Coming Clean: I No Longer Believe in the Church

The desire to write this post has been in my mind for months, but I’ve struggled in finding the appropriate words for what I’ve been thinking.  Even now, I’ve typed and re-typed a dozen different lines, still grappling with what I actually want to say.

I was introduced to Jesus when I was five years old, and I surrendered my heart to him at the age of seven.  I’m now twenty-five, and in the last twenty years I’ve spent a lot of time with the church.  I’ve also been spiritually abused by the church.  Purity culture told me that I was worthless unless I was a virgin, and that if I dared to masturbate, I was defiling myself and deserving of God’s disapproval.  I also learned at the tender age of fourteen that it was my responsibility to keep my body covered so that I did not become a stumbling block for teenage boys.  Time and again, I found that “protecting” the spirituality of others was more important than fostering my own.  When I tried to kill myself at sixteen, the church was silent.  And those who did speak up, only offered empty words about how I would get better if I only had more faith.  “You can move mountains with your faith,” they would say, “This is just a test, read the book of Job.  Let that fill you with hope.”  But it didn’t fill me with hope.  It just made me feel shittier.

I am desperately seeking a place where the community looks at my brokenness and says, “Me, too,” rather than offering a religious Band-Aid.  I am so tired of religious platitudes uttered by my well-meaning brothers and sisters that wind up hurting more than helping.  I need authenticity and grace.  I need a space full of safety and warmth.  I need a refuge that will welcome me on the days when I am bubbly and outgoing, but will also fully embrace me when I’m bitchy and difficult.  Most of all, I need a community of messy people who work toward creating a better world in ways that are both big and small.  A place that will never expect me to pray my depression and anxiety away, and that will never tell me I need to cover up, lest I lead my brothers in Christ to falter spiritually. 

I am finished with churches whose pews are full to the brim every Sunday morning, and whose members profess their closeness to Christ without ever pursuing a community outside the sanctuary.  I hate all the show.  I hate the pretense.  I hate that Christians are obsessed with scrubbing our dirtiness away; constantly pretending that we aren’t ugly and weak.  I am dirty.  I am broken.  I will not hide these things from God, and I will not hide them from humanity.  I will not pretend that my weakness disappears simply because God is the most powerful.  God is with us in the struggle; but the struggle does not disappear.  I will not hide my doubt, and I will not refuse to question.  I will not be so consumed with living a sin-free life that I neglect to use my talents and strengths to glorify my Lord. 

I am afraid that if I open myself to church, I’ll spend another ten years fixing spiritual damage done by in the name of God.  I have faith in my God, but I have lost any affection I once held for the church.  I hope that one day I find my way back again.  I pray that one Sunday morning I’ll walk through the doors of a sanctuary and simply feel the love of Jesus.  In the meantime, I will pray for grace, a heart that forgives, and a mind that is open to the body of Christ.

We must allow ourselves to be uncomfortable.

It's been almost an entire year since I last blogged.  WOW.  Since it's been forever, I just wanted to let everyone know that I plan on updating this blog semi-regularly within the next two months.  I'm dangerously close to finishing my BA in International Relations, so most of my time is devoted to that for the time being.  However, this is my last full semester of classes, so I will have considerably more free time beginning mid-May.

The past few months--through both school and my friends--I have learned a lot about the systemic racism toward people of color around the world.  So when I come back to blogging, you can expect to see quite a few posts dealing exclusively with race.  (Maybe even some guest posts from friends of mine?)  It's an important issue, and one that the United States (or any other country in the world, for that matter) can not afford to sweep under the rug any longer.  I also plan on tackling other hard issues like human trafficking--specifically how anti-trafficking advocacy can be both positive and damaging to the movement--, as well as pertinent global issues.

Talking about these things are not easy and often give us all a pit in our stomachs, but as I navigate my twenties, I am learning that in order to grow we must allow ourselves to be uncomfortable.  We need to learn to face things together:  with open minds, hearts, ears, compassion, and love.  We must stop being so reactive, and instead listen.  When others share their lived experiences with us, rather than becoming angry or defensive, let's try to listen instead.

I want this to be a space of listening and understanding.  A place where we can all agree that disagreeing is a good thing, because when we discover the motivations behind the behaviors and thoughts of those around us, our differences seem to matter less.  In fact, I think that the ways in which we are so fundamentally different--yet intrinsically the same--are the most beautiful things about the human experience.  I'm not going to be perfect, and I'm probably going to put my foot in my mouth more times than I can ever count.  But I'm here for the long haul.  If I say something offensive, please call me out (from a place of love, and not righteous indignation).  I want to hear your opinions, and I want to share mine with you.  And hopefully we'll each end up growing.

Love is all you need

I hear all the time about how in order to be a Christian, you must infallibly believe in absolute truths.  There is no room to question God or his law.  God is unwavering.  God is absolute.  With God, everything is black and white.

