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Earthworms, Knee-Jerk Reactions & My Messy Truth

November 20, 2011 in Personal Narrative, Words with 22 Comments

“You have permission to like something you previously disliked.
You have permission to hold both sides of a contradiction as equally true.”

- Roots of She, Yes, You May

“I don’t think I’m tangible to myself. I mean, I think one thing today and I think another thing tomorrow. I change during the course of a day. I wake and I’m one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I’m somebody else. I don’t know who I am most of the time. It doesn’t even matter to me.”

- Bob Dylan

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.–’Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’–Is it so bad then to be misunderstood?”

-Self Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson

We were walking down the sidewalk of a quaint little harbor town in Georgia. I was aware that this sort of scenario very well might never repeat itself. What with my mom and my dad and me together, just the three of us. And I was taking deliberately slow steps to soak it all in, to feel the oddness of being without my children, without my sister, without my husband, with solely my mom and my dad, my two life-givers. I stopped every few steps to snap photographic memories, while my dad made funny remarks like,

“What are you taking a picture of now, the sewer grate?”

“It has a cool design to it. Leave me alone.”

The banter was warm and lovely, as was the sun burning off the morning fog, and the ships docked along the short piers.

Passing a large church property, enclosed by a white wooden picket fence, I was moved by the crosses that popped up through the thick green leaves, lining the top of the fence solemnly. I paused to photograph. And then I contemplated:

What am I doing? Isn’t this the symbol of my religion, my religion that is giving me a fit lately. My religion that leaves me baffled and bewildered.

Ah yes, I told myself, it is. But equally it is a religion that leaves me marveled and moved. So what am I to make of the strange dichotomy?

I felt squishy. Like if pressed I would smear like an earthworm in the hands of toddler who grips the slimy body a little too hard against the concrete.

I was standing there with my parents, my parents who have both shared and lived such a full faith. Truly I am aware that sometimes, many times, I do believe just as fully as their little 6th grade girl who got baptized on Easter. I am a Christian, I say, without apology.

But other times, I can’t look upon the religion without the knee-jerk reaction of turning away. These are the times I interact with Christianity and I feel shallow, superficial, empty waves of nothingness wash along my sandy, stripped beaches, and I have this innate desire to flee or to lash out. Something of God gets sorely lost in translation. Who are you Christians? I say, with accusation.

Maybe I am the earthworm. The wriggly mess of a body with no distinct form. I wonder if it would be better to be severed and to be two entirely different earthworms, than to be one unified confusion. But I think Paul would have me remain one earthworm warring within.

I feel blessed on the days when I can look without turning away. When my faith comes back to me through secret messages that sneak incognito across enemy lines before my brain has translated the hidden code or my eyes have distinguished the disguise. I hear Sandy Sasso say, “Don’t let your tradition be refined by people who may have ruined it for you.” I know that, like it or not, Christianity is my mother tongue.

Usually I can’t stomach Christian songs, but on occasion the lyrics strike a nerve and attach a harness to pull me out of myself and drop me into a momentary land of clarity and peace. These are some of those words I’ve collected:

“This is my prayer in the desert
And all that’s within me feels dry”

“You’ve rolled back the curtains from our eyes. Now we can see you.”

“You are true, you are true, even in my wandering. You are more, you are more, than my words will ever say.”

“You illuminate the open air

I am silently catching every glimmer I can

Cause i know that when the lightning hits

I’ll be standing here breathless in the wake of each glimpse”

Usually I can’t read the Bible, but on occasion a friend will extend to me verses, and somehow I can see them through their lenses, instead of my convoluted bottle-thick ones:

Like my friend sharing Acts 2 and Acts 4 with me and my instant revelation that I am at home in a church, but it is not a building, it is made up of artists who see the world as I do.

Usually I can’t read Christian books, but there are the occasional touches with greats who weave words into poetry and make me feel not quite so odd in my searching:

One Thousand Gifts

Thoughts In Solitude

The Shack

Usually I can’t hear the gospel without zoning-out, because I have heard it so many times. It sounds empty and hollow and memorized, but it is helpful seeing it through the eyes of a twirling child on tip-toe, who turns to me in awe and says with Shirley Temple-like wide eyes:

“Look there is a big giant cross because Jesus had to die. They hurt him. And oh it is sad, it is sad. But then it is happy because he did not stay dead. And he is alive now. We get to be alive now.”

