Unleashed

It was like staring into the face of a younger, angrier version of me.

The other day I found a research paper I’d written about two-and-a-half years earlier. I had somehow managed to use a sociology prompt as a platform from which to emotionally mouth-off about every bad experience I’d had with the institution of the church. I was cynical, hurt and wrecked with anger.

If you’re reading this and you’re surprised, I’m thankful. If you’re not, then you’ve known me well.
Not everything about that girl is gone. Admittedly I was surprised, reading back, that I’d actually managed a fairly well-researched rant for eight pages...

And yet some things have changed. Today I don’t sit in the church and cower in the pews all morning…I greet for one service on Sundays, involve myself in the discipleship process, and bubble over with excitement for everyone I get to see at Sunday school. While I am mentioning outward changes limited to the sphere of church activities, I hope this is only the sign of an inward change.

Because I remember when I once felt unworthy to come forth just to sing in worship.

I grew up in a minister’s home where my mother, siblings and I were regularly verbally battered and abused. I felt soiled.

The church home I attended most of my childhood was usually not equipped to encourage someone in my unique, and often awkward, situation. Hence, in my heart the church as a whole had reason to grieve for their mistakes and the burdens they cast on others.

Today my parents have been divorced for about the same amount of time it’s been since I wrote that report. Coming away to a new community for school and getting distance from so much of my hurt seems to have been God’s ticket to deliver me from some of the pain. Granted, I carried it with me for some time and it can still be a struggle to shed its burden.

Since then I’ve wrestled with my Heavenly Daddy for a new identity repeatedly, like Jacob wrestled with the Lord (Genesis 32). I’ve fought to regain the space within my heart to grant forgiveness to those who’ve hurt me and release them for their faults against me, while in turn releasing myself from the same standard. I’ve learned that I can know and accept the pieces of my family, the church, and myself that are confusing and imperfect. And after four years of my undergraduate I’ve learned that my daily security and provision rest entirely in Christ.

The relationships within my family are still often filled with tension, and it is a discipline to try walk into my home in a different manner.  I fail a lot. My relationships with my brother and sister are not as close as I wish they were, and I’m admittedly still at a loss as to how to change that. Sometimes speaking with my mother I mirror a person whose flesh I thought I shed a long time ago. And the significant role of Daddy in my life has been replaced by the Holy Spirit during prayer. Truthfully, the thing I most look forward to in Heaven is re-meeting my father, without all of our bondage.

Fortunately, church is now a place I call home. I couldn’t have asked for better support from the brothers and sisters I’ve known over the last several years. Without the help of good friends, the hours of their time that they gave, and even the tears they were willing to shed with me, I would not be the same person I am today. Praise be to God, the role of the church and its members has been redeemed in my life, and I regularly look forward to seeing it continually transformed into a place of healing, where the broken need not hide.

I share this because I believe that I’ve attended church with many at First Baptist Arlington over the years who’ve never heard my story. I also know that within any church there are those that do still hide, or those outside of it who just don’t feel “clean” enough to come in.

Or we’re hurt and need healing, like that girl in my paper that I still wrestle with from time to time. Wherever we are in life, each of us needs someone to help redirect our perspective and point us to the cross.

Thank you to my church home for letting me in, along with the close friends that regularly welcome me into their hearts. I hope my heart will be continually renewed as a place to make others feel just as welcome.