Hand-me-down grace

Do you have older siblings? If so, like me, you probably spent your younger years clothed in their cast-offs, that were too big, too small, too long or too short more often or not. They weren’t your choice or your preference. They didn’t fit you as they should and didn’t have your stamp on them. Someone elses name was in the collar. My big sister went through a major tom-boy phase where she cut off all her hair and wore only items of clothing featuring the ‘teenage mutant hero turtles’.  Four years younger, I was also a kid who spent a childhood up trees and down holes and hanging from bars and falling off fences – but I was happy doing it in dresses, too. I didn’t want her old ‘boy’ stuff. I hated that I only got to wear her clothes. I hated having her old school jumpers and her old jeans. I hated that I wore t shirts for camps I hadn’t been on and places I’d not visited. I hated it.

What made it worse was that people confused us so much, as we were both academic girls in a non-academic school, with brown hair and a tendency to be picked on, who both played the clarinet, both were involved in Girl Guiding, etc etc, ad infinitum. I went through school as ‘bigsister’sname-nowaitwhat’syourname?’.  Her name was written on my school reports and in the labels of my uniform. Looking back, my teenage years were a mess of a long-played identity crisis- she drowned me out. Even now, I often define myself as what she is not, rather than what I am. When my families problems kicked off, I was left muddling through, and made the mistake of defining myself on circumstance, not substance. Through all my counselling, it’s become clearer that I chose the wrong things to define myself with, when I’m able to at all. One of the things that most awes me about God is that He is who He says He is; I am that I am. If I asked you, ‘who do you say you are’, would your answer be the same today as it was ten years ago, and will be ten years in the future? Unlike God, e change, we grow, we alter, we question. God is not someone who has ever had an identity crisis.

When it comes to my faith, sometimes I kind of feel as though the grace set aside for me is just grace that someone else first in line didn’t use – that I’m a left-over Christian standing at the back of the queue, waiting to see if someone else before me has some scraps I can scavange to save my soul. It doesn’t feel like it fits me and my issues and my anxiety and my doubtful nature. It feels as though it should be worn by someone clean and sure and spotless. It makes me feel as though I’m wearing a robe that’s so long I trip over the hem, or a hood that falls down over my eyes so that I cannot see – and item woven for someone else that I somehow stumbled on and inspite of all my hoping, all my longing, still marks me as an outsider, without an invitation, standing in the dark at the back amongst the brooms. As a late comer to faith, often I make the mistake of thinking that God will only get to me after he’s dealt with everyone else – that my prayers haven’t racked up enough church-time to be taken seriously, that until I can list the books of the Bible forwards, backwards, and upside down, I’m stuck on hold.  My hand-me-down attitude to grace is hard to shake.

However, sometimes I remember, again, that the grace God gives me has been reserved for me since the beginning; it’s not second hand, or second best, it’s not handed down or man-handled, it’s not too big or too small or too long – it’s just the right size, the right fit, and would not match anyone elses need the way it matches mine. This reminds me that even when I’m feeling small and vulnerable, more hedgehog than eagle, God has me written in his book (an address book? I think so) and in his story. His Goldilocks grace gives me a firmer place to stand and the courage to stand there. This is one of the reasons I hate it when people talk about the ‘unchurched’ – because they might not be destined to stay that way, and God has their grace cut out and on hold, until they get there. We’re all born ‘unchurched’ at the end of the day. Our grace is enough.

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Serendipitous opportunities

First of all – I’ve calmed down a little since yesterday. I’m still a bit miserable and bitter, but at the end of the day, I’m only human and sometimes I need to have a strop. This is where I have my strops because this is where I’m honest. Onwards and upwards, eh?

Something a little unexpected happened this week. I met the student worker from my church for a chat as we’ve never really had a chance to get to know each other and he suggested meeting up after I emailed to ask if he knew of anyone who’s not found their feet at church, who’d be interested in being in a girls’ Bible study me and a friend were planning to start. The upshot was that he’s wanting to re-organise the student side of things a bit to include a return to more traditional ‘small groups’ after the church moved away from that model a year ago to focus on more missionally orientated groups. These student pods will have about 12 in each, with two leaders, who will, well, lead stuff and arrange everything, including prayer triplets and Bible studies every fortnight. The leaders will then have a monthly meetup with one of the married couples at church, where the husband is an elder  (and a doctor) and the wife is generally very involved too, too make sure they’re supported etc. I’ve been asked if I’d like to lead a group.

