Spiritual

Today was a weird day. 

I had called Rocky early in the day and said, “Today feels weird.”  He thinks I’m weird.

Then, I found out that Farrah Fawcett died.

Then, the shocking word was out that Michael Jackson died.

I wrote on Facebook, “Has anybody checked on Patrick Swayze?  I’m afraid to look…”

These icons who are gone were part of my youth. Farrah’s poster in her red bathingsuit was on my wall when I was entering into Jr. High..  I went to many salons with my mom begging for a Farrah Fawcett hairstyle but I had wavy hair of the “not cool” variety  and instead of sweeping, easy beauty, I looked deranged and like I was trying too hard.

Michael Jackson’s Thriller video on MTV was the reason that I turned OFF my winning game of MegaMania on Atari.  It was totally worth it. The video was completely captivating. MJ’s music was what I played on my first Sony Walkman cassette player as I walked all over Florida on my summer vacation after 8th grade.  His music was the soundtrack that made my life seem like a cool movie in 1982.

These bits of my past that I don’t notice are a part of me until something like this happens. 

I don’t have any great wrap-up…I’m still processing it.  Meanwhile, there’s some big voting on the environmental bill…I’m all for  being responsible with our planet but I hope this one gets shot down.  Yes, I want to drive more environmentally friendly cars and I think humanity needs to to take greater responsibility and not be  greedy to completely ravage the trees and all but geesh, my body is made out of carbon — what are we going to start doing?  Eliminating PEOPLE to save the planet?

Don’t get me started…

I’m not sure if I should be concerned but it just hit me that the two reality shows that have to do with being a housewife, are from the two main areas that I’ve lived my whole life:

The Housewives of New Jersey (where I was raised)

The Housewives of Orange County (where I lived for almost all my adult life).

Nothing profound about it.  Just noticed it.  Gave me pause.

It’s a reckoning moment for me.

Last night, I had wine (not an excessive amount  - 2 or 3 glasses) which is usually fine for me.  Plus, I’m on the larger size of the weight scale so, alcohol doesn’t usually make much of an impact on me. Last night was different — wine on an empty stomach and apparently taken too close, timing-wise, to my thyroid medication and I ended up in a state of ‘not so great’ as the world around me looked like it was on marionette strings — bouncing up and down and up and down and up and down and up and down and…

barf….

Yes. Repeatedly.

Since I haven’t been in that kind of situation since I was in my 20’s, I forgot how bad, bad can feel.

But that night, I didn’t realize that my empty stomach with yummy wine and my medication were going to collide in this moment of “oh. my. gosh. - God HELP me” kind of thoughts in between dry heaves.

I learned a lesson.  But I learned it the hard way, in some respects, and in other respects — I got off easy.

Spiritually, I’ve been learning a lot.

Having been in the church world for a long time, I learned a lot of things that worked for my life:

- Seeking God

- Praying for wisdom

- Being in community during good and hard times with people.

And some things that didn’t work:

-Learning formulaic ways to approach God

- Dealing with people from a sense of hierarchy — the pastor’s the important one, the worship leaders the next important…etc… –

and the ultimate downfall:

- Transferring the performance-based relationships that I had with others to thinking God expected me to perform for him.

That last one really screwed me up.

The disparity between this God of unconditional love and this church of conditional acceptance became a journey for me and a conversation between me and God. I started to talk to God very honestly, in the middle of my pain, in the middle of my confusion, my everything….and a lot of times, I just didn’t talk at all.  I shifted from this desperate clawing for God of “You HAVE to answer me, you HAVE to bless me, you HAVE to, OR ELSE!!!” that I had lived in for much of my faith… and instead, I felt the peace that came in not having answers, and experiencing new trust that He was simply with me and I began living with self-honesty on my spiritual quest.

To some of my Christian friends, I seemed New-Age-y and scary, like I was forsaking my faith.   And I was.  I was forsaking my performance-based faith. And trust me, at times it was scary.  Because I was pursuing an unnerving adventure:  I was being with God and letting him show me who he was, in whatever ways he was going to do that instead  of me telling him who he was and looking for him to show up in those selective ways.  I was giving up control.  Trust me, that scared me.

I wasn’t defining myself by “Christian”.

