Pole, and Santa Claus.  Tim Allen's character (Scott Calvin) looks around at the wonder that surrounds him and says that though he sees it, he doesn't believe it.

Judy responds, "Seeing isn't believing. Believing is seeing."

I have no doubt some pastor (or two) have used this movie bit as a sermon analogy about how believing in God is seeing God at work, or something.  Rather than talking about that, I am going to take it a different direction.  I am going to talk about believing women who have had their bodies violated and used without their expressed consent.

Before I go too much further, I know that my curtailing the conversation to focus on women is going to bring people who say that boys and men are violated too, which is 100% true and equally as wrong.  Not all sexual assaults are reported, and the number of reports is lower amongst male identifying persons, and that is heart breaking.  But this blog is about believing the stories of the victims.  In the outpouring of sexual assault instances that are coming to light (as they should) there is one prominent male figure who has shared his story about assault.  Actor and former NFL player Terry Crews spoke out about his experience with agent Adam Venit.  Because I read the comment sections like a troll, I couldn't help but notice most of people who saying how brave he was, how courageous, how inspiring.  I noticed it, because days before the comment sections and FB conversations I glanced over in regards to the allegations about Harvey Weinstein were filled with people demanding the women prove it, calling them sluts and whores, and saying with a sense of all knowing that these women were just looking for attention.  Or all the women who came forward about Bill Cosby and the people who still denied the women were telling the truth.

As proud as I am for Mr. Crews speaking out about his experience, I cannot help but feel a deep sadness at the contrast of the conversations. No one doubted him.  No one asked him to prove it.  No one accused him of slander.  No one asked Mr. Crews how much he had drank or what he was wearing or if he was asking for it. 

He was simply believed.  Through belief in him people stated they saw his pain, they saw his experience, they saw how vile it was, and that they saw his personhood.

When we don't believe women, we are saying we don't see them. 

When we don't believe women we are saying we don't see their pain, that we don't see how vile it would be to have that done, and that we don't see them as a person.  When we don't believe women, we don't honor their personhood, their ownership of self and their own bodies and that their bodies bear the image of Christ.

But when we say we believe women's stories, we say that we see them. Not only that, for by believing them we begin to actually see them, to see any pain or anger or confusion they harbor.  We begin to understand them and to care about them, to open and transform our hearts and let God do some long over due housecleaning.

Yet I want to dare us to take a step further.  I want us to believe women without demanding the ransom of their stories.  When we see a scar on the skin, we do not need to hear the story to know that it hurt.  And the hardest part about scars we cannot see is we do not know if it is healed or if it is still bleeding and scabbed.  Or if it is like a phantom limb that will randomly itch and ache with no ability to relieve it.  There is so much we don't know, but I am fairly certain about some things, one of which being that believing a woman leads to us seeing them, seeing their bodies as sacred, caring about them as persons, and slowly building space for the Healer and Sustainer to do the rest.

So if we are to be better at seeing, we need to start by being better as believing.

Preaching on Singleness

Five minutes before service and I was still sitting in my car.  I had spent the last five minutes, after I had parked and turned my car off, wondering what had I gotten myself into.  The profile of the church building stood in the corner of my eye and I tried very hard to ignore it.  I looked over the sermon outline I had prepared, scrawled down in haste as if the Spirit's inspiration would evaporate if I wrote it down slowly and neatly.  I could have re-written it, made it nice and neat and organized. Proper, like a lady pastor should be.  Looking back now, it was comforting to have something that looked on the outside as anxious and nervous as I felt inside.  It was a physical companion I carried with me as I walked into the church as I surrendered in obedience to the Holy Spirit.

I have spent the last year and half doing the ministry of guest preaching to churches in need. Some of the opportunities were from pastors who needed a vacation, but more often than not these were churches who needed a pastor.  For over a year, I heard their anxieties, their fears, their joys, and their struggles.  I heard about their physical pains as they avoided telling me about their emotional or spiritual pains.  When a member died, I could tell they noticed how much space was in the pews.  I could see their fears of their church dying when they asked me to pray for the families of the deceased.  I could see the stress from shouldering the responsibility of keeping the church doors open when they apologized for the small attendance of 25 or 10 or 5.

I never felt uncomfortable preaching to a choir (no literally, sometimes it was only a five member choir in attendance), because where they (or others) might have seen death, I saw life. I saw a steadfast devotion to God.  I saw a willingness to risk being the only one present.  I saw devotion to God even when all their friends were absent by death or sickness.  I saw a great witness to the hope of the resurrection even as my voice echoed in the nearly empty space. And every day, every time, I was honored to the point of tears to be in the presence of such faithfulness.

