My mind, body, and spirit have felt weary this summer. Complicated grief has disrupted me as much as the straightforward grief I experienced when I lost my father. I am not sure that grief is ever straightforward, but I believe our culture expects a linear movement through a step-by-step grief process. So, in addition to sitting in my own messy feelings, I fall short of others’ expectations. I find some irony in the fact that the woman’s bar I could never reach leaves me falling short of expectations in her death,

My mother died in July, and I have a lot of people with a lot of opinions on how chose to not be with her when she died, and how I should feel some wave of grief cascading over me. I don’t understand why I was expected to help her die, when she balked at helping me live. While this may sound vengeful to some, it was really self-protective for the little girl and woman who desperately wanted to be loved, an apology, a soft, safe place to land. I couldn’t sit at her bedside wishing for some end-of-life profession of love and pride I would never receive. I couldn’t set myself up for rejection one last time.

I could sit with the Holy Spirit and ask, “What would you have me do; what should I do?” As I met with my spiritual director in prayer, I saw a broken, wounded bird beneath a tree. I looked up and saw a gentle hand reaching to scoop the bird in all her brokenness and draw her near. The broken bird resisted, turning her head in shame. The gentle hand closed around her and pulled her towards his chest. He whispered, “It is okay; you are okay. There is no need to stay in your torment and brokenness. You are loved, and you are forgiven. Come with me, and I will give you rest.”

I called to share this story with my mother as my sister held the phone to her ear. I said a final goodbye with these words: “I am sorry that we didn’t have the relationship either of us desired, but know that I don’t hate you or wish you to be tormented. His hand is holding you; he loves you. Do not be afraid to go with him and rest in his soft hands.”

My grief has been more like a trickle of tears over a lifetime than the cascading waterfall of emotion that is expected from a daughter who lost her mom. My reality is that I have mourned a mother since I was old enough to sense that I wasn’t enough for her, and I would cower from the reach of her hand or her words. As a child, my grief looked like anger, not at my mother, but at myself. I grieved that I was not able to be the child she wanted. As an adult, I began to grieve for a kind, loving, nurturing mom that I never had.

My slow grief seeped out of my pores as depression, anxiety, and anorexia. This is what my unnamed grief of my primal need for a mother looked like. I didn’t even know I was grieving, but I knew I was always sad and longing. I sought the love and affection other children had from their moms. P.D. Eastman’s book Are You My Mother was one of my favorite books as a small child, and I often felt like the little bird flitting from creature to creature asking, “Are you, my mother?” Instead of flitting from creature to creature, I would look from one mom to another mom, thinking, “I wish you were my mother.”

Grief is something we all need to hold space for and not judge. Holding space feels like living out Christ’s words in Matthew 5:4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” (NIV) It was my friends holding space for all my big and messy feelings with no words and no expectations that soothed my soul. We can’t fix grief, but we can, often in silence, be Christ’s comfort.

-Ronald Reagan

This quote from Ronald Reagan has been shared by friends of mine who continue to believe that this MAGA administration follows Christ and therefore support an administration that they falsely believe is following Christ. Donald Trump has called for a re-dedication of our country to be “one nation under God.” White Evangelicals applaud this as a Christian movement, encouraging a relationship with God, but what it is actually calling people to is a relationship with power, misogyny, racism, and sexism, homophobia, and cruelty hidden by a false gospel preached by false teachers.

Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” Jesus valued children who were vulnerable and powerless; he didn’t take advantage of their weakness, as Trump, Epstein, and all who are found in the files did by objectifying them and using them for their own perversion. We cannot be one nation under God while we protect those who harm the most vulnerable of our citizens.

My relationship with Christ nourishes my soul with love, compassion, mercy, and forgiveness. Jesus, the Word became flesh, offers me these gifts freely, and I am encouraged to give these gifts freely as Christ has given them to me. 3 John 1:11 “ Beloved, do not imitate evil, but imitate good. Whoever does good is from God: whoever does evil has not seen God.” (ESV) The only way our children will be nourished on spiritual things is by the grown-ups imitating Christ, not by imitating those who worship power, lust, greed, and white male supremacy.

There is a breakdown of philosophy and theology when we don’t lead by the example Christ demonstrated. We are not declining because we have neglected to nourish our children with spiritual truth, but because we have nourished them with spiritual lies steeped in teachings meant to hold us captive to the rich and powerful. We have neglected to supply them with basic human needs. Jesus came to offer us freedom in love, so that we might love as he has loved us.

Beloved, White Christian Nationalism bears all the qualities of evil that I would not want to imitate, nor would I want my children or grandchildren to imitate. While they claim to know God, I believe they have not seen him. My prayer is that those leaning into the false gospel of Christian Nationalism have their eyes opened to see Christ. John 14:9…” Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father…”(NIV)

How can we expect to nourish our children spiritually when they are hungry and unhoused? Is cutting SNAP benefits for millions of hungry children imitating Christ? Is splitting up families how we show our children how to love the stranger? Our “One Nation Under God” is more concerned with building a billion-dollar ballroom for the rich and famous than with feeding and housing our children. You want to feed their spirits? Shouldn’t that start with being the hands and feet of Christ? Children will know Christ when they see the face of Christ in you.

“It’s okay to change your mind / Show us your courage / Leave this behind / It’s okay to change your mind / You can join us / Join us here anytime”.

written by Minneapolis-based community song leader Annie Schlaefer in early 2026, often sung by Singing Resistance. Written as a “song to encourage defections” during Minneapolis ICE raids, its lyrics call for empathy, courage, and redemption for those enforcing unjust policies.

I recently watched Brandi Carlile and Steven Colbert discuss her Minneapolis concert and the singing of these lyrics with Singing Resistance. I tuned in partway through the interview and missed that the lyrics were intended to call for ICE agents to cease enforcing unjust policies by using inhumane and often illegal means of brutality. While I am not an ICE agent, I felt the words and notes touch my soul as the sound waves moved through time and space, meeting me in the solitude of my writing room.

I watched a young woman weeping on Instagram as she proclaimed that she regretted voting for Trump. I understand those who were less than kind in the comments. Your pain and suffering due to her vote and my vote for Trump 1.0 are real. I also understand the shame and humiliation of being duped since the day she was born, and the courage it took her to admit her wrongs. Maybe she was too young and fragile to post and withstand the fallout? Social media is brutal, but what if we could hold space for her grief while still holding space for the wounded? More people, like her and me, would be willing and able to say “I was wrong. I know better and want to do better.”

I have changed my mind about so many things spiritually, politically, and socially these past few years. Honestly, there are a few issues I didn’t change my mind about, but I needed to find the courage to speak my truth. I share fully aware that friends and strangers will have opinions about my evolution. Some will welcome my shift, others will condemn it, and others will shake their heads and tell me it is too little or too late. Fair enough, because my carefully cultivated belief system led to a vote for Trump 1.0 that allowed hurt and wounds to family, friends, and strangers. I am profoundly sorry. I share for those who are shifting who dread the “I told you so” darts thrown at them, so they remain silent. I, for one, would like to say: I get it. Fear is powerful.

My vote for Trump 1.0 is a deep regret. This vote was motivated by a deep fear instilled into me by the church (not God), which at the time convinced me that voting for a democrat meant that the blood of thousands of children would be on my hands. I was the one-issue voter. I was also naïve enough to believe that Roe V Wade would never be overturned. I could be pro-life on the outside and harbor pro-choice as my truth deep in my soul. I never believed that abortion should be criminal and always believed that a woman’s body and medical decisions were to be between her, her family, and her physician. Will women now be forced to forgo the life-saving surgery for an ectopic pregnancy, the surgery I had twice? I even offered to sit with a friend who chose to terminate her pregnancy while holding fast to the lie that I was pro-life.

I reflect on my relationship with God and see how fear was used as a tool to keep me in line with doctrine and crappy theology. As someone with Complex PTSD, it doesn’t take much for me to capitulate to fear. My vote was one of ignorance, self-preservation, and kowtowing to the church’s “holy leaders.” My mind and body store the trauma of emotional abuse and neglect. Never feeling loved by my mother, I couldn’t risk losing God and the love of my church community.

Some of these holy leaders, such as Franklin Graham, have shown their true colors by supporting a leader who promised no new wars and withheld the Epstein files. I can’t help but wonder if Graham’s name isn’t buried in these files. Why else would a man of God turn a blind eye to the vile nature of Trump? While I believed that I would have blood on my hands, voting for a democrat, Franklin must spend hours at a time trying to wash the blood of civilian schoolgirls off his hands. How can a man of God proclaim the goodness of Trump, a man who preyed on young girls and women for his own sexual gratification? How can a man of God support spending billions of tax dollars on death and destruction while cutting funds to feed and house the people in our country? This man, and others like him, whom I trusted as a wise man of God, is not pro-life at all; he is simply pro-birth.

Jesus said nothing about abortion or homosexuality (see Jesus Loved the Little Children on my Substack), but he did say:

” 40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ Matthew 25:40-44 (NIV)

I feared abandonment by friends, relatives, and the church community who remain, somehow engaged with this soulless administration and Christian Nationalism, but it was really their suggestion that God would abandon me, and sentence me to eternal conscious torment that muzzled me. Some didn’t suggest it to me; they went as far as proclaiming it over me. I had a choice, according to past trauma experiences: fight, flight, or freeze, and I sat frozen in fear and learned helplessness.

Before I could speak my truth to others, I had to take a deep breath and exhale my truth to myself. I had to heal from years of trauma and being told that I was wrong when I expressed any religious or political views, and that I didn’t know what I was talking about. Picture Matilda and her father, Harry Wormwood “I’m smart, you‘re dumb. I’m big, you‘re little. I’mright, you‘re wrong. And there’s nothing you can do about it.” It is terrifying to admit to myself, let alone others, that I am calling BS on some, but not all, “biblical truths” that I have been taught by pastors, family, church elders, public Christian figures, and theologians. You know…those who believe in their own authority and superiority, especially over women. Tired of soaking up others’opinions, knowledge, and proclamations, I returned to scripture: “Seek, and you will find.”

Hmm?? I am to seek, and I will find. Like a baby bird, I had become dependent on others to feed me, but then I grew my wings. I no longer had to live in a nest I didn’t make.

Matthew 7:7 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” (NIV)

I went back to the scriptures, back to school, and down on my knees. The veil was slowly lifted as I pursued wisdom and knowledge from sources outside of my own denomination. It was not what I was reading in the scripture, but how I had been taught/ told to read it. I always knew…and now I have the knowledge and wisdom to speak.