Or my political party.

Or my stance on social issues.

I was stripping away the identities that I had formerly been defined by and that had allowed me access to specific communities.

I started referring to myself as a “human being” and I realized that calling myself that, didn’t leave anyone out.  It was all inclusive.

I just was ‘being’ where I was at — without condemnation or apologies. Even my husband noticed a difference. Rocky said to me, “I see ‘peace’ in you.”  

I began to experience this very ‘Zen’ sort of peace.

I started considering, what if everyone goes to heaven? (if there is such a place, I started wondering…) Because as a parent, I couldn’t imagine not having one of my children with me for eternity.

I started living with a paradigm of “God is love”.  What if  ”love” made us and “Love is in all of our DNA” and what if some of us recognize that and some don’t but we still all have it. 

I began to feel connected to every person, like we were a long-lost relative just reconnecting.

What if we aren’t black with sin from birth?  What if we’re part divine and part human and a glorious wonder — and what if life is all perfectly imperfect and that’s the way it was planned.

That flew in the face of so much of the Christianity, but it was so ‘Jesus’ to me.

When I started seeing life in those new ways, I found that I got intolerant of some formerly accepted commentary I heard around me: 

I got tired of people from non-denominational churches whispering about Catholics the way that they whisper about someone having cancer.  Saying things like “Oh, they’re so great, even though they’re Catholic”.  

I got tired of people asking me if I was “witnessing” to our gay family members at holidays as if that would be the only justifiable reason to be attending an event and as if the only thing that they were, was “gay” or that they some how needed to be witnessed to…

I got tired of people talking to me like I was a rebel to God simply because I didn’t agree with their theology.

It’s just tiring to be approached out of fear which requires agreement in order for there to be acceptance.

And here’s an honest confession:  I know all this stuff because I was this type of person.  The kind who was trying to save you, and change you, and fit you into the box. I was that person judging you.

I’m sorry.  And I’m not in that space anymore.

I’ve learned some lessons the hard way, like my little drinking explosion last night. Spiritually, I’ve lived judging and judged.

Today is a new day for me, as the last 5 years have been, and I can either live in my mistakes with self-condemnation or I can live in the learning that came through those times.

My choice today, and every day is this: I can be ‘against’ the people who don’t agree with me or I can be ‘for’ love.

Since my heart is to short-cut people through some of the hard part of life let me share this little tid-bit of wisdom:

Living “for” love gives you a lot more inspiration and energy than living “against” any denomination, political party or person.

And note to self: Next time you’re co-hosting an event, have a little food before you have a little wine.  You’ll be able to stay and serve the guests rather than barfing behind the bushes and going to bed. It’s a lot more fun to be at the party…

Oh well…

You live, you learn….

If you tuned in to my last post, “A FAQ - A Frequently Awkward Question”, you saw that as I journeyed toward a God of Love, I spent some time stepping away from my former thoughts on God and the long-held traditional beliefs I had.

One thing that I mentioned was that I took Jesus off the table.

That’s a pretty threatening thought to have and express in my world.  Because, in Rocky’s and my life together, we spent most of our marriage working in churches.  And there’s an understanding that you have in churches that you are going to hold to certain beliefs that are foundationally the same as the rest of the team of leaders in the faith.

Well, Jesus is one of those “essentials” for people in Christianity — seeing that it’s in the name and all, “Christ”  –  ”Christianity” — it’s sort of built right in there….

For me, it was risky business to take Jesus off of the table as I was downsizing the craziness of my faith.  But I had such a mixed up idea about who God was, who Jesus was and ultimately, who I was that I reached a point where I felt I had to do something…

It screwed me up to turn on Christian radio and hear 5 different pastors talk about the same verse in the bible and land on 5 different theologies about God — and they all believed they were right and that the others were wrong. 

I stopped listening to Christian radio programs years ago.  I got afraid to go to my bible and read it because I figured, if the scholars can’t figure this thing out, then, who am I to think I could understand?

The scary thing for me was that, I had spent years seeing Jesus as the “kinder, gentler” version of God.  Like the Old Testament God was the scary-ass, punishing, don’t-piss-him-off, God.  And Jesus was like the sweet Kindergarten teacher who loved the most rambunctious kids in the class kind of person.