But Jesus, Jesus came to amend all that.  Jesus is compassionate.  He is flexible.  He is radical.  He is both God and man.  He is love.  He understands our humanness.  He came to give us a chance at redemption.  What was once black and white is now gray. 

Jesus gave us the chance to be unabashedly human.  He came to show us that some rules are meant to be broken, and some "church" leaders are not to be trusted. Not so that we could willfully defy him, but so that despite all the mess in our lives, we could always keep a connection to God.  With Jesus, it doesn't matter how much baggage you have, because he will always be there to help unpack all of it. We are never too broken for him.  In fact, I believe it is often at our most broken that Jesus does his most amazing work.

We must stop focusing so intently on the end goal of holiness and turn instead to emulating the radical love that is Jesus’ legacy.  Dogma and rigid rules are nothing more than distractions.  We must not fear adversity, but instead see that when we struggle, we struggle with God.  God will not abandon us if the hem of our skirts is too short or if we interpret the Bible differently than others.  Our spirituality hinges on the condition of our hearts, not the amount of rules we break and keep.

Please know that I am not trying to say that we should live in any way we wish.  I am only saying that our focus should be on following God rather than adhering to rules and restrictions dictated by man.  When I stand before the Lord at the end of my life, I don't want to say that I led a sinless life.  I want to say that I used my gifts and abilities to bring glory to God, and that I served as many people as possible.

The beauty of grace is that it makes life not fair.

It's strange to think that the most hopeful moment of my history also happens to be the most painful.  Gratitude, optimism, and resilience have always come second nature to me and I attribute the bulk of these three qualities to my adoption.  I learned optimism the day I boldly asked my mother's boyfriend is he would be my new daddy and he shyly replied, "Maybe."  I learned resilience a year later when she didn't come home after a day of work, and I prepared for the fallout of her absence.  Gratitude I learned when the fallout didn't happen, when I knew that this man I had known for such a short period of time would, in fact, be my new daddy.  My dad has shown me throughout my life that family isn't about blood; it's about love.  Adoption has enriched my life in ways I am still only beginning to understand.  It has made me hopeful to a fault, and bestowed in me a loving kindness for all people - regardless of their relation to me.

But if adoption is responsible for my positivity and resilience, it is also the source of the longing, loneliness, and hollowness that have gnawed at my insides for as long as I can remember.  My biological parents weren't the people they needed to be to raise a daughter, and I understand that.  My mother was battling a crippling addiction and I hadn't really known my biological father since I was a toddler.  They were essentially strangers to me, and I was infinitely better off with my adoptive dad.  I knew that then, and I know that now.

But the rejection still hurt in ways I couldn't understand at the age of seven.  It wasn't until my teen years that I began to grasp the weight of adoption on my heart and soul.  I had an awesome life, great friends, and a dad who pushed me toward pursuing my dreams.  But still, something felt off.  My parents' rejection - no matter how great a life I had apart from them - scarred me.  It hurt.  It still hurts.  This is just a fact of life.  Like an arthritic knee that aches with approaching rain, the pain in my heart ebbs and flows.  There are days I am crushed under waves of grief, but there are others when I feel nothing but a sting.

I once seethed with a self-righteous anger against by parents; full of indignation that they could ever give their daughter away to a stranger.  Why couldn't they be what I needed them to be?  It all seemed so unfair that my friends had complete families with both mom and dad present.  It all seemed so easy for them and I began to resent that easiness.  It simply wasn't fair.  But life isn't fair.  It's not an easy truth to swallow, but it is the truth nonetheless.

I don't know what makes some people better suited for parenthood than others, but both types of people have children all the same.  It happens.  There is nothing to do but accept it.  The funny thing, though, is that once I accepted life's unfairness things began to make more sense.  I finally found some peace.  Where I once saw a curse, I now see a beacon of hope.  I might have lost two parents when I was still too young to comprehend the depth of their influence in my life, but I gained a father who taught me what unconditional love looks like in action.  And for that alone, I would do it all over again.  

I have been in reunion with my biological family for nearly six years, and most days I am still as confused and uncertain about it as I was when I first made contact.  But in my search to find where they fit in my life, I found exactly where my dad belongs.  For reasons I couldn't control as a child, he became my dad.  And now, for reasons I fully control, he remains my dad - the man who shaped my identity most.  There is no comparison; no competition.  And there shouldn't be.  

There is still plenty of room in my future for my biological family, and I eagerly welcome the new experiences.  But for now, it's hard, and I won't lie about that.

This post is the first in a series about the messiness of adoption and what it's like to be a young adult adoptee.  I don't speak for anyone, but myself, and these experiences are my own.

Reflections on 2013

As this year draws to an end, like so many others around the world, I feel the need to reflect over the previous 12 months in my life. 2013 was a year of accomplishment and extreme growth for me. From expanding business relationships to my personal relationships, I have changed in virtually every area. A close friend once told me that the person I was at 18 would be nothing like the person I was at 21 and that this process would continue all of my life. I didn’t believe her at the time, but as I’ve grown older, I’ve learned that each year her words become truer and truer. My current 23 year old self seems so distant and profoundly different than who I was five years ago. And five years from now, I’ll look back on these words and revel at how incredibly young-minded and naïve I am today. It’s a humbling and inspiring experience to know that I will (hopefully) continually change and mature until the day I leave this planet.

