Church - Part Seven

Church - "a building used for public Christian worship."

This topic has been on my heart for a long while.  A long while, being years.  As you read this, please know the words and experiences shared here are mine, and the pain, the joys are what I've experienced over the courses of months and years.  I am not hear to lash out or to cast blame, I'm only here to reflect and pour out my thoughts and the throbbing of my heart. I don't know where these words will go but I know that they need to be written.  So here it goes...

Belonging.  For many years I knew where I belonged.  I grew up in a traditional dutch church system,  the Christian Reformed Church.  It was all that I knew.  I knew what was expected of me.  I knew how I had to act.  I knew what ages I would do the church things.  I knew the songs.  I knew when to stand and when to sit down.  I knew that feelings had to be kept in check.  I knew that it was good if I went to church twice on Sunday's.  I knew the motions.   I played this knowing game for years.  I knew that from the outside things needed to look perfect.  It's almost as if there is this invisible border and you don't get to go past.  A border of vulnerability.  

This belonging followed me for years until I knew I didn't quite belong anymore.  When we left seminary, we entered into a world where everything was new territory.  We were 'the pastor' and 'the pastors wife'.  It's an identity that is in part self imposed but largely outside influenced.  There is no strict job description but there seems to be a lot of expectations.  Whether those expectations were told, untold, felt or even unfelt, they were always there.  This belonging of being a 'pastor's wife' was never something I knew how to do well.  All I wanted to be was me. 

I'm still learning to be me.  For right now me is vulnerable.  It comes with emotions and questioning   It is about the heart.  It is about non-tradition.  It is about challenging.  But most importantly it is being loved.  

I belonged to the Christian Reformed Church for 34 years.  This year is the first year in which I will not be a part of it.  Through some mistakes made on my husbands behalf and a church that was unwilling to work through messiness, into a beautiful thing called grace, we were asked to leave.  We agreed it was best and leaned into God's good plan for our lives.  It was incredibly hard.  Where do you go when you don't belong anymore?

The very first thing I learned as a teenager in catechism was Lord's Day 1.  For those of you who may have no idea what that word means, catechism is a collection of our churches doctrine which serves to answer questions of our faith.  It's usually presented in a question and answer format.  The very first Question and Answer that we learned and committed to memorization was this, "What is Your Only Comfort in Life and in Death?"  The answer (summarized) reads like this, "That I am not my own but belong, body and soul, in life and in death, to my faithful saviour Jesus Christ....because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly ready from now on to live for him."

Leaning into these words of belonging is filling the sting and rejection of the physical church. Church has been hard for a long time for me.  Church continues to be a hard thing for me.  When church becomes about structures, image and power, it fails to honour what it means to belong.  I've learned that the church of Jesus is about hearts, and that church, the church of Christ, exists all around me.  It's in the people I encounter each day.  It's in the words spoken in love.  The laugher, the light, the joy, the sorrow, the prayers, the tears.  Church has to be about hearts.  It is my prayer that one day all of our churches may become churches of hearts.  A church of empathy.  

Throughout the past year God has been working in my own heart.  This quote by Lisa Terkeurst sums it up so well, "He isn't so much working to transform our circumstances as he is working through hard circumstances to transform you and me."  What I can now look back on is that I've been undergoing this transformation for years, and will continue to be transformed and molded.  God is not done with me yet.  Hard times will come again, but His mercies and His love is abounding.  They are new each day and they are given to me without end.  I continue to cling to belonging to Him.