Revisiting prayer

                 

     

So I think about prayer a lot and I`m not very good at it and it still frightens me, but I'm also fascinated by it, and I want to be better at it so I think I'm going to talk about it  regularly.

I borrowed a book about praqyer called "Anyone can Pray" By Graeme Davidson . I haven't read much of it yet but I like it so far. He talks about prayer in really simple terms

"All you need to do is focus on God and let him reach out to you. It helps if you have the right attitude: humility and a genuine desire to communicate. That's all it takes"

I always thought of prayer as me reaching out to God, striving really hard to say the right things and  hoping he hears me. I never thought about it as me being in one place and God coming to me, that makes is seem so much more manageable.

The book also talks about why we pray, what the point of it is.

We Pray to God because he loves us and because we want to love him. People in love enjoy being close to each other.They want to know how their partner thinks and feels and what they can do to make him or her happy. if i tild you how much I love my wife and then added I hadnt bothered to communicate with her for the last couple of years, or that i only got in touch at a sunday function or when theres a crisis, youd doubt my sincerity.

I'm actually not one of the people who goes to God when there's a crisis or when I feel terrible. I'm fine and find it easy going to God when everything is good, when my life is going well, when the sun is shining, when my mental health is manageable, when my body doesn't hurt too much, I don't have any problem going to God then. Its when life isn't so good that I find it difficult, that I feel guilty for taking up Gods time and space, that I feel guilty for not being a happy grateful Christian all the time. Partly thats about the same thing i talked about in my depression post, growing up in an environment where if you struggle you are thought of as doing Christianity wrong and not having enough faith. But that doesn't make sense does it? God loves us on the good days and the bad days, he wants to hear from us even when everything is wrong and everything is hurting? God is big enough that we can go to him with everything

"You can share all your thoughts, feelings, and experiences - your joys, sorrows, problems, fears, hopes failures, embarrassments and thoughts - in the full knowledge that God will understand and love you."

One of the things I've been having a problem with i think is that I've always seen prayer as a sort of poetry. I was talking to Best Friend about this and she knows when i write poetry i draft and redraft, make sure all the exact words I want are in the exact places i want them, and she pointed out to me that while poetry can be prayers, and prayers can be poetry they don't have to be, if prayer is a conversation you can just say the words as they come to you, without worrying about it. And I didn't know this but she has recently joined the prayer team in her church and she sent me some of the ones shed written as examples that might be useful to me. Here's just a couple of them

Dear Lord, thank you that we can come to you with our cares, and forgive us when we forget this and spend more time and effort in worrying than in focusing on your word and the peace you so willingly and lovingly give us.

Thank you Lord that when we do turn to you, you are there, waiting, to listen and to take the burden of worries off our shoulders and to fill us again with your love. You have known us since the beginning and have a plan for us. Help us to remember that.

I think they are beautiful in their simplicity and are much more conversational than poetic. I use them when I am struggling with approaching God

 I've also started using christian themed adult coloring books as ways of doing meditative prayers. I used to think that adult colouring books were the Naffest Thing Ever, but about two years ago I realized that i actually have a really big issue with anxiety (I told Best Friend this and she laughed for about a week and said "But you are always anxious about everything!!" what can I say? My emotional literacy sucks!) And I found colouring books were a really good way of soothing some of my anxiety issues. So when I started thinking about prayer I bought some that I thought would be useful. I'm not very good at coloring but that's ok, I don't need to be, it just creates a space for me to calm myself and be with God. None of them are finished yet because I just pick whatever one I feel is most appropriate for that prayer session.

