Sacred Space

I had the opportunity to share my heart with a small group of people last night. I got to talk about what I dream of when I think about a church that is a sacred space to gather and seek God together. Here are the words I spoke:

What I remember most about going to church, as a child, is the preparation. I remember my mom putting sponge rollers in my hair the night before and how uncomfortable they were to sleep on, but how much I loved the curls in my hair the next morning. I remember always wearing a dress to church, it wasn’t a question of whether pants were allowed or not, it was just what was. And I was okay with it most of the time, except when I also had to wear wool tights under my dress to keep my legs warm. They were incredibly uncomfortable and always sagged in the most unpleasant way. I remember my 3 brothers putting on dress slacks and dress shirts, and that sometimes they also wore a tie and jacket. My dad never showed up to church without wearing a full suit. As a girlie girl, and as a child, I didn’t question these routines, I liked dressing up. I liked people telling me I looked pretty. I didn’t question the idea that we need to make ourselves look a certain way in order to be acceptable at church. I couldn’t have known that those simple acts were my first lessons in how to make yourself presentable to God.

I also remember that all of that extra effort took extra time and, with 4 kids, we were often running late. My parents had a very rocky relationship and the stress of Sunday mornings added fuel to the fire. My dad always wanted to be early- but he didn’t actually help get any of us ready. My mom did all of the care taking when it came to us kids so she was often frazzled and running behind and spent the last few minutes getting herself ready to go. My dad would sit in the car and honk the horn at her. Then they would argue on the way to church. I hated that conflict. But when we got there, when we stepped out of the car, we all put on our smiles. And so did everyone else. I didn’t think about how I was being taught that our mess wasn’t really welcome at church.

I enjoyed church most of the time. I enjoyed seeing my friends. I liked the older women and men who had fun teasing us and chatting with us. I liked being chosen to light the candles at the beginning of the service. I enjoyed the refreshments in the reception hall. I liked my Sunday School teachers, especially one I had in the 1^st or 2^nd grade. She was beautiful and she always wore lots of bright red shiny lipstick. I was mesmerized by her lips while she told us stories from the Bible. Sometimes sitting on the hard pews during the service was boring, but overall, it was ok.

I remember that sometimes we were naughty at church and that the consequences for that were usually much more severe than if we were naughty at home. My dad would put his thumb in the soft part of our shoulder and squeeze it while correcting us with a quiet and frightening whisper. And, if the infraction was bad enough, we would receive a spanking with his belt when we got home. Church was not a place to misbehave or embarrass my parents. We needed to prove to the other church people that they were good parents. Good parents have children who are good too.

In high school and college, I started taking an active part in helping to lead the activities at church. I was fully committed and bought in. It was all I’d ever known, and church was the beginning of where I found God, so I was passionate about being a part. I started owning my own desire to know more of God and I sought people who were further along in their faith than me. I participated in youth group, Bible studies, and, in college, I joined a campus ministry called the Navigators. I was an eager learner and loved the community of learning with a group of people who believed like I did.

I am grateful for so much about all those years and experiences- they are the foundation of what my faith is today. I am grateful for the Navigators for many reason-  but the best reason is that that is where I met Jason. I am grateful for the friendships I made- faith is meant to be lived out together. I am grateful for the elderly people who made me feel welcome, seen, and special as a small child at church. I am grateful for the leaders of my youth groups, Bible studies, and the Navigators- they were passionate about sharing their faith with those they led and I learned so much. I’m grateful that, even though it wasn’t always very pretty, my parents made the effort to get us to church every Sunday.

I couldn’t have known, as a child, or even as a teen and young adult, that in the midst of all the truth I was learning, I was also learning things about God that were not true. I was being taught that only the fixed up should show up. Only those who fit in the box are welcome. If you play by the rules you’ll fit in just fine, if you don’t, or can’t, you might not feel welcome or comfortable. You might even be called out and maybe even asked to not come back.

Sometimes life hands us situations and events that unravel our previous understanding of the world. In 2006, 10 years into our marriage, through a story I’d love to share with you on another day, Jason and I decided to adopt 2 children from Haiti. The clarity we had from God that this was something we were called to do, was absolutely unmistakable to us. On our 10^th anniversary we accepted a referral for Moniqua and John and started an 18 month wait to bring them home that was absolutely agonizing. They were 3 and 7 when we said yes to them. We thought we’d have them home in 4-6 months. They were 5 and 9 when they finally came home. The place they lived in Haiti was not a safe place. They were often hungry, sick, malnourished, and they were not always safe there. We watched and waited from afar knowing that we couldn’t protect them and that we were powerless to speed up the process. It was in the hands of the Haitian government.

