My beliefs dramatically changed five years ago. The foundational beliefs of the core of my being. Everything. Completely gut-wrenching even if in the best way.

I never anticipated all that would be impacted. I thought there was just going to be an intellectual reorganization. But no, I feel like every single last part of my world has been flipped upside down. I literally have nothing to stand on anymore except I am sure God Loves me.

And one of the most difficult and painful parts of this transformation has been the loss of community. It’s probably a good thing that I struggled to ever fit in as much as I barely did. Because the agony over losing everyone has been piercing. I can’t imagine if I had been more integrated.

It feels sometimes like it would be easier to go back to the hell of before. At least I had company then.
But now I’d have to be obliterated out of my mind to tolerate what I used to put up with. I wouldn’t be able to stomach it. It would eat me up from the inside out.

So I’m stuck in this awful middle place. Too conservative for the non-believers and too liberal for the believers. I literally can’t win.

I’ve finally stopped fighting it. And accepted that I am still in a very long season of healing. Not only surgery, but lots of mental and emotional rehabilitation to strengthen the new spiritual legs I’ve been given.

Currently focusing on learning to be okay with me. Working on trying not to play small. To honor and even celebrate all of me. The uniqueness that is this collection of attributes that isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. And that’s okay because I wasn’t created to be. Look at Creation. It would be terrible if we were all the same. So I’m becoming my own best friend. Learning how to not outsourcing self-love. And then see who eventually has enough courage to come alongside and publicly claim me.

Even if it isn’t my preference, I’m now okay living in the dissonance of not always jiving with every last person. But it’s easier if the ones out of alignment are those I’m not interested in connecting with.

What I expected was rejection from people whose beliefs are what I came out of. What I did not anticipate was the rejection of those that I thought were with me on this new path. That was pretty devastating. You think you found some new friends, some cohorts for the journey. But no, the celebration starts to end as instead they also back off. And it’s initially difficult to understand why. Pain making everything so intense. Clouding bigger vision.

There are probably several reasons, but one in particular hit me today: some people don’t want to pay the cost for more freedom; they’ve decided to settle for what appears to look like just a more comfortable prison.

I can’t blame them too much. I’ve been there. Hell, I am in the fight even now. And the cost is a lot. Healing, true healing is far from cheap. You will pay for every last bit.

Maybe the easier parts at first, but then that shit gets DEEP. All the way down to the stuff you even forgot about. Those pains that stretch all the way back. Been dragged along this whole time. Through every relationship.

You were content to let sleeping dogs lie. But Spirit knows what great good is in it for you if you dare to lean in. Not for anyone or anything else. This isn’t about the world right now – this is about you. That part of you that you’ve never trusted with anyone. The parts you can barely think about.

And people spend their whole lives running from this opportunity. Medicating themselves legally or illegally. Distracting themselves into oblivion. Working so much that they are too tired to think or feel. That’s probably what I leaned toward.

Or enveloping themselves with the lives of so many others in an effort to forget their own. Somewhat existing vicariously if they can manage to suppress their jealousy at least openly.

Until some crisis happens and you are all alone. With your thoughts. Your heart. No one or nothing else there. Just you and God.

You can keep running but it’s always going to come back to this. Until you face it. Until you go through it.

A million different ways. You’ll be off thinking you are doing a new thing. And somehow, someway it will always boil down to this: the next step in your healing.

Not for your shame or punishment. Although sometimes we put it off so long that natural consequences have stacked up. But even then I trust that the real life and real love you want is on the other side. Because God doesn’t ever do abandonment.

On this side things may never be able to go back to how they were, but there’s a reason they were allowed to fall apart in the first place. And if the future is different than you wish, that doesn’t mean there won’t be any good. Or even better. Despite our ability to imagine it.

You paint your limitations on the situation. You don’t factor in your God. Whose mercies are endless. You put the picture of someone who hurt you on Their face. And it isn’t true. There has always been One rooting for you even all the times you messed up. All the times you fell down and gave up.