I had strayed so far away from this verse because it represented the Prosperity Gospel of a transactional relationship with God. How many times had I knocked on the door to receive healing for myself and others, only to have it never come? Hanging my head in shame, I would slink away from God, searching for where I went wrong. The answered prayers were just as confusing as I tried to make sense of what I had done right. If I could figure this out, then – wash, rinse, repeat, God would always give me what I asked for. I never did figure out the magic formula. News Flash: there isn’t one. I did, however, discern that maybe this scripture wasn’t about receiving from God, but receiving God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Readers…I have so much regret for the things I have done, believing I was acting out of love and biblical certitude. My regret took me to a place of shame and despair for the wounds I caused to those I love and complete strangers. What was I thinking? I wasn’t thinking; I was blindly believing what I had been taught. And like the lyrics from South Pacific by Rodgers and Hammerstein remind me…

You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear
You’ve got to be taught from year to year
It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear
You’ve got to be carefully taught
You’ve got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made
And people whose skin is a different shade
You’ve got to be carefully taught
You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late
Before you are six or seven or eight
To hate all the people your relatives hate
You’ve got to be carefully taught
You’ve got to be carefully taught

Dear readers, like many of the Christian Nationalists and MAGA lemmings, I was carefully taught. This shift comes not by proxy, but by seeking and finding. It is in listening to God’s still small voice that I have found mine.

The world is a hostile place; some of our homes are hostile due to political and religious shifts, even if they are for the better. I would like to remind people that it is okay not to be “OK” and struggling with depression, anxiety, PTSD, an eating disorder, postpartum depression, or any other mental illness. Many of these conditions have surged recently. I am not sure that humans were designed to face day after day of tragedies, war, and division. As an act of faith, I lament that it isn’t supposed to be this way, and some days my faith shrinks to the size of a mustard seed shrouded in darkness. I take comfort in knowing that Mother Teresa spent 50 years in the Dark Night of the Soul. She felt abandoned by God and at times questioned his very existence. She remained faithful, and I have remained faithful. Don’t tell me that I have not…

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You can have tremendous faith in God and acknowledge God and still have a mental illness. I am weary of the suggestion that those of us with mental illness somehow have failed to “let go and let God…” “The church” must stop wounding the wounded and preaching this message. There is no shame in mental illness; the only shame is feeling responsible for something that just “IS” or not seeking the treatment you need or deserve.

The Message…

I tuned in online to hear one of my favorite pastors speak. Listening to him talk has always felt like returning to the familiar. I am searching for a soft place to land as I wrestle with God, my faith, where He is growing me, why He is growing me, and why it sometimes has to be agonizing. I hold onto hope that God will use this time of questioning, doubt, and unrest to bring me “…from glory to glory…” 2 Corinthians 2:18 (NASB). I honestly don’t know what God is doing, but I am willing to press into the mystery. I prefer certainty, but leaning in means trusting that God, no matter how distant he feels, is still present.

I am slowly becoming a Mary in a world that celebrates the Marthas. I prefer to sit quietly instead of moving and doing to earn my place at his table. Can I be still at Jesus’ feet and simply listen, knowing that I will always have a place at his table?

Today’s message felt familiar but neither comforting nor convicting. It was peppered with pride, judgment, and condemnation for not fully releasing mental illness to God. Or proposing, I have not bowed down and truly acknowledged God. Most churches fail to feel safe these days. I am unsure whether “The Church’s” message has changed or whether I am changing, as I move daily further away from the certainty I once held towards asking the questions I didn’t anticipate.

Daniel 4 Summarized by…Yours Truly

This week’s message came from the book of Daniel 4. It concerns the rise, fall, and renewal of King Nebuchadnezzar. Due to the king’s pride and lack of acknowledgment (to say the least) of God as the Highest and most Mighty Lord of all, he is stricken with an illness that sounds a bit like mad cow disease. He crawls on all fours, eating grass and drinking the dew for seven years.

Daniel warned Nebuchadnezzar, “Renounce your sins by doing what is right, and your wickedness by being kind to the oppressed” Daniel 4:27). I am far from a theologian, so I encourage you to explore the book of Daniel as led.)

While the king lived in grand style as he battled nations, killing and torturing those inhabiting the lands he destroyed, his own people lived in horrid conditions. He was filled with pride and arrogance, crediting all his success to his own power and authority. Hence, seven years of insanity until the day he humbled himself, acknowledging God, the same God that saved Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego from the furnace, the same God that I put my trust and faith in, is Lord of all.

After seven long years the king speaks, “Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and exalt and glorify the King of heaven, because everything he does is right, and all his ways are just. And those who walk in pride he is able to humble” (Daniel 4:37). Growing weary of his cow persona* King Nebuchadnezzar, having been humbled by God, acknowledges that there was a God that was sovereign over himself. After this, his sanity is restored, and much like Job, his life is restored to one of even greater wealth and abundance.

The message from the stage lands like a grenade, breaking my heart into pieces. “Until you acknowledge God, he will not bless you, nor heal you from_________.” Insert numerous mental illnesses listed by the pastor, who is a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor, into this blank. In fact, he may even curse you to roam like a beast of burden.* The mental health crisis would be lessened if we would bow and acknowledge that God is sovereign and in control. (paraphrased)

Is this how we demonstrate “love and compassion to the oppressed?” (See Daniel 4:27) I hear the message and wonder, are we any better than the wicked king to judge why people are sick, oppressed, or battling mental illness?

My familiar place didn’t feel like a place I belonged anymore. Shouldn’t everyone think that belonging to Jesus means a place at the table of EVERY church? I felt a bit prickly as if he was speaking directly to me, my clients, and all children of God who suffer anxiety, depression, PTSD, postpartum depression, or, in my arena, eating disorders. Who is this, a mere mortal, to assume that my illness or any mental illness is a result of not acknowledging God’s sovereignty? He is a pastor and a professional counselor; therefore, he must have greater knowledge about God and mental health than either a pastor or a counselor alone. I wonder if others in the congregation are feeling the same wave of judgment from a pastor/therapist crashing upon their fragile souls.

Jesus Loves Me This I know…

I have, since the age of nine, meditated on scripture, rebuked the spirit of anorexia and depression. I fell to my knees in prayer, and I was a faithful servant through my suffering and through my healing. I declared him Lord of all, and yet I succumbed to anorexia twice in my life, self-harm, and thoughts of suicide. I continue to wade in and out of depression. At times, the water is shallow and merely annoying, and my feet may get wet. Other times, it is knee-deep and more challenging to stay upright, and then there are the times I feel stuck in a riptide of depression and anxiety.

I can swim against this tide, fighting it, denying it, pretending that I am fine; after all, as a woman of God, being “fine” is apparently a litmus test of my faith and surrender. After hearing this message, why would anyone share their messiness?

Here is what I know about being stuck in a rip tide: it is in the fight against the tide that your strength is zapped, allowing you to slip under the water and drown. No longer able to fight, you surrender to the sea. There are days I choose not to fight the inevitable; I hold out my arms and float in the arms of my savior, knowing I am loved and fully supported, even if total healing never comes this side of heaven. This, my brothers and sisters in Christ, who presume I lack faith and surrender, is evidence of trusting Jesus. So, I float and do not fight or deny something that just IS.

1 Corinthian 10:13 13 “No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.” My mental illness may ebb and flow like the tide. Still, my faith rests in the capacity of God and his grace to allow me to endure it. He need not ‘heal me’ for me to hope in his love for me.

To suggest that this illness is because of a lack of faith causes me to weep, not because I believe this trauma-inducing theology, but because so many do. Christians are walking around hemorrhaging and dying from treatable illnesses, drowning in shame, and believing that they are responsible for their mental illness. Believers think they are not faithful enough because they are struggling. After all, the “bible tells them so.” Does it really, or does religion tell them so?

There are faithful children of God spending time in The Word, in praise and worship and service, and the healing doesn’t come; they are compelled to conclude that God must not love them like their neighbor, who was cured or spared from a tragedy. Precious time is spent digging for unconfessed sin, a missed prayer, or where they have fallen short of glorifying God, instead seeking evidence-based medical treatment.

I ask, “The Church, “do you see where this theology breaks down and breaks people?” The pastor acknowledges that he can feel the “push back” and covers himself by addressing the fact that he isn’t suggesting people stop taking medication. “Phew, I can continue to take the two meds that allow me to be the best version of myself.” Yet, he isn’t exactly sanctioning it either. I carry no shame for using these medications, but what about those in the congregation already fearing that medication is somehow a crutch, a sign of weakness, or too little faith? They are now served a spoonful of confirmation that this may very well be the truth. Swallowing the doled-out shame is the bitter pill they will now swallow instead of the necessary medication. How is this any different than asking a child of God to walk on a broken leg or to forgo their inhaler for asthma?

I have anxiety and depression that can sneak up on me like a rogue wave. It swells in the moments I spend with God and rolls me under the waves like a surfer who has lost their balance. The random wave tumbles me, pulls me under, and then spits me out when I am faithful or when I am doubting. The waves roll in and out, often without any apparent reason. I know in my spirit it isn’t because I am not in communion with God, faithful, or prayerful. I am confident that it just “IS.”

I am just a broken human, like theologians, pastors, and all believers, living in a broken world. Here is a novel thought: what if, like any other illness, mental illness just “IS?” What if instead of blaming ourselves or God, we recognized that much in this life in a fallen world is simply random? Is it that blaming ourselves or God is easier than accepting the arbitrary tragedies that can befall us all? God is good not because He always heals or saves us from disaster, but because He loves us and carries us through.

Yes, I believe we will face consequences for our actions, or others’, and I also know that we sometimes enter into something that we do not realize is dangerous. I had no idea that I had unique neurology, biology, and genetics that left me vulnerable to an eating disorder when I went on my first diet. Throw in some abusive parenting and other environmental factors, and I was a prime candidate to develop an eating disorder.

I will praise God that there are medications and treatments because I know my clients and I have surrendered, believed, and “let go, to let God…” And yet, we still battle mental illness. Could it be that God’s grace and healing are in the discovered medication and the gifted therapists he uses to treat those with mental illness? Is it that those shunning these treatments are possibly missing God’s divine provision?

The issue isn’t that my clients or I haven’t acknowledged God; it is that Western Evangelical Christianity teaches a faith based on works, obedience, and piety, forgetting that it isn’t what we need to do for God but what he has done for us. As a matter of fact, religious fasting can induce Anorexia Nervosa or act as a hiding place for the illness. https://www.eatingdisorderhope.com/blog/fasting-history-anorexia-nervosa

What we need to do, by the way, is a moving target depending on one’s denomination. Even within the denominations, the “rules” are incongruent. One forbids alcohol, and the next celebrates Easter with a champagne brunch. Another believes the gifts of the spirit are active, while others believe they are not; you can’t fall from grace, but you can fall from grace. Who gets to decide which denominational laws are the ones to allow my ordination as God’s own heir? Romans 8:17: “Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.” Excuse me while I straighten my crown.”