I spent some years hiding behind the well-marketed Jesus so that he could protect me from his rage-a-holic Dad.

At a certain point in my journey a couple of things hit me:

1. I was afraid to know God.

2. I was afraid to let go of Jesus.

Being afraid to know God came up in just thinking that there was a right way/wrong way on how to approach him.  Sort of like, there’s a holy protocol.  Maybe you’re required to sing first (if that’s the rule, then how many songs are enough?)  Or maybe to kneel or to bow (if that’s the rule, then how low and for how long?)  and that I was supposed to address God in a certain way, “Dear Lord…Holy God…Creator….Father…”

If I say it wrong or do it wrong, is the ground going to open up?  Okay, maybe not that but am I going to get a disease — or is that why I have a disease — because I made God mad??

Yikes.  Too freakin’ hard.  Too many rules.  

It’s easier to talk to Jesus.

But then, I realized that if Jesus was the manifestation of God’s heart and I didn’t know God then, I really didn’t know Jesus.

Then it got scary — because taking Jesus off the table is like letting go of the lucky rabbit’s foot that I used to keep in my pocket during my softball games.  If I lose ‘it’, I lose. I lose the power and the protection.

Once I realized that Jesus was my lucky rabbit foot to keep God from completely thrashing me, I realized that I had devalued who he is and my relationship with him and just resorted to him being some kind of existential bodyguard.

So, I took the biggest risk that I spiritually knew and I set Jesus aside so that I could go one-on-one with God.

Wow. I just exhaled right now in typing all this.  I didn’t realize that while I was writing all this I was holding my breath. But it makes sense because it was a pretty stressful time.

It’s like living your spiritual life walking the tightrope, with a God who is wiggling the rope and wanting you to fall — all  without having Jesus as the net anymore.

So, when I tell people that I took Jesus off the table, they might be tempted to think it was because he meant that little to me when really, if someone’s willing to step outside of their view, they might be able to see that I wanted a genuine relationship that much.

They can see what I did as that irreverent or they can see it as that respectful.  

And hungry.

And free.

Here’s what I figured:  If God really wanted me to have a hold of Jesus, He was going to put him back on the table. If this God who made me was really going to require Jesus to be my salvation — or else — than what loving God and Father is going to deny me the access point to my eternity?  If any of that is true, then isn’t a God who is love and who loves me going to reveal it to my seeking heart?

There’s so much that came to me during that time.  And I’m not going to tell about it right now because the answer isn’t the point.

There’s something powerful about the question.  Being able to take the big ol’ hairy risk of saying to God “You scare the shit out of me and I’m using Jesus to keep your angry self at bay and I don’t want our relationship to be that anymore — can we start a new conversation?”  And to know that we can and that he will and that he won’t punish us for doing so.

That’s more the point.

And that’s why I don’t need to save any one and I don’t lead anyone in any old school salvation prayer.  Not my job.  Because if I could convince you, then the next guy down the road could unconvince you.  I’d rather tell you that I went straight to God, in my limited understanding, with all my fear and preconceived notions,  and entered into a new conversation.

My invitation for anyone who is questioning or curious, or ticked off or scared is to do the same - the One who made you is the One who knows how to speak to where you’re hiding out in the crevices of your heart anyway so, why not start there?  If there’s something to prove, He can prove it to you. If there’s something to show, He can show it to you.

When I was walking through it, it terrified me.  When I look back on it, I smile - because there was a peace that came to me that I had never known before.

So whether it’s Jesus or a rule you have of reading the bible every day or a misbelief you have that there’s a ‘right’ way to do spirituality –It’s not the end of the world to let go of the rabbit’s foot of your faith, it’s just the end of the world as you know it.  And, since we’re both being really to the core honest right now — that might not be such a bad thing…

I just went to sign my kids up for this great summer program at a nearby church.  In the midst of all the frenetic, high energy day camps, this one is mellow and takes the children back to Old Jerusalem and what life was like 2000 years ago.  They bake unleavened bread, string beads and avoid the tax collector.  I like it.  It’s part history, part music, part getting them out from under my homeschooling  mom feet for a really, really, really great price.

Works for me.

