Wrong Medicine
Sometimes, the best way to start is to stop.
If you’ve been around here, you know that I spent over a decade of my life living and ministering in Radford, Virginia. I have a suspicion that I’ll be healing and unpacking that decade for many years to come, if not for the rest of my life. That doesn’t mean that it was all bad. It was not. There were good times and good people. What was not good were some of the habits that I developed and some of the things that I started to believe while I lived there.
When I lived in Radford, we were part of a conservative, evangelical church. They would agree with the latter, but might have issues with the former. They liked to think of themselves as edgy because some of them cussed and most of them drank alcohol. But, have you met anyone from the deep south? We all cuss and drink and most of us are still conservative. Anyway, a cornerstone of conservative evangelicalism is the second-class status of women.
I learned pretty early on in adulthood that I was going to need to listen a lot more than I was used to, if I wanted to have friends and also care for the people around me. As a young person, I wasn’t listened to very much, so I developed strong opinions and spoke in hyperbole to get my point across. When I grew up a little, I started listening more and, without backing down from my convictions, heard people out so that I could learn from them. This was the attitude that I brought into the church in Radford.
Unfortunately, my good habit of hearing people out backfired and I was deceived by their well-reasoned arguments and certainty of the truth. I wanted to be accepted and anyone who disagreed with them wasn’t just outcast, they were called heretics and their relationship with Jesus was questioned. So much was going on around and within me that I don’t know if I can explain it all here. What I can tell you is that, despite my upbringing and understanding of God, I began to believe that I was a second-class citizen of the Kingdom of God because I was female. I began to believe that there were certain things that I couldn’t do and certain things that I should do because of my gender. It was devastating.
Another thing that I did while I was in Radford was fight a culture that wasn’t interested in listening. This was not a new thing- see above.. I exhausted myself trying to make my case, help them see my side, or convince someone (maybe even myself) that I wasn’t crazy and that I really did love God and belong there.
The final thing, that I’m going to talk about here, that I started doing while I was in Radford was trying to fit in. I did this by putting an immense amount of pressure on myself to try to look the part of a good woman, in their culture. As I mentioned above, I listened a lot. I learned a lot more about Reformed theology than is good for anybody and what I was learning began to inform my life. (Side note: I’m not sure that the ideas that conservative evangelicalism teaches are much more than that - ideas. They talk a big game, but they are hateful people and the fruit of their ideas and lifestyle is not wholesome.) So, if I was going to be a good reformed girlie, then I was going to have to start looking a different way, talking a different way, and adopting a certain lifestyle. Right here, I want to say out loud that I’m so thankful that God gave me a strong will. Without it, I’d be miserable with 17 kids in a homeschool co-op, thinking that this was what God made me for and never really considering what I wanted out of my life or relationship with him. No shade if that is your lifestyle or your dream. It’s just not mine. It is, however, not exactly the dream, but rather the prescription for the second-class citizens (read: women) of conservative evangelicalism.
I couldn’t stomach it. It was the first thing that I quit. Because, sometimes, the best way to start is to stop.
I had to quit the conservative evangelical dream of being a traditional wife. It’s not who God made me. I can safely and comfortably say that now. When I was there, I wasn’t so sure. I had to stop trying to fit their mold for a good, godly woman and realize that there are many ways to be that. The same prescription won’t cure all illnesses. The same lifestyle won’t sanctify all people.
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.
Finally, I had to quit fighting with people who weren’t interested in listening to me. Honestly, I’m not sure if I’m done fighting with them, at least in my head. This is probably the hardest thing, in any area of my life, for me to quit. I have this insatiable need to be understood and heard.
What’s hard for you to quit? What’s holding you captive or holding you back? What do you need to stop in order to start?
It was only when I quit these things that I began to be myself again. I was still struggling with their disdain for me and their disrespect, but I felt a lot freer to do what I know God made me to do. I think that quitting everything that they wanted me to believe and be made leaving so much easier, when they finally kicked us to the curb. Leaving my students and a ministry that I loved was devastatingly painful, but leaving those people and that culture was the easiest thing in the world.
I wish that I could tell you what you might need to quit. I wish that I could tell you to do these three things and then you’ll be ready to do whatever is next. But I can’t. Everyone is different. The same prescription won’t cure all illnesses. The same lifestyle won’t sanctify all people.
What I can give you are more questions to help you decide what you need to stop so that you can start:
What is something that you believe about yourself and your life that makes you want to give up? What makes you feel defeated?
Who are people and/or what are situations that tear you down?
What habits do you engage in that you really just hate?
What commitments do you have that always suck the life out of you?
Where do you feel overwhelmed or like it’s all too much?
When you’ve answered some or all of those questions, I hope that you have a clearer picture of what you need to quit. It’s not about running away from hard things or cutting people out of your life. This is about evaluating, with the Lord and his Word, what medicines you’re taking that aren’t healing you. They might heal someone else, so they aren’t bad, but they aren’t for you.
My hope and prayer is that you will have the courage to quit beliefs about yourself, God, and his world that are untrue. I hope that you will find freedom as you let go of things that you thought you couldn’t let go of, like when I thought that I wasn’t a real Christian if I didn’t believe in the second-class status of women. I hope that you can learn to love God and his people again.
Sometimes, you gotta stop before you start. You can’t cure the flu with an antibiotic.