My New Running Partner (Saga of the Suffering Jogger)

If you “run” on an elliptical machine, be forewarned that you aren’t actually running.  I discovered that little fun fact when I went out for a “quick little mile” last week.  I thought I was in shape.  In fact, I meant to go more than a mile but there was no way it was going to happen.  PAIN.

But I figured out a solution.  Here she is:

It works like this:  I run.  She bikes.  I wheeze.  She chatters, non-stop. 

It’s actually very entertaining.  I don’t exactly remember what she said, but whatever it was, it took my mind of the pain.  I even ran more than I meant to.  With a trainer like this, I could get over the two-weeks-of-death pretty quickly and into the fun part of running. 

I’m now inviting any of the kids to go with me.  This is the best trick ever.   I’ll even take the kid who colored his ears, face, eyes, and lips with a pink stamp he found in his sister’s room.  When I found him, he was happily working on his tongue.  There is no such thing as boredom here.  As you can see, it was a permanent ink.  Maybe it’s glow-in-the-dark.  He could be my night running partner until it wears off.   

I don’t really have a lot of standards left, but I do have one. 
I won’t take that with me.  This is the dog who runs anywhere and everywhere but next to his owner.  I tried making him my running partner last week.  Heh.  One time was enough.  I think the semi-truck driver flipped me off, but I’m not sure since at a certain point (that would be the post-yelling-for-Mighty-to-come point) I just pulled my hat over my eyes and looked really hard at the ground.  Besides, it was hard to tell what was going on, what with the lack of oxygen to my brain and all.

Here. Let Me Tell You How to Live Your Life.

“Jesus didn’t lace his relationships with expectations and he refused to be trapped when others sought to put expectations on him.  He disappointed Mary and Martha by delaying his trip to Bethany when they begged him to come and heal their brother, Lazarus.  He didn’t tell people all they wanted to know, nor did he heal people just to prove his power. 

Many misunderstood him, and others got angry with him, yet he just kept loving them as they were, gently pointing them to the truth and letting them decide whether to come or not.  He refused to manipulate people even for their own good, and he was not crushed when they turned on him. 

The popular saying is true, ‘Expectations are resentments waiting to happen.’  We sabotage many of our relationships by imposing expectations on others or trying to meet theirs.  It cannot be done.  People who live with expectations will never be satisfied.”   ~Wayne Jacobsen, Authentic Relationships

I was recently privy to a conversation where a couple was tsk-tsking the way a new convert dressed but felt good about how they were planning on waiting a little while before having “the conversation” with her about modest apparel.  I know they meant well, but I was quietly furious.  “Bait and switch” came to mind, the idea that we’ll make you think that we’re not controlling until we’ve got you fully invested here, and then we’ll let you know what you have to do to merit our approval. 

I know there’s nothing wrong with standards.  I just hate the idea that we’re supposed to be about the business of minding everyone else’s business.  I hate the fact that minding everyone else’s business is often equated with righteousness, or, even worse, love, when in reality, the only “love” it has anything to do with is love of self.  It’s basically a big, “I love the way I am so much, I’m going to help you become just like me, overtly or through subtle manipulations.  Aren’t you thankful for my great and mighty wisdom?” 

  I will tell you, as a person who is seperated from her spouse, exactly who I avoid talking to about the state of my relationship, and I don’t mean it to be harsh or condemning, but more along the lines of an observation.  Conservative Christians are people I try to avoid.  I don’t want to tell them anything, because the more information they have, the more they will use it to try to control me, to tell me what I have to do, what I should do, what the right thing to do is, and how if I do anything other than that, I’m sinning against God, or if only I’ll do x, y, and z, all the problems will be solved (an allergy to complexity, generally speaking). 

My slowly growing community of secular friends and emerging/liberal Christians, assuming it’s one of  those rare occasions where it’s appropriate for me to share my marital status, will just say something like, “Oh, I’m so sorry.  That is so hard, isn’t it?” or maybe, with a look of genuine concern, “How are you doing?  I’ve [my sister has, my friend has] gone through that…  It is so hard.” 

Conservative Christians? Not hardly.  To be fair, I haven’t given all of them the chance, mainly because the ones I’ve “let in on it” have been so hurtful, but though there are wonderful exceptions, it’s generally pretty bad.  Bad enough that I don’t really want to “go there” with the rest, you know?  I guess that’s really not fair, but I’ve lived in that world long enough to know that appearance is important there.   Very important.  If you look good on the outside, all must be well on the inside, that kind of stuff. 

It’s more complicated than this post makes it sound, obviously.  I want to protect my husband’s relationships, for one thing.  But all that aside, I’ve come to understand (since it’s what I hear frequently from some who know about my situation) that God’s glory is dependant on a person’s marriage staying together, no matter what kind of Hell it was.  Apparently God’s glory is a very fragile thing. 

A dear friend said to me that, “Divorce is when you find out who your real friends are.”  Performance-based relationships don’t do so well when you’re not performing, which is true all across the spectrum, whether the failed performance is in an abusive marriage or the many other areas where your community, family or culture puts performance over relationship. 

For example, it is astounding who feels comfortable telling me what I should do, based on incomplete or inaccurate knowledge about my situation.  I don’t want to tell them all the details—it’s none of their business, for one thing, and for another, it’s none of their business.  Then there are even some who do have many of the details, but still stick to their guns and try to bully me into thinking and feeling the way they say I should think and feel, having no compunction about throwing God in there too (who, interestingly, seems to always agree with their opinion). 

There is a lot of misinformation out there about the particular problems that were/are a part of my marriage.  The complexities it involves aren’t popular in many realms of conservative Christendom.  It’s not a subject often breached because it’s not a subject that is easily resolved.  Most of the time, there is no resolution and that’s not what we want.  We want tidy little answers.  We want a, “read this book and it will fix everything.”  Well, the dynamics in my situation aren’t the kind that a book fixes.  There is no fix.  It’s more a matter of deciding what I can and can’t live with. 

