Identity Crisis and Fitting In

I had a different post that I wanted to write today, but instead I'm writing this because I feel emotional and of course it's always best to publish one's thoughts when one is emotional, right? :p Really though I've been emotional for a month now, and it's been tough. I feel like such a loser that some hormones could make me so crazy, but it's always been this way. Other women take these hormones every day and are fine, so why do they make me so crazy? I'm supposed to take the hormones for three more weeks, but I'm not going to. I'd rather be in pain and discomfort and be sick than to keep treating people like crap, and keeping on not being able to communicate or think correctly.

It's another 22 days until my surgery, and I want to be sane and easier to live with for the next 22 days. I already feel like I don't fit in and now I'm terrified that I've done irreparable damage to friendships even though in reality I know that there are bumps in the road in any kind of relationship. I've cried a lot more this past month than I've cried I believe in the past year. I hate it because it's like every little thing that happens, where I used to be able to just go with the flow and deal with it, has been a huge deal. Lately, if people look at me wrong, I cry. I'm just not like that, normally I'm tough and it takes a lot to really shake me. I feel like these hormones are altering my personality, altering who I am, and I don't like it one bit!

A friend gave me a book that I have been reading, but she also guided me toward a particular section of the book that I hadn't gotten to yet. This particular section is about a lady called Jeannie, who experienced a rather dramatic conversion to Jesus after being involved in some pretty heavy sin. She was so excited about her new life in Christ. However, Jeannie wished she was like the other women in the church. She feels that the women are welcoming and loving, but she feels that they don't understand her and that she will never quite fit in with them because she feels that they have no clue about her past life and they wouldn't understand it, and that if they did understand they would reject her. I can so totally relate to that. I don't feel like I fit in anywhere, even in the church and even though I know some wonderful women who are friends of mine. I still feel like I don't quite measure up to them and never will.

I try to remind myself that my identity is in Christ and that it doesn't matter if I fit in or not, but the truth is that to me it does matter if I fit in. I have written out Bible verses that tell me the truth about myself, I read encouraging books, but sometimes I still struggle. I struggle with insecurity and acceptance and love, and I always fear that my friendships will one day end because I do something really stupid and that my friends will be sick of dealing with me and just walk away. I've experienced a lot of that and I can't say that I blame the people who walked away, which is why I fear I haven't changed enough yet or that deep down I'm really the same person as I was then and that one day I'll show my "true colors" and that people will just walk away when they've had enough. But I don't really help myself because when I feel the most insecure is when I take things more personally than I should, or snap at someone, or pick a fight. I don't even understand that.

Sometimes I wonder when the truth really will start to take effect and I'll start to believe the truth about myself.

I Want to Look Amazing, Even if it Seems Crazy :)

Sometimes it's hard to remember that my identity is in Christ. But right now, it's even harder. On June 5th, I'm going to undergo surgery that will eliminate the possibility of my having any more biological children. It's a medically necessary surgery, and yet I'm still torn up about it. You see, all these years, the fundamentalist church has taught me that my value lies in how many children I have. Once I can't have children anymore, I'm pretty much useless and serve no other purpose except for raising them (and I have three boys, and had been taught that once a boy is past toddlerhood, he doesn't need his mom anymore and shouldn't and won't listen to her). While I now know that is not true, and while I would never want to use my children to make myself feel valuable, right now it's hard to ignore those lies and I'm getting emotional over losing my uterus. Yet many other women go through this transition just fine, so I have to wonder what is wrong with me. The comments I hear about not being a "real woman" anymore, the mocking of the people who knew I wanted a large family, it hurts and I hear it all. On the inside, where you can't see, I'm crying and emotional and a mess. I'm sort of upset about the loss of my uterus and I have to wonder if I am even normal. I do know that I will be ok, and I do hope that the end result is that I feel much better and am able to more fully pour myself into raising my precious children.

Right now it seems like everyone has an opinion on my body and what I should do about. But then I realize that they are not the ones who have had infection after infection after infection. They are not the ones suffering pain each and every day. They are not the ones going through the whole host of other issues. (I'm trying to be delicate...those of you who know me can laugh because you know delicate is not a word to describe me...because, well, we don't want to gross the men out here. :p ). In the end it doesn't matter what other people's opinions of me are, what matters is what God thinks, and I think that God understands the issues and this is how he is choosing to give me healing. I think it would be pretty stupid not to take his offer of healing.