I realize that it’s pretty clichéd to write a post about reflecting on the previous year while simultaneously calling my former self a stranger, but that’s really the only accurate description I can give. Clichés may be overdone, but sometimes they are all that fit. 2013 has not been such an awesome year because of me, though; it has been 100% because of God. This year has been full of uncertainty, and it forced me to throw myself head first into my relationship with the Father. And though it’s a decision I must constantly renew, I have never once regretted or questioned putting my faith entirely in God.

Anyone who knows me knows that I have been given a passion for seeing an end to modern day slavery within my lifetime, and this passion has driven my thoughts and actions for a very long time. In April of this year, I was blessed with the fantastic opportunity of volunteering with a local non-profit organization which directly serves victims and survivors of human trafficking in Virginia. I work with such a dedicated, brilliant, steadfast, and compassionate group of people who are the definition of love personified. Each day I am reminded of how fortunate I am to know and interact with such noteworthy and motivating people.

My boyfriend also became my future husband this year, and we’re both anxiously and enthusiastically awaiting our wedding in mid-August 2014. All my life, my spiritual leaders warned me of the dangers of cohabiting with my significant other prior to marriage, and while I know our living situation isn’t pleasing to God, it has never once separated me from celebrating and loving my Father in Heaven. 2013 has had its ups and downs, but God has seen me through it all and he has remained a constant beacon of hope and strength.

I imagined adulthood would be terrible and awful and unenjoyable; but how incredibly wrong I was. Becoming an adult—while admittedly very terrifying—has been the most rewarding, exciting, and enthralling adventure of my life; and I am stoked to see where God will lead me in 2014 and in the years to come.

“Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” – Isaiah 43:18-19

This. So much this.

"Adoption feels like a gigantic knot to me. A huge balled up knot that is the complicated life of adoption, open adoption, two families, extended family from four sides, explaining which “mom” I'm talking about and emotions. Those damn emotions that still confound and confuse me decades later – you would think I would be accustomed to this life by now.

But I’m not.

It’s unpredictable not only in the actions, thoughts, feelings and motivations of others, but also it is unpredictable in my own actions, thoughts, feelings and motivations. That factor, the unpredictability, gives the knot a life of its own.

I realize that some people may think we all have unpredictable lives and to that, I agree. It is true, nothing is promised, we only have today, or right now – the present. But, I have no problem living in the present. In fact it’s one of the things I’m actually good at doing. The more I live in the moment, taking nothing for granted, the more I can ignore that damn knot.

But occasionally, I cannot ignore it. Unpredictability sets me right in the middle of the heavy ropes and dares me to try to untangle the knot.

And I try.

I work on the tangled mess and try to unravel it one thread at a time. Rarely do I know if I am making any progress or if I am simply creating a bigger mess in the end.

I fear the latter is what is happening."

-The Adoption Knot

Thoughts on the most wonderful time of the year.

The holiday season is in full swing.  Christmas trees and lights are going up, Christmas carols have been playing on the radio for weeks, and the overwhelming spirit of Christmas cheer is nearly palpable.  One thing I've noticed though, is as Christmas draws near, people seem to have less patience.  And with little patience, a short temper typically follows; particularly when it comes to interacting with cashiers and other retail workers.

I'd like to believe we live in a world where most people are reasonable, decent, and genuinely kind at their core.  But I've watched some of the nicest, most decent people I know verbally berate cashiers for computer glitches, and it sometimes makes me wonder.  I worked in retail for a few years, and in that time I encountered a lot of rude people.  Although I don't have any true horror stories of my own, I have been appalled on many occasions at the way I've seen other people treat retail workers.
When I have questioned these people about their behavior, the most popular response is, "This is what they're paid to do, and they need to do it correctly."

Stop.  Just stop.  Stop using the fact that your cashier gets paid as justification for acting like a jerk.  Their mistakes do not give you license to belittle or shame who they are as people.  I bet if you asked any retail employee what their favorite part of their job is, very few would say the customers.  But I bet if you asked them what their least favorite part was, the vast majority would say customers.  In an industry tailored around the consumer, isn't it just a little sad that very few of the workers actually like the people they're supposed to be working to please?

I can empathize with anyone who loses their temper occasionally.  I lose mine from time to time as well, and when that happens I often take it out on whoever is around me.  But that doesn't make lashing out okay or acceptable.  The lines are going to be long regardless of how you feel or act.  Computer glitches will continue to happen, causing quick purchases to drag on for nearly twenty minutes.  The holidays are stressful for both employees and customers, but just try to remember that everyone involved is a human with feelings of their own.  So the next time you feel like you're about to lose your cool in the checkout line, take a deep breath, count to ten, and then decide if this is really worth freaking out over.  Chances are, it's not.