yesterday's deep gladness

The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.

--Frederick Buechner

*****

Hadn't mentioned that I was back playing and singing again because I wasn't sure if I would stick with it.  It's easier to keep some falterings and hesitations and back-and-forth-ness quiet.  It's a little less embarrassing, I guess.

It isn't all that earth-shattering.  For some, it would look merely like the decision to pursue a hobby or not pursue it; nothing more, and nothing less.  I suspect there might be a little more riding it on it.  Heavy words like Identity and Vocation and Potential come to mind whenever I think about it.  Which makes it both a scarier and an easier decision to make.

Justin and I attend a great church here in Bellingham.  Well, kind of.  We sometimes do.  We started off going almost every Sunday, but these days we're not so consistent.  If one of us worked late, or if we've had a week that's low on rest and low on connection between us, or if we're just simply feeling lazy, we stay home and read Philip Yancey together.  Much as I appreciate the church and the people who serve it, my favorite Sabbaths are those spent reading out loud in bed.  For some reason, I feel closer to God when I'm reading the experiences of those who struggle to connect with God than I do sitting in church, surrounded by people who speak of him in such certain terms.  It's like they had coffee together at Starbucks on the way into service or something.

I don't experience God this way.  The relationship part of our relationship is glimpses only.  Sunsets, unexpected grace, something good following my gut-wrenching anxiety over something, my husband taking my hands and bowing his head and saying, "Hey, God.  Um, we need help."  The gratitude is there; the awareness is there; "Wow"; and then it fades into the background again. 

Apparently I'm still not up for the Faith-Filled Christian of the Year Award.  All I can say is that I've gotten better at seeing those quick glimpses, gotten better at simply standing there for a moment, jaw hanging open, eyes wide.  "Wow." 

(Sometimes we have to measure our Christian growth in millimeters.  If you're like me, I highly advise it).

During the time when we were going almost every Sunday, I started trying to get back involved with the musical worship team.  It was really hard to get things moving -- took months.  My emails inquiring about any openings for pianists were swallowed into some internet vortex, but I kept pushing through until finally I made contact with the necessary folks.  It's only now that I wonder if I should have yielded to the initial difficulty in even making contact.

When I last called Bellingham my home four years ago, I played keys and sang my face off.  I loved every moment I could spend with those folks.  We recorded a few albums together.  I grew phenomenally as a musician and as a worshiper.  I felt that ever-elusive "fit" that I now ache about not feeling.  Everywhere I looked, there was an opportunity to be a part.  Open doors.  With people who, quite frankly, were way cooler and way more talented than I was (am).  Meeting a need?  Check.  Deeply glad about it?  Check.  I was in the right place vocationally, and had good relationships with those I served beside.

The two-car-accidents-in-four-months saga began, however, and the rest is history.  I moved home, healed up after a while, entered an ill-advised internship with a pastor who abused our trust and deeply let us down in the end, and quit going to church for about a year.  There were various starts and stops, where I'd try to get involved again, would freak out about how awkward it all felt, and then make a bunch of apologies to people who had the bad judgment to trust me with something.  I'd feel horrible, but relieved. 

The starts and stops were of brief duration.  Dear Friend Daniel (a pastor friend who had the grace to stick with me at some of my messiest faith-moments) said that things had changed; rather than begging to be a part of the team, I now preferred to stay just off the radar.  I had been too wrapped up in my own junk and hurts to notice it before, but Dear Friend Daniel was right.

So I get up here, start feeling relatively comfortable being on speaking terms with church again, and want to contribute.  What poor decisions sometimes follow good intentions!  I met with the church's very-cool worship pastor and auditioned for the team.  Told him part of my story because I wanted him to know what he was getting.  He was okay with it, told me I was welcome to be a part, but that he wanted me to go home and pray about it.  

I went home and didn't pray about it.  I figured I'd done enough praying about it when I was praying that someone would answer my emails in the next year or so.  I wrote him the next day and said, in effect, see you soon.