What I’m discovering is that often it doesn’t matter what the reality of things may be.  “What matters is that you make it look pretty so that everyone else feels comfortable.   If you do that, we will like you.  If you do that, we will offer our hand of acceptance.”  I cringe to think of those times I have done this to others.  And I did.  Sometimes I think it’s just part of being in that camp.  I don’t really know why.  It just is. 

For example, the (well-intentioned!) marriage advice I got in that camp, versus the advice of every single professional therapist we’ve seen, is as starkly different as day is from night.  In fact, three therapists have openly said that the advice I was given made things worse (and, even more sadly, that they see that all the time).  But it doesn’t matter.  The general feel is still one of,  “if they don’t agree with our opinion, then the professionals are wrong and not to be trusted.” 

But, like I said, perhaps I’m not being fair.  Many of them, I just haven’t given a chance (and, again, there are some treasured exceptions).  I think perhaps I’m just reacting strongly (in this post) to a flurry of recently spewed opinions from that end of the spectrum, from that line of thinking, and that’s made me want to crawl in a hole and hide from the rest of them.  It’s happened before and I had the same reaction.  It’s not fair, I know, to lump everyone else into that catagory, but I don’t have the energy for what happens if I guess wrong and the person goes on the attack. 

The deal is, I got tired of making everyone else feel comfortable at the expense of my sanity and I have no plans of ever going back to that place again.  But often I feel like, at least for some people (perhaps just the loud ones), not slaving to meet their approval is viewed as the worst sin of all (especially since I am female).  The healthier I get, and by that I mean the less I agonize over things I cannot change and concentrate on what I do have power over (the quality of my life, the quality of my children’s lives), the more my own spiritual state is questioned.  I hate this.    

On the other hand, there is probably not a better way to detox from being an approval junkie.  There are the slow gentle hospital-bed detox programs and then there is just going cold turkey.  This is cold turkey. 

But I’m learning a lot.  One of the things I’m learning is just how much I treasure the authentic friends and family members in my life.  (((Thank you)))  I’m learning how deadly control is, even more than I’d realized before.  I’m learning that it really doesn’t matter if people I loved now think I’m in grave sin for still maintaining a separation; I still need to do what I think is the best thing to do, and they can sit and stew in their disapproving expressions without me wasting any time trying to figure out how to get them to be pleased with me again. 

I’m learning that the depth of some relationships wasn’t actually as deep as I thought it was.  I’m learning that dysfunctional abusive people will probably give dysfunctional abusive advice.  I’m accepting that.  I’m also staying far away from them.  It is not always fun, but it’s reality, and I’m okay with that.  Isn’t that the whole point?  Pretending like a bad thing isn’t bad doesn’t make it better.  In the long run, all we can control is our own selves.  All the same, it can be a bittersweet liberation when you startingly realize freedom isn’t always a shared goal. 

“Control is an illusion.  It doesn’t work…  We cannot (and have no business trying to) control anyone’s emotions, mind, or choices.  We cannot control the outcome of events.  We cannot control life.  Some of us can barely control ourselves.

People ultimately do what they want to do.  They feel how they want to feel (or how they are feeling); they think what they want to think; they do the things they believe they need to do; and they will change only when they are ready to change.  It doesn’t matter if they are wrong and we are right.  It doesn’t matter if they are hurting themselves.  It doesn’t matter that we could help them if only they’d listen to and cooperate with us.  IT DOESN’T MATTER.

…We cannot change people.  Any attempts to control them are a delusion as well as an illusion.  People will either resist our efforst or redouble their efforts to prove we can’t control them.  They may temporarily adapt to our demands, but the moment we turn our backs they will return to their natural state.  Furthermore, people will punish us for making them do something they don’t want to do, or be something they don’t want to be.  No amount of control will effectx a permanent or desirable change in another person. 

…And that’s the truth.  It’s too bad.  It’s sometimes hard to accept…  But that’s the way it is.  The only person you can now or ever change is yourself.  The only person that it is your business to control is yourself.   ~Melody Beattie, Co-dependant No More

Parenting Paradigm Shift (Otherwise Known as a Free Ad for “Loving Our Kids on Purpose” by Danny Silk)

 

David's (Lack of) Tooth

Woah.  This is it.  If you’re a parenting-book type person, drop everything and get this one.   

The false belief that you not only can, but are responsible to, control your children contributes to elevating the inferior priority of obedience and compliance in the home.  The danger is that it not only leads to disrespectful interactions, but it also blinds you to what is really going on inside your child, especially if your child is compliant.  It’s easy to mistake obedience for a good relationship.  As long as the child is doing what you say, your relationship is fine.  The moment obedience is threatened, the relationship is threatened.  Therefore, in order for your children to be around you, they must become you.”  (D. Silk, pg. 57, emphasis mine)

 

Anna is Nine!

 “Many of us have been taught that we are to be trained up in the way that someone else thinks we should go, and we spend the rest of our lives checking with someone to see if we are going the way we should be going.  We become dependant on a voice outside of our head that makes our decisions and directs our vision… ” (pg. 63, emphasis mine)

This book is incredible. It’s a must-get, for sure. It describes the paradigm shift I went through when I set out on the journey to change not just the outward way I parented, but the underlying way I thought about parenting and relationships in general.  I am seeing things in this book that I discovered the hard way, as well as a clear concise description of other concepts and ideas that I’m finding very helpful.   

A friend, frustrated with a kid chafing under the authoritarian rule of his household  acting out “rebelliously” recently was asking me what exactly it was that changed for me, what it was that caused one of my kids, previously “rebellious,” to so dramatically change.

I wanted to say it was everything but it was hardly anything.  I wanted to grab his little kid and hug him tightly and say that, “He’s not the enemy.”  I wanted to do the same thing to the kid’s dad.  I wanted to unzipper the top of my friend’s brain and rinse out all the stuff he learned from his own childhood, using a toothbrush to get into the cracks, washing away the stuff that we grew up with that our parents grew up with that their parents grew up with that their parents grew up with, the stuff that clogs our ears and blinds our vision and makes us see a battle where there really isn’t one at all. 