While I was there, I recognized a lot of people.  Why?  Because I attended there for years and was their worship leader for a time. I have history there.

Inevitably, I get asked “the” question.

“So, Stacey, where are you and Rocky going to church?”

Several answers jump into my mind. I give an answer that sounds too curt, even though I don’t think I really mean for it to, 

“Mmmm…we’re not.”

Awkward pause.

“Oh…you’re just attending different churches right now?”

More pause on my part.

“Actually, no….”

“Oh, so, you’re meeting with a home fellowship group or bible study?”

Shaking my head and shifting my feet while still maintaining eye contact, 

“Nope,” I take in a breath and  smile that weird smile that’s just trying to lighten the mutual discomfort.

It’s hard.  Because there’s a part of me that wants to explain my heart –

“You see, I’m freer now than I’ve ever been. I went through something a few years ago that nearly did me in —  I thought I was going to die from all the theological anvils dragging me to the bottom of my spiritual sea.  I had mixed up God with this performance-mode faith I had in church and with people.  I was judgmental and narrow, but called that ‘love’ and only people who could fit through my sieve of acceptance got my friendship. I saw people in two categories, ’saved’ and ‘unsaved’. I was trying to save you and get you to live right. I had an agenda.

But then, I saw it.  Somebody started doing that to me in such a clear and painful way (even though many others had done it before) and I got to see myself in it.  It prompted me to have a conversation with God - an honest one where I took everything that I knew to take off the table:  My long-held beliefs, the traditions of the church, terms like “trinity” and “saved” and “grace” got removed — I even took Jesus off the table (make space for the audible “gasp” that often follows) and said, ‘God, just show me who you are.’

And what he showed me is that He is love and that he made me from love.  That he gave me a command to walk in love, which is not impossible when you have a God of love  sewn into the very fabric of your being by His own loving hand.  I stopped seeing myself as broken and desperate and I started seeing myself as whole and accepted and connected to the Father.

I stopped living in the “To Don’t’s” and started living in the “To Do’s” and my life started having the forward motion that love brings instead of the resistance and tension that fear breeds.

My life had more trust — and more honesty about when I didn’t have trust.  

I knew less answers to questions than I ever had but had more peace than I had ever known in not knowing.

I found a joy that I thought I was supposed to have all those years of Christian leadership and now I have it in a new way, without the title of “Christian” and with a different understanding of “leadership”.

That I have a new love and awe for Christ, but I don’t quite have him all figured out — but that only adds to the mystery and respect that I have for him in a brand new way.

I want to say all of those things and more.

I want to tell that person who asked me about church that I am the church. And like Paul reminds, “Don’t you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit?”  that I am taking on the idea that everywhere I go, there is sanctuary because it is in me.

And that every person I commune with, whether a friend at coffee or at a park with fellow tired moms, or those intimate moments with my husband in the quiet of the night  – is a time of worship because where the temple is, God is and my life is worship wherever I go.

And lastly, I want to tell them that when they’re with my children not to teach them all that whackadoo stuff that they are bad until they find Jesus and then he makes them good because that screwed me up and I’m trying to avoid bringing the same spiritual traffic jams to my kids. 

Because how do you explain to a kid that God is love, and a God of love made you - and that you’re bad?  Where does that make sense in the equation of life?  It doesn’t so, please don’t complicate things unnecessarily.  It’s bad enough that they’ll need therapy from the things that I brought to the table, it’s worse for them to lie in the middle of the night trying to make bad math work and wonder if there’s something that they could do differently to make God happy with them.

I don’t want that for one minute for my kids.

So, those are the things I want to say but I don’t. I realize that my audience isn’t with the person in front of me when they’re asking me a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question about church and it’s a ‘pass’ or ‘fail’ test about my faith.

So, I let there be the awkward presumption about what’s happened to me and when I gave myself over to the dark side.  I let them believe that I’m bitter and hurt because of an event at church instead of convincing that I’m free because of a one-on-God encounter that happened over time. And yes,  I realize that I may end up on their prayer list for my salvation but I don’t think I begrudge it. I kind of like the idea of people praying for me, regardless of their motives because I trust the One they’re talking to and that He knows what I need.