But I am not writing about their devotion, at least not this time.  Instead, I am writing about how I failed to speak to their fears of their church dying, their anxieties of being without a pastor, and their pain from feeling unloved and abandoned, and especially the pain of seeking a new pastor.  I failed to be faithful to them as they had been faithful to God through the gift I had been given of singleness.

You see, in the Presbyterian Church (USA), the process of matching pastors and churches is a long and laborious task.  Eligible pastors make an online profile, and newly single churches make their own profile, and potential matches are made.  If one party is interested in the other, they begin talking.  The talking may lead to meeting, perhaps over coffee.  The meeting may lead to more meetings, which may lead to a match.  Or, it could lead to one not being interested, one not being picked, or one ghosting with no explanation.

So basically, it is like online dating.  For years I have jokingly described it as such for it is the easiest way to explain my job search process to my non-church or non-Presbyterian friends, but the analogy is pretty spot on.  And it's a process I understand, having willingly put myself through the torturous process of online dating.  The ads make online dating seem so simple and pleasant, but those ads are lying.  Online dating is exhausting and it sucks.  You can spend hours looking for someone to see you, to be vulnerable with, only to have your efforts shoved back in your face.  You can end up feeling more belittled, more alone, and more abandoned than before.  And no matter how strong or self confident of a woman you are, it still hurts.  It still gnaws at you.

It is the same in the pastor search process.  No matter how strong or faithful you are, hopelessness and fear still gnaw at you.  Pain and unanswered questions echo inside our minds and hearts, and we try to never show it.  And it is especially hard when we are happy for our former pastors.  It is hard to hold both happiness and sadness together.  We think faithfulness is not worrying and not doubting.  We think the best way to preserve the church is to not grieve.  We think we need to pick either joy or sorrow.

And for the past year I talked to those fears and anxieties but never talked about them.  I never named and addressed their pain directly.  God worked through me regardless of my failings to be faithful because that is the kind of God we are dealing with - One who uses broken and messy humans.  And in the forgiveness I have received from Jesus, I responded with faithful (nervous filled) obedience. I walked up to the pulpit, set my messy scrawled outline of a sermon in front of me, and looked them each right in the eye as I told them how well I saw their pain, their fears, and their feelings of anger, frustration, and brokenness. I told them it was okay to feel both happy for the former pastor's new position and sad that the pastor is gone.  I told them I could understand how exhausting and tired and abandoned they felt.  I read the beginning words of Habakkuk, in which the exiled people who feel abandoned and forgotten cry out to God, and how God hears them and speaks to them even in their abandoned state because even in exile God had not abandoned them.  God stayed.

You see, I was able to do this because of the gift of singleness.   I knew with confidence no other preacher spoke directly to their vulnerable, soft spots because no one preaches on singleness. 

And through this gift, I knew better than to promise them an easy road to a match, to a pastor/partner.

I knew better than to say that if they are perfect and pure that then and only then will God give them the reward of a pastor/partner who will lead them.

I knew better than to say this is all a part of God's plan, for as much as it is, those words are more hurtful than healing.

I knew better, because through the gift of singleness by the grace of God, the faithfulness of Jesus, and by the power of the Holy Spirit I have been able to see that the promise of the gospel is not the promise of a pastor/partner but the promise that God stays.  That God IS present.  That God's faithfulness is not evident only when times are good or when the church's pews are over flowing with bodies.  God's faithfulness is not given if we are well behaved and have the right people in the pews.  No, God simply IS faithful.  We cannot earn it, and bad times are NOT a sign of a lack of it. 

I was only able to speak to the truth of God being present when things are crappy and how God does stay in our moments of greatest pain because that is the promise declared in the empty tomb that God stays with us - Emmanuel.  And I am only uniquely able to speak to this promise in this way, to beckon persons into moments of vulnerability because I am single.  Every time a married person speaks to me about singleness, it is aggravating and distracting because since they are no longer single there is the unspoken illusion of a partner being the reward and not God's presence with us.  But I make no such illusion or promise other than pointing to the gospel.  In being a single person preaching, I made no such promise that they would be happily wed aka that their church wouldn't die or close down.  I simply said I knew a part of their pain and that I knew God was still present, some how and some where, and would be present regardless of what was to come.  I told them I didn't know how God was present. I just knew God was and is and will be.

I am not saying that marriage is bad or that married people are not faithful to God - this is not an either or situation.  Marriage is indeed a gift, and so is singleness, and this is one of the ways I hope I have been faithful to honoring my singleness as the gift it is.

Love in What You Leave

The coffee shop was filled with the expected Saturday afternoon buzz.  It was April 30th. My mother's birthday, and it was lovely and temperate. The windows were open, allowing the unfiltered sounds of the city to pour in with the breeze. 

