It's Okay To Be Glad He's Dead

In case you have not heard, Westboro Baptist Church founder/leader, Fred Phelps, has died. If you are unfamiliar with who WBC is, they are the folks who spew hate filled venom at concerts (I'm pretty certain they were at Cornerstone the year I went), are infamous for their 'God Hates Fags' signage and protesting soldier's funerals. They are known for nothing but their hatred.

So this week when the news broke that Phelps was near death/died, it's not surprising that there seemed to be a collective sigh of relief... There was also a monsoon of articles and posts from Christians crying, 'you must forgive!'  I found that mildly unsettling, but it took me a couple of days to figure out why...

1) Immediately proclaiming, 'you must forgive' is in a sense, glossing over a range of emotions. We are not robots. We do not simply flip a switch and 'turn on our forgiveness'.  Forgiveness is a PROCESS. It's a very personal process and one that typically only occurs after many nights spent soul-searching... And there's a lot of anger and confusion and denial and tears all mixed up in there in between.  You may reach forgiveness, but it's certainly not going to be because somebody TOLD you to.

2) 'But Jesus Commanded Us To Forgive'...  Yes. We know. We all know.  He also talked a lot about money, but that hasn't stopped a lot of you from being stingy to your wait staff. He did tell us to forgive... and to never stop forgiving... That's the radicalness of it to me - the fact that we are even supposed to entertain the idea of forgiving those who have truly wronged us.

3) Search your feelings (Luke)... but don't stay there.  Process the anger and frustration and whatever else... If you don't ever allow yourself to feel those things, you'll never ever be able to embrace the concepts of love and forgiveness. And that's the real win.

rebirth

Two Things:

1) I'm getting divorced. This blows.
2) I've decided to try Jesus and church again. This scares me.

Isaac was the first real, stable romantic relationship that I ever had. We still love each other, though we weren't very good at being married. But god-dammit, if we didn't try.

There are a few take-aways that I've been able to muster over the last few months. First and foremost, I am a stronger, more productive, self-assured woman because of him. I have learned eros love because of him. I am 100% a better person because he loved me. How can I be ungrateful for that?

I know and have always known that he will be such a fantastic daddy to his future kids. My faith in that is unwavering.

I mourn for the loss of my extended family.  I was (am) extremely blessed to have phenomenal in-laws who loved me like I was their own. I was blessed with four fantastic sister/brother-in-laws and three really great nieces and nephews. I will miss them. I do miss them. I can't even have phone conversations because I'll just burst into tears. How do you thank someone for loving you like their own child for 8 years? How do you say good-bye?

***********

My grandmother passed away in September. We weren't exceptionally close, but I never doubted her love for me. It was simple and pure and unwavering. Her last 5 years on earth were pretty crappy. Death never seems very gracious. It runs amuck, overturning and disturbing everything along it's path.  God's silence did not go unnoticed to me in the past years where my Grandma, my family and myself prayed for her return to Jesus. It certainly did not go unnoticed in the chaos surrounding my grandfather's passing. I was angry. And hurt. And I felt turned against.

In the final days before my grandmother passed, I felt a sense of peace for her. I felt Jesus. Like she was safe. And I felt loved in the most simple and pure way. She loved her Lord the way she loved me - unwavering. And in the end, it was the simplicity of her faith that led me to believe she is ok now.  And please believe me when I say that I realize how stupid and weak that sounds to some of you. It sounds simple minded to me as well, I not even going to deny that.

Between the divorce and the death of my Grandma, something in me has changed. Through the shards of brokenness and hurt and pain, there is some form of light that is shining through. It is not bright, but it is there. It is hope.

So now I sit here... weeping uncontrollably for dreams that have passed, but holding out hope for the newness that's bubbling through. I am not the same woman I was 20 years ago. 6 years ago. 4 months ago. I have changed - I am broken and hurt and dirty and untrusting (in others as well as myself and in God) and righteously angry about things. I am a vulgar, liberal, unmarried, childless woman who questions everything, including people who don't seem to question their faith. I'm deeply embarrassed and annoyed at what most American Christians seem to think is persecution. I'm humiliated at the way Christians treat other humans in the name of their loving God. But I'm betting on Jesus. I'm betting that even if no one else loves me or I ever find my place or if I never stop questioning my faith in humanity, that what he taught is true. What he spoke and what he showed by example is true love. I'm betting all on Jesus.