This is only the end if you let it be. Sure, there are no guarantees. But if you’ve already lost so much, then why not intentionally risk just a little more?

Your healing will happen in real time. With real people. Not just an intellectual exercise. But the good news is so will the benefits. Much more than the going through motions you valiantly tried to settle for all this time.

What if everything you tried to convince yourself to live without is just waiting for you on the other side of simply being open to starting to say yes? Or no. Whichever it is for you today.

I’d love to have the answers and give you the green light, but I’m not that smart. And in my experience, God may not give you the easy way out either. Because this is personal. This is your sweet heart and soul being cleansed from what was done to you. So the new and better has a place to land. For you, even if purely for your enjoyment. And you could use maybe more than a little relief, eh?

But the point is you have to want it for yourself. It’s not enough that God values you. Obviously. Trinity wants you to value yourself. Love yourself as much as you are Loved.

So, ask if I’m wrong. I dare you. Ask not for a sign, but for eyes to see and ears to hear. All that’s really out there. For you first.

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I wish I could scream this from the mountain tops for all the world to hear.

It’s amazing the answers you can get from God when you go to Trinity for wisdom versus trying to decide which interpretation of a book written thousands of years ago to different people still applies to you.

In that, God has even been healing the Bible for me.

So many examples. But some from a theme that has been running for me a good while now.

One: I was asking God about something. He told me if prostitutes were good enough for Jesus then they’re good enough for me. As in the church folks were the ones condemning the women Jesus welcomed. So, no shame at all there. Practical concerns, sure – time for that in a different conversation. But most importantly Jesus was encouraging the prostitutes not to sin only in the sense of not allowing anyone to talk down to them. Not to trade what the judgers said about them in exchange for what Jesus says about them.

I feel so confident in this. But you’re welcome to keep looking at it differently. If that’s the measure you feel comfortable holding yourself to.

Again, in like manner with music for me. You have no idea how many decades I’ve wrestled with this. A constant battle. Until I brought it to Jesus. Then freedom. I heard, “Hasn’t this music helped you?” So, so, so, so many times. On repeat. Kept my head above water more so than even therapy. These artists. With their words that you judge. Risking being open and honest when so many others shame and condemn. Reject. Dismiss. Radio silent.

No, music saved me more than anyone. So, play. I am, I will. EnJoy this Life I’ve been given. This freedom.

That really came out of being able to say “no” to a long, long standing battle I’ve been in since December 2017. God brought me a thought kinda like, “Go, give away all your money to the poor, and follow me.” Except it was, “Take two weeks without working and write.” All this time, almost five years, I’ve been wrestling with that sentence. That proposition.

Until one of my customers recently showed me a song (again, music) called, “God Hates the Tips” by Trevor Moore. The lyrics are ridiculous. And that’s the point. It finally hit home: “I wonder if the people of old could have told God no?” Whether He really said what they thought He said might be irrelevant. But maybe, ironically, God plays Devil’s Advocate in order to get us to see the insanity of some of the things we are so married to. If we are reluctant to accept that things might actually be good and easy sometimes.

But you have eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. You have taken that burden on when it is way above your pay grade.

THAT was the whole point of the book of Job. I’ve heard, the oldest of those stories told in your precious Bible. That’s the question for all of us: are we going to appoint ourselves as judges and choose law? And proceed to exhaust ourselves round and round on the hamster wheel of performance to obtain “worth”? Or are we going to let God Love us – simple as that?

When you are an innocent kid, before your behavior threatens the image they want to portray to the world in order to try to obtain security through the illusion of acceptance, you just trust. You live and don’t think of these things. Who deceived you?

So I told God no. After almost five years, I told God no – I’m not going to do “crazy” things anymore to try to prove my faith, love, trust, and belief to you. And I felt like God said, “Finally!” As in, it’s about damn time. “You never have to prove anything to Me. I always have and always will Love you the same. I relish in giving you everything. As long as it is healing. And won’t contribute to some ongoing bondage in you.”

