i am an evangelical pastor's daughter (pause) i was married to an evangelical pastor for 22 years (pause) i am divorced (full stop)
this story isn't so much about those things as it is about the things that followed, and the things that have come together for me recently. things that are still more exploration than fact, more becoming than have become.
i have a beautiful friend, Dylan (@the_dylanhill), who is a gay man who loves Jesus.
He recently posted this picture with the following caption: “I’m living proof that you can look like a street walker, and still love the Lord...” This is a funny quote that I say all the time. But it is such a true statement! This weekend I sat by this window in a hundred year old church. This church hasn’t had a congregation in a very long time, but looking out at the empty pews, God’s presence was still ever present. As it is in my life. I can’t tell you the number of times people have tried to dismiss both my love for him, and his love for me. Simply because of who I am, and how I present myself to the world. But here in this empty church, he whispered to my soul, a gentle reminder that we all come in different packages... some more abstract than others, all carrying different things, gracefully broken, and always loved by him. So yes, just like you, I’m living proof... "
what he wrote ricocheted around inside of me... "all carrying different things.. and always loved by him..." when i left my marriage, i lost all the things you hear about ... friends, dishes, the trust of my daughter...and i lost God. i was devoured by a firestorm of guilt and shame, my whole interior world reduced to ash. divorce, and divorcing a pastor no less, was a Sin with a capital S, and i knew that i had been abandoned by God. unable to return to the church i loved, i attempted, twice, to attend a church in the city that was vaguely familiar to me and that i knew i enjoyed. from the moment i sat in the pew, my eyes began to well up and by the end of the first song i was in full-blown tears. i didn't even make it to the sermon. i had the same experience going back a second time, and found myself crouched against the short wall of the parking lot, tears streaming down my face. i had no longer had any right to enter the presence of God... i had pinned the scarlet S on myself with both hands. it was over a year before i attempted church again.
my friend ashleigh recently said to me quite matter-of-factly, ''you KNOW God looks after babies and fools." it's been over 4 years since i made the incredibly difficult decision to leave my marriage, but i grabbed onto that like a lifesaver, because even now the journey back toward some kind of faith is difficult and halting. and though it may not seem like it to an onlooker, i am still a girl who loves Jesus, and has her whole life. but i can no longer find comfort in prayer, though do sometimes in music. i struggle to connect, feel adrift, and have to look around my life for the beautiful things, the joy-giving things and point them out to myself saying, 'see - God loves you - he is still watching out for you.' but when we found out the roof needed to be replaced, my initial thoughts carried the underlying current of 'see! God has turned his back on you.'
it's as though i live in a schism inside myself - the faithless and the faithful, the daughter and the outcast, the beloved and unlovable. some days, sooty piece by sooty piece, i want to try to put the ashes back together. some days i don't... i seem to myself a lost cause. but i *want* to. i want to find my way back...no. i want to find my way forward. not back to the girl i was. i have outgrown that girl and her small beliefs. i want to unearth the woman i have become, with all of her experiences and love and hurt and joy, and find God whose love is big enough to hold all of that.
so i will hold on to the hope that i am a fool, looked after by God. and a gracefully broken human, loved by him. and i will keep trying to dig through the ashes to see what emerges, if anything...
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