So if anybody knows of a place where hurt people go to heal. Where they are not looked upon for what they can give to further a fund. Where ALL are accepted and loved. Where the weary tread. Where the broken go for shelter and are loved for who they are and not who they have been, then give me a ring. Cause I need a respite in Jesus.

something to believe in

I don't think it's any secret that I've been wrestling with my faith over the last couple of years. Maybe in ten years I'll look back and say, "remember when", but honestly, I hope not. I hope that I will never be continent to take everything at face value and yet, somehow embrace the idea that I believe in a living God who wants the best for us. Even if we think He's a joke, that he's still on our side. Looking out for our best interest and earnestly cares about 'the least of these', those who have been discarded by the church and society. No matter what I end up thinking about religion, I hope that I never ever loose site of loving the forgotten, misled, discarded and damned.

That being said, a few weeks ago I felt 'led' (whatever that means to you) to go to church. I rarely go anymore and I kinda prefer it that way. Anyway, got there and heard a moving, yet factual story of little girls, not that far away, who are forced to perform sex acts on men 15-20x a day. They're part of a very real, very rich, very public industry. From what I understand, the girls (and some little boys) end up there either because their parents sold them so they could have food or because the family was sold a bill of goods about where the girls were really going. Talk about the ultimate sacrifice...

Luckily, there's some decent people still left in the world who think that allowing children to be raped repeatedly isn't in their best interest. So they go out and rescue the little kids (the youngest was 5 yrs old) and then teach them how to actually sustain a real income at a real job and help them with counseling and shelter. And you know what the craziest part is? It's only $1500 to fund a rescue. That is mind blowing to me. It's only around $40 a month to help sustain the girls once they're rescued and like, $5-25 to buy jewelry that the girls make. How much more simple could they have made it?

As much of a distaste of religion that I have, helping fund the rescue of a kid seems like a true worship experience to me.

If you'd like to donate a couple of bucks to fund a rescue, click on this link.

If you'd like to find out more about the folks who do all of this, click here.

May There Be Peace To All This Christmas

Alright. I must make this quick, as I have to get to work... I've been holding off for months on saying this, as I wanted to articulate it well. But alas, lately I've felt as if I don't say anything, especially around Christmas, I'll just burst. So here's the short and sweet.

I work with folks with special needs. Throughout the years they have been marginalized and shuffled off to 'keep with their own kind'. As a society, we believe there's something wrong with them. Health insurance companies largely don't want to touch them and no one wants to believe that they can love, develop true relationships, get married, and have children. It's almost a joke to some to believe that they could possibly be successful in life. As a society, we're so scared of our babies being born with a deficiency, that we'll abort them. Some of us believe that a dead baby is better than a "broken" one.

I tend to want to punch people in the face for thinking such thoughts. I believe we're all cut from the same cloth by the one true God who created us all.

So it got me thinking... who else as a society, and especially as a church, have we marginalized because they don't look like us or it just seems 'unnatural? Minorities. Check. Women. Check. Homosexuals. Double Check.

For thirty years I believed what I was taught - that if you're gay, you're less than. You're dirty. Flamboyant. Filthy minds and lying tongues. You're cheap and promiscuous.You must be fixed. You've chosen to be this way. You can't really love Jesus and you must never ever be given any form of power, lest we all turn into perverts and child molesters. But a surprising fact began to emerge... some of these homosexuals, really did seem to love Jesus. And they didn't have fangs. And I wasn't going to catch whatever this horrible thing was that they must have all carried to make them this way.

And I started to think... if I believe that we're all cut from the same cloth by the one true God who created us all, why did I believe that he couldn't really love the gay population? Why did I think that he was so disappointed in them as a whole? What type of kool-aid had I been given? As a church, we're embarrassed that our forefathers treated folks of a different color worse than animals. It's almost horrible enough, that we kinda block it out. We were a pathetic example of Jesus. As a church, why are we going down the same path then, with the gay and lesbian community? Do we really want our children blocking out our deeds and pathetic beliefs?

If Jesus really came to save us all. If he really came because we are all jacked up. If he really existed and is searching out those who have been discarded and unloved and are seen as misfits... then he must love us all. 

May your Christmas be filled with much love and peace.