That, in retrospect, was stupid.  I felt a vague sense that I was cheating a little, but was so excited about playing again, about being a part again, that I didn't pay it much attention.

I've been paying for it ever since.  Early in the morning and late at night, when I'm too focused on trying to fall asleep to have my filter up and running, I have a really strong sense that I'm not where I should be; that I rushed the process.  I'm up there on a stage in front of about 1,500 people.  I'm singing words about Jesus that I never would actually say about Jesus in normal conversation.  I'm sometimes singing things that don't reflect my experience.  (And up on stage, it's not like you get to pick and choose which ones you feel are honest for you.  That privilege is reserved for the hidden). 

I'm singing like we had coffee together on my way in that morning.  We didn't.

I feel like a fraud.  I often struggled with feeling like a fraud before, because it was always so hard to keep my motives in check.  When someone would say, "That was just beautiful, you have a lovely voice," I had a tendency to agree with them, although I'd probably say something trying to prove how humble I was that in the end just made us both feel awkward.  But this is different, a whole other kind of faking it.  This is me acting like there's a connection that isn't there when I'm up there playing and singing the notes. 

It's true that I once was very able to experience God and feel like I was communicating with God by singing songs.  It's just not the case anymore, at least, not consistently, and at most, very rarely in the environment that a Sunday morning church service provides.  It's just making noises these days.

The truth is that rather than being brave, trying to forge out a new way to serve God's family, I went back to where my old deep gladness used to be.  I went back to the way I used to serve, and the people I used to serve.  I went back to who I was four years ago.  And scary as the thought is to me, that person isn't there anymore.  As soon as I spent some time outside, I was forever changed.  I don't pray too often, but one of my biggest requests of God is that I'll stay changed -- that I'll never go back to life as an insider.

People in huge churches have no shortage of people to lead them musically into a time of focused worship.  There's no ads desperately seeking people who would like to serve on stage.  In fact, there's a waiting list.  There's no shortage of church people to do church things.  But I know there are people who are far from church, or maybe just far from church inclusion, but perhaps not far from God, that I could at least help to feel affirmed and cheered on in their own millimeter-by-millimeter faith. 

We've had people in our home this past month who are experiencing messiness in varying degrees, and Justin and I have enjoyed making efforts to put them at ease and make them feel safe and welcome.  It usually comes in the form of eating together, and playing some games, and talking.  My God, is it a deep gladness for me.  And my God, what a deep need it is for some folks.  The doubters.  The oddballs.  The failures.  The fuck-bomb droppers.  Those who haven't had coffee with God in years, if ever.

I needed it, and I wouldn't have made it but for a precious few.  I still need it, and probably would feel like the loneliest failure at faith in the world were it not for my dear husband and his simple, sweet, honest prayers that make me feel like maybe talking to God isn't so complicated or so hard.

If I had the choice between the two, I'd rather spend my time on the one that feels honest, the one that feels natural, the one that never wakes me up anxious.

I wrote the powers that be and let them know I would not be continuing, and a lot of why, and that I was sorry.  One wrote back and said he wasn't sure he was ready to say, "Okay, don't continue."  He's a really cool dude, and I immediately knew 1) that I'd meet with him as he asked me to, if only because he's one of the Christians who seems to get it, whatever "it" is, and I like talking to him; and 2) that I'd need to figure out how to explain all this to him.  Thus, the above.  We'll see what comes of it.

If you think of it, say my name out loud to God and ask him to help me over the next days.  These may seem like really trite matters, and they probably are, but these millimeters of growth are important ones, expensive ones.  I wouldn't trade the new way of looking at my faith that has come with these last few years for anything, but there is a tension that comes with it, and I get discouraged sometimes. 

Everything is a lot less certain than it was before.  But at least it's honest, or at least as honest as I know how to be.  I'm hoping that counts somehow.