The extent of this crazy vacillating occurred to me one day as I read something that said Jesus was praying for me, on my behalf. Something resounded in me upon seeing those words, like a gong that vibrated my insides, a head-to-toe soul-scan that left no nerve untouched and yet nothing flinched. Not a single knee-jerk desire to turn away!

I can’t tell anyone this, I thought. How can I admit that I am comforted by the thought of Jesus praying for me, when I am the very same person who did an entire mind-map of all my problems with Jesus? How do I balance on one foot and then the other so seamlessly? And yet, AND YET…

“If the truth is worth telling, it is worth making a fool of yourself to tell.”

- Frederick Buechner

“ . . . good writing is about telling the truth.”

-Anne Lamott

All I have is my truth. Right Anne? Right Frederick? And I have to listen to that truth. And I have to speak that truth, right Teresa? Not bury it deep within the mud of my kind, the earthworms. Open the floodgates. Pour out the puddles. Flush me out of my hiding place. These splashes are reminiscent of 6th grade baptismal waters, and I’m coming clean.

There is no self-love like the self-love of letting yourself speak what you must.

So on one day I find myself the enemy of Christians and on another day I find myself the enemy of those who are not Christians? So be it. I am a messy earthworm warring within, and all I have is my truth. And my truth contradicts. And my truth changes its mind. And my truth does not fit the business model. And my truth is making me sorely misunderstood. But Anne, but Frederick, but Teresa, it is still my truth isn’t it? And though it is painstakingly difficult to live it, it is incredibly easy to write it out. just. as. it. is. Perhaps it’s the only piece of my journalism degree still intact: Report just the facts ma’m.

The fact is I am in need of prayer, and I can think of no one greater to pray for me than the very Jesus who baffles me. I don’t know why, but I will not argue with my truth of the moment.

“So, pray that God will come find me, would you, Jesus? And pray that I will be able to stomach my own wishy-washy wanderings from knee-jerks flinches to vulnerable embraces. And pray that the truth, my truth, won’t embarrass me to the point of silencing this artist. And pray that I can have a few kindred friends on both sides of this Christian/not-a-Christian coin that I keep tossing.

“And pray that when I pluck off the last petal of my daisy it’ll be when I’m whispering the words ‘He loves me.’ Pray Jesus, pray hard.”

Twirling Through A Thunderstorm

September 22, 2011 in Personal Narrative, Words with 35 Comments

“Faith is the aftermath of God.”

- Peter Rollins

I woke up with a horrible dream this morning at 2:30 AM. Wide-awake I walked downstairs, poured myself a glass of cold water and sat drinking it with wide blinking eyes. What if all my worst dreams did come true? What if it is all meaningless? What if the good I believe in doesn’t exist? What if it’s just a figment of my imagination?

Then I made a choice. I put down my glass of water. I recanted the dream. I chose the fury of life, or it chose me and I surrendered, or both. (One can never be too sure about these sorts of things.)

I opened my back door, and I ran through a thunderstorm. I mean literally, just now, at 3:30 in the morning. Well, actually I kind of twirled my way through it, spinning with arms outstretched to the sky, my head up to the blackness so the rain could fall on my face and wash down through the cracks of my dreads, touching my scalp and soaking my insides.

I felt the thunder, and I couldn’t be sure if it was rumbling inside my chest or outside my body. I watched as the lightening lit up our backyard with a blue tint. I told myself I needed to run to touch the back fence. And I plodded my bare spinning feet through the soggy grass on to where the patches of grass ran thin until there was nothing left of grass at all, but just red slimy mud soaking between my toes. I took in little gasps of air as the cold rain dropped big splotches onto my skin. And I breathed in deep through my nose, those smells that only rain and twilight can bring, a rare concoction, perhaps the elixir to my preceding panic.

If you read my blog or you follow my twitter or facebook or tumblr feeds, it is of no surprise to you that I’m dealing with a bit of a crisis of a faith. (Side note – I always use the words “a bit” to subtle the blow for something of which I’m not sure how people will react.) Last October I knew I was losing me, and I went on a journey of sorts into the dark place to find where I had gone. I found myself drawing near to God and a few close friends and asking some very hard questions that rocked my beliefs as I had once known them. This of course turned into me writing a book, a book where I thrashed about with God and tried to talk myself through accepting my mess.

