I had a Facebook "discussion" some time back following the Women's March on Washington. It started out with someone I know throwing out an innocuous comment about the marchers. I have to confess, my emotions were still somewhat raw from the election and inauguration of a man I truly don't feel is qualified, but he's now our president… Leaving that aside, I read that comment and wrote a response and spent the rest of the day "discussing" the point of the march and women's rights and abortion and it was hard. Not sure if I understood them, or they understood me, but I found myself broken-hearted at the end.
I have to stop here and state a few things so you know from where I write. I am a child of God. I am a follower of Christ. I am a complementarian. I am pro-life. I have been a child of God since 1977, when, much like CS Lewis, I got in my car to drive across town to my parents' house, not really knowing Christ, but when I got out of my car, at their home, I believed. Yes, there is more to the story, but that works for now. I have followed Christ up close and from a distance ever since. Ours has been a journey of hills and plains and mountains and valleys, roads less traveled, crowded thoroughfares; all the while I have followed, knowing I was His, but not necessarily knowing what to do with that knowledge, nor what that knowledge really meant.
It took a new church and a pastor who admitted he didn't have all the answers, he didn't have it all together, but he knew to whom he belonged to help me essentially deconstruct my faith in order to understand that my behavior didn't make God love me, but that God loved me, period. Placing my hope in Him rather than in my behavior, or in my religiosity changed everything. Having come from a place where I felt like I had to look and act like I had it all together and I had to have all the right answers and behave all the right ways… it was a breath of fresh air for this tired child of God.
And then, something interesting happened. I realized I didn't have to act anymore. I could be myself, all crazy, convoluted person that I am, that God created me to be. I didn't have to fit a mold! What relief, what joy! And joy it was and has been. And then something else happened. I actually felt free. And I could then and can now revel in that freedom IN CHRIST.
Which brings me to that heartbreaking "discussion." So many women marching then… so many coming forward now about sexual assault and abuse… so many people begging for relief in Puerto Rico and Nevada… so many young men taking a knee… so many around the world crying out for relief. And they're being told to get over it… move on… stand up… get a life… "make a quilt." They're trivialized and marginalized…
And yet, Christ went to the trivialized, the marginalized. He didn't wait for them to get better, become better people. He went to them as they were, all messy and broken and he bound and healed their wounds. He walked with them and knelt with them and laughed and cried with them. He wasn't afraid of them.
And because of that, in my freedom IN CHRIST, I can reach out, unafraid. I can walk with, kneel with, cry with and point out "here is God!" He is not absent, He is not uncaring, He does not rebuke. He is here to heal. And that is my heart cry… Lord, heal us!
All Things Elda 