They can talk about me all they want - they can even think I’m wrong and that’s okay because as the saying goes, ‘Caged birds sing of freedom; free birds fly”.  And while they’re trying to find the scripture that could be used to clip my wings, I’ll be soaring in that spacious place that makes my heart sing.

So, my husband, Rocky and I were talking tonight before bed and I was having those rare few moments of self-expression that fall between the children’s bedtime and mine.  We were talking about an issue our family has.

“Issue” is such a serious word.

This isn’t serious but it is…

There’s a “finishing what we’ve started”, “cleaning up before we start the next project” — “issue”.

Not a moral thing.  Not a ‘good’ or ‘evil’ thing.  But it’s a thing.

And it’s not extreme, not like those folks you see on Dateline where you walk into their house and they have stuff from the 1800’s up til today piled in stacks around their apartment and have to sleep on the couch because their collection of Encyclopedia Brittanica from the 1970’s has its home on their bed. No, it’s not like that.

But still…

This afternoon, I had sat stupefied on the couch, surveying the house, the busy boys and my inbox and didn’t know where to start.  Do I delete e-mails (I have about 550 to sort through on this account and several thousand on others)?  Do I clean the counter with all the paperwork, notecards, homeschooling books, and random life supplies?  Do I head to the laundry basket and rescue my kids from commando-world?  Where do I start?

I walked, past all the obvious piles and macro messes, over to the ’secretary’ (the antique desk by the door) and to the left of it sat my purse.  Not my current purse that’s butter yellow and bulging against the bookcase, but the black purse that I took with me to Utah…in February.

I declared to my husband, “I’m going to clean my purse!”

“Great! He said, “Take ten minutes to do that.”

I love his optimism…

As I started digging through, I found an embarrassing collection of items so random that I could have been a winning contestant on the old game show, “Let’s Make a Deal” with Monty Hall that I remembered from my youth.

Wadded up tissues, vitamins, business cards, a teasing comb, stickers, kids tattoos, dental floss sticks, scraps of papers with phone numbers with no name to identify themselves by, crumpled receipts dating back to mid-2008 and more pennies than I could count.  And for some inexplicable reason, sand.  There was sand at the bottom of my purse.  I don’t remember there being sand in Provo, Utah in February….maybe having all this crap floating around at 35,000 feet creates some kind of “purse dust” that ends up looking like sand.

Go figure.

As I pulled it all out and sorted it in “Stacey categories” (categories that make sense to me — and a ferret) I realized why I don’t clean out my bag that often — it’s because I don’t know where to put the things that I pull out of it.

I started with the obvious and managed my way to the last few piles that I was avoiding.

Shuffling aimlessly around the house in my robe and Ugg boots, with both hands clenched full with random items,  made me look a patient in an insane asylum.  I didn’t know where to put this stuff.

One by one, I created a home  – spare change in the kids’ piggy bank, teeth cleaners in an envelope in the bathroom drawer, pen caps in the garbage and on and on and on.  Until all that was left was a to-do list and a mangled, chubby lip liner pencil that had melted all over itself in a baggie without a cap and was now sitting on my make-shift coffee table.

When Rock and I sat down tonight and reflected on the day, we talked about being different — that it’s going to take us being different to have different results.  Yes, we’ve grown a lot in the last twenty years of marriage and yes, having young kids and moving 3 times in the last 4 years puts a twist into the whole organizational mix, but it’s seeming like our life is on top of us, instead of us being on top of our life.

I nodded and said, “My purse is like my car, which is like our garage, which is like my e-mail box….overflowing with stuff that I put in but don’t take out.”

“Yeah, I know, I almost didn’t have room for the kids in the car.  They got in and empty water bottles and library books started falling out. So, frustrating, Stace…”

Ouch.

I nodded again.  Sorry and caught.  The impact doesn’t stop there. There was more.

“Rock, my purse is like my body…I’m carrying around all this extra weight in my life that I don’t know how to get rid of.  I think that I don’t know how to deal with some stuff that’s going on in my life and I’m just housing it in here,” I said, pointing to my thighs, “because I’m not really sure where to put it.”

“Wow,” he said. “That’s good.”

Hmm…‘good’ is a relative term. ‘Good’ can sometimes hit you kinda hard.

