For me, I have been willingly journeying into the dark parts of myself and the painful ones to sit, listen, learn, and work within to understand, love, bless and work toward the healing that needs to happen for me to know I am enough and I am good with me, no matter what others say, think or do. This is a journey and it is a challenging one. For someone who worries about what others think and wants to be a part of, my separateness allows me to stand firm and know what is right for me. I am seeing it as not being separate from someone or the group, it’s being a part of and individualized in the midst. Self-confidence, self-esteem and self-differentiation have been something I’ve struggled with most of my life and am doing hard work around, especially this year.
With the pandemic, I have been able to work (as a chaplain at a nearby hospital system) but have been limited in visiting with Covid patients and changes in daily temp checks, questions about symptoms, quarantine and wearing masks (that sometimes on a hot day make it hard to breathe but are SO VERY worth it). With the lack of social gatherings and in-person time with friends, family and colleagues, being somewhat isolated to my home with my family has allowed me time to grow individually and collectively through reading, times of quiet solitude, working on the blueberry farm, exercise, watching documentaries, and listening to podcasts (podcasts include: Pre-Loved, Old-Fashioned on Purpose, Unlocking Us, Thrift Therapy, The Liturgists, and FarmHer). For someone who tends to be pretty social, this time has been an adjustment and also an incredible blessing.
With working towards becoming an ACPE Educator, I have written many papers. I revisited the first part of my theology paper recently and it provoked me to reflect even more on my journey with God thus far. I began the first paragraph with: I have always known and believed I am a child of God. What this has meant to me has evolved over the years of my life and what has remained is knowing that I am created in the image of a Creator that loves me, values a mutual relationship with me, allows me to be where I am and continues to want relationship with me no matter what the world may tell me. By the “world” I mean the naysayers and narrowminded Christians who believe God loves only certain types of people who live a certain type of way. In today’s climate, this has been brought to light even more.
I read Jeff Chu’s book several times over the last few years, (out of curiosity initially, then my own humble soul-searching) Does Jesus Really Love Me? A Gay Christian’s Search for God in America. He has become a hero of sorts to me and a community I deeply love and value, as has Austin Channing Brown, I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness, and Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist within the Black Lives Matter movement. Chu, Brown, and Kendi all courageously challenge the human race to check their white, heterosexual privilege, open their hearts and minds to a different Jesus than the Jesus and God created by the white homophobic patriarchal society, acknowledge human judgement and shift the current ways of engaging diversity. The call is to embrace compassion, loving-kindness and honest reflection of self and challenge ideas of living an authentic life in authentic community that is full of genuine love and grace for one another. Rachel Held Evans, Jen Hatmaker, Nadia Boltz Weber, Barbara Brown Taylor, Kate Bowler, and Sue Monk Kidd, all women authors I have read in the last several years and deeply admire, who have faced rejection by many evangelical Christians due to their willingness to engage the full love of a Creator who created all and loves all. These women also question the religious communities they grew up in or are a part of. They challenge the Christian community to open their eyes and hearts to bigger God than the one many of us put in a box that fits into a God who thinks like us, loves like us, looks like us, and doesn’t challenge us out of our comfortable places. As these women are all white, I plan to read more women of color moving forward.
It’s been hard for me at times to call myself a Christian due to what much of mainstream, evangelical Christianity has become. I see hope in the subtle shifts that are happening within some of these Christian communities. As I settle in to who God is in me, with me, and as me (reference: Franciscan Richard Rohr) and what the life of Jesus Christ exemplifies to me through scripture allows me to find joy and great meaning in being proud to call myself a Christian, a Christ follower. Coming home to self, my adult self, has allowed me to come home to God in a more profound, real and authentic way. What is within me is lived out of me and that is love and genuine affirmation and acceptance, not only within diverse communities I deeply love, but also those within my own community.
So as I get ready to turn 39, I’m traveling this journey of self-hood that I will continue on until I am no longer on this earth. I’m grateful for the places I have traveled thus far, the people I have loved, lost and continue to hold tightly to me, and I look forward to traveling onward for whatever lies ahead knowing I am loved, I am me, and I am enough just as I am. 39 is a year that I have been having a hard time embracing, but here we go to see what is in store as I grow closer to 40 by the day, ready to learn even more in this next year of life and soon next decade.
The Journey Home 