Orphan, Beloved

The past few days were very tough days indeed. I’ve had to do more adulting than any one person should be required to do, and I don’t like it. Not one bit.

It doesn’t help that I feel like a spiritual orphan, unable to attend church since December. I tried. I really, really tried. And I love my church. Trust me when I say, church and me — we got history. I love my church the way you love a beleaguered marriage, a prodigal daughter, your oldest friend. You know all the messes but keep coming around. That’s how I love my church.

But this damned election. It was a demon tearing our limbs, ripping us apart. Look, we all know I’m vocal about my beliefs, and I’ve not been silent about how I feel about Trump’s presidency. But I try really hard not to attack Trump supporters, and I work hard at not hurling names, spreading fake news, or even engaging in political debate with people who I really, really care about. (Unless they’re being complete idiots. Then it’s game on.)

But when a member of my church posted something on Facebook that basically said anyone who voted for Hillary is going to hell, well. I started thinking that maybe I didn’t belong there after all. I started thinking maybe people there were thinking a whole lot of things, and I could almost feel the prayers being flung at my back like daggers. Prayers that I would stop loving gay people, or marching in marches, or just shut up already about all of this stuff, like so many people have told me (and Elizabeth Warren) to do.

And when legendary leaders like Franklin Graham support Trump, even with all his woman hating, and his refugee hating, and his general hating, I felt a deep, painful disappointment with the institution of church. When no one got up in a pulpit and said, “This is wrong,” it felt deeply personal. It felt like I wasn’t valued, nor were so many of the people sitting next to me. The people of color, the other women, the immigrants, the people who may have been struggling with their sexual identity. All of a sudden it felt like none of us belonged, even if I was the only one who felt that way.

For a long time, I was angry. But when the anger faded away, it was just hurt. And you can call me a whiny baby all you want. But frankly, if you do, all that tells me is that you’ve lost a little part of your humanity — the compassion part. The part that recognizes another person’s pain, and can empathize with it. I’m sorry you lost that part. It’s the part that makes a lot of life worth it.

While the introverted part of me loves not going to church (I always feel awkward at church, like I am wearing someone else’s shoes, even though I worked there for five years), it’s hard being a Jesus Freak without a Jesus Freaky Family.  It doesn’t help that no one has seemed to notice I’m gone, but for a single text. When I explained that I was really struggling after the election, the texter hightailed it faster than roadrunner and I haven’t heard from anyone since.

And now, I’m here, in a place in my life where all the shit is hitting all the fans. Parents’ health is failing, friends are getting sick, my kids are busier than ever, my own health scares happening (but not actually happening, thank God). Favorite neighbors are moving away. I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. Far too much adulting for any one person to bear.

I feel like an orphan.

But here’s the weird thing. Crazy Jesus Love can come from all sorts of places, and the past few days, when I had to pretend to be a grown up, even though I didn’t want to, that CJL came pouring down over my head from all over.

I got text messages from Bloomfield, NJ, NYC, and New Milford, CT.

I got Facebook prayers in a private message from Houston.

I got love and prayers from Oregon, Chicago, California, and one special person in Nashville who wrote my name on his hand, and said every time he saw it he would pray for me. He sent me a picture of my name on his hand, and that picture made me feel so loved and cared for, and it also made me laugh, and I needed to laugh.

And it all worked. I felt that Crazy Jesus Love all over, all day long. I felt peaceful and calm most of the time. I felt it when I pulled up to the hospital valet, where I had to take my dad for his appointment. The valet, an older man with a big smile and sparkly eyes, came over to me and asked me my name. He had watched me run around and grab the walker out of the trunk, rush back to corral the septuagenarian and the octogenarian out of the car without breaking any bones. The valet came to get my key and said, “Kerry, can I just say God bless you, because you have your hands full,” and he gave me a hug.

I felt the Crazy Jesus Love when we got inside to discover that last week, dad called the hospital to say he “might” have to cancel the appointment due to weather that never happened, so they cancelled the appointment. I felt the CJL when I didn’t freak out all over the place. Then the nice woman found another doctor to see my dad and brought us vouchers for lunch in the cafeteria.

(Have you ever guided a septuagenarian and an octogenarian in an over-sized wheelchair through a hospital cafeteria? It’s like herding 20 three-year-olds).

Then I felt it when the doctor, who was as far as I could tell about twelve years old, was patient through my parent’s bickering and dad’s slow speech and was kind and careful to explain everything about why they would need to turn an octogenarian into a cyborg with a pacemaker.

And I felt it later in the conversations I had with my mom, and the walk I took their bossy dog on through the dirt paths of the nature preserve they live on. I felt it in the hugs from my kids when I finally made it home, in the veggie pizza my husband made me, in the bubble bath I drowned my stress in later that night.

I still miss my church with the kind of broken heart that feels like a million little jagged pieces, like an orphan waiting for the parents that never come. Maybe someday I’ll go back. Or maybe I’ll go find myself the kind of open table church where drag queens go, with a nice female pastor who is maybe a lesbian, because even though I’m not gay or a drag queen, maybe I’ll feel more comfortable there, with the broken people, the ones who scream from the tops of mountains I DO NOT HAVE MY SHIT TOGETHER!!!! 

Maybe I fit better in places like that, because when you have a million little jagged pieces, Jesus can squeeze in there between them, and fill up the spaces, and make a gorgeous mosaic out of the shards. And then when there’s Jesus in the middle making that mosaic, sharp pieces aren’t so sharp anymore, and not so many people get hurt.

Maybe this is the kind of church I need to go to. The Church of The Falling Apart. The United Congregation of We Don’t Have Our Shit Together.  Church of the Holy Non-Adulting. The place where we can you can be broken and fabulous all at the same time.

And meanwhile, I will thank God for the Crazy Jesus Love He sent my way via Chicago and Nashville, Oregon and Connecticut, California and NYC and Houston. They poured on the prayer over my shards and then Jesus came and glued it all back together, and it was beautiful.

So I may still be an orphan, but thanks to these friends, I am an orphan, beloved.