A few weeks ago, I met my book agent, Greg, and his wife for the first time in person. And as Greg and I sat for a few minutes in a crooked table in the Starbucks of a Barnes and Noble, I became face to face with reality. “This could happen quickly,” he said, about my book getting picked up by a publisher once he started the pitching process. “Are you ready for this?”

“Yes, I am totally ready for this.” I answered, and then I added, “I mean, to be honest, I’m scared out of my mind, but I’m ready.”

As we chit-chatted a little further about my book he asked me a pretty bold question, “What do you do with Jesus? Where does he fit in your story?”

The book certainly addresses this, but as I came face-to-face with that question in person, I found myself floundering.

I know all the right answers. I know who he is supposed to be to me. But who is he really? Who is he now, now that I’ve been going through this crisis of faith?

I fumbled and bumbled my way through an answer for him, an answer that would somehow make both of us happy, all the while realizing how stupid I sounded.

I heard Jesus in my head, asking me, “Yes, who do you say I am?”

I told Greg, “I hope I’m never asked to debate my theology.”

“Oh, I don’t know that you’ll have to do that, but what if you’re in a Barnes and Nobles like this doing a reading of your book and then you open it up for questions? Will you be able to handle answering people’s questions?

I sheepishly said, “Yes, If I’m allowed to just say ‘I don’t know’ when I don’t have an answer.”

“Yes, of course you can. You can always say, ‘I don’t know.’”

And that’s the point of my book really, I suppose. That in many ways this crisis has shown to me that I have so many unanswerable questions. That I can’t tie God up into a nice neat little gift with a bow on top. He’s beyond explanation, and yet I long to explain Him. He’s beyond knowing, and yet I long to know Him. He’s beyond comprehension, and yet I long to understand Him.

I love this quote from Thomas Merton,

“If I imagine You, I am mistaken. If I understand You, I am deluded. If I am conscious and certain I know You, I am crazy. The darkness is enough.”

The last two days I have returned to that darkness. Maybe it is because the book has been released into Greg’s hands to work his magic with publishers and I’m nervous that all of a sudden this means I have to have everything in my faith ironed out. Maybe it is because I have wrestled and brainstormed my way through this Jesus question, and feel like Jesus is refusing to leave me alone, walking behind me and whispering that probing question, “Who do you say I am?” Maybe it is because I’ve been reading about Mother Theresa’s own crisis of faith or listening to Peter Rollins speak of how we must set fire to our beliefs and then stay there to see what remains. (It’s one thing to set fire to something. It’s another thing to stick around and find the beauty in the ashes.) Maybe it is because I’ve been reading about a different sort of hell or because I’ve been reading through the Sermon on the Mount and feeling like all of those descriptions – poor in spirit, mourning, meek – describe me.

What I know is that this search to come up with answers has sapped my energy. I have been like a dead woman walking. Feeling numb at times. Crying and talking to myself (or God). Is this what it looks like to watch a person go mad, I’ve wondered? And I’ve felt angry. Angry that according to the Christianity I’ve known I’m supposed to figure God out and have the proper answers so as to assure some sort of salvation. But try as I might to do this right now all my questions keep leading to more questions.

Truthfully, I don’t want answers. I know answers. I’ve got some memorized. They are just words. Just regurgitation.

C.S. Lewis in his book A Grief Observed says,

“Talk to me about the truth of religion and I’ll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I’ll listen submissively. But don’t come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don’t understand.”

So yes, I don’t want religious consolation answers, but I do want life. Oh, how I want life. I want to be tapped into the Source of life. It doesn’t have to be life that is always happy and peaceful and mess-free, but it does have to be life that is worth engaging.

And since I do need some sort of consolation that I can engage life, even when my religion isn’t working, I came to a conclusion yesterday. I am choosing to believe in a God that meets me where I’m at when I can’t quite get to Him. A God that comes for me. That makes a way. That when He sees a willing but confused heart, He brings the narrow path to me. He assures me my feet are already on it. He showers love and grace with cold, plummeting drops, and they sink into the cracks of my dreads, touching my scalp and soaking my insides.

Because if I can’t believe in that, I have no more hope. I have nothing left to give. I can’t force my way out of this dark place I am in. The answers that used to work just plain don’t anymore.

