Sometimes I feel like that lone tree...standing there alone, reaching towards the sky and hoping for a break in the clouds in order to embrace the light. It's not a "depression" thing...it's more of an attitude towards spirituality and whether I am indeed able to wrap my arms around something that at times seems so cold and distant and completely unavailable to me.
I want to take a moment before I descend into a vat of bitterness to say thank you for all of the comments, discussion and your willingness to share your own spiritual beliefs with me and with those who read about life here in the asylum, on the first part of this discussion. So many times discussions about religion descend into heated verbal wars which never get anywhere. I was honestly expecting a little more animosity when the post hit Twitter and Facebook, but it never went there. I am not expecting the same result from this post...especially because I'm "calling out" someone as it where. Maybe that's not even a good turn of phrase to use. By the time I'm done with this, maybe I'll have thought of something better to say.
I can say without a doubt that this will be one of my longer posts. It's also going to be one which might make those of you who are very steadfast in your walk with Christ, uncomfortable. I might use words which you'd prefer I didn't. Here's the thing...when I get into the place I'm in right now, I use words that some consider profane, vulgar, or rude. It's just who I am. I am after all, human and I sin. Although I'm not real sure about profanity being a "sin" as much as it is something that most think of as really ugly. Bottom line...this is me, ripping myself open and putting it all out there. I'm in pain right now - spiritual and emotional, I'm angry and I sure as hell am bitter. Very bitter. Having these thoughts and feelings roll around in my head is akin to chewing on lemons laced in vinegar.
I'm also going to admit to something I've never spoken out loud to anyone except my oldest daughter and only those very close to me. I hope you don't think worse of me after reading this...however, I'll understand if you do.
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I've written briefly before about my inner battles with Christianity. I was in a really bad place then, having literally just gone through the "Very Bad Thing" and was also in the midst of trying to help Meaghan deal with issues relating to her paternal family on the east coast. In retrospect, that post barely touched on the crux of what I'm truly going through and in order to understand that, I think you need to understand me and my history with church...or I should make that churches as I've been to a few in my 41 years.
When I was a baby I was baptized into the Episcopal church. Back then it was a much different church than it is currently. I remember always being awed though, even at such a young age, by Jesus' sacrifice for us. To this day it still moves me to tears to read about his Crucifixion. When I was 9 my family (just my mom, step-dad, and myself - my mom was pregnant with my first sibling at the time), were baptized into the Mormon church. By the time I was 17 my parents and my then 3 younger siblings had their names officially removed from the record of the church. Mine wasn't because I'd never been adopted by my step-father and never sealed to my parents in the temple...or so I was told. The thing about being a Mormon, for me anyhow...I didn't really see it as any different than any other religion. I never lost track of my own personal relationship with Jesus. I never saw myself as anything other than an ordinary Christian, even whilst "being Mormon." Sure, Mormons do things differently...they don't smoke or drink alcohol, try and abstain from caffeine and have certain rituals they adhere to.
My parents had very grave theosophical differences and that's what led to the rift. I never harbored any ill will towards the church. More than two decades have passed since I left the Mormon church and I've come to realize that due to my own theological education, I would never return to active membership in the church again. However, I've remained close with a lot of my friends (most who I grew up with) who are generations-long Mormons. It was in fact the Mormon church which helped my family when Joshua died. I've never held any animosity towards them and never will, despite my own theosophical beliefs that differ from those of the church.
From the time we left the Mormon church my mom went on this spiritual odyssey of sorts that took her through several religions including a more potent version on Episcopalian-ism and even Wicca. Oh and take it from me, don't ever get a Wiccan a fancy decorative broom as a holiday/birthday gift. They don't really see the humor in it.
My mom did her own thing (she's Jewish and says she's always felt as if she has been and is completely happy with the path that's taken her life down.), and I moved out and got involved with the boy who would become my first husband. I had no idea what "charismatic evangelists" were until I met his family and I can tell you I was not prepared for the rapid immersion into something which seemed so incredibly foreign to me.
I'm pretty simple when it comes to how I worship. I like the quiet and serenity that a worship service in a traditional church offers. I feel a sense of peace and, well - OK, "communion" with God. I like traditional hymns and a heartfelt sermon. I guess I'm just a traditionalist in that sense. So when my former husband, my then- fiance, took me to his church it scared me a little bit. I could not figure out why people were almost dancing and standing and waving their arms around and speaking aloud, and there was a band on the stage - a real band with guitars and drums and a keyboard. I'd never heard some of those songs and felt lost at sea amidst a bunch of Christian rockers.
If all that wasn't already enough, a couple of people around me started talking in some sort of language that sounded like a mixture of Indian and Chinese with some Spanish thrown in. I had never in my life heard of "speaking in tongues" and thought it was little more than emotional babbling. I was ignorant. Mormons and Episcopalians don't speak in tongues. This was entirely new to me.
