What Next, God?

I know that we are supposed to forgive everyone, especially if you are a Christian, but even if you’re not, forgiveness is better for YOU. I know forgiveness is a choice, too, and does not depend on the contrition, repentance or lack thereof of the offending party. Not an easy, instant, “yes, I must” choice, but one that comes after loss and bitterness and grief, perhaps even prompted by when the pain is too great to bear anymore.

The Nature of Forgiveness

But what of the nature of forgiveness? Is it a sweeping, “all is ok now” response? Does it occur gradually, in steps? Does forgiveness = forgotten?

This is prompted by a discussion I had with my aunt and godmother this week. She is a conservative Christian, and despite this is spiritually evolving toward perfection, I can see (yes that was tongue in cheek). I had someone I love dearly hurt me very badly this year. I’ve been fortunate this is not something I have any memory of anyone that near and dear causing me such pain. Choosing forgiveness was hard, and something that I kept thinking I got and realized after blowing up in anger that I had not. Or that I had to take baby steps toward. Something happened, and I discovered the pain was gone – and then I believed that I forgaver her.

Must You Forget Too?

BUT I have not forgotten. My heart wears deep scars from this, and though this person is very close, intimate and in my family, I have no desire to return to our former relationship. We used to talk about everything, whine about everything too, and I would update her on the in’s and out’s of my children – and sometimes with me – quite regularly. I don’t really want to speak to her too much now. It’s not that I hold this against her, so much as that I cannot afford the risk right now that this kind of thing will happen again. I’ve pulled back.

My aunt claims this is not forgiveness.

Now I suppose you could make an argument for that, true. It does depends on the honesty of the forgiver.

Forgiveness Is ??

I do disagree with my aunt though. I believe I have forgiven this person because:

• The incident is over and done, and I bear no pain from it
• I have absolutely no feelings of anger, retribution or anything else negative toward my offender.
• I don’t even care about justice or who was right or wrong.
• I did see her since forgiving her and things felt more or less fine, except my words were pretty careful.

Is it possible that a relationship can be damaged even AFTER forgiveness on the part of both parties? Longing to hear your thoughts and comments.

A crazy post title for a blog about God, don’t you think? Actually, I’ve come to all or most of my faith through the practice of logic. God’s made me this way and I can’t fight it.

The Question of Orthodoxy

I’ve been fighting the lure of orthodox Christianity. My trouble is always with Jesus as God’s son – aren’t we all His sons and daughters? OK, you say, Christianity says the rest of us are adopted and Mary had a “virgin” birth, because God impregnated. Oddly, I’ve never even questioned that area of faith – every single other piece of Scripture has been a struggle for me but not that.

Is Jesus God? I truly don’t know. I do know some things though – that he was a holy man, that he was filled with God, that he was born perfect, that you need to follow his example, that his sacrifice was not meaningless.

That last line has given me lots of trouble on the issue of NOT being orthodox. Honesty, what value is his sacrifice if he was not totally officially OF God?

Thinking of Christianity

This then is what happened over the last two days:

I’ve struggled with this issue because I find it hard to be a Christian and not believe what other Christians believe. I looked at non-orthodox churches and just felt something was “not quite right”. I did a seminar last weekend at my church on spiritual gifts, which was meant to enlist us for service in our church. My main gift was “knowledge” – not something I can really use in any church ministry if my faith is unorthodox.

More and more this has been coming to a head. I questioned my own monthly taking of communion, which I practiced since December, when I felt called to, and felt honestly in my heart as soon as the bread hit my stomach that I’d done something that made God happy.

The Advice of Others

This is something that I try to avoid – after all, aren’t all Christians going to be slanted towards, well, Christianity as the REAL TRUTH? I’ve been speaking with my godmother a lot lately, and somehow told her my struggle: I’m cool with God, I even get the Holy Spirit at last, but Jesus confounds me. She gave me Scriptures and the typically Christian credo: much of which I don’t believe. I don’t believe God would abandon anyone who was truly seeking Him to hell if the seeker could not wrap his mind or faith around Christianity. Period. God is either merciful or not, and that is NOT. I still believe certainly in successive lives as well.

Then I got a scripture on how we will only see some of the truth now, and more of it after death. Between that and reading on sanctification in John Wesley’s “A Plain Account of Christian Perfection”, I saw that what I was looking for was God to give me the answer on how the Path can be true and Christianity as well. God basically said it’s none of my business at this point.

Here’s where logic won out: God has put me a church which has brought me SO close to Him. He’s given me a strong desire for ministry in it. He’s blocked out any connection with the Path to Perfection, and open doors into Christianity. My brain told me that God is looking for me to become a Christian.

Period.

The Pieces All Fit Together

Today’s sermon was the final straw. The first thing I heard in church was about how we can’t know it all. The music was all about what and who Jesus is: God. The sermon was about how RELIGION – or whatever it is – can get in the way of your faith, and your faith comes from God. Specifically about how the veil was torn at Christ’s death, and how we let our own personal veils get in the way of our faith.

