I have a confession.
I struggle to confess.
I lack strength to say when I've been
wrong. I think sin left my vocabulary many years ago. When I no longer
struggled with lust, I figured the rest of my past was just that - in the past.
I was a new creation, abundantly living in the King. But sin lurked at the
door, I invited it into my living room, and it took up residence but this time
sin had a new name - please meet "This is who I am".
I have another confession.
I have doubted God is big enough. The hole
in my heart is large, the desires of my soul so deep I could drown in their
waters - and I fear God isn't big enough to fit. If you are a child of the
Christian 90's or 2000's you probably heard "God Shaped Hole" by
Plumb. But what if that hole is so large and vast that even God Himself is not
big enough to fill it? And to be honest, being in church, seminary and
community has furthered this belief - that God isn't big enough to fill this
void, because He made it too large for Himself. Yes God is the only way we are
whole, yet the Body is the place we find fulfillment.
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On a recent car ride home from visiting
one of my many sisters in college, the conversation got heated between my
husband and me. He was poking at a wound, and me being the lion I am - I roared
to consume rather than realize my need to confess the pain and accept the help
from the other to be healed.
Like most of our conversations it was
about God, faith and family. As many other millennials have recently confessed,
I was wounded by this faith I had walked into. It seems almost every day I read
some blog or note about my generation leaving the church, of walking away from
this institution. I understand, it's a hot button issue - we want to love but
the politics and "God's side" of issues have been a death
grip around our culture. Rather than sprouting forth love, by witnessing the
Trinity's perichoresis we've pointed the world to a God of
death and judgment, where we are the judges and God a mere puppet of our wisdom.
While I have my own battle wounds over the
last two decades of church going, and my story of trying to leave Her - I am
here in the Church, pursuing God's calling to be a pastor. But I am not as
wounded my church as I thought I was, and I can forgive Her transgressions -
for she is a flawed vessel. See the conversation my husband and I had brought
up the deep issue.
I have been hurt by God.
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It's a cliché I'm sure. But the fact
remains, the pains in my heart revolves around my Creator - or so it seems.
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I believe the prophetic word should be
like the breath that formed all of creation. It is not by my own breath, mind,
or words but when the Spirit falls and prophetic utterance takes place the
possibilities are endless. This Ruach
ha-Kadosh formed the seas, the skies, breathing life into these very
bones. When this same Holy Spirit speaks through us, these broken vessels,
fragile beings, She brings forth the same power and authority, love and
creativity on the day of Creation. I believe it in the very depths of my core.
That the touch of God causes healing, and it's not a healing where poof and it's magically
fixed, but a touch that goes into the very DNA of the person, causing the cells
to be corrected in a miraculous and holistic manner. I know this may sound superfluous
- but the Holy Spirit heals us in bodily ways, often messy human hands, and the
touch of God changes the very fiber of our being. I can't say this strong
enough. I can't express it full enough. These words fail to express the need
for a bodily touch of the Spirit, and the fact that the Spirit does respond in
these ways.
The Son became human, taking on the
fullness of man and of God to make space for us, and the Spirit rested on Him
inviting us to partake in this Holy Communion. We are not making space in these
cobwebbed hearts of ours, but rather the Creator of the universe, the Holy One is inviting
us to join in them. We get to witness the love of the Trinity, fully and
beautifully - and we are never the same. When the Spirit draws us into the
Trinitarian community we are marked, ruined for the ordinary and our taste is
for the divine. But the Spirit does not draw us spirits only - being a mere decapitated
soul. NO! The Spirit invites our body - the all of our humanity to be redeemed,
to be marked by this dance and to witness to the world their beauty.
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As we drove home I wept. For I feared God
was not like I dreamt. That the God whom I formed my every thought around, whom I met in the nights of pain, and in the days of ecstatic joy was not the real God. I feared in my confession I would
find Elohim to be a
fraud, and I would be the fool that believed. I feared if I confessed that I
truly believed that God worked I
would be disappointed. See bodily change takes risk. To believe God can change
my heart, well that's easy to measure - I may get an emotional high today, and
next week it'll be gone but for a season God moved. The body is not so easily
manipulated. I cannot fake my wholeness.
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I was 13. Going on my first mission trip.
My youth group and I were going to Alaska. The night before we were to fly up
there we were practicing one of our dramas. I was a party girl (the polar
opposite of my adolescent self) and was holding a beer bottle, and at one point
would fall on the ground in sight of the holy. Well something went wrong, and
when I fell my wrist hit the bottle and pain surged through my body. Trying to
be strong, I attempted to not make it a big deal. I didn't want them to see my
weakness (which has so many thing wrong with it, but that's for another time) so I
cried outside, alone till I could come back inside. After practice I went home, and my
wrist swelled overnight, so my mom took me to the doctor before I was to get on
the plane. I had fractured my wrist - you know one of those hairline fractures
that would've been less painful and easier to heal if had fully broken. The doctor gave me a brace and I headed to Alaska. After arriving in Anchorage, we met up with several hundred youth at a
church service in preparation for our mission’s week. In the service I felt the
Spirit say my wrist was healed. I took off my brace in faith that the Spirit
had spoken, and proceeded to act out my healing. After the service when one of the adults saw, they
told me to put back on the brace. Me, in my cowardice, and deep desire to be
accepted, simply put on the brace without ever telling them why I had taken it
off. A seemingly small instance, but the next 10 years my wrist would still pop under certain weight, and for
the first five years I couldn't carry anything heavy without intense pain. It
was my marker, my sign that the institution didn't recognize me, and that I
didn't have enough faith for healing to happen. In response I rejected a God who wouldn't touch my
body, and lost so much faith in the process.
