Chronicles: Eli and All my Baby Girls. - a Confession and Pre-Christmas Update
I am trying to remember to go slower. And God helps me through happenstance like this, stumbling across this picture, in my ribbon box, as I'm frantically trying to find items to occupy a 6yrold and 2yrold who want to do CRAFTS. AND the space, the space helps a lot. I am a person who needs some type of organization and order, and children require A LOT OF ITEMS in order to keep them entertained, which requires space, and room to have messy and CLEAN areas, so I can breath. When did kids start requiring so much? Must be these days.... I feel like I built forts in the woods with REAL STICKS and rocks and not the special lakeshore learning whatever which, btw, suck. I mean stink. But, I suppose I also require a lot these days, so I probably lead by example. YES. I do. That is the theme!
ANYWAY, I ran across this today- these girls... and I had to stop, to stop in the moment, what I was doing, and write because I was overcome. This is what came up:
I've struggled recently, with the doubt: "Was it all for nothing? You're such a hypocrite! What of your witness, you wanted so badly to have?!" Those thoughts run through my head, and they lead to awful emotions. Or often, it's my emotion even that is the original sign that something is not okay, or even if something is okay, but we can't blindly trust emotions. Emotions and feelings are signals. They are important, but they have to be weighed and deciphered.
Right now, I'm being humbled. I'm being pruned. I'm being broken. I'm being reminded about the Gospel AFRESH, BRAND NEW IN MY LIFE. The Gospel is having to enlarge to cover greater failure, greater temptation toward shame. And the difficult emotion that produces leads to distorted thoughts. I'm working on those.
So look at those girls, and then listen to the logic of that lie I mentioned about how it was probably all for nothing. It was never all for nothing. Even my emotions then were not all for nothing. My emotion, opinion, attempts, all of it, mattered.
LOOK AT THOSE GIRLS. THOSE GIRLS MATTER. Today, I'm in a totally different season of life, but life was never meant to be one season the entire time, especially not when life is led by broken people who are being sanctified throughout their broken lives on earth.
In actuality, I'm kind of doing the same thing now that I was doing back then with those girls. Don't believe it? Let me prove it to you, and me:
1. I'm loving the people around me. Right now, my emotional and mental health are best served being in this location; thus, there are specific people around me. They are not ALL the people I would LIKE to be around, but they are people I've wanted to be around for a while and haven't really had the chance to be around. I miss NYC. Eli misses toys he didn't bring! I miss the dang subway. What is my freaking problem? BUT THE POINT IS, I am getting to love my family, and they are getting to love me. We are relating at different levels. I'm getting to have a sister. I'm getting to give and take with my father, and learning what type of tools a tool man keeps in his laundry room, and beg him to let me use one of his mini toolboxes in the attic for my makeup, to which he continues to say no. SO RIDICULOUS.
2. I'm differentiating from my family, and not because I don't love them or don't miss them or want to harm them, but because right now, it's not healthy. There are people who literally have become my family in NYC, and I don't even mean just Jesse's family. And it's hard to be away. There are also opinions which mean the world to me, and that I can't let go of. There are relationships I can't let go of, so those relationships have to be navigated, worked out, made better, made right. And sometimes this healing comes through seasons of separation. It's tragic, but that, as well, is an affect of the broken world. BUT WHAT IF even in this brokenness, we could find renewal and healing, for more than just ourselves but even for a broken pattern that needs healing. THIS IS REAL LIFE, COUPLES STRUGGLE, AWFUL THINGS HAPPEN, CONSEQUENCES ARE PARSED THROUGH, and churches work with individuals, and therapists do, and doctors, and community! This is what we wanted to see for certain individuals in our flock in the past, but it only makes sense we probably didn't pursue it the perfect way. Who modeled it for us? I suppose we'll stage our own intervention, or at least I will, and say that we need to get some things right in order to model for our OWN CHILDREN, and EVEN THESE KIDS, allllll my baby girls, the way things SHOULD be done.
3. I'm learning how to teach young women. I was doing that back then, through trying to pursue God, through trying to understand even how to be married. I've learned a lot of ways not to be married, in 10 years. Tons. I bet you some girls can learn from that. I know I can! And that's all I ever did with my baby girls; I just mentored them in the hard lessons I'd learned the hard way. That's all I can do; be honest; be vulnerable; be authentic- a daughter of God, redeemed by God's Son!
What if we normalize the level of brokenness we have right now and then renew it so that the generation going forward lives in LESS OF IT? Could that not be living a life that leads to glory? Maybe we won't have lives the lead in the exact same way they did before- the surface may change in some ways, BUT IS THERE LESS GLORY IN SOMETHING THAT LOOKS DIFFERENT? Or in various titles? What do we preach? Ourselves? With fancy words? OR CHRIST CRUCIFIED. I believe that is 1Corinthians 2. I was reading it this morning.