I don't want to have to be this brave

So I’m in a new round of the never ending spiral of trauma processing. It’s tedious, boring, embarrassing, and painful and I really don't want to do it. I’m on the same trajectory I always take with trauma processing, where I’m grumpy and sulky that I have to do this, that someone can’t just Make it Better, that the people that broke me can’t just come and fix me already (Like that would ever actually happen, like I would want them to anyway.) And I bitch and gripe that it’s so unfair, that I’m so hard done by. And I get angry with myself because it feels so much easier and safer than getting angry with the people who hurt me

I mooch around self sabotaging in small ways, and think about self sabotaging in big ways, the ways I did when my mental health issues were uncontrolled and I was just trying survive my life rather than process it

I actually picked up a craft knife the other day and held the blade against my skin and thought about how easy cutting would be, how good it would make me feel, how it was a way to burn through my anger, how it would blank out all the yuck feelings inside me

But I didn’t hurt myself because these days I’m far too old and actually far to mentally healthy to be pulling that crap anymore. Just because I feel like a broken teenage girl a lot of the time at the moment doesn't mean I actually am one or need to behave like one. And I have a giant toolbox of coping and dealing strategies that will keep me balanced and help me heal if I actually dig them out and use them

I know eventually I’ll get down to processing these particular pieces of trauma because I always do, eventually, after the sulking and the tantrums and the self directed anger, and in the end when I'm out the other side, I’ll feel better for it, calmer, wholer, more focused

So maybe I should stop all the whining and griping and moaning and feeling hideously sorry for myself and just start on doing the processing that needs to be done.

I know turning the anger outwards and using it to work through my stuff is an amazingly powerful positive force for healing, I know that making things with my hands and with my words helps transform trauma into something beautiful and of value. I know that going through the pain is actually always less uncomfortable than dancing round the edge of it expecting it to go away on its own

What does this have to do with my relationship with Christianity? I have no idea, except that my main thing for lent was to stop wasting time, and actually do useful, healthy things, even if I didn't want to even if it was painful and tedious. So I guess I'll get on that

On not being "good enough" for God

For a long time when other Christians would tell me that we can't be "good enough" for God, this always really confused me. Like I said before I thought the point of Christianity was to avoid going to hell and if I couldn't be good enough to do that what was the point? I didn't understand that "not good enough" in this context meant "not as aligned with God as we could be/should be" When I was growing up being told I wasn't "good enough" was always said in conjunction with other things such as " I am ashamed of you" "you are worthless" "no one is going to love you" "I wish you weren't my daughter" (Which is a terrible thing to say to any child but especially an adopted one) and of course "God doesn't want you, you are going to hell"

So I always thought salvation was something we had to earn. God had a clipboard and a pen that he would make checkmarks on, ticks and crosses, tallys, columns and rows and when I died he would add them all up to see if I was good enough but I knew however hard I tried I wouldn't be.

In the house I grew up in I learned that everything had to be paid for, everything, in some way or another, even basic things that parents are supposed to provide like food and medicine, and those basic things, as well as more nebulous things such as affection and nurture could be taken away at any time as a punishment for me not being "good enough." I guess its not surprising that that all bled through into my image, my concept, of God

But in this process of coming back to God, I am talking, thinking, listening, praying, reading, and I realize  now that with so many things about Christianity, I got it all backwards. and I think lots of us do, especially those of us that grow up in abusive environments. I've been reading The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning. It's a bit of a mixed bag but it has been one of the things helping me work this particular tangle out.

The bending of the mind by the powers of this world has twisted the gospel of grace into religious bondage and distorted the image of God into an eternal, small-minded book-keeper....Too many Christians are living in the house of fear and not in the house of love (The Ragamuffin Gospel P 19)

That was pretty much my image of God, Eventually I pretty much thought, well if I'm never going to be good enough and am going to hell anyway, why  not just walk away from Christianity so at least I am not reminded of what a terrible worthless person I am all the time. I didn't understand that it wasn't about what I did but about what God did for me

I've also been reading Mere Christianity by C.S Lewis and although I have some reservations about him, I like him a whole lot better than I thought I would. And this passage just really jumped out of me because it started of totally deconstructing what I thought god wanted from me

If there was any idea that God had set us a sort of exam and that we might get good marks by deserving them, that has to be wiped out. If there was any idea of a sort of bargain - any idea that we could perform our side of the contract and thus put God to our debt so that it was up to Him, in mere justice, to perform His side - that has to be wiped out...God has been waiting for the moment at which you discover that there is no question of earning a pass mark in this exam.(Mere Christianity P142)

And we are not perfect, we are not as good as we could be, we are not as aligned with God as we could be, but that doesn't matter, he wants us now,. The point when we go God and say "Hey it's me, I'm here'" he doesn't care how perfect or not we are, he just wants us to be with him and him with us and if we are truly honest about wanting to align with him everything will work itself out from there