With the changes and the stress right now I feel ugly and bad and I keep forgetting my identity. I want to be beautiful, and I want to be confident. I want to be secure, I want to be confident, I want to be "feminine", I want to be beautiful, I want to be attractive. I feel awkward in my clothes because I know my style but can't find anything where I live in my styles, and I know I will have to go to a larger city to make a shopping trip. However I want to lose more weight first so. I'm trying to get my hair how I like it...right now we're working on bleached with purple streaks on top and black underneath. I'm not sure I am going to like the black and if I don't I will wait a while and then bleach that. But I've always wanted purple streaks, and purple with the bleached-blonde is hopefully going to look amazing. I've finally figured out what kind of style I like to wear my hair in. Despite how others say they like my hair, *I* like my hair long and straight, and with a choppy, thinned out cut. I like to wear my hair out the majority of the time. I have wanted to do the purple streaks for a long time, I hope they look amazing. Because that is my ultimate goal in all of this...I want to look amazing...not how others interpret it, but how I interpret it. I want to feel like I look amazing.

I know these are random thoughts but to me they are all connected and I do feel somewhat random right now. I've been sick and tired for so long that my brain is fried, although I guess my grades this semester at school say otherwise on my brain being fried. I got my first A+ this semester and I was so excited because I worked really hard on that paper. I'd really like to maintain that grade in that class. I wonder why the thought of my surgery is so scary and huge to me. The only other surgery I have ever had was to have two wisdom teeth out, and that was with a local anesthetic because I was pregnant. I get scared that I'll be one of the people that has complications, or scared that this won't fix my issues even though it makes sense that it would. This is where I need to trust God to do what is best. I know he will be with me in that hospital, even if nobody else is. I have so many other things going for me and so many goals and dreams. Why am I letting something like surgery get me down and scared?

Summer Reading

I'm going to be in bed for a significant part of the summer, which I have taken as an opportunity to spend that time reading and learning and studying. :) And helping my kids read, learn and study, but that will be for another post another day (hopefully tomorrow). I've got a great book list that I am looking forward getting through. Here's what I have:

Recovery Devotional Bible, NIV (well, this is not just for the summer but I did just get it and it's great).
The Message Remix Bible (again, not just for the summer. It was a birthday present from some awesome friends...it's hot pink, isn't that awesome)?
The Church of Facebook ~ Jesse Rice
No Other Gods ~ Kelly Minter
Walking in the Dust of Rabbi Jesus ~ Lois Tverberg
The Bible Made Impossible ~ Christian Smith
Jesus Brand Spirituality ~ Ken Wilson
UnChristian ~ David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons
The Next Christians ~ Gabe Lyons
Families Where Grace is in Place ~ Jeff VanVonderen
Raised Right ~ Alisa Harris
The Whole Bible Story ~ Dr. William H. Marty
The Blue Parakeet ~ Scot McKnight
Discovering Biblical Equality ~ Ronald W. Pierce and Rebecca Merrill Groothuis (I'm really excited about this one).
Counsel from the Cross ~ Elyse M. Fitzpatrick and Dennis E. Johnson (a gift from a dear friend).

And, just for pleasure, some fiction:
When Sparrows Fall ~ Meg Moseley

This is just my summer reading list. You should see my Amazon wish list, it's always full! (At least my husband knows what to get me for gifts for any occasion...books off my Amazon wish list, a gift card to the spa, a massage, or a gift card to get my hair done). :p

Have any of you read any of these books? What did you think of them? Hopefully I will have some discussion on here from some of these.

Oh, and I pre-ordered Rachel Held Evans' new book "A Year of Biblical Womanhood" which will be released in October I believe. I can't wait!!!

Prayer

Sometimes, we have to look back in order to see the blessings that have come our way. Flipping back through my irregularly kept up prayer journal, I can see that God has answered some prayers. I prayed for God to help me lose weight and he did, he even allowed me to lose almost 10lbs in a week due to an infection. I prayed for healing and God has chosen to allow that healing to come through a surgery I will have over the summer. He's been good to me!!! 