God never needed to test me. God never needed my faith or belief. I’m the one who insisted on that burden. I was trying to prove it to myself. Thinking that maybe then I’d be good enough for something. Maybe then love would come my way. Since being myself hadn’t worked so well up to that point with others. Broken in their own ways. Unable to be there for me. And I took it way more personally than was warranted. Although, understandably. As it started way before I was old enough to know any differently.

So I’m the one who insisted on performance. On tit for tat. On earning something. When God was happy to give it freely all along.

We’re the ones who decided to take the gavel and then couldn’t live up to our own standards. We run and hide in all kinds of theology.

When all along God beckons us just to simply come back Home. Where the table is set, ready to celebrate.

But we are the ones who insist on a sacrifice. On penance to be paid for not living up to the rules we decided to judge ourselves by.

So They said, “Fine, give Us all you got. All the punishment you think you need in order to be made clean.” And we did it. We hung Him up by nails on a tree. After we beat Him and made Him bleed. And God said, “Is that enough for you? Be sure. Because I don’t want you to be afraid. To live in this lie of fear.”

And at some point, after enough blood was shed, we said, “Yes, we are satisfied.”

So every time we don’t live up to the rules we decide to hold others to, God says, “Look at that Cross – if you need to. In order to not be afraid. In order to climb out of your tree and come back to Me. To sit at the table and talk some more. So eventually you will start to see and know that no matter what you could ever do, my Love for you never changes. I don’t need a sacrifice like you think you do. You’re the one who insists on rules. When all along I am scanning the horizon, anticipating the joy of welcoming you back with open arms.”

And this, this is why some people need marriage and kids. God told me that also. When I was asking Them about singleness.

The world condemns me and my relationship status. But God told me differently.

When I was talking to Them about how I had many loves in my life and didn’t want to choose one at the expense of the others. Surprised me so much yet again.

Showed me the whole angels aren’t given in marriage thing. That the point of marriage and children is to bring people to the place of where they see themselves either in the position of God or otherwise. Either way it still works.

Where you either love someone so much that you keep giving of yourself to try to heal them no matter how much it hurts. You can’t ever see yourself giving up. And then you realize one day that that’s how God feels about you.

Or on the opposite side, you keep hurting someone and they won’t ever give up on you. You don’t understand it, it doesn’t make sense. It might be easier for you to self-destruct if they’d just leave you alone. Until it dawns on you one day that that must be how God feels about you.

And then you get it. Then you finally understand that the real story has nothing to do with rules or measurements. Despite how all the broken people in your life treated you.

Some people need commitments like marriage and children to come to that point. Others don’t. Others learn it differently.

This is what this journey is about. First seeing God correctly in order to maybe more so see ourselves and in turn others correctly. So we can fully LIVE and love!

This isn’t a theocracy for the sake of. That’s blasphemy.

This is God Loving Their children and wanting us to be free. Not staring at Trinity in a constant state of prostration as if that is somehow pleasing versus a bit creepy.

Have you been outside lately? Put down your Bible, put down the books, turn off the screens. Step outside of the congregation for a bit in order to see this amazingly beautiful Creation!

Where there is endless Life abounding in diversity so immense you could probably never catalog and put it into those little boxes you’re so fond of. To do so is to lose the essence of what makes uniqueness so great.

You know this in your soul. You naturally cheer the underdog. Why? Because they don’t measure up to perfection? Or because they don’t let all the naysayers stop them? They are determined to LIVE in spite of all the hell thrown at them.

And so go I. Here. Reveling in newfound freedom to start to embrace everything Created for us. Such as the poetry set to music that moves me. And all the layers and levels of love my heart wants to explore and hold onto. The very good that is still left in this world if we’d just relax a little and let go. And know that we are fully Loved!

Everything is okay even when it isn’t. We make it too complicated.

So much more.