Church is Like Middle School

(excerpt from The Popeye Chronicles: Becoming my I am)

Church can often hinder us from becoming our "I am" because...let's face it...Church is like middle school. I love church. I love worshiping with the saints! But if I'm not careful, it can become a place for fitting in...doing things "right"...and other traps that hinder me from being my true self.

This last year of my life has been one of the hardest in terms of my "Christianity" because I have not belonged to a church. We moved to a new state, and just haven't found a place that feels like home. I have been without the safety net of "belonging". I have been made painfully aware of how much I want to fit in. I feel out of place without my people...I feel very "different". As we visit various churches, it seems I don't really fit anywhere here.

Remember the comfort of having your own group in middle school? Remember how relieved you were in the lunchroom when you found your friends, when you found the group where you felt you belonged? If you're female, you probably all dressed alike, even shared your clothes. You liked the same music, boys, and fast food. Rarely did you voice a differing opinion. It was "safe" to follow the group. It brought you a lot of security. And I'm not saying it was a bad thing.

But this past year has made me aware of how much of my comfort and security came from "belonging" to a church. I was around people who worshiped the same way I was comfortable worshiping, and who believed things that I also believed about God and His Kingdom. Sometimes in that security, the fear of being "different" threatened my I am.

Have you ever noticed how "alike" church bodies are, yet how different from the others? There are groups who prefer to dress up on Sunday mornings, and some who choose jeans-casual. There are some who raise hands in worship. Some who don't. There are groups who dance and get rowdy, and some who hardly sing.
Are you catching a theme here? But within each church, there are few who dare to show their own individuality...either that, or the "different" choose to go someplace with more of their kind.

It's like it was in middle school. We gravitate to the people most like us. We don't want to stand out. We don't want to be different. We don't want to wear jeans to the dress-up church. We don't want to raise our hands if nobody else is. We don't use our prayer language if it is frowned upon. We try so hard to fit in that we often lose our own essence, the very essence of God in us. Our I am. 

I don't want to make waves.

Could God be in this season? Am I right where I'm supposed to be?

What am I learning? God is my home. He is where I fit. And if I am looking for acceptance from any group of people, I am going back to middle school...

God is solidifying me even more deeply in my I am. 

I might be a wave pool in a park full of lap pools, but that is how He made me. He doesn't need or want me to be anyone but me. This is my gift to Him. 

 

The great I AM lives in me. He expresses part of Himself that can only be expressed through my own unique self...my I am.

My Church

These ladies are my Sistas. Aren't we cute? I hesitate sharing pictures of us together, because inevitably it hurts the feelings of other Sistas whom we love, who end up feeling left out or excluded when the seven of us get together.

But the thing is, we seven have a very deep bond that hasn't happen overnight. It happened over years and years of walking together, even when we have moved miles apart. We text, email and call each other daily. We are vulnerable with each other. We share our fears, failures and weaknesses freely...because we are safe. But the thing is...relationships on this level take work! They really do! They require openness. They require time. They require commitment. They require grace. These kinds of relationships are not something that we can ever take lightly. I cherish every one of these ladies. I trust them with my heart.

We have walked with each other through everything imaginable. We have cried with each other, laughed with each other, danced with each other, and laughed-till-we-cried with each other. We have prayed ourselves and our families through divorce, marriage, death, birth, addiction, jail, danger, accidents, surgeries...you name it, we've held each others arms up through it. We have grown to truly love our Sistas' families as our own, even those whom we don't know well or haven't even met. It is quite amazing, really.

We're the kind of group who knows we can call each other any time in the day or night and find the love and prayers needed in that moment. We are available for each other. We not only listen to the stories of others, we find the courage to share our own. We have been through too much to be fake. We have sat in our pajamas together in the morning, looking our worst...and attending weddings together in our Sunday best. It doesn't matter! Because after all of these years, we no longer see our outsides...we are too focused on our hearts.

The growth experienced in a group like this is incomparable to anything one might experience in a corporate church setting once or twice a week. In fact, our growth happened when this group began to realize that there was so much more to God and His Kingdom...and we wanted it all. We stood together when manifestations of the Spirit began to mess up our paradigm. We learned to love everything that God has to offer us. We have washed feet and wiped tears and massaged shoulders and laid awake at night listening to each other snoring. I have learned more about God from each of these ladies than a lifetime of Bible teachings and note-taking could have taught me.

We have walked through life together arm in arm, loving each other...warts and all. Instead of picking at the warts we see on each other until they bleed...we applied the balm of love and watched them heal. We've been patient, kind, gentle, and grace-full. It is a sisterhood indeed.

The older I get, the more I realize that God puts people together to share life with each other, because this is our purpose. This is how we discover the riches of His Kingdom.

So, I share this picture apologetically. The relationship I have with these Sistas doesn't diminish those that I have with other Sistas...it only enriches them, and every other relationship I have in my life.
This is my family. This is my church.

A Lotta Do Do

It crept in quietly while we weren't paying attention, sneaking in to our lives and changing everything. Just two little letters have infused our language while we weren't paying attention. This language we used to speak. But we don't speak a language anymore. We "do" English.

Just like we don't play sports, we "do" basketball, or we "do" football. "How is your son?" "Oh, he's good...he's doing baseball this year. Last year he did football, but now he wants to do baseball." (This is a conversation I overheard while waiting at the dentist yesterday.

"Are you gonna do dinner tonight, or are we going out?"

We used to paint. Now we "do" art.

I used to clean house, now I "do" my cleaning.

Music used to be played and practiced, but now we "do" music.

Do do!! It's everywhere! Now that I've pointed it out, you will notice it too.

Just a subtle change...just two little letters.

I am not sure it matters. I know I can't stop it any more than I can stop myself from wondering how it got in? When did everything change? When did "do" take over?

It's just something that I find myself pondering. Yep, that's me. I do pondering. This is what happens when a person has way too much time on her hands. Oh well, what's a woman to do?