thanks, dear friends, for articulating these deeply personal, often painful experiences that have shaped your inner lives and choices. there's a subtext of isolation in both your stories, and in mine, too.
your posts made me think, again, about finding my way back to a peaceful corporate relationship with other christians (i.e., church). when the road is littered with the stumbling blocks you both talked about, it's so scary. risky.
conversations with several of you prompted the reflection that i sometimes feel like an outsider in church, sort of faking along that i like the same books, i vote the same way, i think about the world the same way, i think about gender roles the same way, i practice my faith the same way and so on.
on rare occasions, i "out" myself to trusted church friends. but that kind of honesty, i'm ashamed to say, is hard for me and hardly ever happens.
for me, hiding in the closet is a habit. so until the gospel becomes the thing that really matters, until those extraneous marks of membership fade, the church may stay full of people hiding in closets of various kinds. maybe when the gospel becomes the thing that really matters in my life, i won't be so worried about being truthful either.
I will say that our family has the "outsider" feeling at times. How can we incorporate all members in to this Christian community? I have to be careful how I answer certain questions because I don't think like the mainstream, and my children feel the same way which makes them withdraw from interaction with church people for fear of some inappropriate comment.....
ReplyDeleteHow do we get past this? I find myself making excuses. Not answering completely. Mumbling...