New beginnings [and] Ocean Depths

I realize I've sort of taken a detour from Judaism. I should have wrapped up my Jewish experience with this wonderful interview I had with a beautiful and intelligent Jewish woman and her husband already. I have that interview and conversation halfway typed and saved as a draft. The thing about my visit with Mary Blye Posani is that she made me think differently about God. She was the culmination of everything I had been learning for the past months. She made me think about sacred spaces and mystery and seeking out those things for myself... and I couldn't really just type up what we talked about and move on. I had to process it all for myself, and figure out what God was saying to me... so I apologize for the detour into my own life and heart and experience... and I will eventually get to that talk I had with Mary on Shabbat, and wrap up Judaism properly, and move on to my next experience. I promise! 
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On November 6th, at 6pm, I am going to be baptized.

I was baptized as a kid. Maybe 9 or 10. I accepted Jesus when I was 5 or 6. I didn’t understand what either of those things meant, and besides all that, what was God washing away? The sins of a child – lying to my parents, disobeying, hitting my brothers... I didn’t really get it.

So I grew up and made different choices, and when my husband and I split in 2006, I left God and the church, too. Only, I missed God. I blocked him out and I tried to fill up the spot where he was, and instead, I just made a big mess out of my life.



Somewhere around 2007, I started going to Gateway. I was determined not to do things the same way. I had unpacked my entire God box, and I was going on a one-girl-mission to fill it back up, this time with the REAL God, not the angry, hostile, impossible to please, perpetually disappointed God that I grew up fearing. So I went to church and I told God I would SHOW UP, but I wasn’t going to do anything more. I wasn’t going to be a perfect christian girl. I wasn’t going to get involved. I wasn’t even going to go to church every week. I certainly wasn’t going to give up anything in my life.

Then in 2010, I read the 40 Rules of Love about a Sufi-God relationship and I recognized that I wanted that sort of relationship with the Divine. One that revolved around love and compassion and acceptance, not one that was based on fear. So that’s when I started my religious experiment, trying to figure out why women were drawn to God in whatever their religious context was. I wanted to write about their journey with religion and God, not realizing that I was on my own journey. The more I talked to women about their perspective on God, the more I questioned my own perspective. When I started really dissecting it and taking it apart, I discovered all these parts of God I didn’t even really know existed.

I didn’t realize that I was looking for ((a different)) God during that journey  ((than the one I *thought* he was before)). I never would have said “I’m looking for God.” But I was: in the lives and stories of other women.

Over the course of 18 months as I wrote about God and wrote about religion and experienced the things I did, I experienced something subtle myself. I realized that I had come back to a place where I wanted God back in my life. Not GOD, who judged me and demanded more of me than I was able to give. I wanted a relationship with the Divine. When I was at a Jewish friend's house the other day, she talked about the mystery of the Divine. How relationship with a Divine being makes your life different, and how it creates a sacred space inside of you. It makes an ordinary life less ordinary. It makes love and forgiveness grow. After that weekend, I knew I didn’t want to be a Jew, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a Christian, either - at least, not how I had been before. The other thing I knew was that over those months and years, I had slowly re-filled my God box… and it was full of a God who was completely unexpected. It was full of a God who thought I was awesome. Who didn’t want to force my hand. Who didn’t want me to be something other than what he created to me. Who didn’t want me to stop asking questions and stop being myself. And it was full of the mystery my Jewish friend had spoken of.

Somewhere, somehow, God sneaked back into my life – not in the scientific manner that I had expected... not in a Being that I was going to study the interactions of... watching how he behaved in the lives of other women. My new God show was starring God as himself... and, really, he had never left.

Realizing that I never really kicked God out of my life made me think about what else I wanted, and I realized I wanted to go to church more. Not to please God or to put on a show for the other Christians… but so that I could sit and absorb and learn and heal from all the damage the church did to me before. I wasn’t willing to make a commitment to the church, no way, but I was willing to go and tentatively sit with my walls up.

September 28th was during my month of Judaism. It was Rosh Hashanah. During the days leading up to Rosh Hashanah, God had been messing with my head. I was working through the Jewish idea of repentance and reconciliation. I was forgiving people, I was trying to reconcile relationships. God made the top of my “To Forgive” list, followed closely by the Church, collectively. I wrote about that on my blog here.

I wrote a letter to the Church (as a collective whole) to apologize and to forgive them. Releasing God and the Church from my stranglehold of resentment did something sneaky to my heart. Suddenly, I felt more free… and more healed… and, well, hungry for more of God. That step of repenting and reconciling gave me footing for another step: giving the Church an actual second chance. So I started going. I got that book Grace for the Good Girl and I decided to try to connect. 

In all of that, I was pretty terrified. What if God wanted me to change? What if he wanted to rearrange my life? What if he wanted to make me something I’m not? Or make me give up everything? Or take away more people I love? Or …??? 

The what-if list was endless. I kept it going. I was praying, but I was scared out of my mind. I looked at a relationship with God and the church as the ocean – I wanted to be in the water, but I didn’t want to get eaten alive. And to me, the possibility of getting eaten alive was quite real.

A funny thing happens when you decide to take a step in trust; when, extending a trembling hand to a God you can’t see, closing your eyes and biting your lip, you take a tiny step toward him:
He takes an enormous step toward you.

I’m not saying he wasn’t there the whole time, even when I felt he wasn’t. I’m not saying that he had to come toward me because he had distanced himself from me (and my sin). I’m saying that when I FORGAVE people, there was suddenly this spot in me. A place that had been storing bitterness and resentment was now empty and bare. And when I asked forgiveness, God filled it with something blinding and warm. 

When I reconciled relationships, this bunch of nerve endings with sparks and raw edges were fused into the cord of relationship they were meant to be all along. 

And when I decided to take the tiniest step toward God, in trusting him and his mercy and grace, suddenly I was washed over with a tidal wave of love and affection and – gasp! – ACCEPTANCE. 

I had been looking for judgment everywhere I went, and guess what I saw? Yep, judgement.

When I started looking for grace, guess what? Grace abounded. It was a magical formula! It was an amazing discovery. It was beautiful. It was new – in fact, it was a new beginning.

A few days later, I was in church and I saw an announcement for an upcoming Baptism service. In that moment, I knew that I was ready to jump in the water. I was ready to take the plunge and commit to myself and others in my life that I was going to look for truth. And love. And grace. And mercy. And justice. And peace. And a relationship with God.

To me, baptism isn’t just about a commitment to God. It’s about a new perspective. It’s about a commitment to all the things God is. And… it’s about a new beginning.

PS - I would love for anyone who wants to come on November 6th at 6pm to Gateway Church in Southlake to be witness to my new beginning. Consider this your invitation. Or, you can tune in online at http://gatewaypeople.com/live.