When your friend cannot believe what you just said on that altar. LISTEN, friends. Acting perfect at church is like getting dressed up for an X-ray.
Church is HOME. It’s where I can breathe deep and BE MYSELF for God’s sake. And I will never ever let anybody convince me any different.
How about church becomes where we talk about ALL the things instead of none of the things????
God loves. No exceptions. Anybody who tells you otherwise is selling something.
You’re beautiful and perfect. Hide nothing. Live naked and unashamed. The end.
-Glennon Doyle Melton
Here’s a glimpse into part of my story.
I lied, cheated, and stole.
My decision to confess was more like a weary surrender than a bold march into battle. After I had allowed my life to fall into a thousand pieces for the thousandth time, my friends planned an intervention. But then, they found out the truth. And just like that-they were gone. I realized I was running out of people and options. At the time, the path of least resistance seemed to be for me to run.
It’s not somebody who’s seen the light
It’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah.
I called my older sister and said, “Sister, do the thing you always do,” which is to figure out what the hell happens next, and then make that thing happen. After a couple hours on the phone, she gathered up my broken self. She figuratively held my sweaty, shaky hand. And that was that. I got in my car at 3am and started driving home. I had just dropped out of my first year of college.
After the school year had ended, my parents drove me back to Portland to gather all my belongings. I hated being there. The shame hit me like a fresh wave of stench right when I got out of the car. My parents followed me up to my room, and we just stared at the disaster together. During my last couple months of school, I lived like a pig. My room was a hazardous pile of shoes, dishes, dirty clothes, and old magazines. I valued nothing. Everything that came into my life was disposable: clothes, opportunities, people. My room looked as if my insides had spilled out onto the floor.
After a few minutes of quiet, my parents both started picking things up, one piece of trash at a time. They threw away garbage, folded my clothes, and gently tossed the magazines. I watched for a while and then joined them. We packed all my clothes into bins and wiped down every gritty surface. We worked silently, side by side, for hours. Then I sat down on what used to be my bed, and my mom sat next to me and held my hand. My room looked so different. It looked like a place where a girl might want to live. I wondered if my head and heart might one day be places I’d like to live too.
This was the beginning.
I once heard that life is a quest to find an unfindable thing. This is the problem. Life is a bit of a setup. We are put here needing something that doesn’t exist here. And that, as my younger sister McKae would say, is some bullshit.
A writer Anne Lamott calls this unquenchable thirst our “God-sized hole.” People of faith believe that God put us here yearning for what will only be found in heaven: him. I get that, sort of, but it still seems a bit twisted to me. What is the point of this life if we can’t have what we need? What are we to do with our God-sized holes in the meantime, before we die? How are we ever supposed to be comfortable down here with a big old hole in the middle of our hearts?
Since I’m a slow learner, I tried to fill mine with poisonous things for over 15 years.
When I was young, I tried to fill mine with lying, cheating, and stealing. Those things became comfortable to me. They were my God. When I did those things, I lost consciousness of my own discomfort and emptiness. But immediately after I lied, cheated, or stole, my hole felt even bigger. That’s how you can tell that you’re filling yourself with the wrong things. You use a lot of energy, and in the end, you feel emptier and less comfortable than ever. Those things were hard, but at the time, I had convinced myself they were easier than real life. I felt safer in my own little world. So I dropped out of college and deeper into these hole-fillers. Fill the hole, empty the hole.
I didn’t come back to life until I was twenty-five.