BECAUSE I HAVE TIME TO READ THE WORD OF GOD AGAIN- I wasn't slowing down. I wasn't resting. Neither was Jesse. No one in my family was.
WHAT IF WE COULD NORMALIZE THE BROKENNESS. sure, we don't LIVE AND LEAD the same way, BUT IS THERE But once we stop, God's Spirit speaks and literally leads us in all truth. Once we hit the full surrender, the full Spirit takes over, if you will. And then, FOREVER HE IS GLORIFIED. HE IS ON HIGH. THE GROUND BEGINGS TO SHAKE; THE STONE IS ROLLED AWAY; HIS PERFECT LOVE CANNOT BE OVERCOME. DEATH, WHERE IS YOUR STING? OUR RESURRECTED KING HAS RENDERED YOU DEFEATED!!!! FOREVER HE IS GLORIIFED!!!!!
So cleaning up Mess. Putting things together, and taking them apart, as I did a piece of furniture today, only to realize after I finished, that I put it together upside down. You now how much I care at this point? Not at all. it works. It looks fine. It's functional. We don't need perfection here. We need do the best we can with what we've got. But other things I am having to take apart and remake, especially if I want them to sustain the test of time. So there is a balance. Let it go, and buckle down.
I've been cleaning up mess since we unloaded that truck, unpacking, moving, figuring things out, making mistakes, learning as we go, trying to make plans only to realize that then I become a woman obsessed with my plan and idolizing my plan without making first and primary focus my relationship with God!
So don't worry everyone, especially City/Grace and GFC: I'll be back to clean up my mess, especially that office. These girls- I'M NOT GOING ANYWHERE. That is what this is, in part- RESPONSIBILITY. Honesty, doing what I believe God would have me to do and not man (because trust me, there are plenty of people who want me to focus on other things right now).
But our lives, MY LIFE, that office- IT'S A WRECK. It's vastly different than it was in 2007, or even 2010, or even 2012.... or 13.... I could pause to tell the story... and maybe I will in another post: But for now, we gotta focus on the mess, even to MAKE the space to live and talk about other things. If we can't clean out the rot in our souls and hearts, how do we expect to nourish love in our hearts?
The truth is, we concentrated so much on ministry and the approval of others and trying to be certain type of people FOR GOD and for EACH OTHER (aka for ourselves), that our marriage DEVOLVED instead of evolving. I am actually not that surprised because, the opinion that my husband and I are poster children, text book cases, of a broken evangelical culture, and even country at large is not lost on me. There is a broken mental health cultural climate in our churches and our nation that has formed our opinions, everyone's opinions, especially during formative years for our contemporaries. Then there is the generational sin and spiritual, emotional, ALL SORTS of abuses in our families, and churches too. Keep coming back to churches, TO BELIEVERS- we have a responsibility. Will anyone stand up? Maybe that's why Isaiah said he'd go. He'd seen the Lord. I feel like I've seen the Lord, after suffering, similar again to Isaiah's circumstances some have argued- And now that I have seen the Lord, I can't sit still. We were pouring from nearly empty cups. We hadn't seen God enough! Our cups were emotionally unhealthy; we didn't know how to steward our emotions. We read the books, but didn't have examples, not many real-life ones. Our mentors ended up overlooking sexual abuse and other inconsistencies with the Christian or basic human ethic. HECK, there were years we immersed ourselves in Driscoll, (although I am one of the arrogants who disliked him from the beginning, specifically due to his sexual ethic, which I will flesh out more later). And plenty is to be said about the church planting boom that permeated my seminary years as well as the end of Jesse's.
AND WE DONT SAY THIS TO CAST STONES. We say this to recognize where we came from and WHY we did what we did, which is hide our unhealth under the excuse of ministry is hard but we'll work harder and commit more and never ADMIT that we were drowning and shaky in our identities, and now participating in sins and abuses instead of fixing them. We hurt others. We hurt each other. We hurt ourselves, but I won't let us hurt our children or any of those others anymore. At least, I'll do my best, and I'll start at the cross, with repentance, and confession.
Is there hope? I don't know. I apologize a lot more these days, even to Jesse. He was right about two things the past few days I have to tell him he was right about, but I also call him out more and care less about the fact that when I do so, even gently, he gets upset with me. He means to much to our kids for me to overlook that. We both need to be in that space, to where we hold each other to a higher standard. THAT'S ACTUALLY WHAT WE NEED. Some have suggested that much of our problems is that I just want Jesse to be different than who he is. But the truth is, I actually just want Jesse to be who I know he is, that is, a man of God. AND I want him to hold me to the standard of a woman of God, which he hasn't done and I haven't done for too long. So that' changes. I hold myself, and I put myself back into relationship in the right ways with the right type of people to hold me accountable.
