When I was a little girl, I remember craving relationship with Jesus. Really, I did. Most of my attempts to connect with God came at night when I was in my bedroom all alone, and during walks alone down the long dirt road we lived down even after dark at night. I remember walking slowly, singing to, and talking to God out loud. I pretty much told Him everything….except for the bad stuff I did…. of course. Because little religious girls don’t think they have faults….especially admit them. Nonetheless, I asked for His help, ect. I guess I talked to Him as a girl would write in her diary. I still do.
Even though I was raised in church from the age of seven, and was there every time the doors were open with my family, and knew a lot about God; actually I knew very little about what it meant to have a real relationship with Him…..that is outside of my random walks and nights in my bedroom talking to Him.
Nonetheless, I know that even in my feeble and sparatic attempts to connect with Him, I know I was His and that He heard the musings of a very confused and at times, lonely little girl on those walks.
However, as I’ve grown in Christ and He has and is opening my eyes to truth in so many ways, there was always one ugly thing standing in the way of trusting that I was talking to and singing about a God that really heard me or that He really had to power to change anything or anyone. It’s called religion.
I know that on some small level I believed He was listening, but I never remembering having faith enough to believe that my prayers carried much, if any weight with God, or that He could or would ever really move and work through people.
Of course we prayed for people to be healed from all kinds of sickness all the time, but it was preached from the pulpit by some that God doesn’t still even performed miracles at all, and that the gifts of the spirit (if they ever even really existed) are no longer present and active in us. (Just a couple of our very untrue beliefs about God.)
Which then stands to reason, why did we even pray at all if we didn’t believe God would actually hear us and that He would really move? Or that He could work through us? Again, appearances and religious ritual ruled. It was all we needed. Or at least all we wanted, to keep our world comfortable and predictable.
Even as a young girl, I learned by watching those around me to be more concerned with “keeping up appearances” and appearing to be a “good girl”. As was most of the church culture I was raised in. It was all about appearing Godly, singing a lovely song, quoting Bible verses, wearing the right clothes, while sweeping the dirt of our lives under the carpet of the neatly kept church pews.
I was a “good” girl….as far as everyone knew, I was talented, and so I always found favor with “religious leaders”. Looking back, I was good at the game. What is even more scary, I could have stayed good at it for a long time….maybe even the rest of my life.
I watched as new people would come in our church doors for the first time; people who didn’t look like us, who didn’t have the same skin color as we did, people who looked like the world. And I watched as most of my church family sneered at them and stuck our noses up at them as though they weren’t good enough to worship with us. If new people didn’t conform to “our accepted image” as quickly as the church though they should, it wouldn’t be long and they would make them uncomfortable or discouraged enough to leave.
I remember one young black man in his late twenties coming to our church once. It was very obvious that he had lived hard for the world at one time. His appearances was rugged, he had tattoos all over his body, but the song that he sang the few times they actually let him on stage was the song of a man that knew, loved, and had been rescued by a God that doesn’t look at us as man does. His heart was so sincere. I remember being glad he was there, but I could tell he made everyone squirm in their pew seat. I remember him trying so hard to fit in, but many of the other church members made it impossible for him to. It wasn’t long and sadly, he was gone.
That’s just one of the many examples I could write a book on of things that looking back, were so wrong…..so not of God. I didn’t even recognize what was happening them, but now that I’m older, I know exactly what it was. And it breaks my heart; that I was even a part of that, that I believed that was the right way and anything outside of what we believed to be true was wrong.
Believe me when I say, I know first hand the ugliness of religion. I’m well acquainted with it and what it does……or doesn’t do for people’s lives. Religion doesn’t save anyone, it blinds and binds.
Several years ago, when I married my husband, little did I know God had a plan and was making a way to lead me away from everything I had always known. Everything I had ever been. Everything I was comfortable with. Everything I had always believed to be truth. It would not be a simple path, and it would take everything I believed to be true about God and the way things should be, and turn it all upside down.
Little did I know that God was about to begin to totally mess up my neatly packaged little view, and bullet list of who He was and what it meant to be His own. He’s STILL messing it up, even today. And honestly, I’m a little uncomfortable……yet so grateful.
To be continued……
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Today, my little girl started Kindergarten. Knowing that this day was coming for the last, well, five and a half years didn’t make it any easier.