Instead, I stumbled for words and stood there, searching my mind for a way to try to explain. 

Israel hones his massage skills on Jireh

I rarely find myself tongue-tied (you can stop laughing now), but the problem with explaining what changed is that I didn’t change a “technique,” or add a new “rule,” or get rid of an old chart or try a new program.   It’s sort of like someone asked you how you got rid of the termites in the house, but the thing is, you never did.  You just moved to a different house, one that didn’t have termites. 

Both houses look good from the outside, but there is a fundamental difference between them. One looks good outwardly but is being destroyed in ways that the owner can’t yet see.  The other one looks good, albeit needs a new coat of paint now and then, etc, but is stable both outwardly and inwardly.  So when my friend asks me what pesticide I used to get rid of the whole termite problem, I don’t have an answer because I didn’t ever figure out a way to get rid of the problem.  It was past fixing.  It was too dangerous to keep my kids in there.  So I moved. 

This is why I stammered and paused and ended up not really saying much of anything, even though I desperately wanted to explain. I just couldn’t figure out how. It’s such a total shift in thinking. And it’s so hard to put words to it because in this weird way, it’s as if you are speaking a different language, from a different culture.

“In summary, limiting the freedom of our children in order to teach them external controls, smallness, constraints, and fear of punishment is not a strategy that works in the long run.  Instead, we must teach our kids what freedom looks like, feels like, and how to prosper in it.  This is the model of Heaven.  This is what our Father in Heaven is doing. 

The best way to prepare our children to handle the multitiude of options they will have as children of the King of Kings is to invest in developing a heart-to-heart connection.  This connection replaces the disrespect factory and introduces the honor factory.  The practice of honor will revolutionize the family system, because honor brings power to relationships and the individuals in those relationships.  Honor is the antidote…   

One of the primary ways we show honor to one another is by sharing power and control in our relationships.  When we help our children practice power from the time they are little, they become powerful people who are not afraid of the forces outside of them.  They learn to think and solve problems.  They learn to draw on the power within them, the power of the Holy Spirit, to direct their lives toward their goals in life.  They become skilled at wielding decisions… 

…Therefore we introduce freedom to our small children, and we allow them to practice messing it up while they have a safety net in our home.  We create a safe place for them to fail and learn about life…”  (pg. 65-66, emphasis mine)

Sometimes I think explaining this shift would be much like going back in time and explaining to a Chinese aristocrat why foot-binding is not good for women, or to a proper Edwardian lady that she shouldn’t put her daughters in corsets. You could use the same language, but the way you think is so different, the foundation that your thoughts are coming from so completely different…

I’m using the word “different” way too much, but it’s the best word I can think of to describe the way I used to parent vs. the way I [am learning!] to now.  I’ve talked about it from time to time on this blog.  I’m not speaking as one who has arrived—rather one who is on the journey—but I know what I like and I like what I see.

Judah helping Ji cross to the other side

I like the changes. My kids like the changes. It was as if a huge weight was lifted off of our household, like this paradigm shift up and tossed off a heavy clinging blanket and let in fresh air and sunshine. No one is perfect.  But that’s the deal. You can be becoming. I can be becoming. It’s not just “tolerated,” it’s expected.  You get to try.  You get to fail.  Mistakes, failures, they aren’t the enemy anymore.  You get to try again and you get to fail again.  It’s okay.  We’re on a journey and we’re on it together.   

And this book is it.  And by that, I don’t mean it’s perfect.  I just mean that I am reading somebody describing the basic building style of the “new house” in language that is more comprehensible than anything that I’ve struggled to say.  So I’m getting an extra copy for my friend.  It’s better than him having to stand there watching me stutter.   

“Angry, fearful reactions to people’s mistakes reveal that somewhere in our minds still lurks that fundamental belief of the Old Covenant, not only that people can be controlled but that they need to be controlled, and they need to be controlled through punishment.  They need to experience the pain of our anger so that they won’t make mistakes that cause us to feel out of control.

…Fear and intimidation cannot help but rule the household of those who believe they can and must control each other when they make mistakes, and use anger and violence to do it.”  (D. Silk, pg. 81)

My Three New Children (The Baby Turkeys Have Bonded)

My experience with baby wild turkeys has been very depressing.  Unlike our baby chickens, these wild turkeys don’t seem to know that they’re supposed to have been hatched in an incubator, nor are they aware that they’re supposed to be rather nonchalant about being motherless.  They’ve wanted a mother from the get go. 

When I first got them, they would peep frantically at night until I would come in the room to soothe them with soft gentle noises or a lullaby.  Within thirty seconds of my presence near them, they would sag into a sleeping position, eyes heavy, heavy, shut, as if they’d been sleepy for hours but were helpless to do anything about it.  I felt so sorry for them.    Sorry enough even to accomodate them a few times in the wee hours of morning when their distressed cries woke me up. 

They currently are almost ready to release outside, so I’ve been giving them daily “outings,” and yet, unlike the chickens, these baby wild turkeys are not at all comfortable just being in a flock by themselves.  They want a mother.  Since options are obviously limited, they’ve decided I’m the mother—-and so they follow me EVERYWHERE.  If I go inside, even just to answer the phone, they panic.  They wander aimlessly, nervously calling me, wondering where I am.  As soon as they hear my voice, they fly from wherever they are, and I swear their faces look  relieved. 

When I am with them, they happily explore in the woods and grass, periodically running or flying back to make sure I’m still around, letting out a distinctive loud peep when they think they’ve lost me, moving back into their gentle chatter when they hear my voice soothing them, letting me know I’m right there.  Ten feet away from me, twenty when they’re feeling bold, they rush around joyfully, chasing bugs, nipping bits of green, exploring, but the second they hear a noise that seems unfamiliar, they all rush right to me. 

Last night, one of them scratched her foot and peeped loudly, repeatedly, until I came.  When I opened the cage door to examine her, she literally lept into my lap, burrowed her head in the crook of my arm and nestled herself straight to sleep. 