My imagination. The creative spirit. The artist. This is the name I felt God reminded me of back in December when I couldn’t seem to carry the title Christian anymore. When my religion was falling apart and failing to do for me what it had always done. Perhaps it is my imagination, my creating, my art, that carries my faith.

I believe not because I have seen clearly, but because it’s dark, and I want so badly to survive and feel the chords within my soul that I haven’t played yet. I have more notes to explore. I believe being an artist is heroic, but there is no need for heroism if there is never any danger. There is no need for a heroine if there are never dark nights of the soul.

What if Someone really did give us the creative power to create beauty from ashes? What if we have to give ourselves permission to believe that so that we can truly live free?

I have no idea why I was able to twirl in the darkness of a thunderstorm today when I was walking through the valley of the shadow of death yesterday. Are we really always just one step away from You, God? Why is it sometimes so hard to see You? To Feel You? To know?

The comforting phrase I shared with Greg that day as we discussed my book, “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know,” has become a sort of mantra to me. I don’t know why death and then sudden life. But I’m going to make something of it. I’m going to read into it with beautiful imagery and metaphor and mystery because that’s what artists do. I’ve got canvases prepped, ready to catch whatever comes out from this.

I’m going to believe, while I feel that I can, in the transforming power of the Muse within who found me worthy of one more chance. I’m going to imagine it is because Someone met me where I was at and made a way. I’m going to believe this is an invitation to live amongst the ashes in the Shadowlands and redefine home.

I feel as though I am back from the dead.

“There is a lovely phrase in Gaelic, ag borradh, that means there is a quivering life about to break forth.” – Anam Cara

Shadowboxing and Both/And Thinking

August 22, 2011 in Personal Narrative, Words with 19 Comments

Very few Christians have been taught how to live both law and freedom at the same time. Our Western dualistic minds do not process paradoxes very well.

Psychological wholeness and spiritual holiness never exclude the problem from the solution. If it is wholeness, then it is always paradoxical, and holds both the dark and light side of things.

Refusing to split and deny reality keeps me in regular touch with my own shadow self, and much more patient with the rather evident shadow of the church. I see the exact same patterns in every other group, so my home base is as good a place to learn shadowboxing as anywhere else…

- Richard Rohr, Falling Upward

Several months ago I decided to take some time away from church. I was just too angry sitting in church, and I could feel that anger driving a wedge between me and God. It was around the time that I wrote this post.

I talked to Tony about it first, asking him what he thought. At the time, Tony wasn’t going to church with us because he, ironically enough, works for our church and was needing to help out on Saturday nights at the time we typically went. He was fine with my decision though. I was fearful my decision might make him lose his job, but he was thankfully very encouraging that I needed to do what I felt God was spurring me to do.

Next I talked to my kids, asking them if they still wanted to go or if they wanted to take a break along with me. They still really wanted to go, so I would drop them off at church every Saturday night and then slip out through the side doors and drive a block or two away to a nearby ice cream shop, where I would sit alone, sipping on a peanut butter milkshake with my pen moving feverishly across journal paper. I think back on those times, and they seem so precious. I felt so close to God in those moments.

A few months went by before I felt ready to return to church, and quite frankly, when I did return, I did so with the understanding that I was taking one week at a time. I felt this internal questioning, a sort of, “God, do you think I am able to go this week and not get angry?” And a sort of internal answering, “Yes, I’ll be with you. Let’s go just this week.”

I would sit and stand sort of numb-like in church, unable to really participate fully in any of the singing, unable to engage fully during the preaching. I remember it being difficult for me to watch the smiles on the faces of the people singing. I felt sure that they must be faking their joy. That they were just going through the motions to put on a pretty show. I would close my eyes while they sang, so as to not be distracted.

I also found it difficult to sing any lyrics that were explicitly Christian. The name Jesus was very difficult to utter. I just had too many questions, and I didn’t want to be swayed by the crowd to sing something my heart wasn’t sure it agreed with. Despite all that, I knew I wanted to be there, in church, even though that seemed so hypocritical to me. I knew I wanted to make my peace with “the Church.” To part with the swirling anger that had caused me to furiously refuse to enter sanctuary because it didn’t feel like the sanctuary I’d been promised by my religion.

