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Part Two – Growing Up Churched (2/3)

Mar8

Thou Shalt Not

There was one thing I heard clearer than anything else during those early morning church services.

Thou shalt not.

I heard the words the Pastor was reading from the Holy Bible kept on the pulpit. I heard the Thou shalt nots, and that the payment for sin is death. I believed those words.

I still do. But he was telling me the thou shalt nots, without a word about how not to. Basically, he was telling me what to think, without teaching me how to think. What I never heard was just how to not do the Thou shalt nots, or how to receive forgiveness for my ill doing.

Surely, God didn’t punish little girls with the death penalty, right? But how could I know? Since they never told me (or I never heard) I only knew for sure that I was a wrong-doer.

I heard the words God so loved the world, but to me they were overshadowed by all of my wrongness. How could He love someone who was just so wrong?

Fast forward again, to when I was that young mother, going to that different church with my children, without their daddy.

It was there that I began to understand my Father’s (God’s) love for me. How it extended much farther than I could have ever believed.

The story of my earthly father is for another day. Suffice to say that our relationship made it very difficult for me to understand that “love” could be any other way.

John 1:12 (ESV) but to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. All God wanted was for me to receive Him.

The wrongness of my childhood was nothing in His eyes. It only mattered that I look to Him for guidance.

The choice was mine. Wait. I get to choose? I had never even known that there were options. My wrongness, just was. It was what it was.

I had an encounter with a woman at this time, which I barely knew.

Here is what she said;

“When I see you, I see a chalkboard. This chalkboard says that 2 + 2 = 5. No matter what you do, or how many times you erase it, you cannot get the answer to come out correctly.”

What she told me next, totally floored me.

“God wants you to know that it wasn’t your fault.”

What? I knew at that moment that all my wrongness, was not my fault, I just had not been given all the facts.

On that day I received three things; Freedom from wrongness, choices, and a Father who loved me regardless.

It was then I realized that I would be in a totally different “classroom” being taught in a way that I could learn.

Oh what a glorious day!

 

Part One – Growing Up Churched (1/3)

Mar7

 

Where Do I Fit In?

When I was growing up, we always attended one of the Lutheran churches in town.

Now I have no problem with the Lutheran church, per se. There are different kinds of people with different preferences, I get that.

But as a small child, I only knew that I would be required to sit, for an hour, and not talk. If I could not maintain stillness, I was sure to receive a painful pinch on the shoulder, or an elbow in my side. Even as an adult this sitting “still” is difficult for me. I can always sit, just not still, and I get to choose whether I speak or not.

Back in the day, every one really dressed up for church, but there was nothing finer than attending on a cool Easter morning, men in their suits and women and girls in all their finery. Springy dresses, bonnets, white gloves and the ever present white patent leather shoes.

None of which we had.

We wore the cleanest, not worn out clothing that we owned. I could feel the heat of the stares on my back as we walked up the aisle to our seats. It always seemed that we were less than, imperfect, those without.

Our dad never attended, even on those special days of Christmas or Easter. Often we would be dropped off, and picked up later. His absence was yet another thing that was my fault. My little mind imagined that in my wrongness.

I was often wrong at home. Every day I was wrong at school. Now here at the one place I should be right, I was wrong as well.

My hair was wrong, my clothes were wrong, our family minus our dad was wrong. Every church service simply proved more to me about my wrongness.

Fast forward, to when I was a young mother, going to a different church with my children, but not with my husband, where I felt the same burning heat on my back as we entered into a room with all the “perfect” people, all the “perfect” families all sitting perfectly still, in “perfect” little rows.

What on earth was wrong with me?

Was there anywhere I (and now my children) could fit in?

The Cartography of Our Scars

Mar5

Last week, a word on “Word of the Day” was cartography.

If you don’t know, cartography is the science or practice of drawing maps.

Hold that thought.

Then in one of my online communities, the topic was “Embracing my scars”.

I took about five minutes to write about it. Here is why they go together;

Our scars are like a road map. One laid out by a expert cartographer.

Our scars show us not only who we are, but where we came from.

The hills, the bumps, the ridges, the pleasant peaceful waters, as well as the water hazards. Straight and curvy roads. Smooth roads, and roads with ruts. All of these make our lives more valuable.

We see that we have come farther than we ever imagined we could, and like a new, snowy landscape, we have before us a place to make a new trail. Fresh new tracks.

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What will your map look like? Will the cartographer use straight lines? Or will it be a more adventurous undertaking?

We need both the straight and adventurous to make our lives interesting, and inconceivably valuable.

Valuable in that we can show others that they are not alone in their wanderings. We can show them the way we took to reach where we are now, or, we can help others to find a whole new way of making it all make sense.

Either way, the beauty of that map, will be strictly owned by you.

As Mr. Rogers was fond of saying, “There is no one like you.”