I swear, this experience may turn me into a vegetarian.

Moving Forward

I type in a little corner of my bedroom, the piano next to me and a cup of tea wafting a friendly whisper of steam just inside my line of vision.  The walls here are “midnight blue” and I couldn’t have picked a better color.  This room is a sanctuary of quiet–assuming I’ve locked the door, of course, and employ the finely honed art of “tuning out.” 

My hands are sore from weeding.  The island of dirt in our driveway, intended to be a flower garden, got a little out of hand.  Most of the perennials I bought last year didn’t make it, but while I was letting them go, seeing what might come back, a whole batch of unwanted plants sprang up in their place.  The kids and I went out this afternoon and gave it a good run for its money, plus got in a little botany and helminthogy in the process (one of the few Latin terms I remember from biology.  Oligachaeta, Nematoda, platyhelminthes, and then it starts getting dim)…  

After touching and admiring and watching it expand and contract, we set the little Alaskan earthworm in some moist soil by the stumpy little lilac that somehow managed to survive multiple moose attacks over the winter.  The baby slugs, however, were removed to go live out their lives somewhere outside the bounds of the flower patch.  

Speaking of all creatures great and small, there are five half-grown Araucanas in the mudroom, a donation from a friend who decided she didn’t want chickens after all.  The baby turkeys and the araucanas should be able to go outside by next week to join the Banties, an event I am looking forward to, though I’ll miss holding them and softly stroking them to sleep.  I won’t miss the endless cleaning-out-of-bedding of these beaked creatures who evacuate their bowels every five minutes. 

I stopped going to the gym the week of my Spring semester finals, then the kids got out of school and the summer craziness started and I haven’t gone back since.  So I went late this morning and ran for a little bit and then lifted.  Ah.  It is hard to beat the feeling of hopping in the car and driving home from a work-out, sweaty, slightly euphoric from the endorphin high.   

I have a love/hate thing going on with the gym.  I feel so awkward there, even in this friendly low-key gym by my house.  I guess because its so body-centric by its very nature, and that kind of weirds me out, probably in a way indicating my own oddities and issues, not necessarily anything to do with the gym. 

Sometimes I will look in the mirrors while I’m there, only for a second, and start—start because I don’t look bad.  The fact that I’m surprised by that really bothers me.  What happened to me?  Who is this person who is that surprised at seeing anything good there?  It ticks me off, that the years and the stupid lies they offered did such damage without me even being aware of it, and yet it also inspires me to work towards changing those places inside of me that currently send up such twisted messages.  This is partly why the top of my blog says “Becoming…and becoming again.”  So, whatever, maybe parts of me were broken, and maybe parts of you, too.  Areas that are obvious, and other areas we don’t even know about yet, but the thing is, that isn’t the end of the story. 

Life is becoming.  Static is dead.  I would sometimes prefer to be in a place of invulnerability, but then I would be a statue, not a person.  The nose-less faces left behind from antiquity promise us that even the invulnerable are vulnerable. There is no escape, even if you become a stone.   

Being made of skin and blood and soul and mind may make us all the more vulnerable to various kind of damage, but the same things that makes us vulnerable also make us capable of action—of creating beauty, of doing good, of forming attachments, of the many different ways of birthing and forming and nurturing and touching other lives that have the opportunity (the gift) of being able to reach out and do the same.  

Being alive also makes us capable of healing from damage done and damage that may come.  This is good.  Rocks break and there they stay, just pieces of what was.  But skin and bones, and even souls, can heal, can grow, becoming something new even as they remain the same.  And gaping wounds, if given space and time, can become scars, those gentle silvery spider webs bearing witness to a work of art that only life can do.

Another Molly: Blogging About Life in a Bible-based Cult (ACTS, Christ as Life, New Creation Fellowship)

A friend of mine, a fellow Molly (we are our own breed, we really are), has started blogging.  We spent some time at a “Bible School” together.  She spent more time there than I did.  She was just getting going there when I left. 

I remember the day she drove up, fresh out of the mountains of Colorado, dreadlocks on head, quizzical expression on her face.  She slowly warmed up and soon became one of us, a true follower of the Lord.  I also remember when she punched the leader’s diva daughter (she wasn’t the first person who thought of it, just the first person who had the guts to do it).  Lots of stories there.  I’m sure there were people who wanted to punch me too.  Zealous group of young adults who wanted to take the world for Jesus.  Gets kind of dicey at times, but usually in a PG sort of way.  

After my husband and I left, we were sort of on the “sort of anathema” list.  You know, dangerous people, except nothing was ever said officially.  It was all just a hint here, a hint there, but everyone knew.  If you leave the one place on the earth with the full and complete gospel, that means, well, you know.  

We lost almost all of our friends—everyone who was still at the Bible school, that is.  I would send Christmas cards, pictures, I would write letters, and no replies, rather cold brief phone calls, etc.  I had thought of these people like family.  In some ways, they were even closer than family.   When we left, we knew there were some strange things afoot a the school, but only had suspicions, nagging questions about things that couldn’t be resolved… 

Still, we left thinking we were all on good terms, glad to leave and yet still thinking we were blessed to have been part of such a group—thinking that the good outweighed the bad.  In other words, we still had so many false beliefs to come out of.   Interestingly, as we drove away up the freeway toward Alaska, both of us noticed that it was as if a dark cloud lifted off of us.  We felt light…free…and we laughed and rejoiced and wondered at how strange it was, how unexpected.  In retrospect, that should have prepared me for what would come next, but it didn’t.

So I moved back to Alaska, a new stay-home mom with one child, one car that was with my husband all day at work, and practically no friends.  I was so lonely and that would have been a hard stage to go through, regardless, but it was worse, because all my friends from the Bible College in Denton now behaved as if I had never been there at all.  It was as if we were kicked out of the family.  All the people that I’d lived with, cried with, had the flu with, gone on mission trips with, took classes with, just evaporated into a silent brick wall. 