How can we fathom being more than enough for Jesus and somehow not enough for “The Church?” The church, in an effort to “save,” reinforces the belief that we are not worth the healing hand of God. If we aren’t worth the healing hand of God to touch our mental illness, then somehow, we are responsible for all the suffering that we are promised in the scriptures. This theology, my friends, doesn’t even begin to demonstrate God’s AMAZING GRACE.

John 16:33 33 “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (NIV). No one, it appears, will escape suffering. Yet, we are led to believe that by following the theology or doctrine of our religious institution, and are faithful, prayerful, obedient, loving, and kind enough we will escape, or at the very least, our lacking in of any of these traits, disappoints God so much that he will punish us or allow an evil spirit to enter.

We are left with the pain and anguish of questioning where or how we have failed God. After all, here I sit with my anxiety crawling upon me. It has been compounded by being told “acknowledge God! Surrender to his ways, let it go, let God, rebuke Satan, renew your mind! Sweet brothers and sisters in Christ, do not believe that you have not “let go to let God” because you struggle with mental illness or any illness, and do not ever believe he has let go of you. 2 Timothy 2:3 “If we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot disown himself.”

I am perplexed and angry that this is the message delivered to me and all who love the Lord and acknowledge him. What is presumably intended to draw people to God’s love creates a chasm, not a bridge. I remind myself that just because a message is given, I do not have to receive it. You do not have to receive it. Deuteronomy 31: 8 “The Lord himself goes before and he will be with you; he will never leave you or forsake you do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.”

I write a comment in the chat box on the live sermon feed, disagreeing with this assumption that we have brought on our own illness. It is met with platitudes and judgment about the maturity of my faith. I wonder where she has gotten the notion that I have not received grace or that I am not growing in Christ. Is it because I continue to battle, vestiges of anorexia? I try to imagine what battle she fights that is hidden behind her pride of certainty that if only I would_________I would be healed.

Who is she or anyone to presume they have insight into my relationship with Christ by observing the degree of my healing from a disease they know nothing about! Most physicians have a poor working knowledge of anorexia and mental illness. “The church” and Pastors are basically dispensing medical diagnosis and treatment protocol from the pulpit. It is a damaging message, putting the very lives of those “The Church” is “saving” in the name of Jesus, in jeopardy.

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Eating Disorder Recovery Week once again has come and gone. I always hesitate to write or post about this. And as always, I am late because writing about mental health is hard and personal… I don’t want my loved ones and friends to worry about me, and there is a canopy of shame covering me, because my recovery, while strong, doesn’t always feel complete. I am sixty-one, almost sixty-two years old, and there are days I struggle to be okay in this recovered body. I wish it were as simple as vanity, but for those of us who have walked the winding path of recovery, it is difficult because our bodies have shouted to the world, “I am in control, I am dedicated, I am powerful in my weakness, be careful with me…” If you know, you know. I am sorry, you know.

If you know, you probably know how hard it was for me to focus on the plot line of Wicked because (I hesitate to comment on others’ bodies) the stars are skeletal, tiny wisps of women who have been subdued by their industry. Emaciated young women and now, those middle-aged and beyond, who are being idolized and admired. It triggers me and the illness, and I worry for the young and old alike that this extreme thinness will lead to more people literally dying to be thin. Not all diets lead to an eating disorder, but the majority of eating disorders begin with a diet.

But this isn’t necessarily about the shrinking stars. It is about me and the residue of Anorexia that clings to me like sand after a swim at the beach. It is about how the residue seems stickier, harder to brush off, as ultra-skinny fills the television screens and theater screens, and the barrage of GLP-1A advertisements streams across my social media feeds. This is about hoping that women won’t fall prey to the vultures of the multibillion-dollar “wellness industry/diet industries,” living small lives, believing they need to be smaller.

Today, ten years after my last stint in treatment, I stand in the warm sunshine, with soft squishy sand beneath my feet. I hear the gentle swell of the ocean and taste the salt in the mist hanging in the air. I love everything about the beach, but the residue of the anorexia taunts me, disturbing my bliss. A dormant voice, roused by recent trends, bellowed, “Is your body a beach body? Do you remember when it was? You could have one. You want it…you know you do. Do you think you should be here?” I look around for a spot to sit as far away from the variety of beach bodies lounging in the sun and surf as possible.

I settle into my chair and strategically place my Kindle, water, and sunscreen within my reach. Quickly sitting down, I slip out of my cover-up and pull a towel around me. I open the sunscreen, inhaling the coconut fragrance, and rub the silky lotion into my limbs. Closing my eyes, I lie flat on my back, massaging the lotion into the now fleshy torso. What I can’t see, hopefully won’t hurt me. It isn’t about others seeing me, but about me seeing me. Ten years of recovery, and I feel like a stranger in my body.

Somehow, the skinny trend has turned up the volume of a voice that had faded into a dull buzz. “HEY, SERIOUSLY, are you wearing a swimsuit? HaHaHa! How are you going to even rise from the chair, get into the water to swim, or put on sunscreen without seeing and feeling your body? Oh, and don’t forget to suck it in when flipping onto your stomach.” The thoughts poke at me, as my once protruding bones poked through my clothes, and I hate them. I am stung by thoughts stinging me like swimming through a school of jellyfish. I judge the weight of my worth by the weight I have restored. Maybe it is too much. Have I succeeded in recovery or failed at the eating disorder?

The sun is hot; the water is cool. I choose to rise because my recovered body deserves to float in the sea just as my emaciated one. I am at the beach, I have a body, so I have a beach body. I repeat this mantra, slinking to the water’s edge where I shuffle my feet along the sand and shells until my waist slips beneath the waves. Once submerged, I can exhale and relax. It shouldn’t have to be this hard for me or any woman to sit in the sand and swim in the ocean.

The tide was beginning to turn in small, gentle waves towards body peace and acceptance, but now it is ebbing back into the depths of diets disguised as wellness, GLP-1’s shrinking the bodies of strong “normal” women. These women once encouraged me to feel better about my recovered body. Now, Demi Moore, Serena, Adele, Kelly Clarkson, Sharon, and Kelly Osbourne, the hilarious Melissa McCarthy, to name a few, women of amazing strength and talents, cause me to pause; it is hard to believe that succeeding at recovery isn’t failing at the anorexia while sitting in a theater, a stadium, or my own living room watching incredible women who are shrinking. I am an incredible woman; do I need to shrink once again?

Do I need to slide into a pair of Demi’s skin-tight black leather pants to be deemed fit… for my age? I look at her move across the Red Carpet, as the commentator proclaims her ultra-skinny body to be amazingly fit for a 60-something. Huh, I cock my head from side to side, attempting to see what the host sees. Must I be missing something? At what age do women get released from being imprisoned in our own bodies? This is what scares me for the young women witnessing this trend. They are being led down a path to a prison that is hard to escape.

My rational mind declares rebellion against the rising tide of ultra-skinny being “fashionable,” again. My recovered body and heart aren’t so sure as the lights go down and the movie rolls. I am mesmerized by Glinda’s frailty when I should be mesmerized by her voice and talent. My eyes are drawn to the collar bones and ribs that jut through her translucent skin. I wonder how the dress stays up because she certainly has no breasts to hold the pink lace and sparkles in place. She has an ethereal essence, a siren’s song of sorts. I wince at Elpheba’s scapulas that strain against her rigid skin like wings ready to sprout so she can fly and defy gravity. My hand floats up to my collarbone, not jutting through my skin, and my ribs tucked behind flesh as they should be. My heart flutters as tears pool in my eyes. In order to defy gravity, they defy their bodies.

So many strong emotions crash upon me that have nothing to do with the movie’s plot, but my memories. I remember the pain that I endured to allow me to feel my bones beneath my touch. I remember the ache from the trauma that attracted me to the hunger pains of Anorexia. I remember the compliments about my skinny body, and I don’t remember when they changed to fear and concern for my life. I am repulsed and attracted to the women on the screen. I want what I know I can’t have or shouldn’t have…SKINNY! But this is the message that rains down on us until we are drowning in desire or dying from trying to fit into skinny jeans at any age.

Staring at the screen, I receive the message that the recovered body I fought so hard to achieve and live in daily is somehow shameful and unacceptable. My recovered mind and spirit become weary as they fight against this current of deception that my worth is once again dependent on my body to declare it. And…I remember that everything, feasting on life, walking in the sun, and pizza, tastes better than skinny feels. I may grow weary, but I can’t and won’t stopping swimming.

The post reads “Dumb Ass,” in response to the murder of Renee Good by ICE agents in Minneapolis. I prefer to address her as brave. Brave because she was questioning ICE and the terror they inflict on all people, not just “illegal” immigrants, but legal immigrants and American citizens, some of whom are white and some of whom are not. Were we all not immigrants at one time, or born of immigrants? A note to my MAGA friends who have family who are of color: how will you twist and turn your conscience when ICE comes for those you love? Would it help to know that all people have the right to love and the pursuit of happiness, regardless of their immigration status, because all are created in the image of God? See Genesis 1:27, pick any version you’d like; Imago Dei-We are ALL created in God’s image, therefore we all have inherent value. God never qualified this statement with any exceptions, and yet so many people have decided that white Christian Nationalists are created higher beings.

Do you believe we are all created in His image? Please think about this question carefully. If your answer is yes, as most of us will, how do you rest in your cognitive dissonance? How do you rest as a Christian while making your bed with pedophiles, murderers, power, greed, lies, and cruelty that rival the ways of barbarians? Why have you abdicated your autonomy to follow evil off a cliff? When did your heart become stone?

The mental gymnastics MAGA must do to justify this and other atrocities must be exhausting. I know! While never a “MAGA”, I voted “yes” for Trump 1.0 because I was supposed to. I had to do a lot of shape-shifting to believe I was doing the right thing. I had to justify his derogatory comments about women and their appearance, or that it was okay for him to grab women by the p***y. I had to pretend to believe that he gave a shit about the American people, including my black granddaughter, gay son, and LGBTQ friends. To all of you…I am sorry. I am sorry for following Christian Nationalism instead of Christ. I am sorry I was wrong.

I find it amazing how I could shape-shift, without asking questions of those in authority in the government or in my church. Asking questions was ok, as long as I came up with the same answers as they did. Asking was allowed, critical thinking was not.