If I'm being honest, it felt distant to me and I wasn't comfortable (but I'm not in any way saying that people who do worship this way are wrong to do so.), with that kind of worship. However "M" (my ex), assured me that in time it would be like home and in the meantime he and his family would pray for me and have their pastor pray for me. Okie dokey. I figured it would be like getting used to a new pair of jeans...after a few squats and stretching them out a bit, it would be a comfortable fit. Those jeans just ended up getting tighter.
At one special service there was a well-known pastor from South Africa who'd come to speak to the congregation and he had an "altar call" after the service and M asked me to go up there. Um...OooooK. We stood around the altar whilst the pastor went around anointing everyone's neck with oil. The minute he anointed them they fell over. I watched both of M's sisters go down, then his mom, his dad and then he went down. The pastor got to me and I prayed that God would guide me and help instill a deeper love for his Word within me...and then I was anointed and prayed over and the pastor stepped back and then...nothing. I just stood there. The pastor moved on and every single other person that took part in that altar call fell down and I was the sole person left standing. Yeah, you can imagine how odd I felt, standing there alone whilst everyone around me was on the floor passed out. I should have taken that for the omen it was. Instead, I ended up feeling like I had this big sign on my forehead that said, "Relationship with Jesus - You're Doin' It Wrong!"
Fast forward a few years and I still have what I thought was a great personal relationship with Christ, but I just wasn't sure about the whole charismatic/evangelistic thing. Then my world collapsed when Josh died. We were living in a small mountain village at the time and I was lonely and for a time had turned back to the Mormon friends I had up there, and the church. I knew it wasn't what I believed in but I needed the friends. M hated it. M organized a prayer meeting for me with people I didn't know. That was the night we lost Josh. He felt the Mormons were devil-worshippers and that I needed help being pulled away from the church. So now in addition to having lost this wonderful child, I have all this guilt heaped on me about it being my fault...had I not gone back to the Mormon church there never would have been the need for the prayer intervention, we never would have left Josh with that sitter and well...you can paint the rest of the picture yourself.
Moving along several years, I've left M, I've had a nervous breakdown, the kids are living with him and I'm trying to figure out how the hell to put my life back together. I go church when I'm not working, on the air, or at school. I still pray but it's different. I'm not altogether trustful of a God who would rip a child out of my arms. I'm not sure I can ever give my whole heart to a God who would intentionally inflict this kind of pain on a mother or a child and take the life of a two year old in such a painful and cruel way. It's a very cautious relationship with God.
I work through all the changes and switched radio stations over the years, moved several times and attended various churches with friends. One of them was a church that...well, I don't even know how to explain it. The women were all modestly dressed as well as the girls. No females were in pants, anywhere. The preacher was jumping around on the pulpit and the organist who had to be Little Richard's white twin, was banging out some old time tunes on the organ with a little bit of hellfire and brimstone added for effect. And then the weirdest thing happened. The men and women in the pews started to scream and yell and flop around on the floor. At first I thought someone was having a seizure but then everyone started doing it. Even the small children were in utter hysterics. I eventually discovered that this was called "being slain in the spirit" and despite having attended a couple of services at that church with a friend (who I could swear suffered a head injury on one occasion after flailing around on the floor), I was never myself, "slain." It might sound sacrilegious, but I'm grateful for that fact. I reckon that if the Spirit decides to show himself within me, he'll have more sense than to throw this here fat woman on the floor...I probably wouldn't be able to get back up without the help of a few EMT's.
By this point I'm seriously starting to consider the fact that I have sinned by such incredible proportions that I'm just some sort of "Christian dud" like the fireworks you get that never go bang! I assume that I've committed a couple of serious sins and this is God's way of punishing me. He takes my child and then numbs me from feeling any sort of connection, genuine connection with him again. In short, I felt shunned.
Why?
I'd had two abortions while I was with M. One before we got married and another shortly before we split up.
Two. Two abortions.
I figured that God was just evening up the score. I took two lives and he took one back. It pissed me off though. I didn't think it was a fair trade but then who am I to call the shots? I'm just a mere human. A sinner. A mother who failed her son and probably doomed him before he even took his first breath.
Yet I still hung onto whatever tatters of this vitriolic relationship with Christ for the very simple reason that I do believe in him, despite everything, I do and I want to see Joshua again. With everything in my being I do believe he's in Heaven. But something tells me that God doesn't play like that. I don't remember reading anything in the Bible about asking Jesus to be your personal savior just so you can see your dead son again.