I would try.  I didn’t get it, I didn’t understand.  I thought we’d had real relationships, so I would reach out.  I mean, I truly loved these people.  But communication was a one way street.  I’d call, I’d write, but no communication back, and this was especially so after I got a phone call from a fellow ex-member who’d been told, from the leader himself, that many of the rumors floating around were actually true.  I believed it but I didn’t believe it.  Mostly didn’t.  So I did what any good friend would do (though I wouldn’t say that the leader and I were good friends.  Still, I wanted to treat him with fairness and ask him, friend to friend, as opposed to believing rumors or second-hand information).  I went straight to the person himself and asked him, between the choking sobs, if it really was true.  

And Randy said it was true, albeit begrudgingly and with various lies thrown in that I would correct with the facts I’d been told, at which point he would agree that what I’d heard was accurate but would then refuse to acknowledge that he’d just lied about that very same thing five minutes prior.  Then he began blaming it all on the women involved, singling one of the young women (the one I was closest to) out and claiming it was all her “demons”…    (He did that very same thing when a friend of mine talked to him about it later, only that time he blamed a different one of the young women, saying it was all her demons that made him do it).  

His tone was very affronted and even threatening (including telling me authoritatively “in the name of the Lord” that I was “not allowed” to contact anyone from the Bible college and tell them anything about it, invoking the whole, “if you do, you will be in rebellion against the Lord” thing) until his wife walked in the room (I heard her voice in the background), at which time his whole personality did an about face and he began sobbing and acting as if I was attacking him. 

I wasn’t able to attack even if I’d wanted to.  I was just a huge mess of gutteral sobs, barely able to say anything coherant into the phone.  I mean, I couldn’t believe it.  Here was this man I had respected so much, a man who I thought really knew the Lord, and I was catching him in the act of major manipulation and some very blatant lies, and at the same time I was processing through the fact that he and some of the barely-older-than-me women there, one of whom had discipled me and who I cared about deeply, had all been involved in sexual relationships. 

It was truly a shattering experience.

Anyways, after that, I heard rumors here and there of members being told we weren’t “safe,” my former best friend there writing me a letter “disfellowshipping” me (she would later tell me that the leader had told her that if she was friends with me, it was as if she was being friends with Satan), the whole nine yards. 

That was when I put a few more “two and two’s” together and realized that everytime people had left our group, a “word from the Lord” came along that said something about how dangerous they were, how they should be avoided, sometimes even including altar calls where we would go up and repent from participating in their deeds of darkness (ie, being friends with them).  I remember a sermon shortly after a funeral of a former Bible School member where the message included a reminder of how judgement happens to those who leave the Lord!  As usual, nothing was said overtly, but we all knew that the Lord had killed this man because he had left the Bible School.   

Now I knew how alone they had felt, those people who’d left before us.  I’d been afraid of them, myself, until shortly before we left when my eyes were beginning to open.  Now I knew how abandoned they must have felt, how shocked they probably were when the love they had for us would turn out to be so very very conditional. 

[Btw, my old best friend has since left the group herself and we have had a JOYOUS time reconnecting and catching up over the phone.  It was as if we were still new twenty-year-olds again, not missing a beat.  I love that girl]!   

What a mess that whole thing was.  I mean, I dropped out of college, totally gung ho on this group, totally buying into their vision and sitting at their feet learning.  In many ways, they had some really good things going.  That was how you got sucked in, enough respectability and real-life good deeds that you were caught off-gaurd with the other stuff.  They were totally sold out, and if you were with them, you were going for the real thing.  

But hindsight, with its 20/20 vision, helps me now see the eight-hundred red flags that my idealistic nineteen-year-old self could not see, one of the most dangerous being their view of delagated authority and hierarchal relationships.  I was not the only young zealous I-just-met-Jesus-and-I-want-to-serve-Him-forever type they would catch.  So very very sad. 

I don’t talk about this group much.  I think because what came after, my entrance into the bondage of legalism and a difficult marital situation, was just as bad, if not worse, and as you read Molly’s descriptions of how authority was viewed at this school, you’ll see how dangerous it could be in a marraige situation.  In my drive to be safe after leaving ACTS and facing the grief of being totally abandoned, I walked out of the frying pan and into the fire.  (Reading Molly’s posts actually gives me more insight into this. I wonder if it was that feeling of being special, of being different, of being “totally sold out” that was created at the Bible School was part of what helped me feel so at home in the legalistic world of Vision Forum and similar groups).  Besides, we are so far away from Texas.  It seems like so long ago.  So I have been silent.   

But my friend Molly spent many more years at ACTS, even working for the Bible College and helping with the ministry.  Her blog is new and it’s good.  And I’m glad she’s speaking out.  I think that for many of us, speaking out is vital to our own healing and to using our own healing process as a vehicle to help others heal and/or avoid the same mistakes.   Her blog is right here, called A Time to Speak.   

As much as those leading these kinds of groups want to keep people quiet and/or demonize those who leave, you can’t get away with that forever.   This is the first time I’m naming names on this blog instead of just saying “the Bible College I attended.”  When I went there, it was New Creation Fellowship.  The Bible College was ACTS (Accelerated Christian Training School).  Now the main name is “Christ as Life.”  The leader of this group is a man by the name of RT Nusbaum (then Randy Nusbaum).  I think it’s time.  Molly’s courage gives me courage.  Thank you, friend.   My friend Eric, who also attended ACTS and NCF, has done the same thing (was one of the first ones to speak out in a public way, and boy were we ever warned that he’d joined the dark side!).    I see that other people are talking about them here.   

And if you are one of the people I love who are still enmeshed with this group, somehow finding this post via google, I want to suggest that perhaps the One bringing these things to light isn’t Satan or a demon making me write this.  Maybe it’s a God who wants to help you break free from the lies you think are Him but are really just a confusing tangle of webbing that keeps you bound hand and foot from being who you were made to be. 

Maybe Randy is wrong.  Maybe it’s not the way he says it is.  Maybe there is something very very wrong with what is going on.  Call me.  Email me.  I miss all of you and your faces still have a treasured place in my heart.  I look forward to the day when we can all talk and laugh again.

