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.

How Very 2003 Of Me...

I've waited a bit too long to  begin writing this... My eyes are becoming increasingly heavy... This will either prove to work towards your benefit, as it will be a shorter blog than usual or will do the opposite - just be too drawn out and miscomjobulated. You know, one of these things.

It's been a while since I've written anything. If you know me for any period of time, you'll begin to notice that this is usually a tell tale sign that something funky's going on in my life on some level, and I just don't feel comfortable sharing it.

The short and sweet of it is that over the past 4 months, I've been emotionally hurt, lost money, lost even more pride, experienced fantastic highs and pretty bad lows. (that last part just made me sound bi-polar - I'm not)

The following may be more for me, but I'm going to attempt to share via bullet points what I've gone through/learned/continuously learning.

* Due to a series of unfortunate incidents, my depression worsened. This makes me feel broken, miserable, discarded, worthless

* I also lost/spent a LOT of money in a very short amount of time. This makes me feel foolish (1 time I had to go to the doctor and the other time I thought I was doing something right), naive, stupid, juvenile, a terrible spouse

* Finally began recognizing that I do binge eat. I don't think I've actually been hungry since 2010. I've gained 24lbs since September. 5bs just in the last month. On some level I'm able to recognize that this is unhealthy. On a more emotional level, I'm so overwhelmed with everything else, that I just don't care. Realizing all of this makes me feel shameful, unworthy of friendship and love, a major, ginormous embarrassment to my friends/family.

* There's some really great things about being married. Being sad a lot and feeling like you (unintentionally) put an extreme amount of pressure on your spouse to make you "okay" is terrible. Whether real or not, I feel awful after sharing things with Isaac. I partially feel relieved to get it off of my chest, but the other part of me feels like a giant Eeyore that moozied on into the room. I've tried to express it before, but it's not my spouse's job to make me 'happy'.  It's just not.

* Periodically I get my panties into a wad about Christians who seem to present their version of the gospel as a spiritual 'wham, bam, thank you m'am'. I don't believe that's what Jesus taught. I typically refer back to the section in Luke 5 when Jesus tells his posse and some church folk that, as the New Living Translation puts it - “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do."
Somehow we've tricked ourselves and others into believing that 'Jesus Saves' means that we'll never have to deal with our drug or sex addictions. Our judgemental attitudes or loose tongues. Marriage problems will evade us and as long as we don't get a divorce, we've proven we really listened to God. I have done a fabulous job at convincing myself on many occasions that because I really searched out my faith, or that I did all of the right "steps" that I'll never have to deal with my own "afflictions". Because I love Jesus, I shouldn't ever have to really deal with recurrences of depression, doubt, self-loathing, anxiety, stress, obsessive tendencies or over eating. A) This is total BULL SHIT  B) No sane person ever expects to go to the pediatrician as a baby and never have to see a doctor again for the rest of their lives. C) Nor should any sane person rack their faith up to check marks.

As much as I talk about my friends and the need for community, I'm still pretty into me. I would like to believe that I should have mastered (insert something here) by now. I don't really need continual saving....

I'm sure there were other witty, intelligent thoughts that were dying to get out, but I've successfully stayed asleep on the couch with the computer in my lap for at least the last 45-60 minutes.... so I'm calling it a night.

Feel free to discuss/share (anonymous is always a swell safe way to share in my book) your thoughts, successes or struggles here. I can't promise that I'll always respond in the most loving way, but I promise that I'll fall asleep on the couch multiple times with the aim to...