This is a bit weird as obviously it’s about a hundred miles from anything ‘church related’ I’ve done so far, and more than the small group I’d planned, and could see myself managing. On the other hand, I’ve not had any ‘input’ from someone mature at church for over a year, and have a feeling that this is something I need – I get lost and confused and waylaid, and could do with someone further on who knows me, and cares enough to signpost the way. As I come further and further out of depression, I’m going to need some guidance from someone I trust. This could be a good way of getting that. I’m also a much better speaker on ‘paper’ (electronic or otherwise) than out loud, so leading a group of students would push me to extend my faith in a way I’ve not really cracked yet. I know I get the words out here, but in public, I am, as always, more of a hedgehog for Jesus than an eagle. I know that I can do the leadership side, practically – I’m a good organiser, and good at looking out for people – but am not quite so sure about how good I will be about being honest about where I am with God, as, afterall, the last time I was that honest with someone from church ended in disaster. I still sometimes fall into a trap of not quite believing that my skills are relevant to church either – that it’s some holy place where only other people have a right to serve, and that I’ll never be good enough to lead anything with a Christian tag to it, because I’m not holy enough, or good enough, or clean enough. It’s going to need me to wipe that slate clean, leave my unease behind, and focus on being a good follower of Christ who can help other people follow too. Tall order? Pass me the stepladder.

I don’t really know what to do – as a fifth year, I’m pretty busy, but on the other hand, this could be a way of really deepening my faith and getting back into the community after feeling pretty forced out, after the dreadful encounter last year. It kind of has that ‘oooch’ feeling of knowing that God has put this in my path for a reason. It has that kind of niggle that it’s too well timed to be down to chance. It just fits too many spaces in my life, right now. I’m off to Nepal anyway, in January, so it would only be short term, which also makes me want to accept.

Thoughts, anyone?

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Work in Progress

Today I went on a home visit with one of the GP’s to see a very old man, in his nursing home. Before we got out of the car, the GP turned to me and said, the picture of nonchalence, ‘by the way – he might ask us to euthanise him – just so you know. He asks every time we visit him.‘

Sure enough, this man, who is over a hundred, with no living family, no friends to visit him, and incredibly frail health, started asking about what it means to die, and when it would come, and could we, please, please doctor, help him, now, right now? And of course, we sat and told him that we couldn’t do that, and that we didn’t know when death would come, but that when it did, we hoped it would be peaceful.  And he talked, for a long time, about what lay behind in his youth, and what lay ahead, in his dying, and the loneliness in the room was so heavy it felt like we were sitting in thick fog. Then, the time came for us to go and move on to another patient, and it made me wish, as I do so many days, that I was training to be a magician, rather than a doctor. There’s just aren’t enough magic wands in medicine. I wish there were more.

It’s things like this that remind me how good the church, or any similar group, for that matter, can be. Now that our communities lack the cohesiveness and closeness of the past, it falls to groups like the church to come in and reach out, and keep people connected. I’d like to think that if this man was a member of my church, that someone would be going to see him, taking him Communion, dedicating time to those questions that are still for him, so painfully unanswered. Patients in hospital have access to chaplains and ministers; it’s when they leave, that they so often are left lonelier than ever. I’ve been so proud to see the student charity I founded two years ago grow, to be able to provide regular visitors to elderly patients across three hospitals, if they don’t have family to come and see them – but there are so many older people alone in their homes, that we can’t reach. It’s painful. I want to do more. I want it to be better. There are so many gaps in society that I want to help fill. I know that I can’t fill them all. None of us, can fill them all.

 It’s things like today that make me want to go and shout from the rooftops that until we have a society that has a place for every person in it, we have no society at all. We talk about the community of church, so often, and yes, it’s fantastic, the things that happen when a group of people get under a steepled roof and lift up their hands and cast upwards their eyes, but does any of it matter, if we’re not taking it to those places that need it the most? Does any of it matter, if there’s still an old man, lonely, or a young mother, not managing, or dare I say, a student, dropping off the edge of depression? The people most on the outside are the ones most in need, and hardest to reach. There are so many places that just need someone alongside someone else. There are so many places that just need a hand ontop of a hand, a heart beating next to a heart.

We all know that according to Genesis, one day, God looked at this world and said that simply, it was ‘good’. For now, I’ll pass over God’s extensive use of the understatement.

Now – forgive me if, thanks to my hazy knowledge of the Bible, I’m off the mark here, but from what I know, God’s not said that, since. Our world is not being looked at and passed as ‘ok’. Can you imagine what the world would look like if God still thought it was ‘good’? I’m not sure I can. It’s so far away, from what I have seen. And I know, that Jesus changed everything and set the wheels in motion for it being ok, more than ok even – perfect – I know, that before Jesus we were living in a spiritual cemetery, and without Jesus, we’re still sitting amongst the gravestones – but our world is still not good. We, are still not good. No matter what you believe, we can do better. We need to do better. We need to sort this stuff out. We need to figure out how to stay connected. We need to figure out, how to get our hand on top of the hand that is shaking. We need to figure out, how to get our heart beating next to the heart that is failing.