Pathological Spirituality

As a Christian in my middle-to-late twenties, I was obsessed with getting it right.  I can’t believe the things I wasted my time on.  Like the baby I tried to “schedule.”  Who in their right mind thinks that a baby should be scheduled in the first place?  Factories run on schedules, and for good reasons.  Each machine has to have the product in a certain place at a certain time in order to do its job.  But babies are humans.  Hello?

Thankfully she was one of those naturally sweet compliant babies and I doubt any major damage was done, but still.  Mothers through out time and culture have fashioned various wraps and slings and just hauled baby around with them, letting baby feed when the baby needs fed, not spending time trying to soothe and distract a hungry baby because the clock says baby can’t eat until twenty more minutes have passed.   Mothers across time and cultures have studied their babies and found ways to incorporate the rhythms of motherhood with all the other things to be done during the day.  Rhythms?  Yes.  But making a hungry baby wait to eat simply because a book said so?  I swear, sometimes I think modernity has made us all drop some serious IQ points. 

What ticks me off more than anything is how the whole “set baby to the clock” thing was wrapped around glorifying God.  Like, if you bounced and soothed baby until twenty minutes had gone by, baby would somehow be the better for it both now and in eternity.  God would shine all the brighter in the world because baby had to wait until 6pm instead of nursing at 5:40pm.  Baby would grow up to love and serve God because baby had to wait ’till the clock said she could eat. 

What deep and valuable lessons she was learning, and what a great parent I was, parenting God’s Way and all.  Okay, so maybe it wasn’t technology that hurt my IQ, maybe it was just me being a sucker for a philosophy that threw in God’s name along with a lot of promises of how I could control my little baby—and plenty of fear-inducing stories about what would happen if I didn’t.     

Scheduling a baby was only one of my little “things” that I spent a stretch of my valuable years obsessing over.  Though it’s not something I particularly like thinking about, I can actually chart a five or six year period of my life in terms of my frantic “gotta-find-the-right-way” obsessions.  The baby schedule thing was rather short compared to some of them.  The baby thing I tried with Anna—read about it when pregnant but ended up quitting when she was three or four months old because it just seemed dumb to not feed an obviously hungry baby.  But there were other obsessions. 

The cleaning one, wherein I tried to keep our house spotless in order to try and get approval from a perfectionist.  The Calvinist-vs-Armenianist one, where I spent half a year or so ripping the Bible apart and reading a bunch of books written by various theologians trying to decide which side was God’s side.  The whole foods one, where I actually fermented a whole grain pie crust on purpose and was dumb enough to bring it proudly to a friends house for dinner.  The cloth diaper one with two baby bottoms in them, where I discovered that any money saved by not buying disposables was blown on the stupid electric dryer which seemed like it was always running to keep up with the demand.  The headcovering one, where, interestingly enough, I never actually did cover my head but was sure 1 Corinithians 11 said I should—and spent way too much time reading about women who did.  It’s getting painful, so I’m going to stop, but you get the idea.       

These were fun—some of them, anyway.  I’ve always thrown myself into whatever I’m interested in.  But there’s a healthy kind of hyper-focus and an unhealthy type.  I was obsessed and much of it was unhealthy, unhealthy in a scrambling frantic sort of way, a fearful person desperate to find a fool-proof way to be safe from pain, failure, heartache.  In short, a way to be safe from life. 

What is obsessing, anyway?  In her latest book, “The New Co-Dependancy,” author Melody Beattie says we can tell if an obsession is a good thing if we turn it into a creative energy that is turned into passion and used to get a job done beautifully or brilliantly.  Cool.  I have some of those.  This is the stuff that makes great musicians, artists, scholars and engineers. 

But obsession is a dangerous thing if the motives behind it are screwed up and because of that, it wears us out and does damage.  Obsession is a unhealthy thing when we are trying “to control a situation and force it to be what we want instead of surrendering to and accepting life the way it is” (Beattie, pg. 136). 

When I read that, it was a bulls-eye moment.  It was a perfect description of that season, that horrible time period when I was terribly confused about who God was and what He wanted, living in a state of fear and denial—a lot of denial—instead of a place of grace and peace.  I had that kind of obsession—the not so good kind.  I do not ever want to live in that place again.  Ever. 

Somewhere in the jumble of wretched teaching, such as the shepherding/Gothard/Nee movement’s “umbrella of authority” garbage, the vomit of the Super Duper Christian types with their ”Things You Have to Do or God Will be Horribly Shamed” and even good things (because, let’s face it, this kind of thing is always complex), I lost my way.  My own natural passion for learning and my innate desire to know God mixed with a powerfully strong fear of never-wanting-to-be-in-a-bad-situation-like-the-wacko-Bible-School-one again… and a witches brew was the result.  Meaning, I didn’t just kind of miss it.  I totally bombed.      

It’s not like I was this amazingly healthy person in my young twenties.  I wasn’t.  All the same, I still trusted my gut.  And that means a lot to me, because soon I would learn that it was a sin to trust your own self if you were a woman, and I would later stumble out of this whole horrible season with the terrible handicap of not knowing how to hear my own voice anymore. 

You see, women were designed to be followers, not leaders.  Women’s intuition is only right only insofar as it agrees with her male authority’s opinions.  That’s what I learned was “God’s way” and eventually submitted to.  But in my early twenties before I got married, I was blessed to have the common sense to see that for the load of crock it was.  With all my quirks and immaturities, I did at least trust my own voice. 

 But when I got married and then learned that the right way was whatever my spouse said it was, and when the church and Bible school I attended turned out to be a mini-cult and beloved friends and teachers of mine ended up being involved a highly covered up sexual soap opera, something sort of snapped in me.  

This group that I considered as close as family, a group that I trusted deeply, the group that helped me get out of my crazy life, off of drugs, out of unhealthy relationships, ended up being a much more unhealthy relationship when all was said and done.  And a marriage relationship that I thought was going to be filled with joy ended up being a lot more painful than I thought it would be (in great part thanks to some very unhealthy concepts about what being married meant). 