Some caffeine seeking cliental walked in and out, ordering their espressos and iced lattes and some snatched up any available real-estate they could. I had arrived early to insure we had a spot.  The only available one was a small round table, close to the register.  I set my hot tea down after trying (and failing) to sip it without burning my mouth and the table teetered ever so slightly, squeaking loudly in protest to my liquid burden.

He had arrived ten minutes ago, ordered his drink, and joined me.  I braced the table, trying to muffle its protestation.  Immediately he had begun to talk about....I can't even remember.  This was the café in which we first met which is why I had picked it.  As a theatre artist I enjoyed the poetic symmetry it established.  As he talked, I wondered if he noticed or would notice, since he heralded himself a great theatre artist.  Since it wasn't really about him, I doubted he would. 

Stopping himself, he asked himself what he was talking about and why, and then asked what I wanted to talk about.

I pulled a deep breath in, gathering as much strength from the sweet, warm spring air as I could and looked him straight in the eyes.  I let my heart peek out from behind the walls I had built in order to protect it from him. 

I said that we were done "seeing" each other, or whatever term ambiguous term we were using. 

I said that I had loved him.

He opened his mouth to begin what he would do - tell me I was wrong and manipulate my emotions with his words to eventually make this all my fault. Make me look and feel stupid. Small. Weak. Unwanted.

I cut him off, my tone slicing through his words.  I said this was my truth and he could not tell me what it was I felt. 

I said I did love him, but that if this is what love looks like, I want no part of it anymore.  I said he no longer gets to touch me. He no longer gets to use me. He no longer gets to make me feel little and insignificant.

He told me he wanted to be friends.  He told me he cared about me.  He told me that he wouldn't have come here at all if he didn't care about me.

Guilt began to rise from my heart up into the back of my throat like bile.

I swallowed.

I said if he really cared about me, he would have ended it with me when he wanted to see other people rather than cheating on me.  I said if he cared, he wouldn't be trying to make me feel guilty.  I said if he cared he wouldn't have been such an asshole.  And I said that I didn't want to see what friendship looked like if this was how he did relationships.

But I couldn't stop there.  For months I rooted through myself looking for the weeds he planted in me.

I found the one that said being in an unhealthy relationship was better than nothing, and I told it that it was wrong. And pulled.

I found the one built on loneliness, that cultivating the lies that I was alone, isolated, and no one understood me.  The one that told me the best way to fix it was to ignore it. I told it no, and pulled.

I found one with that said I was worthless and unlovable, one that was able to grow deep roots from all the years of memories from other people doing and telling me the same. I told it no, that it was bullshit. And pulled.

I found the one that told me it was all my fault, and that I deserved this.  And I told it to shut the fuck up.

Thing is, this garden which flourished under his care was not originally planted by him.  It had been tilled and tended for years of people saying directly or indirectly that my worth as woman was tied up and summed to a romantic relationship.  What he encouraged to grow were seeds dropped from the words of people assuring me that God's faithfulness to me would be evident in me having a someone.  And each person who would nod their heads in agreement that singleness is a gift but then want no part of it, who wanted to cure my singleness with their grandsons, made me feel like I was worthless and unlovable.  This garden was able to grow because we as a Church spend so much time telling women to be in relationships rather than telling them how God loves them, just as they are.  We don't face the actual pain of their loneliness, their additions, their insecurities, and their failures.  We would rather don't teach our girls and women to love themselves with the love that God has for them, which beckons us to leave our Egypts behind.  I'm not trying to place blame on one person or one group of persons - the responsibility for our neglect is all of our to bear and wrestle with.

It was hard.  I thought many times it would break me. There were moments when I almost went back because having something (even something unhealthy and destructive) seemed better than having to learn to love myself.  But with time, tons of tears, and a wonderful therapist, I was able to leave them behind. 

And any time they grow back, I pull them up again and leave them, some easier than others.  You see, I leave these things, this relationship and even harmful friendships, because no matter how deep these lies get planted in me have grown, deeper still was God's love for me.  And I am only able to leave not because of my own strength or because I innately understand my value but rather because of God's steadfast love for me.  A love that wants me to leave Egypt, to leave behind the things that weigh me down and the lies that keep me enslaved.  A love that wants me to find healing and wholeness in ways that may hurt but that are truth-filled and healthy.

Beloved sisters who are reading this and struggling, you are worth being loved.  It is not your fault. You are not alone. You don't have to be perfect and you don't have to pretend to be perfect.  You are loved, and I pray that you trust in God enough to start loving yourself by leaving the garbage behind.