"It's okay to be a girly girl, it's okay!"
The words felt like they hung in the air, swirling me befuddled into a confusion – I just said "That's not me," because it's not. I haven't been much of a girly girl since I was little. I'm okay with it. I remember when I stopped wearing daily makeup and what a relief it was. I love that I don't have to wear curve-hugging clothes that give me an impression of being feminine because they more readily display my figure – which is all any woman's good for, after all.
I'm surprised I didn't take on the title feminist sooner. Though not that surprising, it took stepping back from my Christian bubble to fully understand how much it aligns with me.
I've always looked at the women in my life and felt so grateful for being surrounded by powerful, tenacious humans like them. And yet, so many women still don't know their power and tenacity outside of their relation to men. Many still don't know their value aside from the gender roles we've given that require them to "put on their face" every day, act polite even when being disrespected – be a girly girl.
Women are not allowed to be what we want, we're instead told it's okay to fall back into the stereotype of our gender. What if I want to wear baggy, comfortable clothes instead of heels? What if dressing up and putting on makeup is a special occasion thing, not an everyday thing? Also, can I just damn grocery shop without being catcalled?
Wednesday, December 12, 2018
Friday, December 07, 2018
Unidentifying as a Christian
I've gone around in circles about it in my mind, how to talk about where I'm at – whether to, or whether to keep biting my tongue through one uncomfortable conversation or comment after another. Over the years I have learned that when it comes to pain, given the options to keep silent or speak your truth, truth is always best.
My truth is that I am astonishingly uncomfortable with christianity. I have not attended church regularly for nearing a year. It's been freeing, but it's also been incredibly painful. My worldview, once narrow, rose-colored glass, is now wide open and seemingly boundless, true colors screaming. It's not unlike how very sheltered children sometimes later struggle to function independently in adulthood. Not viewing the world and life through one distinct vintage lens has me feeling a little lost at times.
"Pray for me because...," the words echo within me like a pinball ricochets off walls. I don't really pray anymore. But I can't say that.
You see, I had enough of life's pain, let alone blatantly invalidating responses to it from Christians. Whether it was a 'part of God's plan' for me to question if I had the will to carry on living, or that He would 'give me something better' if I just remained joyful – you know, while suppressing the grief I had festering inside me – I couldn't keep subjecting myself to a club where reality isn't real. A group in which God is attributed with all the pain we endure in life, because He at least has a good motive in the end.
And don't get me wrong, I tried. About two years I spent feeling unbalanced, unfulfilled, sad, and yet I showed up waiting for that feeling to be zapped out of me. Sometimes, I think I thought it was [out of me]...only to see it rear its head again later. Until one Sunday, I couldn't keep fighting to be there, hurting and feeling like a heretic for it. Sadly, after nearly a decade at the same church, I could no longer sit through a service without my skin crawling and my heart racing, my stomach churning. So I stopped. I got up and walked out.
If I'm honest, I hadn't been praying much for a while. Any time I felt something resembling God's presence, it was conveniently interrupted by an exhortation to be even more loudly faithful. I found I needed to protect myself by stepping away.
Little did I know, all sorts of questions were laying in wait for this moment. Years of being in leadership in the church, growing up in the religion, and suddenly I was stumbling into big, difficult questions I never imagined I'd be asking. I also sighed a breath of relief that I was done striving! No more constantly attempting to whittle away my imperfections and become some perpetually joyful saint seemingly impenetrable by life's tragedies. No more being forced to be alone in my pain in a crowd.
I didn't even give it more thought, I sort of walked away and kept going. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a wild heathen or a satanist. But deciding that it was okay to leave church if church wasn't a place that could appropriately address pain, that was a decision that allowed me to begin to heal. I was able to be alone with my pain without anyone trying to force it to become something else; force it to be okay when it felt furthest from it. And that was so freeing. As I look back on it now, it's disturbing how hard it was to be a person grieving and angry in church. I felt like there was no room for me to be there, not that version of me.
It has led to all kinds of trying to parse out God from The Church. Having gone to a public university and worked several places that weren't christian-affiliated, I wasn't ignorant to the fact that the world doesn't understand Christians – in a bad way. It's become even more apparent how invalidating Christians can be of the rest of the world's experience of life. It's become difficult to identify as Christian because sometimes Christianity looks like an extrapolation of what it was meant to be at its core: a way of life centered on love as a gift of self and inclusivity in spite of differences, brokenness, and imperfection.