Wait.  This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.  This wasn’t what I wanted.  This can’t be happening.   

So when I left for Alaska with my new little family, I took with me something that I didn’t know was in the luggage.  Fear. 

I was so afraid of all of that drama, all of that betrayal, all of those lies happening again.  I was convinced that there had to be a way to ensure that nothing like that would occur again, that there was a way to make the world safe, to make my world safe. 

I found it.  One drink and I was addicted.  I am not sure there is anything more intoxicating than the wine of legalism.  Oh my gosh, it tasted so good—better than drugs, better than sex, better than anything I could think of.  I was safe.  It was full of promises and all you had to do was jump through hoops to get your gold stars.  Everything made sense.  Everything had a name, a label, a gaurantee that if you put in the right ingredients, you’d get the product you wanted.

Pretty soon, the hoops didn’t even feel like hoops—they just felt like home.  Plus, my brain was in the hands of someone much more capable than I, and that was a relief, although I would regularly battle “sinful rebellious feelings” (any thoughts that didn’t agree with my authority’s thoughts) and have to stuff them back down.  Still, on the whole, it was nice to have my brain shut off and just do what I was told. 

I began to notice other people and whether or not they were jumping through the same hoops I was.  Some people weren’t at all.  Full of good intentions, I helped them learn how.  The ones who didn’t want to learn, I stayed away from.  Too scary.  Don’t they want to love God? 

Other people had more hoops than I’d ever seen.  Impressive.  I sat at their feet and learned.  I read their books and listened to their tapes, scoured their websites and read back issues of their magazines.  I adopted many of their hoops—colorful things, worth the price, and practiced jumping through until those hoops, too, became second nature.  Now I had more hoops to share with others, and I did. 

And somewhere along the line I forgot that Jesus didn’t have anything to do with jumping through hoops.  

 

“The church as a whole often seems to function like a sociopathic husband.  The evidence is pervasive.  The fact that the collective body of the church is known more for its declarations of good and evil than for its outrageous love is telling.  We often do good things (at least as we define good), but something is often lacking—and it happens to be the one thing that is needful. 

The church as a whole does not look like the body of Christ, whose outrageous love attracted people who would otherwise have had nothing to do with a “religous establishment” or “ethical system.”  We don’t generally have tax collectors, prostitues and other sinners (not former tax collectors and former sinners) in our company (Mark 2:16).  Rather, despite our own insistence that it is not so, we often look like a body of Pharisees whom sinners—people with certain kinds of sin we’ve identified as more serious than our own—avoid at all costs. 

Another evidence of our spiritual pathology is that at both an individual and corporate level Christians often lack the freedom, flexibility, joy, boldness and playfulness of a real lover.  The abundant life and reckless love Jesus exemplified and came to bring is often replaced with a hypervigilance on what people ought to believe, how people ought to behave, and how the church should appear.  We live out of our ethical maxims and religous ideas rather than the vibrant, concrete life and love of God.  We live in the abstract, not the concrete. 

In a proper context, of course, there is nothing wrong with concerns about right belief and proper behavior.  But it is evidence of spiritual pathology when these concerns dominate our individual or collective lives and are not rather merely by-products of what ought to dominate our lives: the outrageous, freely-given, unsurpassable love of God to us and through us.”

Gregory Boyd on pg. 97 of his book, “Repenting of Religion.”

On Blog Lords and Mostoftherestofus

This post made me want to do a touchdown dance.  I’m serious.  I can’t decide whether to laugh, cry, or just twitch funny.  If you’ve been in the blog world for awhile, especially the super-conservative-christian-womanish one, you will know exactly why.

My New Babies

 

So I went to the feed store to buy a new bag of chick starter feed.  It was practically impossible to not see the little hand-written huge sign advertising a sale on wild turkeys.  I left the store with a bag of feed and a box containing three of the cutest little turkeys you’ve ever seen.  (This same thing used to happen to me when I lived in the city during college days, only it was much much less practical).

The nine Banty babies are fast hitting older teenage status.  If they were humans, they’d be getting their driver’s licenses about now, but because they’re not humans, we have a problem.  Only four of them turned out to be hens.  I like to buy free-range chicken, but I don’t like to kill free-range chicken.  Or anything else, for that matter, with exceptions made for mosquitos and anything that tries to get between me and my children with intent to harm. 

Five roosters require action.  If I don’t do it,  they’ll do the killing part themselves.  Judah didn’t understand, so I tried to explain the Way of the Rooster [insert Spanish guitar music here]. 

“Find hens.  Keep hens.  See other rooster?  Kill other rooster.  Get more hens.” 

I know I was talking smack about how I might just butcher some if there were too many roosters, but I didn’t really mean any of it.  Those cute little upturned tails…  We noticed today that some of them are already starting that puffed up swagger.  I know it’s odd to feel like their mother, but I couldn’t help but melt a little watching “my babies” grow up.     

 

Anyways, now there are turkeys.  Please, please, God, let at least one of them be female.  I can’t take all this carnage!

 The folks at the feed shop said that the Banties and the turkeys will get along great, and both are the perfect type of bird to free-range in a spruce forest where bald eagles do regular fly by’s.  I cuddled with one tonight, soothing it right to sleep on my lap.  Judah held it next.  We talked about how cool it would be if we could tame them.  Then it walked off her lap and pooped on the couch.

This is a girl. I just know it.

I am telling her she is a girl. She is listening.

Now she is done listening.  Told you they could fly.

Mighty looked at us and then sighed loudly and laid his head down.  Apparently, he thinks that cuddling with birds is really dumb.

The Way of Love: Thoughts from a Former Pharisee

If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal.

And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.

If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.

—1 Corinthians 13, NAB

 

I believe that Christianity is first and foremost a Way, not a formulation of beliefs.  That also means it is not primarily a system of thought, not a list of rules, not a theological treatise.  It is a Way. 

