Thursday Thirteen #40

Thirteen Things About My Faith

1. I was raised in a Christian family and have a long line of very faithful women who came before me. I feel blessed to claim that and have felt the blessings of their faithfulness throughout my life. It seems like you go one way or another when you are raised in a Christian household (at least, in my experience) — you either embrace it or run in the opposite direction. I can’t say that many of my childhood friends that I know had the same upbringing as me are much different. They are now either passionate about their faith or have none at all. Which is preferable (Revelation 3:15-16).

2. I wasn’t always sure about my faith. My parents don’t know this, most of my friends and family don’t either. I’ve talked about it some on GodlyGals, but not very much.

There was a period in my life where things were, in my mind, very dark and I dwelled there for a number of years. Not that I could really identify with the Goth culture (I thought dressing in all black, white makeup, etc. was ridiculous — that opinion hasn’t really changed), but some of their interests were things that I was into. I read Sylvia Plath obsessively, wrote pages and pages of what can really only be described as “gothic” novels (Southern Gothic is more my style now), spent all extra time at school reading while the rest of my peers were socializing, never contemplated suicide but read literature and watched films that dealt heavily with the subject, and got sucked into a world of introspection and solitude. I still find my peace in the quiet by myself, but this was different.

I didn’t want to be different, but I felt the pain of it every day at school. A line from Sylvia Plath’s journals spoke to me back then, about an animal returning to the herd with the touch of human hands upon it. I felt like that animal. I felt that I knew something they did not, not in a pompous way — no. This was not a conscious decision on my part. I felt…just plain alone. I’d never had a boyfriend, my family and strangers told me I was pretty but I felt fat and nothing more, to this day…I don’t believe any of the people that I counted as my closest friends at the time have ever said words that were just meant to be “kind words” or a compliment. I’m not saying that to try and elicit them, what I’m trying to explain here is the effect that the absence of those sentiments had on my heart and mind. It was like all my friends back then did was take take take. By the end of high school I was fed up with that and ready for some giving (I did get that in college).

My interests were different from those of my peers, I preferred the company of older people, hated the hypocrisy and fickle ways of the people around me, hated the way that I was tormented (quietly and in such a way that it was permitted by the adults that should have stopped it) by young people in my church, and just the general behavior of people that I expected more of. I wanted truth, stability, and people that cared. Not some watered-down, “go to church on Sunday and live like the devil the rest of the week” version of “faith” in Jesus Christ (in quotations because it most certainly is not).

So I went looking. All of my searching, introspection, and diving into the darkness was at the very core a human being looking for the truth. Want to know the reason I know so much about so many cults and off-shoots of Christianity? Because I researched them with a fervor that would rival that of the most devout member of any of those groups. You name it and I looked into it as a possible new path to take. Did I ever truly step away from what I had grown up believing? No, I don’t believe so. But did I believe that those around me, those who were supposed to be my examples (my family is absolutely, well, most members, not included here) were practicing what they preached? Absolutely not.

3. Whoosh. That bit was long, huh? Thanks if you’re still here. This next part is the part where I stop caring what other people think. The part where God takes me in His hands and says, “You are Mine and I have a plan for you.”

I never saw myself as a leader. I fancied myself a princess at certain points of my life, as the first female president when I was in 3rd grade, but not much else. Wallflower to the core, my life was had become about drawing as little attention to myself as possible.But God has a funny way of working things out the way He wants. I had been going to a high school girl’s retreat with my church for the past few years (I was 18 or so at this point) and each year had come away feeling a little stronger, a little more encouraged in my faith (more on this later). But this was my senior year of high school. The end. I had started the year on a new foot. A new woman, in my own mind (the change had really happened the spring semester of my junior year), and I think the changes going on in my life really showed it. I still didn’t have the support system I needed, but things were better. I was happy and thriving. And the best thing of all? I only answered to God now. What a liberating idea — that the unfounded criticism based on worldly “values” you receive from people around you is worthless.

4. The girl’s retreat. That was a turning point, though I didn’t realize it at the time. However you feel about prophecy, I’m just going to lay it out there. In the middle of something that wasn’t some knock-down, drag-out, Pentecostal worship service (something that wasn’t foreign to me), the main speaker at the retreat walked quietly off the stage (she wasn’t speaking at the time), walked straight back to where I stood, embraced me, and began to weep. Then she spoke quietly, “God has been speaking to me about you. Follow where He is leading you. He is preparing you right now, to raise you up as a leader among women.” She hugged me a little longer and then returned to the stage.