Lemony Snicket, in A Series of Unfortunate Events defines sanctuary as ‎”a small safe place in a troubling world.” So why did I feel far more safe in my ice cream shop with my journal then I did within church walls? What was going on? But I trusted that my gut would not lie to me, and my gut (or perhaps God) was telling me, one week at a time, to return to church.

Now, about four or five months after returning to church, things have gotten a little easier for me. I don’t feel numb when I sit in the experiences.

I still don’t sing a song unless the lyrics really resonate with me. I find myself closing my eyes and dancing more, moved by the powerful sounds of music in its purest sense. I try not to become transfixed on the smiles of the worship leaders, contemplating whether they are real or not. I figure, that’s their business.

I find little nuggets of wisdom amongst the preaching that do speak to me, and I write them down. I also jot down what is hard for me, so I can stay honest with myself. I take what I feel applies to me from the experience, what resonates with my soul, and I try to let the rest blow through me and away.

I am not at a place where I feel comfortable inviting others to go to church with me. I am not at a place where I am 100% sure that I will be in a church building for the rest of my life. I am not at a place where I feel comfortable serving within the options the church currently has for me. Perhaps I’m what churches would call an attender, rather than a member. I honestly don’t know how to classify my Christianity at this point, or if I would use that label at all, but that’s really not my concern. I’m just taking one day at a time, and using my art to work through and express the truth of my beliefs.

Yesterday I was lying on a park bench reading the words of Richard Rohr, when I came across the quotes that I posted in the beginning of this blog post. As books often do, I felt as though the author had strung together just the right words to pinpoint my current spiritual prognosis, and I felt a wave of fresh air rush into my lungs. It always feels good to finally have words to something that has been brewing inside you for months.

I think it is dualistic thinking that made me run away from church for awhile. This idea that if church makes me angry, then I must need the opposite of church. I must need to rush to the opposing side, whatever that might be. And I think it is the subtle shift to nondualistic thinking that is allowing me the grace to step back into church.

It is the realization that any organization, any group that I make affinities with will have an element of let-down. Will have shadow moments, dark-sides of the moon, extreme paradoxes that make it appear to be all a hoax. That is what is so bizarre and yet so rich about this life I’m finally opening my eyes to – it is not a life of “either/or,” it is a life of “both/and.”

Yes, I am wildly impressed and amazed with this man Jesus, but there are equally things he said in history that leave me floundering and shaking my head and wondering, did he really mean that? Yes, I am moved by certain passages in the Bible, like 1 Corinthinas 13 that speak about love, but I am equally horrified by some of those spewing-wrath-of-God type moments. Yes, I have found great life-long friendships through our ties to church, but I have also felt moments of embarrassment when the politics and the buy-in and the one-size-fix-all religion has been pushed harder than the mystical unquantifiable mystery of God.

Life is paradoxical, and no matter what “community” I find myself a part of, I am going to find shadows that don’t make sense when compared to the light. But here is where I think my studies of Eastern spirituality are bringing some much needed balance to my Western upbringing. The idea of Yin Yang means that both sides of the paradox are needed and are in fact inclusive of one another. I do not claim to understand that fully, but when I look at my life realistically, and I dare to speak the truth as the artist in me so longs to do, I can’t help but notice the tragedies and the comedies both feed into the richness of life.

“The weight of this sad time we must obey
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.”

— Edgar in King Lear

“What [Shakespeare] ought to have said in his play [King Lear] was one or the other of these – despair or hope – but instead what he said was both of them and thus something in a way more than, and different from, either.”

- Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth

“Will you tell of your hopes and your dreams and the goodness you have seen?
Or will you tell them of the darkness youʼve created with your own hands?
If you donʼt tell them both…
If you donʼt tell them the whole and true story.
They will never believe you.”

- Blaine Hogan, Untitled

I am MESSY. I am light and I am dark. I bring both joy and pain to those around me.

I am an anomaly. The church is an anomaly. The gay community is an anomaly. Atheists are an anomaly. Hippies are an anomaly. Humanity is an anomaly. Dare I say it – God Him/Herself seems to be a bit of anomaly.

And we need “both/and,” not “either/or” sort of thinking. “Both/and” thinking is where grace and dialogue and love and even redemption are born. “Both/and” is where our humanity and Divinity collide. “Both/and” is where I can be a church attender and still realize I am working through a lot of spiritual questions and doubts.

