One More Truth

Reflections on faith, truth, and being human

Love, pendulums, and the Author of grace

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Last week a CNN article announced a prominent Christian author and former pastor was walking away from both his marriage and the Christian faith. Newsweek had covered the story, as had USA Today, NPR, and Fox News, making it apparent the mainstream public cared just as much about the story as Christian circles. That doesn’t happen very often.

But a pendulum swing is always big news, I suppose, making Joshua Harris’ story a journalistic feast.

‘I Kissed Dating Goodbye‘ hit bookshelves in January of 1997. Harris was young, but his book –  essentially the teen guidebook for Christian purity – would launch him into Christian stardom. It sold 1 million copies, and although it was written with good intentions, it quickly became a legalistic handbook on fear rather than love.

Fear constructs ideals and judgements and calls them religion. Fear develops formulas and sorts people into categories of right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable. Fear gets puffy and ugly and raises hate flags.

Fear wasn’t what Joshua Harris intended to communicate. He asked the publisher to stop printing his book and made an apology for his words and any destruction they’d caused. But I wonder if he forgave himself, because I know – painfully – making apologies doesn’t indicate anything about a personal understanding of forgiveness. Two decades after becoming Christian famous, Harris wrote new words – he was leaving faith. He was kissing the Christian circle goodbye.

I was truly sad about it, not because I always love the Christian circle, because I’ll be honest, sometimes I don’t. Not because I’d been a fan of Harris’ book. I never read it, but in a way, it shaped me. 

I was a senior in high school working at the Family Christian Store the day the book came out, and I was eight months pregnant. Joshua Harris was the poster child for doing everything right as a Christian teen, and I was the poster child for doing everything wrong as a Christian teen, and for the final month of my pregnancy, I carried an illegitimate child while also carrying stacks of the purity guidebook, lining them up on empty shelves, all neat and tidy. I grew a thick skin during that month, for a lot of reasons.

I’d work at the bookstore for several more years and countless pastors, youth leaders, and other kids my age would continue gushing about the book, asking, ‘Have you read it yet and don’t you think it’s wonderful and isn’t it about time we go back to the days of not kissing anyone until your wedding day?’

I was feeding a baby every couple hours. I was trying to make it to graduation. At any given moment I was thinking about buying diapers or worrying my abusive ex would show up and threaten to take my greatest treasure. I didn’t have the energy to agree or disagree with one man’s opinion written in a book. I didn’t have time to take sides, or explain the dangers of creating polarized sides on an issue in the first place. And any idealized dreams I’d formed about relationships, marriage, sexuality, or womanhood had been deconstructed in less than a year, so I wasn’t aiming for perfect – I was grappling for grace.

And the beautiful part of my story is, I found it. 

Becoming a teen mom in the height of purity culture taught me a lot about grace – that I didn’t need a formula for Christianity, I just needed Christ. I needed the good form of both humility and dignity, because without them, I couldn’t love or be loved. I learned how to live on the outer fringes of the Christian circle of ‘acceptable’, but I never felt like I had to leave the circle. I knew Who had invited me; I knew I belonged.

Grace doesn’t swing on the pendulum of our understanding, on the pendulum of our culture, on the pendulum of fear or pain or disillusionment. Grace doesn’t swing away from mistakes or swing closer when we get it right. We can’t explain it, we have to experience it from the source: Jesus.

So it makes me very sad when Harris, or anyone, walks away from faith in Christ, because they will not find grace apart from Him. I’ve tried to brute force my way through pain, questions, suffering, and failure without the gift of grace – and it broke me. Brute force always breaks.

The day after reading the announcement, I did as I always do on Tuesday and volunteered at Hope, a center for women in crisis. I sat in a circle with my women and facilitated the discussion. We didn’t talk about the news, we talked about things that mattered, about challenges and suffering, about joy and goodness. We were honest with each other and we listened. We asked questions we wouldn’t dare ask in church. We spoke truth without defending it, and we didn’t rush to give answers. 