I watched the January 6 insurrection unfold in real time on the media, alongside the majority of the nation and the world. I watched the rioters climb over barriers, bash in doors, and break windows to deter the confirmation of our new president. These thugs killed at least one police officer and injured many others. I am now supposed to believe that those convicted are actually innocent despite their images captured on film. Don’t tell me I didn’t see what I saw.

As horrific as this day in history was, I am grateful that it enraged me enough to call bullshit on all that I had held as certainty from my white evangelical upbringing. I believed that as a Christian, voting for anything other than a republican candidate meant that I had the “blood of children on my hands,” because democrats were pro-choice. Then it happened… I saw with my own eyes. Don’t tell me I didn’t see what I saw. I saw the blood of police officers on the hands of Republican Insurrectionists. A veil was lifted from my eyes, causing me to question my faith and politics. I could no longer believe what I was told to believe, and I had to face myself and my God.

The air hangs heavier today, and I feel heavy of heart and soul because this weekend, another human life was snuffed out. Alex Pretti was exercising his First Amendment right to peacefully protest, which he was, until he reached down to help a woman to her feet. Don’t tell me I didn’t see what I saw. ICE agents knocked him to the ground, violently beating him and spraying him with pepper spray, rendering him helpless. Don’t tell me I didn’t see what I saw. He was also exercising his Second Amendment right to bear arms. A weapon he never drew. Don’t tell me I didn’t see what I saw. He was disarmed of the weapon he never drew by the ICE agents and then executed. He didn’t even have the chance to resist arrest or to be arrested, and he had no due process. And when one bullet wasn’t enough, they fired 9 more rounds into his back. I am not okay with this and profoundly sorry for those that are.

I am staring out my window. The limbs of the trees reach heavenward while the last remnants of an early winter’s storm fall like fairy dust in the winds. My breath draws in and out, and as my breath escapes, I am reminded that the limbs of trees, upon which I gaze, are much like the bronchial branches that reach down into my lungs. I am awed at the evidence that God created us to be interconnected with all of creation. I could not inhale life’s oxygen without the exhale of the trees, and they would cease to breathe without my exhale of carbon dioxide. A peace that passes my understanding drops into my soul. A God that can create the reciprocal exchange for the air we breathe can redeem our chaotic world.

The second week of Advent invites us to light the peace candle. (I know that as I write, we are just days away from Christmas). Peace seems to elude me each day, and most of us, if we have any sense of humanity, feel the same ache. The world has forgotten that, as with our dependence on the exchange of breath between the trees and our lungs, we are all meant to be interconnected with our fellow humans. Can we have a deep, abiding internal peace while the entire world is in conflict?

“5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” John 1:5 (ESV)

The world feels dark, scary, and unsafe. Two more mass shootings occurred as people celebrated Hanukkah in Australia on Bondi Beach, and another at Brown University. At the same time, students sat for their final exams before returning home for the holidays. Hollywood actor Rob Reiner and his wife, Michelle, a producer, were murdered in their home, presumably by their son. Instead of being a light to our country, Trump continues to divide the country by making the Reiner murders about politics and not acknowledging the family tragedy that it is. (Another topic for another day). The DARKNESS has not overcome it, nor will it, but has not.

One tragedy, after another, crashes over us like the angry, frigid waters of Superior’s gale-driven waves, and we have no time to catch a life-giving breath. I am concerned that if the unrelenting waves do not consume us, we will become numb to our own suffering and that of our fellow humans. The human mind and spirit can only take so much.

I don’t understand the inequity of suffering, but I do know that John 16:33 offers me some assurance, “I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. In this world, you will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world.” Hear me out, this isn’t some platitude to deny the darkness of the days we are experiencing, but an opportunity to call the darkness out into the light. Father Richard Rohr, “What we need to do is recognize what is in fact darkness and learn to live in creative and courageous relationship to it.”

Thirty-plus years ago, I sat with a friend expressing my profound sorrow and anger with God over losing a pregnancy, a child that I desperately wanted. “Oh no, you can’t be angry with God. This happened for a reason, be happy that he knew there was something wrong with the baby, so this, this, is a blessing. You can get pregnant again.” She whispered as if the whisper of her platitudes could soften the blow to my heart. My sorrow now marinated in guilt and shame, until one wise woman pulled me aside and allowed me to express all that welled up from my soul, without the platitudes of the Evangelical church and without judgment for my anger.

The Name it and claim it: God allowed this loss to teach you something “Theology” has kept so many people hiding their suffering in the darkness. One kind woman’s simple act allowed God’s light to shine through her. My grief still clung to me, but the simple act of co-suffering peeled back a layer of guilt and shame.

Americans are uncomfortable with grief, and I wonder if it is a result of denying our darkness to prove God’s inherent goodness. As Christians, nothing is going to bring us down. Is it a lack of faith to grieve, to be angry, or to doubt? I believe God desires us to express all suffering to him and to each other. I hope to live as Christ and to be the light to other human beings in their darkness. Do not be afraid to share your suffering with me. I will not judge your darkness as a lack of faith or a doubt of God’s goodness. We are designed to co-suffer and bear each other’s burdens, just as we are meant to share our breath with the trees.

What if we stopped pretending that we are all fine and shared in the great suffering of this world? We could exhale the collective breath we have been holding and drop into a peace that passes understanding together. A peace that comes from knowing that, in simple ways, we can be the light for each other, and sometimes this looks like holding space for our fellow humans.

2 Corinthians 1:4 “All praise to the God and Father of our Master, Jesus the Messiah! Father of all mercy! God of all healing counsel! He comes alongside us when we go through hard times, and before you know it, he brings us alongside someone else who is going through hard times so that we can be there for that person just as God was there for us. We have plenty of hard times that come from following the Messiah, but no more so than the good times of his healing comfort—we get a full measure of that, too.” (MSG)

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Isaiah 2:4 “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord... they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; one nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war any more.”

Today is the first Sunday of Advent, and, to be honest with you all, I have not regularly attended an actual brick-and-mortar church since most buildings shut their doors during the pandemic. This makes me sad, anxious, and lonely. I am seeking a like-minded human connection with people who love Jesus and want to follow him, loving their neighbor as themselves. I miss the community of worship in prayer and song.

Today, I realized how much I miss sitting in a church for the lighting of the Advent candle nestled in a wreath of green and gold. I have found a church that I love and watch it live online, all alone in my writing room, every Sunday. I miss the sound of a family herding their children to the altar to read the scripture and light the candle of the week. I miss the hiss of the match as it strikes the box, and the scent of sulfur and wax wafting up to the rafters in a plume of smoke. I miss the simple handshake between friends and strangers, but it is a fear steeped deep in my evangelical roots that keeps me away and keeps me from being vulnerable.

It is lonely to watch in isolation, but it is also safe. It is safe from judgment and condemnation disguised as love through quoting cherry-picked scripture that is often read out of context. It is safe from being shamed for living with depression and anxiety, being estranged from your mother, or having your children no longer choose to attend a space that follows the tenets of Christian Nationalism, and not the word made flesh in Jesus Christ. I don’t miss the self-righteous suggesting that I blew parenting 101, according to Proverbs 22:6: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” I have lost the hope represented by today’s candle as I wait for us, as a society, to start bearing good fruit, and for the swords and spears of destruction to become plowshares and pruning hooks.

I watch the match meet the wick of the traditional purple candle, igniting a flame that spreads light across the altar and through cyberspace. I sit in prayer, asking how I can find hope in this world that feels so cruel and hopeless, especially for those who are not white, CIS gender, men, making idols out of power, money, and greed. Jesus, I whisper, “It was never meant to be this way.” How do I hold hope for those who are people of color, part of the LGBTQ community, the immigrant stranger, the widow, the single parent, or the homeless? I sit in the stillness, watching the wind bend the trees and push the dark clouds across the sky. I get a sense of God, the Holy Spirit, breathing hope into me. I hear a whisper in the wind, reminding me not to find hope, but to be hope to all in the margins by loving like Jesus, co-suffering with his children, because we are all beloved belonging to the beloved.

I am drawn to read Matthew 25:34-40: “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ 37 Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? 38 And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? 39 And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ 40 And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers,[a] you did it to me.’ (ESV)

Currently, I don’t feel hope, but amid the world’s suffering, I can be a light of hope to Christ’s beloved. Does hope beget hope? I am counting on it. I am reminded of a quote that helped me through the trying days of recovery from anorexia:

“I would just say, hope is just pretending to believe in something until one day you don’t have to pretend anymore.“(Former Ohio State Buckeyes offensive lineman Harry Miller, NBC Today Show 3/21/22.)

Maybe it is the action of being hope, I will find the elusive hope I am chasing after.

Advent is a season of waiting, marked by hope and anticipation, of Jesus’ birth and his return. “Behold, I am making all things new.” Revelation 21:5 Sometimes in the muck and mess we have made of this world, I remember that I can find HOPE in his promise. I dream of a day when we all modeled Jesus to our fellow humans, and not religion. This my friends feels hopeful to me.

Sit, be still, and ask yourself how you can be a plowshare and not a sword.

Be Careful Little Ears what You Hear....

Every Sunday, I made the long, slow walk up the dark, cold staircase that spiraled upward, hoping to encounter God’s love and the salvation offered by Jesus Christ. Each step echoed through me and reverberated off the thick stone walls. I entered this stairwell through a heavy, medieval wooden door that reminded me of the one the evil witch stood before as she presented Snow White the poisoned apple. Now, I wonder if this was foreshadowing the toxic theology I would be fed for years to come.

One bite at a time, I consumed and ingested rotten fruit—harmful beliefs—disguised as truth and nourishment for my spirit. Just like physical food can affect your body, these toxic teachings became part of my being and cellular makeup, just as my mother's abuse was woven into my sense of self. Both tables—the one at home and the one at church—served me fear and trembling, rather than love, grace, or mercy. Philippians 2:12, “Therefore my beloved, as you have always, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (NKJV), became Scripture used to keep me in line, just as my mother’s anger kept me obedient. Even when I was not in her presence, I feared her, and now I was taught to serve God in fear and trembling, working out my own salvation. I needed a savior, not more work to do in order to be loved.

I went looking for love and my savior in a room on the third floor of the parish center, which reminded me of a grand English castle built for Kings and Queens. I was told that this is where I would find God while the grown-ups met with God in the sanctuary down the street. There was a small Juliet balcony just beyond the children’s chapel and Sunday School rooms overlooking the large multi-purpose room and stage. We weren’t allowed to enter the roped-off balcony, but I would imagine myself standing on it, crying out for help. I was the damsel in distress in hopes that Jesus, my prince charming, would swoop in to rescue me from the clutches of my evil mother. Jesus plus faith equaled salvation and receiving what we asked for. I wasn’t asking for much. I just wanted to be safe and loved in my home.

