Worthy

My family of origin was a part of an independent, fundamental church growing up.  As a child I didn’t care, at all, what church I attended.  I do remember being thankful I wasn’t the religion my across-the-street neighbor friends were because the girls had to wear dresses or skirts all of the time – even when they were swimming in our small, backyard pool.  My green, one-piece seemed a lot more comfortable than their attire.  Yet, even then, it wasn’t something I thought about.  When I was a bit older I was jealous of some friends of mine that didn’t attend church at all as they were able to sleep in on Sundays then eat cereal while watching cartoons.  I had to get dressed in my Sunday finest and be on my best behavior.

As part of my fundamental education I learned a lot of Biblical truths, and, to this day, I can quote you a lot of scripture in the King James version.  Most of what I know about religion and Jesus was born out of my church of origin.  Knowing what I know and, probably more importantly, not knowing what I didn’t know, I accepted most of this training as absolute truth and lived my first forty years not questioning too much of it.  

In 2018, a lot of my life changed.  One of those many changes came when I decided to reject everything I’d been taught about Jesus, God, or religion unless I’d made the conscious, adult choice to know or believe it.  Faith deconstruction wasn’t something I chose flippantly, but instead, with great care and study.  It’s been a wild ride and I’m still learning and deconstructing.  It’s been fun getting to know Jesus by myself without the interpretations of men with agendas.  It’s also been a lot of work and I’ve felt rather alone often as I wrestle with a concept or have to filter out the ignorance of someone who argues a point with me solely based on their own learned, non-researched opinion.  I had so much self-righteous behavior that I’m ashamed of in regard to my faith practice.  Yet, there are still so many things I do “just because” specifically around religious holidays or in times of stress.  Completely changing how I do things and see things has been exhausting and exhilarating.

In August, 2021, I was diagnosed with life-threatening cancer.

Brene Brown, in her latest book, “Atlas of the Heart”, defined disenfranchised grief as “grief that is not openly acknowledged or publicly supported through mourning practices or rituals because the experience is not valued or counted (by others) as a loss.”  My deconstructed faith, that hadn’t had the time to be constructed fully back together, resulted in disenfranchised grief when I was diagnosed with cancer.  When I was undergoing surgery on my chin there was a moment of searing pain and creepiness.  I immediately stated to myself that Jesus will never leave me nor forsake me.  However, in that exact moment, it didn’t matter.  Even if Jesus himself was sitting with me in bodily form holding my hand I would still be experiencing that event.  When I was told that the cancer could be terminal and my five year outlook wasn’t too rosey, I immediately shut my eyes in a prayer of healing, and yet again, I quickly realized it didn’t matter.  God has already ordained my days.  Maybe they’re going to be really, really short.  When I shared my reality with my Jesus friends they genuinely implored me to trust in Jesus.  Is trusting Jesus helpful?  How?  In these moments I grieved the simple faith that had carried me through other earlier hardships in my life.  I grieved my deconstruction, and I piled heaps of shame on my already burdened head that maybe God had forsaken me after all.  Maybe I’m the one who isn’t worthy of love.

In all of my work over the last four years deconstructing my childhood faith, one area continued to elude me.  I have a distinct memory of a particular sermon being preached at my family church.  Based on what I was wearing and my learned experiences to that point I guess I was around nine years old.  The pastor was teaching the concept from Ephesians 2:8-9.  Saving faith in Jesus is a gift.  No one earns it or can work for it.  It’s something God offers to anyone and anyone is welcome to receive it.  At this point in my life I’d already prayed the sinner’s prayer and I genuinely believed (and still believe) that my eternal security was safe.  After he’d established that point he went on to (misuse) James 2:10 by saying that everything past the point of salvation needs to be earned.  My nine-year-old ears heard that favor with God will be something we need to earn every day and any day we slack is a day we fail.  From my childhood on this teaching would be said over and over.  Our hearts are desperately wicked and not to be trusted.  Any unforgiveness you have in your heart means God won’t forgive you or hear you or regard you as a person.  (A particularly tough one for a victim of childhood sexual abuse to be taught.)  If you lack faith in a situation it means you’re not trying hard enough, praying hard enough, living good enough and now God will turn his face from you.  I’d experienced adults in my church treat God as a magic genie.  Ask for something and it would be given to you.  Except when He didn’t give it to you.  Then … well … I’m sure it’s something you did.  I even had someone in religious leadership tell me that the abuse I suffered at the hand of someone (also in religious leadership) was God’s way of testing my faith.  And because I was so “bothered” by it and was struggling with unforgiveness as an adult that I’d failed the testing.

I love the culture that I see emerging from the new generations – You are Enough!  God loves you just the way you are!  I believed this to be true for anyone who declared it true for themselves.  You’re right!  You are worthy and God does love you just the way you are!  For me though – for my lived experience – it’s simply not true.  It’s so different from the teachings I experienced as a child which basically equated to you’re a piece of human garbage and you should be on your knees thanking God everyday that he loves you.  In fact, it’s the pastor of my childhood church whose voice rings in my head anytime I want or need something , “You are not worthy.”  It’s my experience that often when I asked for something as a child I would be quoted, “Be content with such things as you have because the Lord has said He’ll never leave you nor forsake you.”  This isn’t something I sat around and dwelled on.  It’s just where my mind went during times of need.

One day, very recently, I figured something out.  My believing it as truth was as simple as flipping a lightswitch.  However, getting to the lightswitch was a near yearlong process of studying, reading, thinking, and lots of life experience.  This thing leads to this thing, which leads here and then there.  Only in hindsight do I see the well worn map.

God loves me just the way I am.  Nothing I do will take away that love and nothing I do will make him love me more.  And, if that’s true, then I’m not human garbage unworthy of love and connection.  My needs and wants have value and should be expressed.  I can make requests of God without first being “good enough” to earn his favor.  I can make my needs/wants known to my circle of people and expect them to be filled.  

I live so far outside the scope of perfection, and I’m exhausted from my years of perfection striving.  I grieve my childhood that taught me such false truths and the years I’ve been oppressed trying to be good enough.  I grieve for that child inside me who went to bed every night with a sadness that, once again, I failed.  And, admittedly, I’m mad at the Christians who taught me to be this way.  They should have done better.  I hope they’re doing better now.

Armed with this belief I get what my genuine Jesus friends have gotten all along.  I now know what trusting in Jesus means for me.  Life is going to suck sometimes.  Right now with pain, uncertainty, questions without answers, and all my fear it sucks pretty bad.  I believe that God made the universe so obviously He has the power to make my life easy and fun.  I also know that’s probably not going to happen right now.  For a lot of reasons (cause and effect, science, etc) I’m meant to endure this part of life.  For me, trusting in God means I know I’ll be strong enough to endure what’s coming next.  Or what’s happening now.  It doesn’t mean the circumstances change.  It means I change.  I’ll be equipped.  I’ll be okay.