So we are getting an intervention and help for our family so that we don't mimic mistakes we've seen or perpetuate abuses we even know to be abuses. We don't want to do that which we don't want to do (Romans 7) but ultimately will if we don't do something different. We can't become abused shells of ourselves, and we can't become enemies... and that's where we were headed. SO PAUSE...for the cause, as I always liked to say.
AND WHAT IF WE SURRENDERED TO OURSELVES FOR A CHANGE INSTEAD OF TRYING TO CREATE THE BEST LIFE FOR OURSELVES OR LOOK FOR OURSELVES. What if? WOULD THAT not be the best lesson I could teach Eli and ALL MY BABY GIRLS?! Indeed, that is the title of this piece because Eli wanted a lot of baby girls, and so did I. I wanted more, and God helped me know I was not to pursue more earthly kids, at least not then, but that there was something birthing in me. As I've mentioned. I was being born. I was going to raise myself the way I should have been raised, and God had given me the tools. Time to put them in practice..
Jesse and I TRIED TO CREATE OUR LIVES AROUND WHAT WE THOUGHT WOULD HONOR GOD, AND LOOK HOW WELL WE GUARDED OUR HEARTS OR TREATED EACH OTHER. So now, why not just surrender to Jesus.... Isn't that the Gospel we preached??? EVEN to these kids THAT are NOW FULL BLOWN ADULTS AND STILL matter SO MUCH. God gave us those lives to steward, and I hope to steward them well still. It's not their fault or God's fault Jesse and I are broken and didn't steward everything well before. We neglected something important, ourselves- our personal relationships with God. Our pride drove us instead of willingness to be humble
So I'll be humble now. May this be my "ceremony constructed out of the sky,” as the Mars Hill podcast rightly deemed in the final episode, about a similar blog confession from someone who came out of all the fall out of Mars Hill. We weren't Mars Hill, completely- not at all, but I think we were on our way in that the core sins were the same; we just practiced them within the context we had. There is criticism from some that the podcast said too much and was gossipy. Others criticized it didn't say enough and needed to call out the church more. Still, there was a solid middle group of us there who were just ministered to and healed by it. And I pray even my meager words, NOTHING like that podcast, could do the same.
I've said too much at times. I need to parse back through and edit and be aware of presenting the narrative balanced, but I need to say something, and I must call out certain sins. I pray God gives me the words, the voice, that He wants me to have. I'M GOING TO GET IT WRONG, I'm sure. BUT, I'm going to get it right too. I'm going to have to use wisdom to discern those two, and community, and the Scripture, and listening to the Spirit. Really, I can't do anything less. My god is too good to present halfway OR to hide. My god is too good for my pride OR FEAR TO GET IN THE WAY OF ME BEING HONEST.
I get how ridiculous some believe I am and that I look. I get how dangerous some of what I say could be. But, I owe it to God, and to people, LIKE THESE KIDS. dude. My life isn't mine. Let God have His way. I will trust him to vindicate when needed and set right when needed. AND HE HAS BEEN, but then he's also been convicting.
So I apologize for not having gotten to have personal conversations with more people before I wrote. Sometimes, I posted material I wish I had saved for later. Fortunately, my following isn't that hot at the moment, so I can edit. I want to do better. I want to be better. I want to grow, and I want to figure this out. There is no way I can follow God without community, and when our community is broken or unhealthy, we have to step outside of it. For years, I supported so many people stepping away, and now it seems, I need to support myself, even if it breaks my heart and my pride.
So here I go, yo.. here we all go. To and fro this wondrous world," to use the words of a young MeginLea who aspired to be a poet, a lyricist, a writer, a lover, a daughter of God, who followed God and gave her all TO HIM to utilize how HE saw fit. She gives her heart to God again, and takes it back from man, all men and women, all creatures and created things, save God. My heart, it is undivided before Him, and I stand so secure.
Here is some Outline for how to understand much of what I'll be writing about in the future:
THE UPSIDE DOWN PROJECT: birthing myself- the silver lining of covid. I guess I'm a covid baby, although I'm pretty sure God's been forming me since way before that... maybe since Sars ;).
God introduced me to myself.
Chronicles- me transforming- personal growth, mental health, identity, forgiveness, grace,
The church- mars hill, patterns, abuses, cycles, playing into abuse and becoming abusive, repenting, confessing, changing
The marriage- how abuse cycles and the consequences for it, how we can devolve instead of EVOLVE, and then how we have to figure out what STOPPING generational sin looks like in order to FOLLOW Jesus
As always, to support us in this journey, email me or head over to GoFundMe
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