Honestly...

A look at what I am currently learning

Upon reading Calvin Miller’s memoir I am finding a deep realization sinking in amidst a hard week of struggling to feel at peace with my two current jobs. I can love Christ and not NEED the church. He is everything I need and Christian employment and involvement will not complete me.

Ever since I was in high school, I have found a lot of validation in Christian service. I was an odd ball at my high school who wore clothes that were too big on an oddly shaped awkward body. I didn’t listen to the same music or watch the same movies and I generally felt a little tense walking down the halls of my high school because I knew I was surrounded by wolves. Not that these kids had a bigger sin nature than me but I knew they would defend their popularity no matter the cost and if I was to offend or endanger that popularity I would be put down in order for them to climb up.

I know this because I was a wolf in my preteen years and every once in a while I find my wolf like tendencies come out again. I can even be wolfish in my marriage. “No honey, we can’t do that! Do you know what they will think of us?” More than half the reason I didn’t kiss or have sex before marriage is because I had a rather prudish and overly spiritual reputation to keep up.

I am a people pleaser. I come by it honestly as I am one of a long line of people pleasers. My great grandmother never stepped out of the house without a girdle and a face full of clay. My grandma still thinks she is overweight at probably 130 pounds. While I love these ladies I can see how ridiculous their obsession is and yet I have justified my own for so long.

In college, I went to a small church and I loved it, mostly. Yet I also had this niggling fear that I would one day screw up and they would realize that I am wholly imperfect, have all sorts of wrong thoughts, can be extremely judgmental and all in all just don’t have it all together.

By the grace of God, I married a man who doesn’t worry about these things like I do. He is somehow his own unique, beautiful and flawed human being a he is ok with people knowing it. He doesn’t have to be the coolest person and he is not afraid to make a fool of himself. He even sings loud and off key in church while I worry about what the people in front of us are thinking. He is worshipping and I am worrying.

When I graduated, I had no doubts I would work in some sort of holy job. I went to China and lived in a community of sinners and I learned that forgiveness is more important than appearances. One of my teammates would frustrate me so and I learned to ask forgiveness even when she didn’t know I needed. I learned that quick forgiveness is much more freeing that austere perfection.

Yet I returned to the states and some of those hard lessons seemed to melt away. I still needed to keep up my reputation, to impress and to show the world just how good of a person I was. Funny thing is- Jesus didn’t come to save the good. He came to save the broken and I was certainly that. I just didn’t want to admit it. So we went to church at the same place after marriage and my beloved learned first hand how poisonous my obsession with reputation was. The majority of our early arguments were not about sex or even money (although we have had a few of those) they were about being late to church.

We sat through a good many worship songs brooding about the fight we had and not really focusing or worshipping.

Again by God’s grace we moved to Houston. It isn’t that I don’t love that little church, it is that I needed a new fresh and white canvas. Hubby and I needed a new start where I wasn’t so bound my people’s expectations. Its been marvelous and painful. I feel the need to find a church because I crave the community. At the same time it has been wonderful to find our own rhythm. We can sleep in if that is the healthy option and I don’t whine and complain about what people will think if we aren’t there. We can garden on Sunday and worship God in the absolute splendor of his creation.

But there is still one thing that I haven’t fully surrendered and perhaps it is the hardest one. As I said, I thought I would certainly work in some sort of holy career where I could save thousands of people from the pit of hell, have lots of spiritual children and make everyone’s life a little better.

Last week I started working at an Christian ESL school. It is an uncomfortable and uprooting process but I have felt so many of my precious and tightly held presuppositions cracked, shattered and blown to smitherines. We have students from all over the world with every religion you could possibly imagine thrown into the mix. It is a true melting pot. It should be my dream job but I starting to wonder if such a thing really exists.

I feel like I don’t belong. I am trying to be what they expect of me but I guess I am sort of tired of putting on airs. So I don’t always laugh at their jokes and I see the problems of disorganization and poor management and I can’t help but want to change them. It isn’t ok with me that this is how they have always done things. I see the injustice and for once I am slowly losing my affection for a good reputation.

All I can see is the opportunities being squandered. I can feel the tension in the classroom, in the whole building. There are high hopes from professors to shed the light of Christ on these pagan students. And yet, I am looking in their eyes and seeing true joy, hope, light. I always thought non-believers would have dead eyes- no joy. I was wrong. And I am struggling with this: They don’t seem to really need what I have to give. From a theological standpoint I know they do. I am still unyielding in my belief that Jesus is the only way to true Life. The problem is that it is getting harder to reconcile my theology with my experiences. I know what they say: You must let your theology define your experiences and not your experiences define your theology. But they are all sitting in comfortable offices teaching truths that are much harder to live.

They haven’t met my incredible refugee students that I teach in the apartment complex downtown. You have never seen such open-faced gratitude, such simple child like joy and contentment. They have been through hell living in refugee camps and now starting over in a foreign country, yet they laugh with sweet abandon when I act-a-fool trying to explain English.

I wanted to do something Holy, Great, Meaningful with my life. I wanted to be the Texas Mother Theresa. Yet I am realizing her work wasn’t really very glorious. It was stinky and frustrating, tiring and heartbreaking. It was probably pretty mundane and people probably thought she was crazy. Here I am filing more papers than I ever cared to and trying to figure out exactly what I am supposed to be doing and finishing eleven hour days with sore feet and not much in my tank (emotional, spiritual, physical and gas tanks).

So I am praying and seeking to find if this current job is really the place where I am to stay. Meanwhile, I am trying to figure out how to be content being me, or Me and Jesus and Hank, for the timebeing.