Behind yet another heavy wooden door in this fortress-like building, I was introduced to Jesus, God’s own son, King of the Jews; the Word made flesh to live among us, and eventually die for me and every other human that walked the earth. Since Jesus was a king, it made perfect sense to my childlike soul to learn about and worship him in a place that echoed both grandeur and isolation. The prayers I learned—“Deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, the power and glory forever...” —merged my childhood imagination with the promise of divine protection. As I pictured Snow White running through the darkness, seeking escape, I began to realize that the enemy I feared outside might also exist within.

It was in this "castle" that I learned Jesus, the king of the Jews, had to die for me because I was born a ball of sin, inherently wicked and depraved. I was taught that my inherent wickedness forced this man, who knew no sin, to die on the cross so that my sins could be cleansed by his blood—or at the very least, covered up so God could look upon me. I was confused by this message. I joined in with my teacher and classmates singing, “Oh, be careful little ears, what you hear. There is a father up above looking down in tender love. Oh, be careful little ears, what you hear.” Which was it? Did he look down on me with tender love, or was I so abhorrent that he couldn’t look at me at all?

Today I find myself standing in the shifting sands of my faith, looking back on the rooms, doors, and voices that shaped me. The very foundation upon which my faith was built continues to crumble. The daily assault on my being came from what my mother said and her biting words to me and about me. The words I heard outside the thick stone walls echoed and found confirmation in those spoken inside the church. I wish I had understood then that the messages, both from the pulpit and the Sunday school teachers, often wrought more harm than good, reverberating far beyond those heavy doors.

I open my Facebook feed as I watch the sun filtering through the blinds. I realize this is a bad habit, especially in recent days, as family pictures and cute pet posts have been replaced with political commentary, and the chasm grows wider between following Christ and Christian nationalism. In the erroneous belief that we are speaking the truth in love to “save” our fellow humans from the wrath of God, we can become the wrath as we judge our fellow humans and dispense poor ideology and theology that we are certain is the truth. The church continues to focus on what we need to accomplish rather than on what Jesus has already achieved.

Today, a woman posts from Luke 13:24-25 “The door to heaven is narrow. Work hard to get in, because many will try to enter, but when the head of the house has locked the door, it will be too late.” (NLT) Will you be ready, or will you be standing outside the door once it is closed? The post lands like an accusation, not an invitation. I interpret this as meaning you all need to shape up if you want to be with me in heaven.

Why does this raise my hackles? I suppose it is a result of my religious trauma and wounding, confirming my childhood abuse and trauma were well-earned because I simply didn’t work hard enough. “How hard does Jesus require us to try? I want to respond to the piety with sarcasm. “How wonderful for you that you worked hard to get through The Gate. Now, will you please share with all your readers and me just how much hard work is enough because you imply that you have worked hard and Jesus has opened his narrow gate for you?” In other words, the author of this post has checked all the boxes to appease God.

I always fell short of my family’s expectations. If my family could beat me down for my supposed lack of effort, I wondered how God could ever love me. It was scripture like this, taught to me without context, that rubbed salt in my wounded soul. Any suffering I faced must be God’s way of punishing me. I doubted my ability to work hard enough to gain entrance to heaven’s narrow gate, and I exhausted myself trying.

I, like many well-churched children, was raised in an evangelical, fear-based church and home. Guilt and shame were used by my parents, grandparents, and the church to keep me in line. I was never that far out of line, but the harsh discipline in my home led me to believe I was a problem to be reined in or fixed. I believed the condemning theology presented to me that I was born inherently wicked, depraved, and a big ball of black tangled chains of sin.

The thought of hell and eternal damnation was what drew me to receive Jesus. Sitting attentively in Sunday school with my best-listening ears on, I heard less about the love and grace Jesus offered and more about hell and eternal torment. I was free to accept Christ as my savior or not. Jesus will never violate our free will, but terrifying a child with the threat of eternal torment reminded me of my mother threatening me to clean my room or take a beating. Of course, I cleaned my room, but not out of love and respect, but fear and trembling. Of course, I received Christ!

I wanted to feel Jesus’s love and grace flow over me like cool water, but I felt no love or grace. Maybe if I worked harder to enter the narrow gate, images of rainbows of love and butterflies of grace would replace the images of the devil, flaming arrows, and lakes of fire that I had been told by well-meaning Christians were waiting for me if…I didn’t work hard enough.

I honestly feel that my little girl self, sitting in Sunday School, came to receive Christ to avoid the suffering promised by the Bible, teachers, and ministers. I suffered enough at home and couldn’t imagine the compounded suffering of hell for eternity. So, prayed the Sinner’s Prayer based on Romans 10:9-10 9 “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.” (NIV) After repeating the prayer daily to make sure it stuck, I worked ferociously in the hope that it would be enough to enter before the gate was closed.

Jesus was traveling at the time and was presumably speaking to the religious Jews whom he had been addressing since the beginning of his ministry. He was addressing those who were descendants of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob, who believed that God favored them and, by keeping the law, were guaranteed a place with the Father. Jesus taught that relying on one’s own identity was not the same as responding to Jesus and acknowledging who He claimed to be.

It has taken years of study and contemplative prayer to release the idea that God wasn’t the great punisher in the sky but a loving father holding the gate wide open for me. I believe he is waiting to open the gate for all who earnestly seek his will, and this is the only work we need to do.

I often default to the following prayer of Thomas Merton:

MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.

I believe he desires for me to seek him out of love and not fear. John 4:18 18 “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” As the prayer states, I can’t be certain that I am following God’s will for my life, but I am sure that he loves that it is his will that I seek. I no longer fear that I have not worked hard enough, because what loving parent doesn’t appreciate the effort of their child to please them, even if they stumble and fall.

How can living as Christ be a bad thing? Webster’s defines compassion as “sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it.” It is a burden to carry the desire to alleviate others’ distress. So many of us are in distress because our faith in Christ and our desire to live as Christ have been hijacked and crushed under the stampede of Christian Nationalism.

Are we afraid to offer compassion and empathy to alleviate others’ distress lest we be cut loose from our tether of certainty to evangelicalism, our community, and often friends and family? We are fearful that if we acknowledge those in the margins, we aren’t considered the hands and feet of Christ, but a woke. (Like this is a bad concept?)

If we are afraid to offer compassion, how can we possibly demonstrate the love of Christ by feeding the poor, welcoming a stranger, caring for widows and orphans?

I am guilty of falling into this camp because I walked hand in hand with religion and rigid dogma instead of Christ for the majority of my life. I hurt many along the way under the guise of “speaking the truth in love.” I was the one willing to lob a stone or two or three because the bible said it, and that settles it. The problem is that it doesn’t settle it, but one’s understanding, confirmation bias, and interpretation settle it. Most of us do not even take the time to dive into the Scriptures, preferring to believe the religious dogma we have been handed down.

I have been crushed this week because I had the audacity to post a quote from Jimmy Carter on my Facebook Page. “Homosexuality was well known in the ancient world, well before Christ was born, and Jesus never said a word about homosexuality. In all of his teaching about multiple — he never said that gay people should be condemned.”

A pointed reply: “Its very simple. Homosexuality is a sin. It’s not only an abomination in God’s eyes, but it is a sin against your own body. Your children are being lied to. This is the last stop on the train to hell. Is that how you "love" your children? When you are involved in this life style you think you are wise but you are a fool. Romans 1. Again. God turns you over to yourself. What is called a reprobate mind. You are being deceived by the devil.”

Someone I would consider a distant acquaintance (at best) has decided that I am putting myself and my children, my LGBTQ brothers and sisters in Christ, on a “train to hell.” This quote is just one stone launched at me, and I have the distinct feeling it was not out of love, but to question my faith, and I suppose, my parenting. I must not have raised my boys up in the way they should go, because they have, in the opinion of my evangelical Christian Nationalist friends and Community, strayed.

I feel my skin prickle under the heat of her condemnation. She is not standing in the righteousness of Christ but in her self-righteousness. I want to argue my point, fight fire with fire, and use scripture to refute her claims, but I do not because I am secure in my relationship with Christ and who he says I am and calls me to be. I offer to take every stone thrown she throws, gather it, and hide it so there are fewer stones to throw at each other. I am just a mom who loves her son and Jesus, and I try to move through the world as the Jesus I have come to know, moving from a place of love, compassion, and humility.

Religion has confused righteousness with self-righteousness? Scripture is being used as a sword to draw a line in the sand, and depending on our religious institutions and upbringing, we either welcome strangers to our tables or leave people foraging in the streets, hoping for scraps and breadcrumbs to satiate their hunger. People are quick to dole out condemnation and judgment in the name of Christianity’s righteousness, as a bitter elixir for our fellow humans to swallow instead of inviting them to feast on God’s love and grace.

My soul is starving to feast on God's righteousness in the world, in the country, and in the churches. In our need to be right within our self-contained bubbles of certainty, we have created shorter tables that exclude the very people whom Jesus himself would have prepared a feast to feed all those who hunger emotionally, physically, and spiritually.

Matthew 25:35 & 36 reminds us that Jesus calls on us to be his hands, his feet, his love ..." For when I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty, and you gave me something to eat, I was a stranger, and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes, and you clothed me, I was sick, and you looked after me, I was in prison, and you came to visit me."

Her assumption that I don’t know the scriptures she quoted insults me. She has no clue about the depth of my studies of theology and culture, both on a personal and academic level. I feel like my integrity, my intelligence, and most of all, my heart are being judged.

Proverbs 14:30: "A peaceful heart leads to a healthy body;

​​Jealousy is like a cancer to the bones." (NLT)

1 Thessalonians 4:11-12 "And make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business…"

I scroll through numerous devotionals to take me through the Lenten Season and out of my Dark Night of the Soul. Not being Catholic, this idea of giving something up for Lent seems like a backup plan for the long-since broken New Year's resolutions. I understand that it is an outward display of self-denial to honor the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus's death on the cross. Giving up chocolate, wine, cookies, or meat doesn't seem close to giving up one's life. It feels like a means to appease God and win his favor. It becomes about what I can do versus what God has done.

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Then I found a fantastic article by Phil Ressler, 19 Things To Give Up for Lent that Aren't Chocolate. The list includes such things as fear, the need to please everyone, impatience, blame, and doubt, among many other things that are a matter of surrendering to God instead of giving something up for God.