Thinking about Lent

Because I’ve never been involved in a church where Lent was a really big deal, I’d never really thought about it. I mean I really like pancakes, I notice people giving up things, and I always look forward to Easter eggs, but I’ve never really delved into the point of it (Easter  and the forty day corresponding to Jesus forty days in the desert I understand but I never really understood the connection between lent and Easter)

It seems that Lent is a time of waiting, reflecting, anticipation, and repentance. It’s a time of thinking on the sacrifice of Easter and a time of trying to become more aligned with God. This seems like a solid article on both the history and purpose of lent.

A lot of people give up things for Lent to help them be better people. I don't think that's the point of Lent, I think it’s a side effect of the point. Like the more aligned with God we become the more we become better people? And sometimes there are things in our lives that stop us being aligned with God as we could be and those things need to be given, up, given away, put down.

I thought about the usual things that people give up for lent but they are either irrelevant to me or don't seem like big issues as barriers between me and God. So I thought what is the one thing I could change in my life that would help me both know God better and become more aligned with him. And I think the answer to that is to stop wasting time.

I waste a lot of time, I watch trash TV, I play too many hours of computer games, I mooch around the house doing nothing. I am the world's best procrastinator.  And I know a lot of the time I am doing these things as avoidance tactics, to avoid things I should be doing (In case I am not good enough at them, in case they bring up negative emotions, in case they are harder work than I anticipated, because I feel guilty doing things that I like, that benefit me, and partly because I’m just lazy) I could use that time that I fritter away to learn more about God, to be more with God, which isn't just prayer and bible reading but about more fully engaging in life in ways that are healthy for myself and others

And the thing is this endeavor will involve me being scrupulously, savagely honest with myself. Because of my mental and physical health issues I need a lot of down time, more than a lot of people and from the outside, downtime looks a lot like wasting time I think. Which means I am the only person that can tell if I’m recuperating or wasting time so I’m going to have to hold myself to account, be really honest with myself on which I am doing and which I need to be doing. (And also exploring if there are more downtime activities that are more nurturing and good for me than I am currently engaging in)

With some of the time i save I will do more overtly obviously Christian things. I'm going to double up my Bible reading so I'm reading two Psalms and Two chapters of the gospels each day. I will spend more time in prayer (which I am kind of getting the hang of and getting more comfortable with) I also bought myself a lent devotional, Let Me Go There by Paula Gooder. I heard an interview with her and really liked what she was saying so I thought I'd really like this book

But as well as these things I want to use the time I'm not wasting to do things that maybe aren't seen as overtly christian but are still intimately tied up with my relationship with God: writing, gardening, crafting,cooking, volunteering, exercising, dealing with my emotional stuff. I think all of these things can be ways of engaging with God for me, and ways of learning more about both God and myself.

I know I'm going to fail at this endevour a lot of the time and I know I'm going to find it incredibly frustrating, both when I fail at it and when I succeed but I still think its something that is really worth doing.

What if I loved myself the way Jesus expects me to?

(I’ve been stalling on writing this because I know once I've thought about it and written it I’ll have to stop feeling sorry for myself and overthinking stuff and actually get stuff done. and not for example hypothetically be writing this at four in the morning while drinking coffee because I don't want to do the trauma processing that will enable me to go to sleep at night on my own)

When I was growing up, I learned, mostly from my parents, that it was not okay for me to love myself, for me to ever think about my own needs, for me to ever seek comfort, and I had to be thinking about other people's needs all the time, that everybody was worth more than me and that putting myself first ever was sinful and evil

I unlearned some of this, but not as much as I should have done, I care about myself enough to keep my mental health as stable as possible, but even then I begrudge the things I do for that because I often don't think I’m worth it and I feel really guilty thinking about myself

I was loved when I was growing up, not by the people who were supposed to love me, but I can look back and see that I was loved and nurtured by various people, but I never felt loved. The first time I ever felt deep secure rock steady love was at 19 when I met the man who is now my husband. He is the only person I have ever met who can turn off the white noise in my head, It was only when I met him that I realised that the tension and pain that I carried in my back and my shoulders wasn't supposed to be there because he was the first person I ever felt really safe enough to relax with.