On February 9, 2008 they finally came home. We were ecstatic. Watching them experience snow for the first time, taste foods they’d never heard of before, play with all the toys their hearts could desire, enjoy new friendships with their 3 new siblings- it was all a rush. It was fun and endearing and all the things you’d imagine it to be. But underneath all of that joy was pain that could not be ignored forever.

The next few years were really hard- and not just for us as their parents- for them too. Moniqua and John were brought here against what they would have chosen- being kept by their birth mom and dad. They had no reason to believe that our family and home would be any safer than the orphanage they had come from. They had no idea of permanence or abundance, of provision or safety. Their experience up to that point had taught them that food would not always be there, safety was not guaranteed, people could not be trusted. Children do not have words for these experiences and fears. They cannot have a conversation about this out loud. Instead, they express their pain through their behavior. That is not wrong, it is just how it works. In fact, we do this as adults too.

I had read many books about kids who have experienced trauma. I knew all the theories about attachment and how much broken attachments with birth mom can affect children. We had attended trainings and conferences and did our best to prepare ourselves. We had so much knowledge. What I could not have known until I was in the midst of it was how I would feel about it. I didn’t know how bad I’d be at handling it. I didn’t know that I would get so angry or take their behaviors so personally. I didn’t know that I would feel so much grief that adjustment wasn’t just easy, that my efforts didn’t feel like enough. I couldn’t have possibly imagined the guilt I would feel in what a failure I felt I was as their mom. I was consumed by myself and the pain of my experience.

During that hardest season of our lives, I kept showing up to church, hoping for answers and relief from the hard, and I started seeing what I hadn’t needed to see before- what I couldn’t previously recognize as unhealthy. I started experiencing the discomfort that people display when you bring your ugly truth into the church building. Everyone there was working so hard to do what they’d always been taught to do- show up with a smile, hide the pain of the fight you had on the way there, conceal the pain you feel about your broken marriage, disguise the details of your teen’s absence who is rebelling and has refused to come anymore, don’t let anyone know that your 8-year-old son is begging to be a girl. Keep all the unacceptable things hidden.

Well, I am an outward processor. I am transparent to a fault. And so I shared too much. I learned over the first few years that they were home that the church was not a safe place for me to take my pain. And I really needed it to be. If I shared with the wrong people (who I had previously believed to be the right people) I would be told that I needed to pray more, that I needed to stop complaining and be grateful, that I wasn’t trusting God enough. I learned that people were much more comfortable if I didn’t talk about it, if I pretended like everything was okay.

I couldn’t do that. I was too desperate to find help.

Thankfully I found support online with a group of women who had also adopted older children who were struggling and hurting like I was. I took a leap of faith and flew to Orlando to meet all of these strangers, who Jason feared might actually be serial rapists and killers, and I spent 4 days experiencing the most sacred space I had ever had in my life. These women- they were not a Bible study. They weren’t a small group. They weren’t a church committee. Some of them don’t believe in God, some of them used to go to church but left when the disillusionment became greater than the benefit, some of them were very conservative in their faith and some were very liberal. ALL of them embraced me right where I was. ALL of them listened to my story and met me there and not one of them diminished my pain or my experience with a Christian platitude. ALL of them were and still are my church.

18 years ago, when we were brand new parents to just one child, we moved to Colorado and started attending the church where my husband is now employed. Our second weekend there I met my friend Nicole and her husband Jessie there. Nicole and I have twice been pregnant at the same time. We each have 5 kids. We have potty trained our toddlers in her backyard. We have celebrated holidays and birthdays together. We have spent family weekends in the mountains together. We have done life together. We have wept together over disappointments and fears. We have laughed till we cried at the embarrassing and funny things our kids have done and said. Nicole knows more of my thoughts, my passions, my fears and my ugly than any other friend. And she has stayed. She has listened. She has accepted me right where I’m at. Nicole is my church.

Jason and I and our family found a small group of friends a few years ago who we connected with and felt safe with and who we started meeting with several times a year. Our time together was mostly spent around a meal and some wine or cocktails. We didn’t have an agenda. We just all really enjoyed being together and we found that our conversation would naturally turn to our faith. We still get together regularly and our conversations are filled with life-giving stories and with our doubts. We share where we are failing and what we are hoping for. We find many reasons to laugh together, and sometimes we play Cards Against Humanity. Our kids are a variety of ages and test the limits in a multitude of ways- and it’s okay if we all know that. We’re well aware that our kids are going to make mistakes and so are theirs. These people are my church.