As long as I’m at a church that will tolerate my paradoxes (which I seem to be), I can certainly come to some sort of peace about staying “on board” and tolerating theirs as well. As Rohr says, “my home base is as good a place to learn shadowboxing as anywhere else…”

Why I Need Jesus Even If I Don’t Understand Why I Need Jesus

May 17, 2011 in Personal Essay, Words with 5 Comments

You make your plans and then a great wind comes along and you begin again.

- Laurie Wagner

I don’t have any answers. Well not nearly as many as I used to anyway. In so many ways Christianity just isn’t working for me like it once was. And yet, despite that, I can’t explain why I want Jesus when I’m hurting or scared. But I do. I call for Him. I “make” Him come and sit with me. I give into His hovering (like Anne Lamott in Traveling Mercies) and say, “Fine, You can hold me for awhile, but only because I’m letting You.”

“And by the way,” I whisper to Him because I’m not sure I’m ready for everyone else to know, “I need You. I REALLY need You. I don’t know why, but I know I need You.”

When things are whipping around all fine and dandy it doesn’t occur to me that I’m a Christian. I’m an artist chasing God, stepping into His beauty after unfolding beauty. I’m a spirit, floating with, in and around the Divine’s free-flowing Spirit. A Spirit that flows right through thick concrete, man-made walls of religions, institutions, race, gender. A Spirit without bounds because God is in everything. I’m collecting gifts faster than my pen can document them. It’s enchanting and bigger than religion. Far bigger.

But when my heart is breaking, and I can’t help but feel all so alone, then I enter into the dark and sit on my bed with my feet pulled in tight so they don’t dangle over edge to get nibbled on by the creatures that haunt, by the unknown that growls. And here is where there is this odd, desperate thirst for Jesus. There is hunger for Savior. And there is peace that really does surround me and waft me in waves, right on past understanding, right on past human comprehension. Peace deep.

Tell me, how do you get to peace deep without Him? I know some of you do. Don’t you? I can muster strength for a lot, but the spiderweb cracks of my breaking heart just don’t respond to any other sort of first-aid than His. They want Him. Why do they want Him? I don’t know. But do I care? Don’t I want this full-life worse then I want to understand myself?

So I bend, and I beg Him, “Come to me.” He is already close, dabbing soothing in the spots that make me wince. I am already well. In an instant, I am well. I am well and I don’t understand why and I don’t have to. Just like I don’t have to understand why tears fall with the weight of the joy, every single time.

He takes me back to the freedom spot, and I dance on through the MESSY until the winds of the Spirit blow me back to bedside edge for revisited heart lessons revealing that grace is what sustains me. Grace that Jesus smuggles into me when the prison guards have all fallen asleep.

You know, come to think of it, so many people are falling asleep with guns strapped to their chests for safety. I think I’d rather be awake and vulnerable.I think.

Woke up this morning
And I heard the news
I know the pain of a heartbreak
I don’t have answers
And neither do you
I know the pain of a heartbreak

This isn’t easy
This isn’t clear
And you don’t need Jesus
Til you’re here
Then confusion and the doubts you had
Up and walk away
They walk away
When a heart breaks

I heard the doctor
But what did he say
I knew I was fine about this time yesterday
I don’t need answers
I just need some peace
I just need someone who could help me get some sleep
Who could help me get some sleep

This isn’t easy
This isn’t clear
And you don’t need Jesus
Til you’re here
Then confusion and the doubts you had
Up and walk away
They walk away
When a heart breaks

I’m Tired of Being a Christian

December 3, 2010 in Personal Essay, Words with 12 Comments

I am tired of being a Christian. Like a flower in the winter, my color is gone. My edges are brittle. My leaves are gnawed. I am drab and lifeless.

I am tired of being a Christian. The word sits on me like a lead weight. It makes it hard for me to breathe, like old neighborhood games of football where you end up at the bottom of a pile of sweaty kids and no one seems to be un-piling. I feel the burning in my chest, the labored breath, my ribs are bruised from the pressure.