Our relationship trajectory has been complicated and we haven't been together for large chunks of the last twenty years, and we  have been off having relationships with other people for some of that time, but he was always there, always a calming influence when I needed it, always accepting me as I was. He was the first person who ever made me feel consciously that maybe caring about myself was ok. That maybe I was a person worth loving. But even still I haven't been very good at it over the years (Though I've definitely been getting much  better at it in the last two years, since I got my wheelchair.)

As I've been working stuff through recently I’ve been thinking a lot about Matthew  22:37- 40

37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments

There just seems to be an expectation there that people will love themselves, it’s not even formulated as a commandment but a comparison because it’s so expected, and I think the way its written means they will love themselves first before their neighbours, not that they will love themselves more but that it’s perfectly okay to meet ones own needs before those of your neighbour?

(I know he said neighbour and he kind of meant everybody but lets start on a small scale and work outwards),

I am not by any stretch of the imagination a perfect friend, I can be harsh, sharp, judgmental, demanding, needy, moody and all those things are things that need work. But I am also fiercely loyal, generous, protective, compassionate, encouraging, thoughtful, honest, so if this is how I love my friends why isn't this how I love me?

What If I actually did what Jesus expects of me and loved myself the way I love my friends? (While simultaneously working on being a better friend and neighbour)

I’m under no illusions that this will be easy, sometimes Gods concept of love has sharper edges than we are used to, sometimes loving myself will be about keeping warm, having long hot baths, curling up with a cup of hot chocolate and a poetry book, all those things are good and I should let myself do more of them.  But it will sometimes be about learning the self discipline not to self sabotage, to do my trauma processing, to use my talents and aptitudes more often than I do, to feed myself properly every day rather than eating trash that I know is bad for me in someway, to talk back constantly to the voices in my head telling me I am worthless and useless and going to hell until they shut up and go away or at least soften. And then to forgive myself when I fail at all these things. And then start all over again

Just what if I did an experiment in that until Easter I wake up every morning and promised to try and love myself the way Jesus expects me to?

Queer Church!

I live in a small town and go to a small town church, it's the same church I went to before I walked away from Christianity the second time, and even when I wasn't going to that church I still supported it and kept my friendships with the people there. I love my church, I love the people and I know that enough of them love me. But it's very straight and gender normative, and I am usually the youngest person in the congregation by a very long way

Its pretty liberal, especially for the average age of the congregation and the small townness of it but I have still had people talk in front of me of how same sex relationships are depraved, and have  been judged on my lack of being a girlness. I am out as bisexual to some of my church friends and those people also seem to understand my genderqueerness. But I still have to weigh up in that space what I'm talking about, how I talk about my history, my volunteer work, my social activities, my friends, and I know if I say too much to the wrong person I will be really harshly judged

The church I grew up in had a total bug up its nose about same sex attraction. It was the WORSE THING EVER and made you not worthy to be a christian. My mother was even worse about it, she said I couldn't wear a red ribbon to school on world AIDs day because most people who got AIDs deserved it, and whenever there were lesbians on the television she always felt the need to say how disgusting she thought they were. (She also got incredibly angry with me once for being attracted to a very femme male singer  because "he looks like a girl!")

I knew I liked girls from when I was eleven and didn't talk about it, ever, to anybody, till I was seventeen, and I didn't tell Best Friend till I was twenty one because I was so afraid she wouldn't want to be my friend anymore.

I also got definite messages about acceptable levels of femininity, and it was definitely a  balance, if you were too feminine you were leading men into temptation, and if you weren't feminine enough you were rejecting your God given gender role.

So I carried a lot of shame for a long time about both liking women and failing at being one, and I have mostly worked that through now and am mostly surrounded by people who love me as is

But I've kind of felt since I came back to Christianity that there are some wounds around this that can only be healed in a space were everyone is 100% supportive and affirming of LGBT+ people, and that I need to explore my  faith with other LGBT+ people

I was pondering this and then one of my friends told me that a church in the nearest big town has a Sunday evening service that is run by and for LGBT+ people and people who are 100% ok with LGBT+ people being Christians, and having all the same rights as straight cis people.