It really was like God was talking to ME. God’s shown me things that maybe other Christians haven’t seen. Don’t think this is a glory thing – this just makes it HARDER. I have to be more brave than the average Christian, and I’m a chicken sh** at heart. I won’t say I don’t have problems with Christ’s divinity, and I won’t say that this leap is not completely and totally TERRIFYING. I AM saying that if God wants me to accept Christianity, I can take a hint. Someday He’ll explain it all to me – boy that’ll be a lot of explaining!

Bad Day
Today started out horribly. I left for my parent’s house at around 8:30am to give my mother her medications. She is 81 and ha advanced Alzheimer’s, and it’s getting worse. My 85 year old dad is her primary caretaker. It’s not a good situation, but there is a lot of politics involved in getting Mom into a nearby nursing home – my county only has three in total.

She has roughly 10 pills to take twice a day. This morning she only managed the Tylenol and aspirin before losing her grip on reality, and then getting very angry. She kicked me out. It was disturbing. Logic brain KNOWS it’s only the disease, but my heart had a hard time listening. I thought, if it’s bad on me, no wonder Dad is taking it so horribly.

Last week was their 59th anniversary. Really, how many people do you know happily married even 50 years? Not one separation, not one affair, not a single blot on their marriage at all. Dad put up a blow up photo of their wedding day. Mom looks SO beautiful. Dad looked over at the picture and said, “Where did she go?”

What Happens If God’s Not First?
On the way home, only the sheer power of prayer kept me from crying. I can’t cry and drive – I’ve only been driving a year, and I’m not even sure that’s a skill that ANYONE should try. The music on Spirit Radio was speaking to me as well. On Sunday morning, they play worship music. As I called on the Lord to help me through this, I was struck by something. My father has been falling apart since the beginning of the year, and why? Because he put my mom before everything else. And while that is touching, beautiful and romantic, the real truth is that God wants you to put HIM first.

Even our most important relationship is second to God, even if it’s ourselves. When we put ourselves, our spouses, our children, or anyone else before God, it shows. Not generally in readily apparent ways, either. My father, until the last year of pain and doubt, has always been a devout Christian. A liberal one, yes, and many of his views are driven by Christian values. He wasn’t always like this, he got what Christians call “saved” or “born again” when I was about 10 or 11. Even then, though, he put Mom first. I remember as a teen getting in trouble for talking back to “his wife”.

I love my husband more than any other person on this Earth, and he goes before anyone else, which is just a hair’s breadth ahead of the children we created together. (Unless the building’s on fire, though, because I can pick THEM up but not him.) Make no mistake, he is important. I’m slightly ahead of him in my own importance – just my basic needs, because it’s a lie to believe you can take care of your family if you’re malnourished, fatigued, and emotionally spent.

What Happens When God IS First
But up front? Lately, I’ve learned to put God there. God, here’s the car – I don’t have anything left to drive it, I’m exhausted, sick, broken-hearted, lame, diseased, flea-bitten and cranky. Then God does something really, REALLY weird.

HE DRIVES THE CAR.

And as if THAT weren’t enough, then he does something so completely over the top, it astounds you:

HE MAKES YOU FEEL WARM, LOVED, AND GOOD.

I realized that my father is STILL letting a woman who is mentally and physicall deteriorating drive the car, and it’s killing him. She can’t, of course, and his frustration turns out in anger, sorrow and indecision about vital matters.

Only By Putting God First Can You Truly Care For Others
After my parent’s house, I went to church. I was completely and utterly broken. I don’t think I’ve felt that spiritually spent in a long time. The sermon today was on forgiveness. Pastor Lenny was reiterating on John 21:15, as Jesus begins the first of 3 times that he asks Peter if he loves him. And while I got the point of the sermon, I suddenly saw those verses in a new light:

“Do you truly love me more than these?”

I see it as Jesus asking Peter if he loves God ABOVE ALL OTHERS. In other words, does he put God first? After Peter agrees, in the next line Christ asks Peter to take care of his sheep.

BECAUSE YOU CAN’T TAKE CARE OF ANYONE ELSE UNTIL YOU PUT GOD FIRST.

Heavy.

Yesterday I was driving and “God Blessed The Broken Road” by Selah came on the road. It got to this one point in the song, the same point that always makes me weepy. It’s not about my beautiful marriage, though, that I cry every time I hear the lyric:

“It’s all part of a grander plan, that is coming true”

And I realized that the real point of this song is that every crummy thing that’s ever happened to us is all part of a plan, and that plan is God’s plan. We are in His hands, in His Master Plan, a plan that is for our own good, a plan with a happy ending.

And that, to me, is comfort.

What of dreams and God? We humans tend to dream big, and we tend to think that God – selfishly perhaps – blocks our dreams.

What Do Oprah and Jeff Majors Have to Do With My Dreams?