I attend a discipleship Bible study, and last Wednesday night we talked about prayer, and I learned so much. I learned that when I am crying and talking to God but not really making any sense, that that is praying (the Bible says that at these times, Jesus hears us and makes sense of the prayers and takes them to his father). I learned that when I sing those worship songs in church with all my heart, that is praying. Prayer is communicating with God. I can write prayers, I can sing them, I can get down on my knees and pray out loud or silently. I can even read God's words back to him and that's praying. 

Praying has always been hard for me, so it's nice to know that I actually pray more than I thought I did. I actually find that the closer I get to God, the easier praying gets because the more I get to know him, the more I want to know him and so the more I talk to him, just like I would a friend. I mean, I'm pretty good at talking, but sometimes when it comes to talking to God I just freeze up because honestly, it doesn't feel like a conversation, it feels like I do all the talking and God does none. But I've learned recently that God does talk too, he talks to me through opening my eyes up to things in the Bible, and he's given me the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit talks in that still small voice and actually talks to me quite often, it's just that sometimes I'm doing so much that I don't listen and don't hear. And sometimes God just sets up circumstances to get me to listen. The thing I have learned though is that he does talk to me, in many ways, just like I talk to him in many ways. 

The more I learn about God, the more exciting this journey gets! :)

Thoughts on Being "Ex-Gay" or, in 12-Step Language, a Recovering Gay

This past week I read an interesting article by an openly gay man named Jayson Littman which was titled "Can We Leave the Ex-Gay's Alone?" The following comments seemed to indicate that a lot of people don't believe that one can be an "ex-gay". The arguments say that because they believe that being gay is the way that somebody is born, that they can't change their orientation. I've thought about this article and the comments a lot, and I disagree with the notion that someone can't be an ex-gay. Although it might be easier to use 12-step language and say they are a recovering gay.

I believe on the issue of homosexuality, the Bible and psychology can mesh some. I believe that just as with an alcoholic, a person can be born with the tendency toward being gay, just like somebody can be born with a tendency towards alcoholism, especially if it's already something others in their family have struggled with. However, as much as I don't like it and as much as I have looked to try to figure out differently, I have to honestly say that the Bible does say that being gay is a sin (Can't get around Romans 1). And here's where my faith comes in. I don't like that it says that, but it does. And so all I can do, if I want to be true to the Bible, is admit that while I don't understand the reasoning behind it, that God, the creator, says that being gay is a sin and if I'm going to be true to my faith I have to believe that whether I like it or not. And I don't like it, but I believe it.

Just like an alcoholic doesn't have to engage in drinking alcohol, so also a person that is born with gay tendencies doesn't have to act on that. I'm not claiming it's easy, it's not easy for the recovering alcoholic or for any one of us who are in recovery for certain things. Being in recovery for anything is hard. (And, while I'm on that subject, most of you that read here know that I am highly allergic to legalism in all it's forms. I have to say though that structure can be a good thing and so far, the structure of a 12-step program has been very good for me).

The Bible talks often of how people can change. I believe that any sin, including homosexuality, can be forgiven and that the sinner can change. I believe that the person who is a liar is sinning and can, with the help of God, quit his lying. I believe that stealing is a sin and that a thief can stop their stealing (I raise my own hand as testimony to this one), I believe that gluttony is a sin and the over-eater can quit their indulgence (still in recovery on this one), I believe that drug, alcohol and substance abuse are sins and that people can be reformed and quit doing those things and live in victory. The same is true for homosexuality. You can be someone who used to be gay and now isn't. It's not only possible, but it happens.

That being said, it doesn't mean that I endorse the antics of some popular ex-gay "ministries". All it means is that I believe that someone can be gay, and then change and be straight. One other thing I believe on the subject is this: homosexuality is a a sin, just like lying, stealing, gluttony, pride, arrogance, selfishness, etc are sins (and I assume most if not all of us have at least one on that list). Sin is sin, we are all on an equal playing field. We've all sinned, so who are we to judge each other?