I was a bit anxious I wouldn't be able to go as I don't drive and local public transport links don't really believe in Sundays, but it turns out there's a guy from even further away than me goes and can give me a lift.

So I went on Sunday, and I liked it a lot. Everyone was really friendly and welcoming, without being weirdly overwhelming as some churches are sometimes. It was really relaxed, someone made me an awesome cup of coffee before the service, I wasn't the butchest woman in the room which I almost always am in church spaces, and anyway even if I had been nobody would have cared. A really big bonus that I hadn't thought about is also that most of the people there are much closer to my age than in my home church, I don't mind at all worshiping with people older than me but its also nice to be with people who know what it's like to be my age now. It was just really nice to be in a group where I knew none of the other Christians were judging me for my orientation and gender stuff.

We had prayers, and singing and interactive discussions in small groups, which was a bit awkward to begin with but isn't it always?

And this sounds like a really small thing, but I loved that they had contemporary worship music, I really like that kind of music but I never thought I'd get to sing it in a group again because mostly the kind of churches that use it tend to be the conservative kind that I don't feel comfortable in and that don't want people like me anyway. It was just the nicest thing to be able to worship with other people in that way.

                                                   

"Find me on my knees with my soul laid bare"

 

I live with sorrow, with sadness, with darkness, with emptiness,  and I have for a very long time. It's not that i'm never happy, sometimes I'm really happy, i'm incredibly lucky, my life is awesome, I have people in my life who love and support me, I have a house full of books and music, I can make beautiful things with my hands. I get a lot of enjoyment out of life but depression circles me always like a big dark bird waiting for the chance if I'm not vigilant, or I just get unlucky, to block out the sunlight.


When it hits sometimes I am langugeless, sometimes I feel like there is a thick pane of frosted glass between me and the things and people that matter to me.Time slows down so I feel like I'm moving through treacle. Sometimes it lasts minutes and sometimes it  lasts months. But I'm old enough now and have lived with it long enough to know that it will go away, eventually, it might come back, in fact it always does come back, but it also always, always goes away.


I have to spend a lot of time and energy keeping it at bay, do enough exercise, get enough sunlight, watch what I eat, use my lightbox, make sure I read and write enough poetry, get the right amount of sleep, keep my social life in the right exact balance so i'm not too sensory overloaded or too isolated. I have to be aware all the time of the slide, of the taste of metal in my mouth, of my limbs getting heavier, of my brain slowing down, I have to wake up everyday and do a depression check "where am I on the slide today and what can I do about it?"


When I first started getting depressed in my early teens,  my parents would tell me that I had nothing to be depressed about, that I just wasn't grateful enough for what i had, and that I wasn't really depressed I was just feeling sorry for myself, all of which pushed me further into sadness, into darkness, and the church I belonged to was very heavy on the idea that if you were really saved your life would be awesome and if you had enough faith god would heal everything, and if he didn't heal it that was your fault for not having enough faith. Both of these things made me feel incredibly guilty, and added to my feelings of worthlessnes and being a bad christian.

But there were times even then where I would break through all the sludge and lies and feel Gods comfort. And when I was sixteen I heard this song performed live (Like seriously I'm so cool, I remember Delirious? when they were Cutting Edge, and by "cool" I clearly mean "old")




And since then I have always, always, listened to this song, first on cassette, then on CD, and then on youtube, even all the years when me and God weren't on speaking terms I listened to it in the darkest points of my depression  because it always gave me a kind of comfort i can't even explain

I've learnt in the years between that depression is not feeling sorry for myself or not being grateful enough,  and I learnt that this is part of the me-ness of me, living with this has so profoundly shaped who I am and how I live that it can't be taken away even if that was an option. its not about having enough faith or not, that if God wants all of me, as I am, he has to take the depression as well

And I believe now, or I'm starting to believe now, that he will do that, that he will take my sadness, and not take it away, but support me with it, through it, even if I feel like he too is on the other side of that thick frosted glass, I am learning to trust that he, like the other people who love me are still there and still supporting me even when I can't feel it