This was my week:

Awful. But it was Friday, and the baby awoke, so I took a few minutes while my 3 year was being industrious and sat with Oprah. She had on a classical harpist – Jeff Majors – not my favorite type of music, but the baby liked it. I call her my “Christian baby”, because she loves Christian music and prefer “Praise Baby” DVD to “Baby Einstein” (which makes her cry). Not surprisingly, she fell right asleep to Major’s version of Psalm 23, and I must admit it was spiritually effective.

Afterwards, Jeff told a beautiful story: how he’d never seen a harp before, but the Lord gave him a dream that he was playing one and demons were just running away. He told a friend who made a harp for him, and the rest I guess is history. I remember wishing that God would talk that clearly to me.

Then Oprah told a story about why the psalm is her favorite and how as a child, she’d dream of having 5 trees in front of her kitchen window. Now, she has 2000. She said, “God can dream bigger than we ever can.”

And Then God Spoke… 

I went upstairs after this to put my baby down, and decided to check email while I was by my PC. I subscribe to the Spiritual Parenting newsletter and saw that my letter had arrived. I didn’t have time to read, and truth be told, I can almost NEVER read the newsletters I get. But I had a minute and needed a recharge, so I glanced at the titles. There was one about encouraging your child’s dreams. I think about this a lot, having a Down syndrome child. I skimmed down and what did it say?

“In truth, God has bigger dreams for our lives than we could ever think up by ourselves.” I paraphrased Oprah, but it truly was near verbatim to what she said – and it was only a few minutes after the first message.

God’s Dreams Are Better Than Mine?

I don’t know how to interpret this. I DO know that if anything, I ignored this bit of wisdom in the last few days. My Mom’s Alzheimers is getting really bad and we have to put her in a home – but do we have the means? My business is ramping up – but can I afford child support? My heart is being led towards writing and ministry – but do I have the time?

Well, God, you’ve got some big dreams for me. I have some for myself, but you’re saying that yours are better. Ok. I give. Any time you want to tell me what they are and how to accomplish them, I’m all ears…

HI there and welcome to my new blog, What Next, God? God has been leading me down a very crooked path over the last few years, and this is where I’m going to share some of my insights, lessons, questions, and so on. I’m also hoping to start either a podcast or videoblog here, where I can discuss on a monthly basis importance questions concerning our quest for God and the further quest for a godly life.

Ask and Ye Shall Receive

My story? Another Catholic church drop out. After 12 years in their schools, and parents who converted to Born Again Christianity which they used to terrify me about boys and sex, I ran screaming from religion – but not from God. Internally, I felt that a lot of things Christianity and the Bible had taught went against my very nature, and truths that were at my own inner core. By age 27, I was so lost and confused that I made a prayer to God. I sent a request to the one true Divine and Good Creator – that if He existed, to let me know and let me learn about Him in a way I could understand. Until then, I would erase everything I’d ever learned in this life from other people, and be more or less an atheist.

About 2 or 3 INCREDIBLY painful and lonely weeks followed. Some people say that Hell is absence from God’s presence – and if you think that doesn’t sound so bad, you don’t know yourself or God very well. It was two weeks of Hell. And then a friend of a friend started talking about the “Path to Perfection“. I went to learn more. A group was giving meeting on the upper east side, and all you had to do was buy the book and read it – it was the study guide for this unstructured spiritual university.

And there I found God. Not someone else’s God, not the definition of God, but a real intimate personal experience – a God I could touch and test, a God who was definite and definitive, even while being omnipotent and all powerful. A real living Being God, too, not one of these new age definitions where God is more like the Force.

So I went to meetings regularly, and they had regular school years too – for about 5 years. In that time, I stopped due to laziness – guess how many times? What’s that magical Biblical number? How many times did Peter deny Jesus? Yes, three times – which is the charm and after that the Path was never open to me again.

Seek and Ye Shall Find

But anyone who has a close relationship with God knows that the only way to continue that relationship is with study, prayer, and community. So I went back to church – 4 days after the Twin Towers fell. That church was a fluke, a test case, and when the married pastor impregnated the assistant pastor, it fell apart. Then we moved out of New York and I had a baby with Mosaic Down Syndrome. I knew after another year or two passed that I needed that connection, and I asked. Yes, ask and ye shall receive is a truth – my husband pointed to a church that was the very same one my neighbor recommended the next day. So I started attending a conversative Wesleyan church (Stroudsburg Wesleyan) – me, a liberal lefty Dem. Somehow, I got closer with God and a lot of my prejudices about the right wing began to melt when I found how dear and loving people can be.

So that’s where I’m at. I’m struggling, as I probably always will, with Christianity and I still believe in the Path and my benevolent, loving God. The story, however, is far from over. There is so much more to learn, and I truly want to learn about other monotheistic religions and Buddhism. Much of God is in other practices too.

Join me on my journey, and then follow your own spiritual path by asking:

What Next, God?