Pious Religiosity

A week or so ago I was berated harshly by a fundamentalist I knew from a previous church for working at the Home Depot. She informed me that she was boycotting the Home Depot, as was her church and most of her friends because American Family Radio was calling for a boycott because she said "the Home Depot supports gays". Although I was hurt by the manner in which she had said what she said, I remained cordial and chatted a few minutes more, while saying that the Home Depot supported several causes I don't, two of those being the military and the Republican Party. However, because this woman and her church are "against gays" they won't shop at a place that openly supports gay and lesbian causes. While I don't see that as being necessary, and while I think most large companies "support gays" as this woman put it, I can respect that they have the right to boycott the Home Depot or any other business they like based on any criteria they want.

However, the pious religiosity (as my husband's Aunt Cynthia once said and how I have thought of it ever since) bothers me to no end. The same people that are boycotting the Home Depot because American Family Radio told them to are the same people that buy homeschooling materials from such places as Bob Jones University, and stop sending their children to school there. I would think that Christian people would surely rather spend their time boycotting a fundamentalist college who kept a man who knew of a rape, covered it up, and lied on their board of trustees (see the Tina Anderson case) and then when one of their own students, Christopher Peterman, asked them to do right and started a protest group called "Do Right BJU" that they stalked him and gave him demerits for stupid things until they were able to expel him, 11 days before he was due to graduate and after they had taken his final tuition payment. 

And do you know what he got those demerits for? He got 50 demerits for watching an episode of Glee off-campus at a Starbucks, he got demerits for having facial hair at midnight and therefore not being clean shaven, and he got 25 demerits for posting the words to a Matthew West song on Facebook. This gave Peterman a grand total of 145 demerits, and a student needs 150 demerits to be expelled. However, they told him they were expelling him, and so he contacted the media and some legal counsel. In a meeting with the school later that day, the school rescinded the 25 demerits for the posting of song lyrics they did not agree with, however, they said that they were still expelling him because he was trying to "threaten" the school because he had sought legal counsel and contacted the media.

So my question, then, is this. Why don't fundamentalists quit supporting a place that supports rape and that expels students for trivial matters right before graduation and who allows no dissent? When fundamentalists start standing up for rape victims, of which I am one, and boycott those places, I might have more respect for their boycotting of certain secular businesses for their support of GLBTQ causes. 

Stories

These days when I make a new friend, I'm always interested in what their story is. One thing that I have learned this past year is that stories are valuable, stories are powerful, stories are healing, stories are motivational. Stories are important because they make us realize that we are not alone. No matter what our story is, someone has been there before. I'm going to be making a lot of blog changes in the future as I can afford to, and one of those changes will be changing the "my journey" label into a "my story" label. Another of those changes that I hope happens sooner rather than later will be a section where I feature the stories of others, whether they write their story themselves or whether I interview them and write it for them. This will simply be called "stories". :)

The power of stories in my life this past year has been amazing. When I first left fundamentalism, it felt like I was alone, and it was a blessing to find out that others had gone down this road before me. It made me realize that after all those months of intense loneliness, I wasn't really alone at all. And then I began to meet people who had gone through some other things in life the same as what I had been through, and they were generous enough to share their stories and their stories have helped and continue to help me. 

Our stories are part of who we are, and I believe God gave us our stories to share. I have just begun to realize that it is selfish not to share my story when it can be of benefit to someone else. Often I am scared of rejection and so many other things, and yet God wants me to share my story with others anyway. And so it has been that in the last six months or so, I have started to share my story, and God has been blessing with it. However, my story is still continuing and I hope that I am writing a better story with my life now than what I was a year ago. 

Just remember, stories are important. :)

In Which I Will Have Evangelicals Disagreeing With Me (But What Else is New) :p

I've spent a LOT of time since I left fundamentalism with questions about women and how they are treated in conservative Christianity. I mean, if you ask a fundamentalist, women can't be pastors, women can't preach, women must let their husbands rule over them. I often wondered why God hated me so much that he made me a woman, a second class citizen. I often wondered why God gave me a brain if I was supposed to shut it off and just do what my husband demanded. I came to the conclusion that God hated women, and that he created me a cursed being and that his intention for me as a woman was to be abused and mistreated and that he gave me a brain to frustrate me knowing I would not ever be allowed to use it. The church, you see, told me that the Bible said I must mindlessly obey my husband, that I could never be a pastor, etc.