I read through the list thoughtfully and prayerfully and got as far as comparison. The word seemed to glow in red and have its own pulse. I looked up Proverbs 14:30…" Jealousy is like cancer to the bones."

It truly is "the thief of joy" (Theodore Roosevelt), yet how can we escape it?

I yearn to give up comparison for Lent or, better yet, for life. It is so hard to give up or surrender to God something that we are born into from our first breath. It is simply part of our human nature because we are confronted with comparison as we emerge helpless into this world. The umbilical cord is cut, and we are given our first rating on how we score on the APGAR test. APGAR is an acronym for Appearance, Pulse, Grimace, Activity, and Respiration. It is a scoring system used to assess the health of a newborn baby immediately after birth. 

A ten, of course, is the highest score and is reserved (as we are told in our childbirth classes with a wink) for children born to doctors. I suppose expectant parents are given this warning. Hence, we are not panicked when our perfect, sweet, slippery, crying bundle of awesomeness doesn't receive a perfect ten, but usually around an eight or nine. We are minutes old, and we are given a subjective ranking.

We are compared to and pitted against each other long before we enter school. Subtle comments spoken over us or those surrounding us continue to compel us into wondering if we are enough. "Isn't she pretty, smart, funny, tall, short, slight, chubby, quiet, loud, shy, or outgoing?" The list could go on and on. We all hear words such as these, and we all use these adjectives with little thought to how they are received by the actual child or those surrounding the child. We often do not realize how both the positive and the negative can impact children's self-esteem, self-love, and self-acceptance.

For the child, a bar is being set that they may or may not be able to attain or maintain in response to the positive remarks, and shame blooms around the negative or perceived negative pronouncements. These words can fall like drops of rain, washing away our security in who we are in Christ and the inherent value of our fearfully and wonderfully made badass selves.

Those of us who are highly sensitive hear these words echoing in our minds, boding us to wonder how we measure up to the adorable, bright, funny, outgoing people around us. Our quiet and sensitive nature pulls us into the background, where we either don't receive the words of encouragement or can't quite hear them.

Then, we enter school, and all bets are off as it nourishes the breeding ground of comparison and feelings of inadequacy. We are now graded on our performance. In elementary school, our report cards told us whether we were (S) "satisfactory," (S+) "above satisfactory," or (S-) "below satisfactory.

Satisfactory? What is that supposed to convey to a child's spirit? Somehow, seeing column after column of S's or S-'s revealed to me that there was nothing special about me. My teachers, family, and friends tolerated me as I strived to move beyond satisfactory.

At an early age, I learned that I needed to perform or at least try to do something to rise above "satisfactory." Rising above this label placed upon me in Kindergarten became elusive. The harder I tried and failed, the more painful "satisfactory" became. Somehow, this became a pronouncement of who I was, not just a grade I had earned in reading, writing, or math.

Eventually, I settled for this satisfactory label and gave up trying to rise above it. I believed I was merely adequate and tolerated. I was nothing special.

An introvert by nature, I was rarely noticed, even when I achieved and should have been recognized. I could have or maybe even should have been content with satisfactory, but something in me wanted to stand out. I wanted to be unique. So, from day one, I was compelled to compete and compare myself to those around me.

Being a twin only compounded the issue for me. I was born vying for attention at home and thrust into greater comparison in school. "Which one are you? How can we tell you apart? Who is taller? Who is the better student? Let's see, you are the (fill in the blank) twin, and she is the (fill in the blank) twin." These were all questions I faced on a regular basis, right down to "Who started the period first?" I was left second-guessing if my body was going to function normally as well. This seemed to be a competition!

I believe this constant comparison was a contributing factor to my development of anorexia as a teen. I would be the thin twin, and there would be no mistaking who was who. It separated me from my twin, and I erroneously believed this was what made me unique. I believed being thin would make me happy, attractive, and unique. Instead, anorexia slid in, stealing my identity in Christ, and fed me a pack of lies, leaving me unable to feed myself.

We can all fall prey to looking at our outward appearance and performance. We can lose sight of who we are meant to be as a child of God. We are so busy comparing ourselves to each other and wondering how we measure up that we don't delight in the spirits and souls of those in our presence. We also lose sight of or hide our authentic selves. We are striving and surviving, but are we thriving?

We lose sight of the qualities in ourselves and others that cannot be measured in numbers, time, or percentages. Our vision becomes blurred, and we fail to see one's heart. We can't measure kindness, compassion, empathy, prayerfulness, and, most of all, love, but boy, do we feel it when these are absent in our lives.

How well can I love while I am comparing myself to others? This ability to fully love becomes eclipsed by envy and jealousy of other's accomplishments. And when I am "better" at something, my pride can cast a dark shadow on the love I can give and receive.

Yes, the problem with comparison is that there is always someone greater than me, leaving me feeling "less than enough." It steals my joy and sends me back to identifying with my illness, my athleticism, and my outward appearance. I even judge my story's relevance when I compare my blog traffic or book sales with others. I must remind myself that if my journey helps just one person, I have done God's work. My work is relevant. When I see a person, I am drawn towards their heart. Can I remain open to the possibility that a heart of Christ is what people see in me?

Psalm 139:13 "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. 14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful I know that full well. (NIV)

Giving up comparison for Lent has not been easy. It has taken tremendous effort and focus to be the best me I can be and allow you to be the best you can be. Comparison is woven into the fabric of our beings. When I find myself falling into the comparison trap, I remind myself that comparison is woven into me. Still, I remember that it was God who knit me together. I am fearfully and wonderfully made in his image, which makes me incomparable!

As I enter Holy Week this year, I thank Phil Ressler for the idea that God doesn't need us to give up something for him; he wants us to surrender to him. Surrender to his love.

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³⁶ “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

³⁷ Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’^{[a] 38} This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹ And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’^{[b] 40} All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Matthew 22:36-40 (NIV)

I ask myself and fellow humans, who are trying to make sense of the chaos we are currently navigating, how we are doing with Christ’s greatest commandment. I don’t know about you, but I am struggling to love as Jesus commands us. The political climate has wrapped me in a tight ball of fear for my Black granddaughter, my gay son, and everyone in the LGBQT community. I want to love, but how is a mother and grandmother supposed to love those who seek to dehumanize the people I cherish most because of their sexuality or race?

My heart aches for children who are followed a little closer at Target, or fear being separated from their families because of the color of their skin, and for children out there whose parents do not accept their full humanity born in the image of God because you can’t be a child belonging to both God and the LBGQT community. I am sorry, it is not supposed to be this way. You are God’s beloved.

Hate isn’t a word that slips from my lips very often unless I am talking about kale, the extra repetitions my trainer asks of me, or the high-pitched bark of my dog. Believing that we are all, yes all, created in the image of God, it just seems wrong to hate a fellow image bearer. Is it okay that I am angry, fearful, and wounded by those who claim to follow Christ as they heap hot coals of shame and judgment upon beautiful souls? Ephesians 4:26 reminds me not to sin in my anger.

I am sad, scared, and angry even as I know and trust in a good and loving God, because people are hijacking my good loving God’s name to increase their power and wealth at the expense of the least of these. How do Franklin Graham, Focus on the Family, and other religious leaders justify their support of a man who claims to follow Christ, but doesn’t honor his marriage vows, mocks the handicapped, and is systematically dismantling the Constitution of the United States to strip people of their unalienable rights?

I desire to focus on God’s goodness to find hope among the chaos and discord that have been sown throughout our country, watered and fertilized by the half-truths and lies by Christian Nationalists.

If I look beyond our borders, our culture, and beyond the White Evangelical male understanding of scripture, I see a more beautiful Jesus and gospel ensconced in love. I see women playing prominent roles in teaching and prophecy. I see Jesus loving and welcoming the stranger.

I see Sodom and Gomorrah as not statements about same-sex relationships, but one of serving selfish desires, lack of hospitality, and human kindness.

The hate looming around can cause me to become bitter and sinful in my anger, or it can encourage me to be better. I am my highest or best version of myself surfaces when I move from a place of love for others and a deep abiding love for who I am in Christ. I am God’s beloved, the one that Jesus loves. I break the chains that bind me to my Evangelical /Baptist/Pentecostal roots one link at a time as I read, study the Bible, study about the Bible, and become comfortable questioning those holding positions of power or authority in the Church.

I no longer have faith by proxy but faith based on a new and improved relationship with Christ.

I believe we are all God’s beloved children based on Scripture.

Romans 8:16-17 – "The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory."

In this revelation to my spirit from the Holy Spirit that lives within me, I can move from a place of love, leaving self-righteous judgment behind. When I move from the place, remembering we are all raw, vulnerable people doing our best to survive in this troubled world, I can look into my fellow humans’ eyes and see the divine in them. I see sacred image bearers of Christ.

My dearest mentor and friend often reminded me that I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me. She was and is right! I can do all things through Him or Her, not because of some magical prayer, religion, or theology, but because of love. God is love, and God is truly the divine in all of us, and we are all divine by nature. It is in love that we offer the strength of the divine to one another, and by grace, we receive it. When I move from this place of love and not a religious doctrine, I believe I am enough. I believe my fellow sojourners, regardless of religion, race, gender, sexual orientation, etc., are enough and worthy of dignity and love because, like me, they are all His children created in his image. Sometimes, I need to look at my fellow humans through the eyes of God within me.

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I hear the Anorexia (I often call her Ana) tapping at the door to my soul most days even as my recovery remains strong. Well, for the most part strong. A virus grips my gut, shutting down my appetite and hunger for a solid week. I can hear the line delivered by Emily Blunt in The Devil Wears Prada, “I’m just one stomach flu away from my goal weight.” I don’t know my weight, nor do I have a goal weight, and this iconic quote lures me towards Ana’s hook.

How long will our culture continue to subdue women by encouraging them to shrink away and become tiny versions of the person they were created to be? This line would be funny, if it weren’t sad because most women can relate to it. They can relate to the relentless pursuit of thinness as an indication of their value and worth. As long as women are pursuing the cultural thin ideal, they can’t be fully engaged in their lives, work, creative outlets, or service to others.

Although the majority will not develop a deadly eating disorder as I did, they will spend valuable time beating their bodies into submission to acquire an unattainable or sustainable shape and size. Ninety five percent of dieters will gain back most of their weight. If we all ate and exercised the exact same way, there would be thin people, fat people, short people, and tall people. The size of your jeans has more to do with your genes than the billion-dollardiet industry would want you to believe.

I remind myself to be careful as I don’t know where my edges drop off into an abyss. I don’t know how many days of restriction or pounds lost I can endure before Ana takes over. It is a secret held by Ana and my genes. My genes don’t care if I choose to restrict or if a virus forces it, but my genes know the breaking point between my healthy mind and my anorexic brain. After this recent illness, my brain drifts into the foggy middle ground of health and anorexia.