I have a very good circle. Yes, it is still on the fringes of the Christian circle, and yes, I like it that way, but here’s the deal: the people in my circle – at Hope and elsewhere – are living like their God is as big and as loving as He says He is. They don’t pretend to know it all or do it all right, and no matter what is going on in their mind, body, circumstance, emotions, relationships, or in the world around them, they keep following Christ. I need that. We all do. (Note to reader: Get a good circle!)

We discussed strength and its many forms, deciding on these:

The best strength is agile trust in a good God – regardless. 

The best strength is resolute faith that endures – even though. 

The best strength is resilient hope that refocuses and responds, ‘Maybe today.’

And above all else, in all things, our greatest strength is knowing and believing we have a God who is right here, unchanged by our understanding, unafraid of our questions and doubts, and completely unwilling to be stingy with grace. 

So my friends, let’s live like we believe that. Let’s pray for each other and encourage each other. Let’s continue following the One who loved us first, extending and reflecting His love to those who don’t believe, to those who have walked away, to those who are seeking, and to those who are wandering, because there is still Good News and it hasn’t changed. 

 

As always, feel free to share. Thanks for reading.

What Grows in Waiting Spaces

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I met with a new friend yesterday. We’d scheduled to meet twice before, and both times we’d cancelled – because work, because travel, because life. January became July, and we finally made a date we didn’t have to break.

We were just two white gals with our laptops in Starbucks, still strangers, but deep in conversation, deeply connected by the conversation the Spirit of God had been having in both our hearts since January. And I realized while sitting there, in those six months of broken connection, God had been breaking common ground within us. There was purpose in His timing.

A few months back, my daughter and I strolled to the mailbox in the dark. I’d been waiting for the magazine that had printed my words, and for 7 days at least, I’d hustled to the mailbox in expectation, all the while, tamping my enthusiasm, just in case. On the way, I said I’d give up waiting if it wasn’t there.

It wasn’t there.

And on the way home, I said I’d keep waiting after all, because I’m wired to be a hopeful dreamer, even though sometimes, I wish I wasn’t. Carrying hope is tiring. Endurance exposes my weakness.

But that’s just it – I practice endurance. I finish my chores all the way before I cross them off. I get 5 hours of exercise a week, no questions asked. And when something comes out of me that isn’t a fruit of the Spirit, I give my heart a full examination, confront the problem, and dig it out. I take risks that could end in crushing disappointment – and sometimes they have. Endurance and waiting should be easier by now.

I took a risk last week and now I’m in the restless space between hope born and hope realized. I see it on the horizon sometimes, and I nod. I like seeing it there, expecting something ahead, but for now, I’m in the waiting space, the space of dependence, the space of patience. The space where I find out I’m not that patient.

These are the times when I when I chew gum like fiend, my jaw pounding harder than my heartbeat. These are the times when I criticize my body, holding the old lie that if I looked better, life would be better. These are the times the doubt voice is loudest and the accusations make more sense than the truth. These are the times when I wonder why I fiddle with hope at all, because courage takes guts and guts require hustle and sometimes I’d rather just wrap myself in the comfy blanket of apathy and drink my coffee without a single thought in my head, for heaven’s sake.

It’s a lie though. Who would I be without hope?

The journey of spiritual growth doesn’t have blankets, it has covers – of peace and strength, patience and ridiculous courage. Faith assures us what we see isn’t the whole picture and what we can’t see yet – the purpose and good of it all – will push through only if we do. Enduring hope is the journey; hope realized is hindsight. It’s when we see the gathering of many pieces in His perfect timing. It’s when we see ourselves at a table, connecting with someone of similar spirit, saying things we couldn’t have understood without the journey and the space to grow.

The spaces in which we wait aren’t times, but timing. I struggle to believe it in the waiting, but it always proves true in the end. God has the supernatural ability to finish everything He starts. We carry hope and He carries out His purpose – every time.

In all that you wait for and hope for, be encouraged, friend. And keep on.