Let’s all try and figure out, how we can do better. We’re all works in progress.

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On gentleness

My church’s latest sermon series has been on the fruits of the Spirit, as listed in Galatians 5. Whenever I think of the ‘fruits’, it’s always the ‘gentleness’ that makes me think the most- it’s not something we think and talk of often. I’ve prayed for help to be more loving, more faithful, more controlled, as many of you will have done. Had I ever prayed directly for more gentleness? No – not until I realised I hadn’t, anyway.

As I thought more about it, the lack of emphasis given to being gentle, in many circles, including churches, struck me as stranger and stranger. God has many characteristics and many facets, but when I was wobbling between uncertainty, and fully opening myself to belief, it wasn’t his omnipresence, or omniscience, or omnipotence, that lead me to faith. It wasn’t images of the ostentacious miracles of the Old or New Testaments that called me to Jesus. It wasn’t the loud, blunted shouts of the major prophets, it wasn’t the jubilant songs of David, calling me to rejoice, calling me to joy, it wasn’t the modernity of the worship band or the radicality of the lyrics. If anything, these things kept me away. They freaked me out.

What caught me was this quiet promise that God was gentle enough that coming closer wouldn’t hurt me more. It was the promise in James 4, that if I drew near to God, he would draw near to me, without lashing out, without the need to fear rejection. You can’t draw near to an angry being. You can’t come close, to someone who wishes you away. It was the whispered, dark-of-the-night voice that came alongside me and told me that if I was brave enough to trust, brave enough to follow, then all of those things in my life that seemed so wrong and messy, would find something new to focus on. It was the feeling of a hand on my lonesome shoulder as I sat in a lonesome prayer room in the small hours of dark mornings, telling me that yes, I was flawed and imperfect, broke-down and weary, but that there, in the shadows, was someone who could bind my wounds and heal my bruises. It was knowing that when I opened my soul and let down my walls, Jesus would protect my heart, as one of his own. I’m not saying that it wasn’t a gamble, or that it was easy; it wasn’t, it wasn’t at all, but in the end, that gentleness wore me down. I couldn’t hold off, anymore. Something had to give.

I have been a Christian for almost two years now, and although God’s goodness amazes me, his power bemuses me, and his control at times escapes me, it’s his gentleness that brings me back at every turn. When I am feeling far away and disconnected, it’s those smallest, most heartfelt prayers that seem to bring me home when I am at my most vulnerable. It’s that brushing against my heart that tells me, reminds me, that I’m held in the same hand that holds the Earth, which secures me. It’s the still, small voice that speaks as I shake and cry, that shows me the way I need to go. God has been gentle, with me.

Last week I met with the person who mentored me at church before moving back to her home country a year ago, when she came for a flying visit. She is who I think of when I hear the word ‘gentle’. Being with her for a few hours, after going a long time from being truly honest with a Christian after a pretty horrific encounter at the height of my depression, reminded me of how important gentleness is. She was nothing but gentle with me, both when I was having a hefty tug-0f-war with respect to my faith last year, and since then, when I’ve faced obstacles of a different sort. And in the gentle way she walks through life, I see more strength and power to touch the people around her, than I see in the louder, more exuberant Christians who so often end up at the frontline of churches and communities. I’m not doubting, in any way, their love of God, or their calling – but sometimes, I think it’s gentleness, that will open the most doors, heal the most wounds, and glean the most followers. I think it’s gentleness, that brings us most closely into step with Jesus. I think it’s gentleness, that will change things.

She also reminded me that they’re called ‘fruits of the Spirit’ for a reason – they don’t spring up overnight. As someone who measured a Christmas tree seedling every single day for two years as a child, I know full well that growing takes time. I get frustrated sometimes, that God’s timeline is different to my own, that it took months for depression to lift even a little, and it’s taking months more, to gain back all the ground I’ve been steadily losing for so long. I get cross with myself that I don’t have more faith, or more self-control, and sometimes seem to lack the passport needed to get within a hundred miles of real peace – but I know that these things will take time, and that with time, they will come. I will learn. If you take Genesis at face value, it was an apple that lost us the Kingdom; funny that it’s ‘fruits’ that will bring it back. In the meantime, I’m praying for more gentleness.

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