I had a really nice conversation with my newly-returned-from-her-honeymoon friend last night about where I am in my life and my faith right now, and it reminded me again of why I have this blog. I'd posted about this once before way back at the beginning, but I feel like it has even more relevance these days.
I think my friend was struck by a comment I made that being able to resolve the sexual frustration that was such a huge issue for me is actually allowing me to feel that I can start to come back to a better place in my relationship with God. She understood where I was coming from, but we both also agreed that it seemed kind of backwards, and not the way that we're told our faith is supposed to work. How can doing something that seems pretty clearly counter to God's commands (fornication, for those who haven't been keeping up with the latest news) be a step on the path to getting back to Him? How do I reconcile parts of my identity that seem incompatible, but also equally necessary?
I found that a strong sense of my sexual identity, of sexual and sensual fulfillment, of being a desirable and lovable woman - all of these were things that I couldn't live without, no matter how much I tried to convince myself that I could be sustained on the intangible. I felt like a very bad Christian for not having a faith that became enough substance and evidence for me, and for needing to rely for my comfort on things that I could see with my eyes and hear with my ears and feel with my hands and skin. I got to a point where I didn't feel I could hold on with just hope and faith any longer; and I felt like I'd failed a huge test, and that my faith can't stand up to serious trial.
But my faith is still there, and I also know that I can't live without God in my life, either. I do need to know that He's there and that He cares and is aware of what I am doing - even if my sense of our relationship right now is mostly that I'm disobedient and He's disappointed. I don't like that state of affairs, and I want to change it; but even that is better than giving up the belief that is at the core of my worldview and purpose. I still believe in God, in His Son, in His law, in the rightness of what He does. I don't understand it, I am really frustrated by it right now, and I wish He'd be just a bit more clear with me - but in my world, He is still very real and very much in control.
Doesn't that sound crazy? Another blogger friend of mine is also going through a crisis of faith, and feels that he may have come to the end of being able to believe; and while I completely empathize, I also want to talk with Him and convince Him of the truth that I know in my heart is still real, even as I myself am having such a difficult time with it. When you ask me what I want my family to be like, I want a strong Christian life partner and I want to raise kids who know Jesus; when you ask what drives my vocation, it is still a desire to bring God's justice and compassion to the world. All of this is, and has remained, the same even as my faith was battered and flagging.
I'm still working through the sense of extreme loss over the past year and a half that shook me up in the first place. Some things, like the realignments of my family and my housing situation, I kind of accepted the way things have settled out, but I still don't know if I've really dealt with the issues that came up during those times. Things like my job situation and my family-building future are still in question, and I don't know exactly what the future holds and I'm still a little anxious. But I also feel like I got my "win": no, a new potential relationship doesn't solve all my problems (and comes with some issues of its own), but it gives me something to be happy and excited and satisfied about, and having that fun and smiley thing in my life at the moment makes it easier to figure out how to deal with everything else.
My friend says we need to write a book about these kinds of things - about what it is really like being a Christian. She and I commented that it feels so good for us to have each other, and to know that we're each not the only one to wrestle with and be confused by the intersection of what we believe with what goes on in our life. I don't understand why we don't talk about these things in church, in all these Christian books and songs and such. The focus seems to be on inspiring and encouraging believers to reach their ideals, and to showcase the stories of success; which is all very good, but not if it requires papering over the cracks that I think show up in many (if not most?) people's faith all along the way. The only time it seems that you can talk about those fault lines is when they are healed, when you've found the resolution and can give the witness of a conqueror. Where's the "witness" of the soldier, in the trenches where things are messy and where your choices right there on the battlefield aren't nearly as clear-cut and easy to gauge as they seem to be later?
For me, at least, being a Christian is really hard, and I'm not sure I know what I'm doing most of the time. I don't think I'm the only one, and I think more of us might benefit if we were more honest about what goes through our heads when we're trying to be God's people. It's why I very much appreciated the witness story presented in my church some months ago from the wife in a missionary couple returning to the field. She was very honest in front of our church community; she didn't want to go back, she wasn't feeling the call in the same way that she had before and wasn't quite sure if that was really where she should be; she was returning more from a sense of duty and obligation than of love and faith. I appreciated her witness, and it helped me even though it gave me no answers or practical application steps. I just needed to know that being confused and struggling didn't mean that I wasn't also a woman who really loved God and wanted to serve Him. I needed to know that what I was going through was normal, and it didn't mean that I was an especially awful Christian.
I doubt anyone would call my blog inspirational, nor call it a powerful witness for Christ. I hope it is, in some way and for someone - both for those who are Christians and working through similar issues, and for those who want to know that Christianity isn't about pretending or hypocrisy or being holier-than-thou, but about trying to make sense of who we are, where we come from and what we are here to do. I hope my ups and downs will be a testament to the very realness of Christianity (it's supposed to touch your life inside as well as out) and Christians (we are just people, and we deal with the same things in our lives and minds as most other people). I also firmly believe that my God can love a whole lot of different people with different opinions and backgrounds and lifestyles and practices; and I especially believe that He came for the sassy, stubborn ones like me.
Sunday, September 07, 2008
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2 comments:
I hear you, but here's my experience: in college, when on the surface I felt and expressed the desire to know God better, deep inside (had I admitted it to myself) I got much more of a rush from the power and elation that came with being a woman who could strongly attract and seduce someone (and being confident in my sexuality, even if no one else was around). It made me literally feel more, heightened my senses. It was like a drug that restored my confidence, beauty, womanhood.
I'm now happily married to the object of this lust (there was and is real love there, too), but I live with terrible regrets about who I was then. And now that I'm actually starting to fall in love with God Himself, instead of my own appeal, I'm realizing I was an idiot. I often wondered why God seemed cryptic and unresponsive and far away, and I only recently saw (though trial and error) that when I deliberately will myself to be pure in mind and body, he mysteriously seems clearer, closer, more loving. It's obvious to me now that my doing those things placed a giant fog between us.
Don't know if this would be the case for you also, but if you are looking to relate to God and still feel fully a woman, I think you would get a lot out of reading through the writings of Teresa de Avila. There's a lot there we can relate to.
Thank you for the recommendation about Teresa de Avila; I will take a look at her writings. Sometimes I think I will eventually agree with you, and I will see very clearly how different choices would have made God easier to find. But sex really isn't even the main issue in my faith right now; the sense that I just can't understand what God is doing or why things were happening in my life the way they were predated the more recent resumption of sexual activity.
And I admit that sex is a way of "self-medicating" for me when I'm upset; it can be easy to let myself be distracted from the real things I need to deal with. It seems that this time, though, it may be giving me the space to actually think about where I am a little more and start making steps - albeit very tiny ones - back towards a better place of faith. Not the most orthodox strategy, nor one that I'd necessarily recommend ... I'm really just felling my way on this one. Maybe that was the point of this post; my faith walk feels like feeling my way a lot, even when my life is less dramatic than at present, and I thought it was worth sharing that sense of uncertainty.
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