A few years ago, after agonizing for several years over attending church regularly as I had always been taught to do, Jason and I decided together that it was not healthy for me to attend Sunday services anymore. I stopped going to the church. I stopped doing something that I had done every weekend of my life since 9 months before I was born. I realized that what I needed and longed for in church was not a place where we put our pretty on to show up. I needed relationships with safe people. And I needed to know that anyone who I might want to bring to church would feel safe there as well. It was time for me to let go of the idea that attending an event on Sunday morning constituted church and was required to be a ‘good Christian.’ I decided to focus on the church I was finding outside of the church building. And I started to dig deep inside of myself and look for the untrue things the Church taught me so I could redefine my faith based on truths that would be new to me.

Throughout the past few years I have struggled to figure out why what I was taught as a child does not work for me today. I have grieved the loss of what felt was easy about my faith before and railed at God about why it’s so hard now. At one point I questioned whether I believed anymore at all. But here’s the thing: in spite of the imperfection of the church and the pain I experienced at the hands of those who should have been a safe place to come and in spite of my own misunderstand of so much about faith, I haven’t been able to let it go. I believe, deep inside of me, and with a passion that I can’t shake, that God exists. And I believe that God loves us. I believe that God knew we would get sidetracked by our humanity, but that He intended for us to seek Him together anyway because the gift of vulnerability in community is a miraculous opportunity to experience grace, love, forgiveness and hope. 

At some point, the church got mixed up and it took a book that is filled to the brim with broken, sinful people and used it to teach its members that we can’t be like those people. We have to be people who represent the perfection we hope for in eternity. Problem is, we haven’t been relieved of our humanity so we aren’t capable of what is being asked of us. At some point the teachings of the church somehow became a guidebook for being perfect like Jesus- except we aren’t. Hypocrisy doesn’t come from being sinful. Hypocrisy comes from telling people they aren’t good enough if they are sinful. Hypocrisy is telling people they aren’t acceptable to God because they aren’t like us. Hypocrisy is a disease that is eating away at the validity of the message that Jesus brought us. We lose our voice to those who don’t know God when we tell them they have to clean up their act and put on their Sunday best to come to Sunday School, because even though we do those things, and in spite of how hard we try to cover up our ugly, it has a crazy way of getting out anyway. We’re exposed as people who asked more of everyone than any of us have to give.

Our desire to present as perfect diminishes the truth and magnitude of Christ’s sacrifice for us on the cross. Who are we to claim or present as people who need God less than others? At what point did the teachings of the church shift from a focus on the awesome gift of relationship with God thru Christ, to the idea that we are supposed to be so good we don’t need Christ?

And so, here I am with all of you and I’m telling you that I’m looking for a sacred space to do church with a group of people who aren’t afraid to show up real and broken and messy. I’m looking for people who can handle my reality and who will risk telling me theirs. I’ll even go first.

I used to read my Bible regularly, but in all of this crazy growth and transition, I stopped believing that it was literal and, while I still hold it with reverence and awe, I’m not quite sure how to use it right now so I didn’t even include a single verse in this talk. I am really insecure about my body and how I look and sometimes I stand in my closet for long periods of time trying to find something to wear that will make me feel acceptable to the world. I judge people and think that if they would do things my way they’d be better off. I have some grudges that I’m holding against people who’ve hurt me and, even though I know I’d be better off if I forgave them, I haven’t done that yet. Sometimes I cuss my kids out when I get angry. I shouldn’t do that, and I’m working on it, but it’s a truth about me you should know if we’re going to do true church together. I am passionate. I love to laugh. I fight hard for things I believe in. I feel driven to be a part of showing the world a God who loves beyond comprehension. I am loyal. I am in process.

So what is Sacred Space to me?

The word Sacred speaks to a devotion and dedication to God. When I hear the word I think of something beautiful, peaceful, set aside for pointing us to God. The idea of gathering with people to seek God doesn’t make the meeting sacred, sacred describes a focus on God, not a focus on our efforts to seek God. The word Space can be defined many ways, depending on the context. One definition is ‘the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have a relative position and direction.’ For me, Sacred Space, is about gathering together in a place and time that is positioned to direct us to seeking God. I don’t know exactly what that will look like, but I can get excited about trying to find out.

I remember a teacher telling me one time that the best way to get students to behave is not to tell them what they can’t do. The most successful plan is to tell them what they should do. Give them positive instructions. I believe the same applies to our faith. I don’t believe that we’re meant to just accept where we’re at and never grow beyond the hard in our life. I wonder if we come together as whole human beings who spend our time together seeking an infinite and loving God, if maybe the messes will sort themselves out. We’ll become stronger in places where we used to be weak. We’ll grow out of bad habits and lean on each other’s wisdom as we focus more on learning together. And our primary focus will be on a loving God who doesn’t expect us to put on our Sunday best and smile in order to show up.