I know so much more about my nemesis and how to outsmart her than I did at 15, 23, 27, and 47 years old. I suppose my learned hypervigilance as a result of childhood abuse and neglect is helpful in this case. My life is full, and everything tastes better than skinny feels. I am drawn to the edges of the abyss to see and feel the void. Empty can feel so much more satisfying than full. Only someone who experiences anorexia truly can comprehend how emptiness can satisfy.

I sit on the ledge staring at the abyss. A crushing wave of shame washes over me as I acknowledge the tug Ana can have on my spirit and my being. I hate her and at the same time I love her and miss her. She was a loyal companion that kept me safe and numb from emotions that were too big for me and my family. I don’t need her anymore, but there are so many days I desire to welcome her back into my life, allowing her to make herself at home, but this means I must welcome her back into all of me, my soul as well as my body.

She has always shown up uninvited and I have welcomed her like a surprise that I didn’t know I wanted orneeded. I suppose at the time she came knocking at my door the fourth time, I needed her. She was my fuck you to my mother. If truth be told, she was the little girl begging her daddy to pay attention to her pain. It is easier to allow Ana to be my anger towards my mother than to concede that Ana was a cry of grief over abandonment by both parents. Ana was a soothing blanket draped around me. I could huddle my small body into her lies of safety when my dad couldn’t or wouldn’t step in to save me from Mom’s wrath.

I now know that the very thing promising to keep me safe, was just like my dad, a liar, lacking any true desire to save me, and like my mother, her promise of comfort, was just another bait and switch.

Ana whispered that “thin will win, and you will finally fit in” to the younger me. She lied. Instead, I became the odd girl, the weird one that sat in the cafeteria picking just the raisins out of my cookies, or puking up the self-serve milkshakes from the high school cafeteria kitchen. I survived by holding hands with Ana as she became my only friend. Other girls had eating disorders, and they were washed in empathy while I was considered a freak to be bathed in ridicule and gossip. These girls had real reasons for starving, or puking. Both girls’ mothers had died. I couldn’t begin to compete with this, since I had no mother to lose. No one knew of the physical and emotional abuse I suffered at the hands of my mother, and my father…he was everyone’s hero except mine.

Ana convinced me I needed to try harder to be thinner. I wasn’t good enough at anorexia. She sounded like my mother’s critical voice staying rent free in my famished brain. Starving served me much better, as far as concern and empathy from my friends as a middle-aged woman. I was in control of my body and food…until I wasn’t. I turned to Ana in middle age for power, and strength. I turned to Ana and asked her to speak for me. My friends’ reactions took me by surprise because I didn’t expect anyone to notice, much less care if I was shrinking away.

Somedays, even as I write, I wish Ana had snuffed me out, leaving nothing but a plume of my spirit rising into nothingness like the smoke from a candle burning itself out. Living in recovery and weight restoration sucks. Some days it is hardly the sense of freedom and joy I longed for. My body might not be starving, but somewhere in my soul, I long for the protruding bones to expose my pain or suggest that people need to be careful with me.

Does my body say I have succeeded at recovery, or failed at letting Ana live in me? Does it advertise that I have let myself go, succumbing to laziness and gluttony? (I have not). Who wouldn’t want to invite Ana back in when recovery initially means being miserable in my own body. While somedays it does feel miserable, I promise you my readers in recovery, it doesn’t always feel this way.

She is a temptress. I am weight restored and think I have been here long enough to shield myself from her seduction. Ugh! I need a better shield, or maybe noise canceling headphones so I can’t hear her. She tells me to hide my body, and conceal my rolls of flesh, and she tells me to eat plain chicken and salad, when all I want is a cheeseburger and fries. I wonder if the freedom of recovery is just a lie sold to me to keep me alive. Is it Ana that compels me to make excuses for my body before people can comment? I body shame myself before others can.

I am not sure if it is Ana I am angry with, or myself for being naive enough to play with her again in middle age. Honestly, I didn’t know she would take over again, and again, and again… She is a pretty stubborn gal and evicting her is like trying to evict the mice from my cottage in the woods. When one leaves, another one arrives. Or…Maybe it is the same one finding the crack in the foundation, and just lets herself back in.

Writing about Ana is painful. I feel stricken with grief, but is it because I need her, let her go, do I want her? She creeps up on me from her hiding places of pictures, the mirrors, my drawers filled with clothes I either cannot wear, or I am terrified to try on my recovered body. Is my hate directed at Ana, or myself for playing her game? I hate the trauma that my body stores that is illuminated now that she doesn’t conceal it.

She is relentless – pick, pick, pick. She can steal my joy, my ability to make decisions, and is a master at distracting me from days and moments of human connection. How can I engage in the moments that can bring me joy, when my focus is on how this recovered body looks and feels.

It isn’t fair that I live in her haunting shadow when I truly do not need her to speak for me anymore. My voice is strong and my boundaries clear. My mom is tucked away in a care facility and I get to choose how much, or little contact I have with her. I am physically strong, much stronger than when Ana convinced me that there was power in my frailty. I do miss the frailty calling for people to be careful with me or ask me how my recovery is going.

Looking “recovered.” is vastly different from a full recovery. I honestly don’t know if I believe in full recovery, or one that doesn’t have Ana whispering in my ears. I hear her whispering, “cover up, people think you are lazy!”

I have grown tired of Ana’s covert and overt means of sucking me out of my life. I wish I didn’t have to be so vigilant, remembering that a stomach virus can be a hook to lure me back into her fold.

So, Ana, it is time for me to speak directly to you and not about you.

Dear Ana,

You, my friend, are no friend, but you are a pesky bitch. I don’t want you, nor do I need you. You keep showing up to ridicule me, criticize me and my “fearfully and wonderfully made,” body, pointing out its flaws, and my flaws of being a human sixty-year-old woman. This is my body, and I get to decide! I get to decide that my curves, and full breasts are okay, or even (gasp) beautiful. I decide if dessert and pasta are okay, that fat isn’t a feeling and food doesn’t have some culturally constructed moral value.

I am tired, so very tired of playing tug of war with you. My inner dialogue feels so much bigger than normal female angst when you engage me. Your voice can paralyze me, ruin my day and make me be so cruel to the me that lives inside my body. I won’t stand in front of the mirror telling my reflection that she is a worthless ugly bitch while I pummel my gut and pinch my folds and rolls. We are breaking up. I want to treat this body like someone I love lives in it, because I do.

No longer yours…

Until we meet again,

Lisabeth

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I originally planned on this to be a place to write about letting go of '‘The Church,” digging up my evangelical roots, and addressing religious trauma from poor, toxic theology as I follow Jesus. I am holding on tight to the God I have come to know and praying that he is holding onto me like I used to hold onto my boys on the rides at Disney because this shifting feels like a wild and dangerous ride. How far up do I climb before the gravity of life leaves me plummeting to the earth?

My intention is to continue to write of my shifting sands of faith, and I will write as well about my life, my relationships, my recovery from anorexia, complex PTSD, and living (really living) with depression and anxiety. All are intertwined and it is a knot of faith that each strand of my being can be traced back to.

My life, like yours is constantly shifting. Some days it is a subtle wind of change, other days the shift feels more seismic. Regardless of the magnitude, I am learning to navigate the soft sands and keep my footing. I am learning how to pivot without falling over (most days), and I am learning that I have many lifelines available to me if I can allow myself to be vulnerable, admitting my imperfections and that I need help. Whether my needs are emotional, spiritual, or physical, it is incredible to trust that having a need, doesn’t make me needy and it doesn’t make me high maintenance it simply means I am human.

I believe that for me, the risky part of asking for help is the possibility that no one will care enough to come. No one will have my back. I will be the 8-year-old little girl whose father watched her mother shame her and use a paddle as a means of punishment. I can hear her saying, “this will teach you to do as you are told.” It taught me alright! It taught me not to question her authority, hence, any authority, and the paddle would lie in wait to strike me because as hard as I tried, I could never reach her standards. My father often watched as my mother’s rage was unleashed. He didn’t step in for me or up to her. I thought I wasn’t worth protecting. I believed I was a problem to be tamed, not a daughter to be cherished.

I spent much of my childhood and adulthood not only burying my own needs but anticipating my mother’s needs. My needs became eclipsed by Her’s. It is often the breakdown of my physical body, you know…the one that keeps the score, that has me waving my white flag of surrender to cry out for help. It is in my utter weakness of body, mind and spirit, that I can ask someone to hold me up or breathe life into me. Allowing for my weakness can reveal the strength of those in community with me. Moses a strong capable man grew weary and in his fatigue and momentary weakness needed help to hold up his tired and trembling hands.

Exodus 17:11-12 “As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning.

12When Moses’ hands grew tires, they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held his hands up-one on one side, one on the other-so that his hands remained steady until sunset.” (NIV)

There are days when I grow tired and weary. One more step towards recovery, living a full beautiful life with depression, reconstructing my faith, etc. feels more like a leap off a cliff, and I need a belay to hold me as I repel down to the safety of solid ground. Once grounded and steady, I can belay for my fellow humans navigating shifting sands…We are the embodiment of Christ’s love for us.

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What is “Grace”?

As I continue to research, study and pray to understand God’s grace as a gift, not a reward for the few who have served Christ correctly, prayed correctly, tithed correctly, etc. as the evangelicals would have us believe, I remained mystified as to a satisfying definition of grace. Then I recently came across this quote from Dallas Willard on Soul Shepherding’s website.

“Grace is God acting in our life,” Dallas Willard says. (See his book The Great Omission.) God’s grace to us is his power for living an effective and glorious life today! It is God acting generously and powerfully, to do for us what we cannot do ourselves. Practically speaking, grace is an energy source that can help us get out of bed in the morning, speak a kind word to a stranger, persevere in a difficult situation, face a fear, or offer compassion to someone who has criticized us.”^[1]

Imagining grace as an “energy source,” sent a chill through my body down into the marrow of my soul, a soul that is learning to open to the possibility that it is this grace that is shifting me away from a faith based on works, towards a faith based on love, compassion, and surrendering the need to debate and be right

Our country and world continue to walk the path of division. The election results deepen the divide of us versus them even among family and friends. It is God’s grace, his energy coursing through me that allows me, to see every human as his beloved child on their path, a path that I know nothing about, or how God will move in their lives. When, where and how…are not my concern. His grace is the “energy force” encouraging me to hand over my need to be right and certain. It is grace that is allowing me to lean into the mystery of receiving God’s grace, offering grace, and honestly, the mystery of God.