The Way has a path, and that path can, in a sense, be written down as a formulation of certain beliefs.  A Way has unique properties that differentiate it from other ways.  This is why I love reciting the Nicene Creed every Sunday.  There are boundaries to this Way, a structure to the path, and those who say there are none are confused about what a path is in the first place.  There are others, however, who misundertand a path to mean rules, and they are confused as well.  Rules are things you write down on paper and post on the wall, but a path is something you walk on. 

That is the point.  We are supposed to be walking on the Way, not observing it from afar, noting it’s peculiar characteristics and writing them down in neat systematic order.  

I love how the Eastern Orthodox view salvation as a journey instead of a one-time event.  One-time-event theology is dangerous even as much as it is helpful.  It helps us feel secure, keeping us safe from those who think we can lose our salvation any time we are anything less than perfect.  But viewing salvation as a journey protects us just as well, and it’s much more true.   

When you are on a journey, you aren’t trying to be perfect.  You are simply trying to remain on the process of journeying.  If you stumble, you get up, wipe off your knees and keep going.  You can even sit down and pull out a picnic lunch from your backpack.  It’s all okay.  None of the perfectionistic hysterics about messing up.  You don’t mess up when you’re on a journey.  You might trip, but that’s part of the journey.  A journey is both/and.  It was a one-time event, the day you set your foot on this trail and decided to follow it.  But it is also a process, a way you travel, a ever-unfolding experience.   

One-time-event salvation is dangerous because it reduces following Christ to a legal transaction.  Following Christ becomes “an event that happened,” not a Way we travel, and that is dangerous because it just isn’t true and it sucks the life right out of what really is true.  You sit down and never go anywhere, waiting for heaven, waiting for the Left Behind series to come to life.  You miss the journey altogether.  

And salvation-is-rule-following is even worse.  If you weren’t an anxiety-ridden basketcase (or a first-class faker) before you started, honey, you will be before you’re done. 

This is why Paul said he really didn’t give a hoot whether or not Mrs. Good Christian was just burned at the stake for her faith, or Mr. Good Christian just preached a first-rate sermon.  If you don’t understand the Way you are on, the rest of it doesn’t matter.  For all practical purposes, you just sat there at the head of the trail.  It’s kind of like buying tickets to a big event and then never going in. 

Paul said you can preach a great sermon, you can be a martyr for the cause, you can give everything you own to the poor and those things can all be perfectly fine.  Good for you.  Great job.  But Paul’s point is that you can do all of those things from the sidelines.  You don’t have to be on the Way to analyze Scripture, to preach, to sacrifice all, to prophecy the future, or to write your own systematic theology book. 

We get so confused and find things like this shocking because of this one-time-event concept of Christianity that we’ve been taught.  We start thinking that those sideline things are the real meat of our faith, or that they prove that somebody is on the Way—far, far along on the Way—-because you can only write systematic theology if you are.   

We think if you know your Bible inside and out, you are a “real Christian.”  But lots of people know their Bibles but have no clue what Love is.  In fact, some of themwill use their Bibles to try and put a box on you, to try to control you—the words of the God who sets you free are used by them to cage you in.  Lots of people know their systematic theology and yet have no clue who Christ is, don’t have even a kindergarten-level education in the spiritual things that really matter. 

Some of us think that if you are active in matters of social justice, you are a “real Christian.”   While helping the weak and poor is highly commendable, there are plenty of people who do it without a shred of Love.  (I am remembering a vegan I knew who fought against animal cruelty—and rightly so— at the same time he oozed venom towards any and all “flesh eaters.”  Sorry, but something’s wrong when you love a chicken more than you love a two year old kid eating a hamburger).   

Some of us think that if you operate in prophetic giftings, you are a “real Christian.”  Todd Bentley, anyone?  ”So he kicked an old lady with his combat boots, who cares?  Man, he’s operating in the Spirit!  That means he can’t be questioned!  God was in that kick, I’m telling you!”  You know what, if you don’t walk in Love, bringing a “revival” down doesn’t earn you a flying flip in eternity.  And just because some people are easily manipulated psychologically doesn’t mean the Spirit is there or a person should be followed.  In fact, if they pull the God card to justify their behavior, the safest thing to do might be to run from like hell.  

Others think that if you know your theology, you are a “real Christian.”  I know of a currently popular Reformed pastor who is worshipped by many, yet his mannerisms and behaviors are incredibly arrogant, his leadership style visciously authoritative.  Don’t agree with him?  Hope you’re not on his staff, because you just got fired.  But because he preaches the right doctrine in a way that a lot of people like, he’s a good guy and his popularity grows.  Paul doesn’t commend us for that.  If you don’t have Love, you are nothing, and that applies even to people who are hip.   

Love is a way.  Love is the Way we are on, the Christ we are in, the Truth and the Life of this journey we are on.  A friend and I were just talking about this, how Love is so much harder than anything else, even though it’s so much simpler than all the rest.   

It’s easier to go through a legal transaction, it’s easier to find a tidy little world where Republicans are right and Democrats are wrong.  It’s easier to follow a leader as if he were the mouthpiece of God.  It’s easier to fight for one’s favorite social justice issue, or follow the latest revival trail.  I swear, it’s easier to write a one-thousand page systematic theology book than it is to walk down the dirty unkempt path of Love. 

He is the real narrow road, the one that is almost hard to see because it’s so little, so unassuming.  It’s the humble little dirt path the follows a small gurgling stream, and it is the Way we are called to walk.  This is the stuff of following Christ.  Simple.  Very very simple.  We grow in love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness and self-control.  We grow because the God in us grows us in those things and we don’t fight Him, or, at least, we try not to. 

We meet God in the holy everyday, the little moments, the day that is called today and as we meet Him, we learn Love, His kind of Love, and we practice it and we screw it up and we get up and we practice it again, no differently than a violinist or a basketball player or a surgeon practices her art.  Our art is Love.  This is the Way that promises nothing but everything, that costs nothing but everything, that offers nothing but everything, that is worth nothing but everything.       

If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. ²If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.   –excerpt from 1 Corinthians 13, The Message