Authentic me [and you]

:: dedicated to the Whosoever Dallas crowd who graciously hosted me last night! ::

"It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection."

-The Baghavad Gita

Once upon a time there was a girl who didn't know who she was, so she decided to be what everyone else thought she should be.
That girl was me.

Growing up, it was frowned upon to question, to wonder, to disagree... if you were a child.
But certainly if you were a girl child. And certainly if you were a woman.

My desire to know and understand more about everything got me labels right and left: rebellious, unsubmissive, smart alec, argumentative, bad wife.
So I tried. REALLY. HARD. to be someone else.

I tried to be that girl that accepts things without questioning, that girl who is demure and a follower, and accepts willingly the truths laid before her. I tried to be that girl, because I was so anxious to please - God, and the people at church, and my parents - who saw so much potential in me, who saw that I could do great things and go places. Most of all, I didn't want to disappoint God. I didn't want him to look down from heaven and think how disappointed he was at how I turned out, so I tried.

In 2006, I left the church.
Really, to put it more accurately, the church left me.
I remember the day I said "No more."
The husband with whom I had three children threw me across the room and into a wall while the kids watched television 4 feet away. He was enraged. He had found my journals, in which I wrote my innermost feelings of sadness and hopelessness and lovelessness.

Of course, the story goes back further than that to the day he told me that God had spoken to him that I was to marry him. We were friends, we were even close friends, but never had I considered marriage. Never had I thought he might be The One. I wasn't even interested in marriage. But GOD said to marry him, and above all, I must NOT disappoint God, so I tried. When my parents agreed that he was God's destiny for me, and my church leaders prophesied over us, I accepted that I would never love the same way I had loved my first love. I would never feel that passion or zeal again... but then, maybe this was the mature sort of love that pleases God?

Within weeks we were engaged, and within months, married.
I wanted to be in love with him, so I tried. Really hard. Within the first year, we were having issues, but I couldn't speak of it to anyone because that would be asking for help, admitting that my life was a fraud. That I was a fraud.

So I went on trying. It wasn't fair to him, I see that now. It wasn't fair to marry him in order to please God, or in order to keep myself on God's "good side." But it was the only love I knew - obedience.

Through years of frustration and disappointment in my inauthentic self, his anger grew to rage, and I began to fear him. He told me I was crazy, and of course, I believed him. He told me I was wrong, and he was right. I knew I was the problem. I couldn't tell anyone [because telling anyone was uncovering your husband, and that was disrespectful of his position of authority], so I let myself become a victim. The only thing I was honest about was my writing, and I wrote furiously, I wrote emotionally, I wrote incessantly about my fear and uncertainty and my hatred of being in this relationship, and it never went past my journals.

The day he found my journals, he read them. He read the words hastily written and smeared with tears
"I hate being with him. I hate my life. I have lost all hope in this marriage. I don't love him now, and I never loved him at all... now I see it."

I was exposed.
I was raw.
And he was in control, confronting me with my words and telling me that I would never see my children again.

The day the church left me, I had been thrown out of my home. I had been fired from the job that we shared. I had been told that I wasn't submissive enough, that I was a rebellious wife, that God would be disappointed in my failure at marriage by my former employers. I had no money, no car, no cell phone, just the clothes on my back.

His hand left welts on my arm, and I walked to the police station and told them I needed help. They told me they would arrest him. In front of my children. They would carry him away and I would be safe.

And I said no. I have asked myself why so many times since then, but I know the answer:
I said no because I didn't know how to say yes. I didn't know how to say yes to my own feelings. Or to my own fear. Or to letting God love me [despite] the fact that I was ME.

I said no because I was afraid of him. And I was afraid that he was right: maybe I was crazy, and a bad mom, and an unsubmissive and rebellious wife for whom there was no hope.

No hope. I said no because I had no hope.

So he was not arrested, and I instead called my pastor. I will never forget his words to me after I spilled out my story through tears and hiccups:
"If you can't tell me right now that you will go back to him and make this work no matter what, I'm not going to waste my time with you."

"I can't tell you that." My voice was small, but for the first time in a long time, it was my voice.

Just 5 little words, but I said them.

I turned from the church that day because they turned from me in that moment, and I spent long months missing part of me that had been there since the day I was born. I grieved my marriage, but I grieved my church more, and I grieved my God the most.

Over the following years, I began to trust God again. I began to listen for his voice. I began to believe again that he had good things in mind for me. And when I began to listen, I figured something out.

God made me to be ME. Not someone else. Me.
God made me curious
and inquisitive
and questioning.
God made me a woman who is capable of shouting in the face of a storm.
God made me a woman who can pull others up.

But if I spent my life trying to be [her] or [you], I could never really fulfill my purpose and calling. I could never really find happiness or peace, or hope.

Until I found my voice, hope eluded me. But authenticity and becoming who I am brought it back. I am hopeful now. Oddly enough, for the first time ((even though I'm disappointing alot of people who believe I should still be [that girl], the one who is submissive and demure)) I don't feel like I'm disappointing God. I feel like I'm making him happy. Being who I am.

With the wonderful group of ladies (and one man) from Whosoever Dallas last night, I was reminded of how much I found when I found authenticity. And how much others have found. And I thank God that all of his church didn't turn their back on me, and some people, somewhere, who call themselves Christians and Pastors are accepting and loving and practice the religion of Jesus:
Radical Compassion.