I think I am gaining a greater understanding of 2 Corinthians 12:9 “⁹ But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”

I sit in my chair like a child resisting a cookie I was told not to touch. Dang it Jesus, this grace stuff feels so hard when I read so much hatred towards your children from your children on every social media outlet especially when it harmful to me and the people closest to me. Not responding with anger and my own smug sense of certainty is difficult. It is my enticing “cookie,” in front of me. I lean into God’s grace to respond with compassion and respect. You see it is his strength, a force that is power in my weakness. I hear that still small voice that says, “don’t push send, don’t add to the division,” and some days I heed its plea. I am weak and find evidence that His power, his “energy force” of grace pours out of me. Other days, my weakness, my ego and need to be heard, pull my finger to the send key like a magnet drawn to metal.

Just as Jesus can say forgive them, for they no not what they do, or could look on the rich man with compassion, I desire to do the same, harvesting the energy force of God’s grace until it overflows from my weakness, and my need to be right, because honestly, there are plenty of times I am simply wrong.

^[1] https://www.soulshepherding.org/grow-in-grace-and-power-for-daily-life/#:~:text=It%20is%20God%20acting%20generously,someone%20who%20has%20criticized%20us.

Grace, God’s grace has been floating around in my mind like the autumn leaves resting on the surface of the lake. I hear many use the phrase, “by the grace of God, go I,” implying that God has granted them a special measure of favor, or approval. Our world is in chaos and natural disasters have destroyed homes, lives and businesses. Those who are spared claim God’s grace, and or blessing protected them, but what about those who were not spared?  Does God not love them as much as the neighbor spared? Of course he does, Ephesians 2:10. “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (NIV) The New Living Translation uses the word Masterpiece. No artist would choose to destroy his work, but sometimes life happens, and the painting goes up in flames, or the sculpture gets knocked over. Yet, the artist never stops admiring and loving his creation.

 As young Christians we often mistake God’s blessings for grace, and we often attribute God’s blessings as something we earn by pleasing God though obedience and self-sacrifice. Neither God’s grace or God’s blessing is a result of anything we have done or not done, but a gift of unconditional love, compassion, and God’s goodness. His unmerited favor is not evident by answered prayer or protection because of one’s holiness, having enough faith, or following the right prayer formula. The evidence hung on the cross because of love.

“By the grace of God go I,” had always rolled easily of my tongue, until the day it didn’t. Until the day 30 years ago when I began to wrestle with what I had been taught about God’s grace and blessings. Until… I realized, through my own pain, how the casual use of this idiom has the power to wound another’s heart or feel abandoned by God.

After numerous miscarriages, and a struggle with secondary infertility, I walked into church one day as a woman in our congregation announced that by the “grace of God,” she was expecting her “rainbow baby” in the coming months. A rainbow baby is a baby born after a miscarriage or a stillbirth, and the rainbow represents God’s promise. My heart sank into the depths of my being, as I stifled a sob rising from my gut, quieting it with a painted-on smile. A quick, “I am so happy for you,” escaped my lips. I took my seat in the dark auditorium and brushed away a single tear slipping down my cheek.

I desperately didn’t want to cry. I feared this would cause others to misunderstand my grief and my inability to fully join in her joy as cruel, self-centered, or lacking in Christian kindness. Would God allow me to contain myself and my dignity, finding it in his heart to allow me to hold myself together? I don’t know if it was God, or my own will, but I sat stoically through the service.

I didn’t begrudge her this apparent grace of God, but my heart grieved and broke into a million pieces. Where was God’s grace for me? What did I need to do to be graced with my rainbow baby, or what had I done wrong that I was not the recipient of His promise…His favor? There was no place for my pain in the celebratory atrium. I have found that pain and suffering is offered little space in the church, without the judgement that somehow, we have brought it upon ourselves.

Matthew 7:7-9 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 9which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11 If you, then though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him?”

Growing up in a staunchly evangelical tradition, I, along with my peers, were taught this scripture as part of the name it and claim it theology. Today it is called the prosperity gospel. If I named it, I could claim it as a child of God, all I had to do was have “enough faith.” I stood at the door and knocked, and asked and yes three babies were given to me, only to have God “take” 3 babies away.

This felt like the breaking point of my faith. All my questions and doubts that I had been shooing away since I was I small child, landed on me like an unexpected rain. 

I began to have the courage to earnestly challenge the toxic, soul crushing “name it and claim it” prosperity gospel. I had been denying theological questions that circled like vultures picking and picking away at my belief system, leaving remnants of my faith. A faith that so often did not add up. I didn’t have a name for this theology at the time, and certainly not as a child just trying to survive an abusive mother. Be a good girl + be a good Christian = abundant blessings. I held onto the remnants of my faith believing Jesus could make a greater faith with the remnants, after all, look what he did couple fish and some loaves of bread.

This name it and claim it, gospel had always taunted me and caused me to blame myself for any suffering I experienced as my own lack of faith or a punishment for pissing God off. After all I was born into this world inherently evil, wicked, and depraved because this was what I learned from the age of 5, sitting at my Sunday school teachers’ feet. Pray, read the bible, be a good Christian and do all the church tells you to do, because God, like Santa Clause will only give good gifts to good girls and boys.

Sitting in the auditorium that painful day, my mind wandered from the sermon. I am sure it was about God, Jesus, and how much he loved me, but I didn’t feel very loved in that moment and wondered what must I do to be loved by God? What had I done to not be loved and cherished by my mother? The logical inference was that I must be the problem. And I was sure that the people sitting around me who knew of my miscarriages and my desire for my rainbow baby, questioned my faith or that I had some unconfessed sin, after all my womb remained empty. I had asked for bread, and was given another stone of shame to put in my pack.

My eyes were fixed on the pastor, but they were focused my past, feeling the burden of this gospel I carried felt like a pack of stones upon my back. I carried the shame of never being enough for my mother or God, the shame of having two healthy children and having the longing for one more. Maybe I wasn’t grateful enough for my boys, so I carried a stone of shame of being greedy?

I hadn’t done the math, but I probably wasn’t giving my first ten percent of my money to the church. Our large donation to build the building I was sitting in, and helped plan, must not have measured up. Story after story of God’s blessings of givers faithfulness were shared on stewardship Sunday enticing people to give in hopes of Gods return on their investment in the form of blessings and grace.

My quiet time and prayer time were at times mediocre, and I never seemed to finish my pages of the Beth Moore bible studies the church seemed to worship as much as the scriptures. Missing a day meant that I didn’t desire God with a fervent passion. Missing a weekly meeting meant that I had a weak commitment to, or love for Christ. One woman even asked me to sign a declaration of attendance. One absence and I would be cast out. Rather than risk being cast out, I walked away with my bible in hand allowing this woman the power to declare how much I loved Jesus.

Around this same time, people all around me in church and the United States were reading and practicing the Prayer of Jabez: Breaking Through to the Blessed Life by Bruce Wilkinson. In the book, Wilkinson suggests that making this prayer a daily habit, blessings will abound for you. This is presented as the secret formula for coaxing God in to blessing you.

1 Chronicles 4: 9-10 “Jabez was more honorable than his brothers. His mother had named him Jabez, saying: "I gave birth to him in pain." Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, saying: "Oh that You would bless me indeed and enlarge my territory! Let Your hand be with me and keep me from the evil one." And God granted his request.

“I challenge you to make the Jabez prayer for blessing part of the daily fabric of your life. To do that, I encourage you to follow unwaveringly the plan outlined here for the next thirty days. By the end of that time, you'll be noticing significant changes in your life, and the prayer will be on its way to becoming a treasured, lifelong habit.”^[1]

I had felt let down by God so many times, or that I had let him down, yet I loved him. I decided to not fall into the prayer of Jabez movement so that when the prayed for blessing didn’t come, it would be me that failed God, not God that failed me. Even as I felt let down, I didn’t question his love for me. I suppose I questioned if my love for him was sufficient.

This works-based theology proved to be a trap of striving for perfection to be enough to please God. Each time I fell into pain of suffering, I beat myself up for missing the mark (sinning) in God’s eyes. I wondered how many people sitting in this same auditorium felt the same way but would never share it because the pain of judgement was worse than the pain they were carrying. Instead of leaning into each other, being Jesus hands of compassion upon each other, we end up suffering alone in isolation, and shame.

Spoiler alert…It doesn’t have to be this way, and Jesus never intended his church to be a place to pick up shame, but a place to lay it down.

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^[1] Quoted in Fitzgerald, William (2012). Spiritual Modalities: Prayer as Rhetoric and Performance. Penn State Press. p. 2. ISBN 9780271060521.

The rise Christian Nationalism often leaves me fearful to say, I am a Christian, at the same time it is terrifying to walk away from a community and stand in this liminal space of shifting sands towards a new faith, putting Christ above religion and welcoming EVERYONE at my table because Christ is in me and each of his sacred children. Evangelical Christian Nationalism is the antithesis to what it means to live as Christ.

I am a survivor of childhood emotional neglect, emotional abuse, and physical abuse.  I am working to maintain recovery from anorexia and healing from Complex PTSD (C-PTSD). I am a Christ follower who, like many Christians today, find themselves recovering from the teachings of the Patriarchal, Evangelical Church we were born into, or we were evangelized and “born again,” into Christ. 

In 2020 I entered into a very dark night of my soul and found myself in utter despair that God had indeed forsaken me. Feeling like this was truly a matter of life or death, I began meeting with a spiritual director. There was no judgment, no Band Aide of scriptures placed upon my hemorrhaging spiritual wounds, no weaponizing of scripture either. I am not sure what I had expected, but It was a lovely safe space to be me, work on me, and ask some tough questions. Where was God, why is he doing this to me, how does prayer work, is God in control, etc. Sitting in safely with my Spiritual Director, I allowed myself to doubt, question, and wonder. I believe Jesus is my love, my friend and rock. Religion is a sandcastle that has dissolved around me.  

I invite you to walk with me upon my Shifting Sands of Faith and how my life experience and toxic theology distorted my view of God, and myself. Leave your footprints in the sand, walk alongside me as I dare to experience God in a new Christ-like way exchanging my need for certainty and perfection, for sinking into the soft mystery of His love.

My hope is to post monthly thoughts, musings and essays about my life experiences and how each experience influenced my walk with Jesus. Thank you in advance for your patience as I become accustomed to the Substack publishing world.

Feel free to check out my current website www.eatingbyfaith.com

You can find my book Eating by Faith: A Walk with God my Eating Disorder from The Inside Out on Amazon or reaching out to me using the contact info on my site.

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