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Living in a Pentecostal context, people would often ask for prayers of healing. Yet when others would ask for healing prayers,
I wouldn't touch the person - for fear my touch would be the 'faith zapper'
making void all the other prayers. I knew I didn't have enough faith and feared I would be the preventing hand. Being a follower of Jesus I knew I should ask for my own healing, though anytime I asked for healing the double mindedness was so consuming I hated
myself. In order to handle this bodily rejection, God became the God of my mind, an intellectual playmate of sorts. In
the nights where the darkness would creep, the name of Jesus cast out fear and
caused peace. Through counseling the Spirit rested on me, and I would sing His
praises again. But the God that carried my Body... I wasn't so sure. It was
during these immediate years after the mission trip experience that my eyes had a
weird healing experience. Having been born with a very bad lazy eye, I had
surgery at three and wore bifocals from that point on. Then one day between the
ages of 12-15 my glasses broke, and I could see. I could really truly see
without them. I was healed! But as the months and years went by, my eyes grew
tired. And I could not see as clearly. Soon the headaches would set in, and I
needed glasses again. This time not bifocals, but still glasses had to be worn.
Once again I didn't have enough faith, God couldn't fully heal me. I would
become a product of a half-healing.
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In a faith that often saw mental
illness as demons, and physical handicaps often the result of sin or the enemy - I had
no theology for lingering 'otherness'. Then my brother-in-law was diagnosed with Asperger’s,
my little sister as well would be found on the spectrum. My husband struggled
with depression, and I went through dark post-partum after the birth of our
daughter. Both of my childhood best friends lost their mother's to breast cancer - though both had claimed healing in Jesus. Our bodies were being affected, they were fallen and I needed a God
who cared. He was not absent, but His timing seemed so very slow. Yet His response turned everything upside down; through my two
best friends, Hannah and Jenna.
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Jenna is a mom of two, a lively soul who
reminds me of the joys of God. She has blood pressure problems, and a number of allergies that prevent her from "normal" living. Her body isn't strong, and work is taxing - but God
has made a way for her to revel in her children and in His nature. She is one
of the most intelligent people I've ever met, though she lacks a degree. Yet one night at a prayer meeting God called me
to pray for her healing as she asked the congregation to do so. I went and touched Jenna on the top of her head down to then down to her toes, and wept. The next week she testified to being healed of that
specific allergy.
Hannah has cerebral palsy. Her heart is
strong, and she has faced death so many times - yet she perseveres. God spoke a
promise of healing, and every day we seek His face for this holistic healing.
She has to wear noise canceling headphones because sound hurts so much. Her
body aches in ways I can't imagine. Yet she cares so deeply for the other, her empathy
is like that of our Eternal Intercessor. She has committed her steps to the
Lord, though her feet may drag and her spirit may feel broken - she hasn't
given up. In a church service God called me to anoint her feet, as the oil
dripped and my tears ran; I'm still believing for her healing.
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I have been marked. Hannah's very presence
has changed me, the structure of my heart has been affected. From her I love in ways I
didn't know was possible. Jenna has torn down so many walls, allowing me to
believe in friends again. Her vibrate spirituality has challenged me to believe
in a playful God again.
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See I believe in a Holy God, one who is
not disinterested in our bodies, but rejoices in them. I believe in a Holy
Spirit who changes us, causing right all that has been wrong. When we see a
broken mind - the Spirit can make it right! It may be in the whisper of days,
months and years – but oh for the glorious moments of fire that causes
immediate and complete change! I believe that the prophetic is alive today, and
we are invited to participate in the Spirit’s work of illuminating the broken to God’s
love.
I believe because my mind can’t be greater than God’s. My
imagination cannot be more beautiful than the Creator’s. My love for the other
is a shadowed reflection compared to the Son’s. My desire for transformation is a small drop
in the Spirit’s brooding over all creation.
I don’t feel it. Often I feel the exact opposite. I'm left wondering why
God is dead. I wonder why Hannah’s body is still broken, why Jenna isn’t whole,
why J's mind is still conflicted, why F doesn’t see, why our church
is so full of broken people….. But perhaps it is in this desert, that the new
creation is being made. That in the drought, the seemingly absent Spirit is
holding us here, drawing us deeper than we ever knew, to a place of intimacy that
we wouldn’t see otherwise. I wish it felt good, I wish I believed in my
emotions. Honestly I doubt, there are spaces of fear so strong I want to run away
from this place. But I have been marked – I have seen the backside of the Lord
and I believe He will show His face. I am choosing to stay – not because I feel
like it, but because all I am affirms His truth and I will have faith in this
tension of already and not yet to abide. Oh Holy Spirit rest on us, draw us into this holy communion.
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