So, it’s time…time to take care of the flood of e-mail, the distressed shoulder bags that would scream in pain if they could say anything, and the body that is my human purse, storing the random emotional items that I’m not sure how to sort and store in their proper homes..

It’s a good thing to see — a ’sighing’ thing even.

I deleted 121 e-mails today, down to 429 — and have one purse behind me.  The rest will have to wait until morning and then we’ll take care of it - or at least, I’ll continue on….

One scrap of paper — one bit of sand — and I’m thinking even, one pound — at a time.

 It’s hard to feel like God loves you when you’re busy just trying to keep him from being mad.  

My life used to look a lot like trying to catch up on my spirituality and not piss off God; reading more scriptures, serving more at church, not having emotions that went above the even green line, and looking for a demon under every rock. It’s an exhausting and unsatisfying way to live.

Life is different now and there’s an honesty, freedom and humor to the journey I’ve been on. There are remarkable stories in how God has shown up and re-taught me who he is.  I was asked to put it in a book.  God Loves Me, I Think…Stories from Hell, Heaven and the Other Side of Texas is something that will make you laugh and sigh because a part of you has always known that “it”( this whole “faith” thing) doesn’t have to be so hard.

And you were right.

————————-

Book excerpt and website to come.  Wanna help make the website live?  Contact me: stacey@integrity.com

We’ve been enjoying having friend and author, Darin Hufford, with two of his little girls, in our home for some gatherings.  As I was preparing the house for the Friday night event, I first cleared all the big, obvious spaces that were a mess.  As I did that, suddenly I noticed the dust bunnies in the corners. After chasing them down, I saw the spots on the floor. 

Same thing when I entered the kitchen to clean it.  The science experiment in the sink called to me. The blender that I had used mid-week and have avoided for the last 3 days had floating colonies in it. Gross. Once I got that disinfected, I did the counters, then the floors.  The one that really surprised me was the cabinets, though.  They were gross.  You would have thought that all my family and I do is walk into the kitchen and throw food around the room.  I couldn’t believe the drips and the sticky stuff and the little dark finger prints of little dirty boys.

Little by little, I was taking care of obvious to obscure details.

It was hard to miss the spiritual illustration.

I never noticed the little details until I took care of the big ones.  Once all the macro disasters were cleared, my vision honed in on the micro ones.

Remember the T.v show “M*A*S*H”?  Doctors Hawkeye and Hunnicutt would triage the wounded soldiers to see which ones were the most serious. Once they did, the doctors were all about stopping the bleeding and saving the life.  Broken bones and stitches would be taken care of later.

When I coach people or when I’m being coached on my journey, there is often an issue that’s waving a big ol’ flag of attention:  A few of mine?

YOUR MIND IS ANXIOUS! YOU’RE STRESSING YOUR BODY OUT, CREATE A DIFFERENT CONVERSATION!

YOUR HEALTH HAS BEEN OUT OF WHACK, STABILIZE IT WITH REST, GOOD FOOD AND VITAMINS!

YOUR BUTT is BIG! LOSE 50 POUNDS!  

Those are a few that are currently screaming to me. And even though they don’t seem like some “emergency”, I don’t want to ignore them because I don’t want them to turn into one. 

I’m working on it.

When Rocky and I walked through his deal with pornography in the beginning of our marriage (yes, I have permission to talk about this) he would say to me, resentfully, as an excuse for his indulgences, “Well, if I stop this, you’ll just find something else to pick on.”

And he was right. Once the big issue was taken care of, there were other things to address. Not just for him, but for both of us. Having that big, hairy monster gone let us look at some of the inner workings of our dynamics.

After he was out of porn and stopped being resentful, he’d lovingly look at me and say, “Now, we have the luxury of working on other stuff.”

And he was right.

I don’t know what’s screaming to you in your life right now that’s of the “TAKE CARE of THIS, OR ELSE!” variety but just be comforted:  We’ve all got something we’re working on, that’s keeping us humble and in the game of humanity.

And if you’re just feeling like you’re cleaning the cabinets of your life; taking care of schedule demands, whiny kids or some negative thinking — then, thank God that there isn’t some major catastrophe that could be consuming your life.

I guess it’s all a matter of perspective.

Enjoy the day -

Stacey