Because we don’t understand God or his mercy, we can miss them both if we are not careful. Lacking understanding about something isn’t a bad thing. It leaves room for wonder, surprise, and mystery - all critical elements to a vibrant faith and life with God. If I’m going to see God’s mercy each day, I’m going to have to look for it. I’m going to have to make space in my life to stop, slow down, and take account of what’s going on around me. I cannot autopilot my way through my days, if I don’t want to miss them entirely.

The church is robbed of her beauty, mystery, and goodness when your voice is the loudest. She cannot hear the voice of her God when you’re casting doubt on every utterance that comes from his mouth. She cannot care for the least of these when you question their worthiness to receive help. She cannot meet the confused and outcast where they are when you insist that they get their act together and agree with your ideological and theological premises to be welcome amongst you. 

She cannot shout the rallying cry of freedom when you shackle her with chains of oppression and gag half her members for the audacity of being female.

In my life, I’ve faced many challenges and I expect that I’ll face a few more before my time is through. I was recently reading a book where the author reminded us that there is no pain “quota”. As in, you don’t suddenly reach your max-out-of-pocket with pain and suffering. It’s not like, just because things have been difficult for me, that it’s smooth sailing from here on out. My worst days could be ahead. I cannot control this, but I can control how I respond.

My experience left me disoriented and disconnected from my efforts at gratitude and contentment with the life I was living because I didn’t know what to be grateful for anymore. I’ve known how I needed to spend my life since I was fourteen. I’ve never wanted to do anything besides tell others about Jesus. The specifics of that tug on my heart have taken a variety of forms, but it’s never really changed. It’s all I want to spend my time doing: imbuing life with meaning by knowing its author and bringing as many people along with me as I can.

The trauma and abuse that I endured as part of a conservative, white, evangelical church and ministry organization left me with more than just a scrape or bruise on my upper arm. I’m not even sure that I could compare what I’m dealing with to a specific disease, but I do know that things hurt that shouldn’t. There are, otherwise, perfectly healthy parts of my mind and my soul that ache for no apparent reason when someone says something or looks at me in a slightly sideways fashion. Someone asked me recently where I thought I was on the road to healing from all of this and I said, “Not very far at all. I think that I may walk with a limp for the rest of my life”.

We end up separated from God in this life and into eternity because of a lack of faith, not because of wrong ideas. What I mean is that, even if I have all the wrong ideas in the world, but I have faith in God as he is revealed in his world and in the Holy Scriptures, then the worst thing that can happen to me is not that bad. God is not cruel. If I have wrong ideas about something and I’m earnestly seeking to know the truth, can he not be trusted to redirect me? Can he not be trusted to teach me differently? Am I not allowed to change my mind? 

I’m fumbling a little as I grapple for words to communicate something deeply healing for me. Deconstructing the faith community that I found myself in throughout my twenties was the best thing I ever did for myself and my faith in Jesus.

I’d encourage you, if you find yourself in a similar place, to not be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to deconstruct your faith before God and see what’s still left standing. It doesn’t mean that everything you took off the walls is bad. It just means that it’s not necessary and anyone who claims that it is selling something.

A community that had the opportunity and distinct privilege to help me and others like me heal chose to wound us even more deeply because being participants in our healing was too messy and painful.

So. I’m pretty sure that I’ve spent my life, ever since those first few years in Radford, being the exact opposite of that. I’ve tried to meet wounded people with mercy, grace, understanding, and a listening ear. I’ve proven myself trustworthy before I offered advice or alternative perspectives. I’ve never doubted how someone has viewed or experienced their life, even if their view was skewed or wrong - it still felt that way to them. I suspect that I’m going to spend the rest of my life not only healing from the wounds of my time in Radford, but becoming the kind of person who I needed when I found myself lost and confused in the depths of conservative evangelicalism.

Along with quitting their dream was quitting their ideas about women and what God intended when he made us. I had to go back to my roots, do my own studying, and spend years wrestling before the Lord. I had to quit listening to voices that did not want to listen to me. They were so convinced that they were right that they couldn’t entertain other views, much less respect them. The sad thing is that I had to do this mostly alone. My only companion was my husband because literally everyone else in that community thought that God’s highest and best for women was to be second-class. It was awful.

 I was never listened to. At best, I was dismissed as bitter and lacking understanding. At worst, I was silenced for daring to question someone in authority or daring to speak against someone who was part of the inner ring. At the very worst, I was completely disregarded and treated as a second class citizen for having the audacity to possess both two X chromosomes and a penchant for anything but staying at home with my 5 children. “God doesn’t make women like that.” “God made you a mother and you need to delight in it.”