It’s been a long 5+ weeks since this thing went on…this big, heavy purple thing. I cannot tell you how excited I am to get it off tomorrow…and just am so hopeful that I am done with at least the restrictions of the cast. The road to recovery…now that is a different story. I have a long way to go to get this physical body whipped back into shape…not to mention my gait, my ankle and my knee on my right side might take even more work to get them all back into alignment.
As I’ve been reflecting back on these last 5 weeks this week, as I’ve been reflecting back on all I’ve learned in this state of physical brokenness – I can now see the beauty of what happened to me last week. I don’t think I lost my faith as much as it was broken…and just as the road to recovery is always an uphill battle – it seems that healing my faith and my trust in my Faith…well that also is an uphill road. Just as the initial break of anything is the most painful, and those pains might take a few weeks to settle down into a dull ache – I am seeing that the pain of my faith “breaking” will also take some time to settle down before it becomes that dull ache. Yet, when things are freshly broken, because they are so raw and easily irritated by this or that – you are kind of forced to face your own limitations, your own fears, your own insecurities as you learn that you cannot do everything on your own, that you have to reach out and ask for help…and you have to sometimes have to back out of bits and parts of life in order to restore the brokenness. And just as something that has been broken is supposedly stronger than it was before – I am praying that this is true for both my foot and my faith.
FIRST THINGS FIRST – TO MEN
My last post. Let’s talk about it for a minute if you don’t mind. I realize now that perhaps it wasn’t the best idea to write when I did – in the midst of my anger. Or perhaps it wasn’t best to tie it together with so many different factors of what was going on in my life. Or perhaps I could have written what I did write in a different manner. But I didn’t…and now it is out there forever to be read as is the delight and the curse of the internet. Of course I could go edit it…but that wouldn’t be very honest of me? No, I will live with what I wrote and let it be a lesson for me in the future.
I just want to express that it was not my intent to insult men in any way, shape or form. I know this was not my intent in writing last week – even in my state of anger. I thought I had tried to express myself in a way that showed that I was angry at a system – a cultural system that I feel is damaging to all of us. Yet, I am learning that no matter how hard I try to word things just right – that someone will always read into them something that I didn’t mean to say at all. Gosh, I find this happens all the time in person – even between females. Communication – it is not easy!
On that note, I want to say again as I did at the beginning of my series that I am not a man-hater or man-basher. That is and never has been my intent. I see the beauty in God’s design to make 2 people so completely different from each other…yet when they come together to reflect God in both His Maleness and Her Femaleness. I have so much respect for men and what they are truly capable of in this world. I am utterly dedicated in more ways than one to understanding and upholding manhood, and encouraging those men and future men around me to be all that God has designed them to be.
Lastly, I want to offer a public apology for what I wrote about the male pastors at my church. Re-reading what I wrote, I do wish I had worded this differently. The pastors at my church have been some key figures to helping me understand Scripture in a light that has brought me much freedom. They are some crazily gifted men that seek to honor God with their service. I regularly hear that they are glad they work at a church that makes “giftedness” not “gender” the qualification for leadership. My intent was not to diminish the work they have done around this issue. Even if I feel the equality could be taken further, I feel it was unfair of me to say they weren’t living out equality. I am sorry to paint a picture of these men that simply isn’t true.
MOVING ON DOWN THE ROAD
This week was a painful one – if that wasn’t obvious by the last post. I felt completely raw, jagged and exposed. I couldn’t bear the thought of opening my Bible or even listen to worship music. Every time a thought about God came to my head, well I can’t even fully express what happened and don’t want to get emails about what people think I am saying – so I will just skip this one.
Long story short, just as when I realized I was going to be in a cast for 5 weeks(!!!) I let myself have a small freak out session before pulling myself together and reaching out for help – I guess that is what I have done with this “break” as well. I’ve had my freak out session and now I’m moving on. I’m reaching out:
~ I’ve got books coming to re-teach me about history and teach me for the first time about women in history.
~ I’ve been able to reach out to friends and been supported more than I could have ever imagined.
~ I’m reaching out to other women ahead of me on the journey…
~ …and I’m spending time looking back at my last few months and am convinced more than anything that this is EXACTLY where God was leading me to.
Then the most amazing thing happened this morning. Well really started off not so amazing this morning when I found myself near my church with a very uneasy, verge of anxiety feeling. What is it with this place? This church that I’ve had a personal love/hate relationship with for how many years now? Oh, about 13 give or take a few. What is the love/hate…before you go thinking I’m going to say more wrong stuff? Well, it goes something like this: I love to come back to it every few years and hate to leave it.
Yet, when I finally decided to throw up my hands today and tell God that I do still believe in Her/Him (for lack of a better term in English) and that I would follow this path I am on…when I committed to this knowing that my church as no longer to be my church – it seemed like the fog of “no hope” started to lift. All the uneasiness that has been in the pit of my stomach this past week at this point seems to be gone. So it seems that, a call I possibly heard (if it wasn’t just me hearing voices again 🙂 back in like March – well it seems that I might have actually been hearing things right…and that it is time for me to be moving on down the road…
LIVING INTO THE QUESTIONS
I have no idea what any of this means more than you do. I just know that as I said, I need a break, a time out to regroup, to look at the Scriptures myself in more detail and in the order I want to look at them…to mull on them for a while and see what I can find. I’ve already found some exciting things about the Feminine side of God, already had some important thoughts that actually took the form of more questions and – oh! am seeing God’ sense of humor that I dearly love. One of those moments is in the quote from above, which was from a book that I had downloaded a few weeks ago and just “rediscovered” last night. Compare it to the start of my last post.
For now, though, more than anything I am trying to not rush myself past living into my questions.