I was a little taken aback. Shocked? Not quite. The reason for that was because this wasn’t the first time I’d had this said to me. The first time was in 8th or 9th grade, in the midst of my “dark age.” In the following weeks I had two women at church who were not connected approach me with the same thing. As we are told in scripture, I tested everything, waited it out a while, and everything really came together (1 Thessalonians 5:21; Acts 17:11) — which you’ll see later.

5. I attend the church I do, not because of the denomination (it’s not the one I was raised in), but because they teach the Bible. Pure and simple.

6. It’s Baptist, in case you were wondering.

7. I was raised in a non-denominational church that used Assembly of God literature.

8. My parents now attend an Assembly of God church and that is where my family has been for the past…ten years. Wow. That is hard to believe. I never became a member and will not because I do not agree with all of their doctrine. It’s something that I choose (on good days) not to bring up with my family. Sometimes I worry that if I ever do dive into it, try to show them scripture, etc. that they will doubt my faith and I’ll be prodded to go down front during the altar call.

9. On June 12, 2003, GodlyGals was born. I’d become pen pals with a girl named Alisha through Brio Magazine. For a while I had felt God leading me to start some kind of community for young women online and I just hadn’t seen anything around that vaguely resembled what I had in mind. Alisha and I talked about it for a while…I want to say maybe a year, so the talk about GodlyGals started in 2002 and came into fruition in 2003 when we started the community on Livejournal. About a year later, we started the boards, which later died down, only to come back in March of 2006. They have been going strong ever since. It has grown into a thriving community of over 500 women.

10. Random: Growing up I was very prejudiced against the two denominations that divided my hometown. One did everything they told me not to and then told me I was going to hell. The other accused me of going to a “snake church.” It took going to college and getting to know sincere members of the first denomination to get rid of all prejudices.

11. Being in a position of leadership in a ministry has taught me a lot of things. 1) You can’t be everyone’s friend. Being kind to everyone is a must, but there times when you must simply put your foot down and lead. Kinda makes me feel like I understand what the pastor is feeling when 15 families invite him to lunch on Sunday and he knows he can’t just pick one. 2) Sadly, not everyone who shows interest in your ministry and becomes involved has the best interests of the ministry at heart. While they deserve to be treated as human beings…as someone once told me, “If someone walked into your house and pooped on the floor, you’d be expected to throw them out.” Let’s extend this metaphor. I’ve had a few people come into my house and poop on my floor during the middle of a happy, fun party with lots of guests. That part of being a leader makes me miserable. 3) Sometimes, “christians” hate other Christians. This isn’t good, it’s not supposed to happen, but it does. Do you feel like Christians hate you? Come on over here and sit down. We can be friends and chat. 4) Girls, girls, girls. Definitely the more difficult to deal with of the two sexes. 5) God REALLY won’t give you more than you can handle. There have been things about ministry that make me feel like I can’t breathe, that cause a deep ache in my heart from the time I wake until I go to sleep again. But I can honestly tell you that the Lord has always been there and has not let me down.

12. I try my best to do what I need to be doing, what scripture calls all Christians to. When I mess up (often), please forgive me. I have a temper, pride issues (hello, I’m a blogger. I talk about myself ALL THE TIME.), a hard time making friends with women, experience a lack of trust with most people, am very “Mama Bear”ish if you mess with my friends, am sometimes quick to speak, and can be incredibly abrasive. Little by little, those things are becoming less of me.

13. I am not who I was. This isn’t by any work of my own, nor any other human: it’s by the changing power of the blood of Jesus Christ. I often feel like a failure thinking back on the type of witness I have been in my lifetime. I’m not the girl I mentioned in #2, though there are parts of her that remain. I’m not anything close to what I was 5 years ago, when I graduated from high school. And now I wish desperately that I could show people that, but they aren’t in my life anymore. That’s life and how things go, but I do hope that someday I am able to share a little of who I am now and Who made me this way with them. Maybe this is a start.

This is, by far, the longest TT I have ever written. I can’t say that a lot of thought went into it, because it didn’t. All this is, as one of my creative writing teachers would call it, is “blood spilled on the pages”. If this mattered to you, touched you, or brought any questions to your mind, I would love to hear your thoughts. Please share in a comment or email: liz@misswisabus.com