Singing Amazing Grace

I've been inside of a church since I was born.  My father worked for a Christian organization.  My mother sang in the church choir.  My first step-father was an off-again-on-again music minister and my second step-father has been an off-again-on-again church board member.  I come from what most would classify a "religious" family.

As such, I followed the rules, the 'truths' as they were presented, both whole truths and the slightly broken, damaged truths.

Whole.
Don't murder.  Done.

Broken.
Go to a Christian university and marry right after graduation.  Done.

The thing of it is, I never questioned any of these rules, this path I was being herded down.  If I did ask, it was explained that it was "for my best" and a bunch of other nonsense like that.  It worked out well for me.  Really well.  I may in fact be the poster child for why those cultural practices are around, but even so, I still find myself deeply, deeply wounded by the lack of conversation.  I find that I'm terribly discontent and grappling with ideas and concepts that I have no vocabulary with which to explain because there was no communication ever to be had.  You either believed and accepted or you were out, needing to be 'prayed back into the fold', wayward.

I was talking yesterday with a dear friend.  She is in the midst of being a leaning post for another who is walking the very hard and broken path of marital separation.  And my friend, the one supporting a load of weight, she's struggling to support while giving her friend the vocabulary to explain.  I found myself hurt over a situation I have no stake in, my heart deeply entangled with a person I have never met, simply because I have been to that broken place.  And no one talked to me about it either.  Because as I came to understand in my finite wisdom of pre-pubescence, we, the little "c" church, the ones who come and worship but are always broken and human ourselves, do not talk about BIG things because we serve a BIG God who can overcome all.

Hear my heart.  I firmly believe and have staked my life, my children's lives, and my husband's life on the very truth that says I serve an infinitely big God who can and will overcome any and all obstacles, in my life or anywhere else for that matter.  Period.  That is as core to who I am as the marrow which makes up my bones. He is big, and He will do big things.  That doesn't mean we have to leave every child in the midst of a separation to their own devices to "pray it out" with Jesus.  That does not mean that we have to heap judgement on each other because we don't "have enough faith" to overcome a situation and that most certainly doesn't mean we were somehow lacking and this current trial is God's way of teaching me about that lack.

Bull.

Shit.

Every good and perfect gift if from above above, coming down from the Father of heavenly lights, who does not change like the shifting shadows.  James 1:17 (NIV)

To put it another way...

Every generous act of giving and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father who make the heavenly lights, in whom there is no inconsistency or shifting shadow.  James 1:17 (ISV)

I may be totally out in left field here, half rantings of a mostly crazy person.  Maybe.  But if music is the theology of the masses, and so many "old" hymns are coming back into popularity, then I wonder if I really am that far off or if, maybe, just maybe, I'm not the only one yearning for more.

More commitment to the Body of Christ, the big "C" Church, the one who is supposed to hold up my arms when I am no longer able to raise the staff to win the battle.

More transparency and conversation about these broken, half truths we've been told, we've ingested, and are now getting sick from.

More authenticity and vulnerability to big, tough questions like How is your soul?  Followed immediately by more grace and compassion and accountability when the answer to that scary question is Not too well.

One of my children's favorite songs is Fight Song.  They sing it incessantly and at the absolute top of their lungs.  One of the lines in the song makes me so deeply grateful to the writer of the song and to Rachel Platten for birthing it into popularity.   It is a line that will be forever embedded in my children's souls... and that, is good.  Maybe the church can figure out how to grab a hold of the concept and run it all the way, teaching a whole new generation that truths aren't truths until they are whole... and whole truths are the only ones worth having, worth fighting for.

"I might only have one match, but I can make an explosion."

My heart yearns and breaks to be part of a people who realize that we are the Church.  Full stop.  The Bride of Christ.  Called to be together, called to purity, called to unity through all our many and diverse parts.  To celebrate at the wedding feast the union we have through Christ Jesus our LORD, our bridegroom, our co-inheritor of the riches of the the Father.  That we are called not to aspire to be from a "religion" but to fight the powers and principalities in our minds and in the world, all the while singing out the amazing grace of the LORD who calls each and every one of us "beloved."