Several years down the line, another divorce, I finally get it together and have my life moving ahead in the direction I want it to. I had begun the reconciliation process with my children from my marriage to M, have dealt with breast cancer, and been blessed with a child who I was told I'd never be able to have because of what chemo likely did to me and because of my obesity. Gaby was a miracle. A miracle we almost lost. I did seek the Lord when her life hung between the living and the valley of the veil. I told God that it was a deal breaker if he took her away from me. I know he doesn't play that way. I know he doesn't take bribes, even if it is you're soul we're talking about. I won't lie though...I had several moments when I thought to myself, "OK, tit for tat. There's still another soul up there, a life I took that has to be paid for and the sonofabitch is probably going to collect on that debt after all!" Crude, but looking back on my journal, those are the exact words I spoke.
Gaby made a miraculous recovery and look at her now. She's amazing. Four years down the road and you'd never know how perilously close she came to dying and how terribly ill she was at birth. When she's being defiant and a pain in my ass, I often think back to those really scary days in the NICU and watching her hooked up to all those machines and sedated out of her mind on Morphine. I'd rather have a million toddler meltdowns than go through having another babe torn from my breast.
Despite it all I still feel like God doesn't really like me much. Hell, I rub a lot of people the wrong way and maybe he's not down with some of the stunts I've pulled. I wasn't present for a lot of my older children's lives and despite them having forgiven me (no one else has, but they really don't matter...or at least I keep telling myself that, and honestly I wonder if my kids really have forgiven me, they're young yet.), maybe God hasn't. I guess the abortions may have forever placed a huge scarlet letter "A" on my chest as well. A is for Audrey...Asshole...Abortion...and Absent in the eyes of God.
All of this brings us to here and now. There have been a few more bumps in the road but nothing we haven't dealt with. I've realized that my attitude has a lot to do with how I fare through these trials. So many times it's how you react to things and whether or not you're going to consciously decide to get through it, or bitch and moan and groan your way through the mud which ultimately dictates whether you'll survive. I've done a lot of all of the above, but like I said, am learning to react differently and see the solutions instead of seeing the problems right off the bat.
The thing I can't see my way through though is Christianity and after reading Jennifer McKinney's ("MckMama" from My Charming Kids) blog and hearing about her remarks at Blissdom '10, I'm even more pissed off and bitter than I was before. I've been reading JM's blog for a long time. I cried and prayed when Stellan was so close to death's door. I sent money and gift cards when the need was great and continued to pray...not because I wanted anything in return but because it felt good doing it and it was the right thing to do. The entire time though I had this niggling feeling that would remain after reading some of her posts that left not only me, but a lot of people feeling like she was inferring that she was somehow more special in God's eyes because he was healing Stellan.
Oh and before you even go there...no I don't really care about all of the other sins of omission that JM has copped to or the other controversy that seems to surround her, her finances and her relationship with her husband. I don't care about those things. I care about the fact that she seems to be saying she and/or Stellan are somehow more special and important in God's eyes. Stellan has been cured! He's healthy and perfect and beautiful and ya know, that's awesome. Truly it is. I used to hate going out to her blog during the time that Stellan was hanging by a thread because I was so afraid that I was going to read that the worst had come to pass. I'd tell God, "Come on Dude, don't do this to someone else that has such deep and abiding blind faith in you...that would just suck ass on an epic level!" Thankfully and blessedly that adorable kiddo is healthy and will probably go on to live a long and happy life!
This is what makes me so damned angry though, and I'm not the only one saying it. JM is so convicted of the fact that her child survived because of God's love. So where does that leave women like me, and the millions of others who love Christ and believe and have accepted him as our savior but have lost children? I'll tell you were it leaves us...it leaves us feeling like we don't rate in God's eyes and that we're second class citizens and our kids weren't worthy of God's healing love.
JM continues to go on about how Stellan was this miracle of God's love. Well hell woman...what about the doctors? Or were they connected to this spiritual miracle as well and worthy of God's love which lead their hands during Stellan's life-saving ablation? I guess the world-class neurosurgeons that worked for hours on Josh, into what seemed like an endless night, didn't rate either, if that's the case. So not only did I fuck up and end up dooming Josh, the surgeons and all those people who cared for him must not have cut it either.
And finally, what about all the other hundreds of prayers that went out the night Josh died? Were those prayers not deemed worthy enough ...did they fall on deaf ears?
Just writing this rips me apart because I know damned well that it sounds bitter and jealous and almost hateful towards a woman I don't even know. Maybe I am. I don't know. And yes, nearly 20 years after Joshua's death I'm still wounded, and raw and bleeding from the hole his death tore into my soul and my entire person...and the void it created in my relationship with Christ. I'm still left reeling and awash in an ocean of grief, feeling like God didn't love my child enough to save him.
Or maybe, just maybe, at the end of the day it all boils down to the simple fact that I'm not the right kind of Christian.