Since letting these questions marinate in my subconscious, I have struggled to re-engage with Christianity. And yet, I haven't dumped God. I don't really know what to say to him, or how our relationship looks without The Church. But I'm not ready to explore that. That's one reason I share this all, that every well-meaning or assuming comment is like a little scrape on a still-healing wound. You didn't know, and how could you? No one ever expects a faith-filled person to slingshot the other direction into doubt. But as a good friend recently said to me, "I think God is not so insecure as to be distraught over your doubts." To which I'll add, I think God is not so impatient as to abandon me as I process through pain.
Therein lies the second reason I share: I am not alone in this experience of doubting and struggling to find an appropriate way to view the world and perhaps still believe in a good, loving God.
So, whether this encourages practicing Christians to try to validate others' reality, or reassures fellow questioners that doubting and pain are normal parts of life and faith, my story serves its purpose.
My truth is that I am astonishingly uncomfortable with christianity. I have not attended church regularly for nearing a year. It's been freeing, but it's also been incredibly painful. My worldview, once narrow, rose-colored glass, is now wide open and seemingly boundless, true colors screaming. It's not unlike how very sheltered children sometimes later struggle to function independently in adulthood. Not viewing the world and life through one distinct vintage lens has me feeling a little lost at times.
"Pray for me because...," the words echo within me like a pinball ricochets off walls. I don't really pray anymore. But I can't say that.
You see, I had enough of life's pain, let alone blatantly invalidating responses to it from Christians. Whether it was a 'part of God's plan' for me to question if I had the will to carry on living, or that He would 'give me something better' if I just remained joyful – you know, while suppressing the grief I had festering inside me – I couldn't keep subjecting myself to a club where reality isn't real. A group in which God is attributed with all the pain we endure in life, because He at least has a good motive in the end.
And don't get me wrong, I tried. About two years I spent feeling unbalanced, unfulfilled, sad, and yet I showed up waiting for that feeling to be zapped out of me. Sometimes, I think I thought it was [out of me]...only to see it rear its head again later. Until one Sunday, I couldn't keep fighting to be there, hurting and feeling like a heretic for it. Sadly, after nearly a decade at the same church, I could no longer sit through a service without my skin crawling and my heart racing, my stomach churning. So I stopped. I got up and walked out.
If I'm honest, I hadn't been praying much for a while. Any time I felt something resembling God's presence, it was conveniently interrupted by an exhortation to be even more loudly faithful. I found I needed to protect myself by stepping away.
Little did I know, all sorts of questions were laying in wait for this moment. Years of being in leadership in the church, growing up in the religion, and suddenly I was stumbling into big, difficult questions I never imagined I'd be asking. I also sighed a breath of relief that I was done striving! No more constantly attempting to whittle away my imperfections and become some perpetually joyful saint seemingly impenetrable by life's tragedies. No more being forced to be alone in my pain in a crowd.
I didn't even give it more thought, I sort of walked away and kept going. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a wild heathen or a satanist. But deciding that it was okay to leave church if church wasn't a place that could appropriately address pain, that was a decision that allowed me to begin to heal. I was able to be alone with my pain without anyone trying to force it to become something else; force it to be okay when it felt furthest from it. And that was so freeing. As I look back on it now, it's disturbing how hard it was to be a person grieving and angry in church. I felt like there was no room for me to be there, not that version of me.
It has led to all kinds of trying to parse out God from The Church. Having gone to a public university and worked several places that weren't christian-affiliated, I wasn't ignorant to the fact that the world doesn't understand Christians – in a bad way. It's become even more apparent how invalidating Christians can be of the rest of the world's experience of life. It's become difficult to identify as Christian because sometimes Christianity looks like an extrapolation of what it was meant to be at its core: a way of life centered on love as a gift of self and inclusivity in spite of differences, brokenness, and imperfection.
Since letting these questions marinate in my subconscious, I have struggled to re-engage with Christianity. And yet, I haven't dumped God. I don't really know what to say to him, or how our relationship looks without The Church. But I'm not ready to explore that. That's one reason I share this all, that every well-meaning or assuming comment is like a little scrape on a still-healing wound. You didn't know, and how could you? No one ever expects a faith-filled person to slingshot the other direction into doubt. But as a good friend recently said to me, "I think God is not so insecure as to be distraught over your doubts." To which I'll add, I think God is not so impatient as to abandon me as I process through pain.
Therein lies the second reason I share: I am not alone in this experience of doubting and struggling to find an appropriate way to view the world and perhaps still believe in a good, loving God.
So, whether this encourages practicing Christians to try to validate others' reality, or reassures fellow questioners that doubting and pain are normal parts of life and faith, my story serves its purpose.
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