Remaining. Running or resting?

Today is one of those days. One of the days you've been asking God a million questions and he starts answering. And you find yourself sitting at your computer working instead of being able to take note of every little thing he is saying, wishing fate had played the "rich" card on you so you could just sit and write and take in every little thing he is saying - that, or be a monk or a nun with lots of thinking time on your hands...

So, I decided just to stop what I was doing. There is so much going on here in my mind that not to document it would be to let it go by and be forgotten. I am writing it here in my blog because my new Windows 7 does not yet have a word processing program. This is the only place I can write. So, if you find it random and rambling, that's fine, it should have been in my personal files and for my own journaling. But maybe you can use some of it - I don't know.

Maybe some of you are on the same journey as I am. A Christian for my whole adult life, growing up in church, being there every time the doors were opened, knowing what a good Christian should "look like" and "do", well schooled in the art of mask-wearing, and now 30-something years later, starting to ask questions and re-evaluating everything I ever knew and learned about what a Christian "should be" and "should look like", and what the church "should be". Seeing that a lot of this somehow just isn't working. And if it was from God, why isn't it working? And, if it's not working, was it even from God?

That one topic alone is a book needing to be written - actually they are being written and selling by the truckloads right now. But I tend to work my way through my own thoughts and God's words to me, before picking up a book to copy their thoughts and revelations. Everybody's in search of the quote that will set the whole Facebook world on its ear. As odd as it might sound, I have never ever in my life read a Beth Moore book or done a Beth Moore study. Or any of those other "women's Bible studies" from great women of the faith in the Southern Baptist Church. I keep meaning to, but I keep getting caught up in what God is telling me himself. And oddly enough, sometimes it's stuff he's told those ladies too, and it's already in a book somewhere, but since I haven't read the books, I don't know that.

Recently, my husband and I heard God telling us and releasing us to go to a different church. It's really the first time I've heard that and it is an odd feeling, one that I'm not quite sure what to do with. As a good little Southern Baptist girl growing up in the Bible belt, I've experienced all the "ways" that "God has told me" to go to a new church. Ways like church splits, too many deacons in control, me wanting control, not liking the preacher, thinking the preacher doesn't like me, wanting to be a little more entertained with better music and speaking, not being "fed" enough. We all have used those phrases and more, and somehow managed to link them to God's will for our lives. Let's face it, we just didn't want to work through the conflict and do the hard things, and we couldn't stand the thought of being there another minute, so it was better (easier) to run away somewhere else and get caught up in their misery (or add to it). Or maybe we were in a church he never called us to be in, in the first place! Heck, even the preachers themselves are in this predicament! The bad thing about not hearing God for yourself from the get-go is that when you are years and miles down the road, boy it is a lot more difficult to start hearing then and doing all the over-correcting you have to do to undo all the false beliefs you've become entrenched in have been replaced by truth.

So that's where I find myself. Quite a predicament! I am called to a baby church plant that espouses the very things I am very uncomfortable with - community, relationship, honesty, giving up control and being real and transparent, and doing in connection with being. And I am more excited about it than I have ever been about a church in my life and at the same time a little concerned because I know there are a lot of changes already taking place that God wants to work through in my life. Not comfortable, but still exciting, because I know this is right and it's good and it's not something I am running away from.

My granddaddy was a preacher, my uncle, and others in my family. I think I was birthed on the back pew in time for my mother to go play the offertory song. I can still taste the iron in the water from the well at that old church I grew up in, feel the chill and smell the stuffiness in the building, when I went in early to unlock the doors and turn the heat or air on with my granddaddy. And I can just as vividly remember the first lie I told in church and how I was sure God was going to strike me dead then and there.

It was a Sunday night "training union" class, and I was about 11 or 12 years old I guess. This particular class was called Bible Learners and the whole purpose of the class was to read the Bible, a noble pursuit don't you think? We went on the honor system, telling each week how many chapters we had read. Well, like any 11 or 12 year old, saved or not, reading the Bible wasn't at the top of my list - especially since good old King James was the only translation at the time. I had good intentions and a lot of guilt and condemnation to go on top of the good intentions, but seems like I never quite made it to the part of the day where I sat and read the begats and begots and thees and thous. However, one particular Sunday night, the teacher was going around the room, asking how many chapters we had read and something clicked in me at that moment in time. I knew I was the preacher's granddaughter, I knew I was expected to be a good girl, I knew it was not acceptable to not read the Bible, so I had a choice to make. And I lied! I told the teacher that night that I read some unthinkable amount of chapters that week (something like 20 or so). The teacher's face beamed and lit up and she gushed over me as she complimented me and compared me in front of the class of young heathens that had not done as well as myself that week. I had that taste of what it felt like to have arrived and I was holy,and by far holier than everybody else in the room. Mission accomplished. Masquerade successful. And a few short weeks later, I stood in front of the church while that same teacher gushed about my dedication to reading God's word and pinned on me the coveted green and gold Bible Learners pin, signified by a gold B and an L intertwined, , but all I could see was the L - L for Liar! And it is then and there that I began to learn the fine art of Christian improv. Because, after all, what is most important in this Christian life I was learning about was appearances, convincing the others that you had no problems, that you were completely victorious in all areas of life, that you never had problems or issues or hang-ups or even hurts, and God help if you ever questioned anything. There would be a healthy ladle full of heaping guilt and questioning your salvation poured upon your curious and pondering little head.

And oh the stories I have to tell - deacons curled up in fetal positions with their ears plugged while my grandfather preached, ugly phone calls to his house, secret meetings, visiting churches on Easter where you were run out with a cane by some old lady who claimed you were sitting in her pew. Oh don't even get me started on the church.

I'm going to stop for today, but let me end it by saying this. Many of us and our children are quite jaded and cynical because of the things we've experienced in church. But I have to remember this before I go any further. Those people, many of them, at least, were actual "blood-bought, Bible-believing" Christians, just like we cynical and jaded folks are. Trouble is, they were taught lies too. I truly believe these people loved God and wanted to be holy and good people. They were just handed it down by the previous generation, and the time has finally come in our society to get real and question the way we've always done it. So, before we go to the next day jaded and judging, just try to believe the best about those people that have hurt you in your past church experience. Because, for me, what it's all about now is wiping the slate clean, unlearning everything I knew, and relearning it accurately and truthfully. And for that - I'm excited. Just this one week has been a tremendous social experiment in Christian expectations, as I will allude to one day later, and probably offend you with at the same time, haha.

The older I get, the less I know and the more flaws I see in me, and that is why I am on this journey, this journey for the truth and nothing but the truth - So help me, God!