So I have spent years wrestling with these questions, and while I don't have all the answers now, I think I have finally come to the beginning of a conclusion (HA) in this matter and that helps me be somewhat settled in what I believe about women and our value. I believe that women are valuable to God, and that we are just as equal as men. I think I believe that women can be pastors, and I think I believe that women don't have to mindlessly obey their husbands. And I think I believe these things because so far, that's where the Biblical evidence is leading me.

I believe that the Bible is very clear on the fact that we are all equal in Christ. (Galatians 3:28). I also believe that one cannot be equal with someone else if that someone else is "in authority" over them. People are either equal, or unequal. And the Bible is pretty clear on us being equal in Christ. The passage I have wrestled with the most is Ephesians 5:21-31. The thing is, Paul was trying not to rock the boat in the Roman culture of the day when he said what he did. The very first thing he said was that we were all to submit to each other. In the Roman culture of the day, the man was the head of the family, and people were not equal. Jesus says we are all equal, but Paul I believe was trying to work within the culture of the day when he gave his instructions.

I actually believe that in a marriage, God's plan is for a husband and a wife to work together in submission and cooperation with each other to solve their problems. The Bible says that those who are married are one...and if a husband and wife are one, how can there be a "boss" when there is only one of you? So, other evangelicals will probably disagree with me, but what else is new?

Reflections on Faith

I've been thinking a lot about faith lately, and have been studying Hebrews 11. I've been reading it daily in the Message translation, and it's been eye opening for me. In fact, Hebrews 11 begins to answer some of the questions I've had about God in the Old Testament and how different things were then. I'm still not entirely reconciled with it, the Old Testament still bothers me, but this is at least a beginning look at my questions. Right at the end of Hebrews 11, it says: "Not one of these people, even though their lives of faith were exemplary, got their hands on what was promised. God had a better plan for us: that their faith and our faith would come together to make one completed whole, their lives of faith not complete without ours." Hebrews 11:39-40 (The Message).

I never really saw God's plan as simple as this before, his plan in mixing the faith of the people in the Old Testament with the faith of the people in the New Testament with our faith now, as all being part of one big picture, a complete picture. None of our lives are faith are fully complete without the lives of faith of others.

Most Christians I know talk about being separate from the world, and from the background I come from, this means a list of rules and regulations that are not necessarily in the Bible. However, Hebrews 12:2 tells us what sets us apart, what makes us different from the world, and that is faith. "The act of faith is what distinguished our ancestors, set them above the crowd." Hebrews 12:2. This makes the Christian life so much simpler for me, knowing that it is my faith that sets me apart from the crowd. This is mentioned again in Hebrews 11:7 where it says "His act of faith drew a sharp line between the evil of the unbelieving world and the rightness of the believing world. As a result, Noah became intimate with God." Faith and intimacy with God go hand in hand.

This chapter also tells us that our faith is what pleases God. "It's impossible to please God apart from faith. And why? Because anyone who wants to approach God must believe both that he exists and that he cares enough to respond to those who seek him." Hebrews 11:6.

I write all this to say that Hebrews 11 is connecting some dots for me. If I want to please God, if I want to be intimate with God and have a relationship with him, I need faith. It also shows me that my faith journey is important because it influences the faith journey of others, some parts of my story become parts of other people's story. The other thing that has really been impressed on me that I never really realized before is that faith is a journey, not a destination. That realization takes a lot of pressure off of me. I'm not going to do the faith thing perfectly or even close. It's a learning process. And their are many people who are influencing me with their journey of faith, their faith is becoming part of my faith so that when my faith is weak, I still have the faith of some of these people who have been influential in my life to look to. And that's how it works. God doesn't leave us alone, he gives us each other, it's why we are the church...

Soundtrack for Healing

I've been blessed by some amazing songs lately. I'm so thankful that some people write songs about issues of brokenness. :) I wanted to share so that you can be blessed, too! (And I wanted to put them all in one place so that I don't forget them). :p


You Are More - Tenth Avenue North


Beautiful - MercyMe


The Hurt and the Healer - MercyMe


Broken Girl - Matthew West


One Thing Remains - Jesus Culture


Family Tree - Matthew West