 

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Looking for Jesus When I Don’t Understand

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On Ash Wednesday, I awoke in the dark, and clumsily made my way toward coffee. While I’d slept, a vulnerable post had been released into a bigger sphere than my normal audience, and there was no taking it back. Strangers, loved ones, or acquaintances were reading the delicate story my mind had kept in sounds, feelings, and colors. It’d taken a long time to find the language, but somehow, 700 words made it to paper and the sensory story I hadn’t known was there had finally been told. It was healing to honor it and let it go, and as a gift, the Lord saw fit to have it open my Lenten season.

I didn’t yet have a practice for Lent, but I was chaperoning the 6th grade zoo field trip and I figured the zoo gardens were the perfect setting for a soul retreat and the revelation of a meaningful practice for the next forty days. But before we boarded the busses, it was announced my daughter would be a soloist in the upcoming spring concert, and in the few seconds it took to say her name, my soul took a long sip of disappointment.

My daughter had tried out for countless solos and it was happy news she’d finally been chosen, but without knowing the date of the concert, I’d already said ‘yes’ to attending a conference that would fall on the same day. In twenty-two years I’d attended at least 2 million games, concerts, assemblies, science fairs, leadership days, rehearsals, speeches, awards ceremonies, presentations, dance performances, and parades. I’d spent my life being there, even when it didn’t seem to matter, and now that it was the big solo that mattered a lot, I’d be absent.

I was confused, maybe even indignant. I was annoyed that the God of all time and goodness couldn’t work things out a little better. I was afraid my daughter would need therapy for the rest of her life because of my absence. And I was uncomfortable with these unpleasant feelings. More than that, I was discontent with forty years’ worth of other confusion, disappointment, hurt, indignation, annoyances, and fears. I didn’t want them anymore.

So I wandered into the forty day season with a promise rather than a practice, the same promise throughout Scripture: if I look for God – even in the midst of things I don’t understand – He says I will find Him.

Forty is the number of years former slaves wandered in the desert; the number of days rain fell and swelled around one boat holding all the world’s remaining life; the number of fasting days for prophets, and for Jesus Himself. Forty is the number of days I stewed and worried and overate to avoid the hard work of letting go of old grievances (and of watching a solo on Duo rather than from the front row).

When counted as a number, forty is the timeline of hardship and nearly losing your senses. But when viewed as a process, forty is a number of healing.

Newly freed slaves wander, and in the process, learn to trust the provision of a new Master. Water covers everything, and in the process, the earth is made clean. Prophets and the Messiah go without, and in the process, they draw closer to God and find He is enough – He is everything.

I unbury the hard stuff I don’t understand, and in the process of confronting and forgiving, I see what I hadn’t before – healing. In the Holy practice of looking for Him, I find Him, as He promised. But the Easter story I’ve never seen until last week – Holy Week – is that in the process of looking for Him, He’s healing my heart, healing my mind, and healing my senses, so that when I find Him, I’ll see, hear, feel, and know it’s Him. And I’ll recognize He’s the Savior He says He is.

 

 

The Grace of Choice and Empty Space

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A few weeks before my senior year, I called a clinic from a payphone and found out I was pregnant. I processed the news alone, July’s humidity running down my back and laying thick on my skin like beads of guilt. The Florida sun spread yellow over everything, all bright sky and silence, and the asphalt steamed thick like the coals of a firewalk. There was much to think about, but I didn’t want to think. I just wanted to breathe.

Room to breathe had been the quest of my junior year. I’d gone looking for it in some pretty dark places and found it, but the freedom I’d found wasn’t as comfortable as I’d expected. It was the kind that quickly sours, the kind that requires hiding the truth and hiding from it. Hiding magnified the darkness and further complicated my sadness. A pregnancy, though – well, that complicated everything.

An unplanned pregnancy is typically complicated, especially for a 17 year old who had planned to go to college, but there were other complexities, too. My boyfriend was an addict, something I should have considered long before, but ignored instead. I worried the Christian bookstore where I worked would cut me loose rather than keep an unwed mother on the payroll. But most worrisome of all was my dad’s job – he was a pastor. Our whole lives had been ministry, and small, unplanned lives popping from the bellies of pastor’s daughters had been known to ruin ministries. Or so I’d heard…

 

To finish reading this guest post with (In)courage, click here.  

 

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