I am tired of being a Christian, and God tells me, “It’s just a name. It’s just a label. And I have given you a new name. I am calling you Artist.” But you don’t just go around telling people that, now do you? Because the Christian title is one worn with great pride and at great cost. It is protected by many. It is even, especially where I live, culturally relevant, accepted, assumed. When the masses are carrying the current a certain direction it’s pretty hard to feel like the right thing for you to do is to swim against the flow of status quo.

The problem for me really comes down to the definition of Christian. And my definition is obviously skewed and slanted and messy and disfigured. I can’t hold onto a title that I’ve been asked to honor, when the title is leaving me bitter and angry and lying to myself. I have an affection for people like Anne Rice and Gandhi who at least are daring enough to be honest about the dangers of a word that so many blindly reverence.

I am, oddly enough, not tired of Christ. I am in awe of the story of a rebel with a cause. A great cause. A cause that refused to be muddled up by the preconceptions of what it “should” be. And I am in great conversation with a God who seems to know my name and my heart far greater than I have ever given Him credit for. I am in shock that my religion has kept me so far from Him. And even more in shock that I was absolutely sure for years that I knew Him because I knew the rules of my religion.

Things got messy for me when I first started paying attention to and pursuing the desires of my heart. I started listening to the fact that I wanted to be an artist, and I started taking those desires seriously. I had the audacity to consider that those desires planted on my heart took precedence over guilt-driven actions of serving at a soup kitchen, going to church, or reading my Bible and that years of ignoring those desires actually drove me further away from God and into a life of empty service.

And then something else messy started happening. I started believing I was really hearing from God and that He was telling me something different and unique. I started to get confused with what to do with the preaching at church because the preaching at church wasn’t nearly as unique and hand-crafted for me. I started to feel guilty that I would rather be hearing from God on my own then hearing from Him through the words of a sermon series at church. I started looking around at the people filling the church building and wondering if they were feeling as empty as me. If they were sitting there because they were lumped in under the title of Christian and that meant their butt had to be in a seat. I started feeling like God was calling me to Himself instead of calling me to protect and reverence a label, and it felt naughty and scandalous and oh so relieving.

I’m tired of being a Christian if being a Christian means I have to be issued my marching orders from “higher-ups” who do not know me or know my heart.

I’m tired of being a Christian if being a Christian means I have to preface any and all of my actions with an explanation. I am drinking, but I am not getting drunk. I am cussing, but I am doing it in a whisper and I’m only quoting something I heard from someone else. I am not going to church but I’m not alienating myself from the body of Christ. I am writing in the mornings, but it doesn’t mean I’m not getting my prayer time and Bible time in with God at some other point in my day. I’m so tired of explanations, many of which I don’t even believe in.

I’m tired of being a Christian if being a Christian means I have to apologize for being me.

I’m tired of being a Christian if being a Christian means I have to tie everything up in a nice neat little bow.

2011 is going to be a year of “Messy” for me. And it’s going to get messy because I’m going to stop doing things because of a label that I don’t believe in. I’m going to stop doing the things that I’m doing simply because that’s the way they’ve always been done. I’m going to trust God’s unforced rhythms of grace and realize that as much as my religion has wanted to convince me that there is a formula, there just plain isn’t.

Every single day of my life is unpaved territory, and I’m being led by an unsafe (yet good) Artist God who delights in mystery, wonder, the unexpected and joy, and He sure as hell doesn’t wrap everything up with a nice neat little bow for me. He lets me wrestle with the mess for as long as it takes. And you know what? I really like that about Him. He has far less problems with my imperfections then I do, and He refuses to make me do anything.

I’ve been drowning for years in a world of “make me” and He has pulled me up out of those turbulent waters and set me down in the sunshine to bask in His love and grace and condemnation free sunlight. And I, quite honestly, am just enjoying the conversation, and the warmth, and the space to figure out what it even means to just be “me.” Dripping wet, angsty, pent-up, gasping for breath “me.” The me He created me to be, not the me Christianity created me to be. I don’t owe it to God to be a “Christian.” I owe it to God to listen to the truth of who He created me to be.

Do yourself a favor, if you are a Christian, stop being one because someone told you had to be and start having a conversation with God to find out who you really are. How are you defining that word Christian and are you okay with being that definition? If yes, great, but if there is even the smallest inkling in you that you aren’t, give up the game. There are far more exciting conversations and lifestyles to be had on the other side of the ocean, on the beaches of God’s grace and truth and love.