I tend to go to church on Saturday evenings, but not tonight. Tonight my kids need to borrow my vehicle to move a piece of furniture from the apartment that they had rented into the house they inherited. While it was nice of my daughter to remember that I usually am in church on Saturday evenings, it really wasn’t a big deal for me to skip tonight’s service.
I’m one of those people pastors and church leadership abhor. I come to the services, sit through them, then go home. I don’t get involved. I don’t *do* anything to really help with the church. I’m a pew-person couch-potato.
I didn’t used to be like this. There was a time that I was up to my eyebrows in doing churchy stuff. I spent hours counseling others, teaching Sunday School and women’s Bible studies, editing newsletters, and, my favorite, cooking in the kitchen. So, why did I change?
First, I burned out. I was always willing to help, so I was always asked. Then I realized that no one in my church really cared about how abused I was in my marriage. They didn’t want to see my pain or how exhausted I was from doing everything in church and dealing with my husband’s oddities. It was just so much easier to add more burdens to my burdens than to help me with some of those burdens.
Now, I’m recovered for the most part but I have even less interest in getting involved. I changed churches during the time I was separating from my ex, so it’s not because I’m mad at that particular congregation. After all, it’s a new group of people who were not a part of my marriage or it’s demise.
Part of it is because I keep hearing so much about the evils of divorce in the sermons. I don’t know if it’s because I’m divorced so I’m more sensitive to it or if the tenor of the sermons have changed. Sometimes it can be difficult not to be hurt by something that I know the pastor doesn’t mean the way I am hearing it. I know he doesn’t mean to hurt those of us who are divorced because I have emailed the church about how my divorce was necessary due to the abuse and he preached a wonderful sermon on how love can mean saying “no” and leaving an abusive marriage.
Part of it is because I’m afraid to trust. I have spent 51 years in church. In all of those years church was a place to go to be beat up, even in churches that are well known for being caring and compassionate.
I am, in some ways, a PK. While my father was never a pastor, thank God!, my uncle started the church I grew up in and my parents were always hip deep in church stuff. When there was no pastor, I would hear my father preach. Dad was a deacon/elder, Sunday School superintendent, church treasurer, etc, etc, etc. My mom was just as busy with kids’ ministries and women’s ministries. For all intents and purposes, I’m a PK.
I don’t know one PK who doesn’t have the same feeling of fear of churches that I have. We’ve all been burned, often very badly, by churches and church people. I’ve healed from a lot of it. But, just as an adult child of an alcoholic tends to stay away from bars, I tend to stay away from churches. I know the damage they can do.
Next Saturday I have a social event planned so I won’t be at church then either. My parents would be appalled that I would put a party above going to church. They would insist that I attend a service on Sunday if I were going to skip Saturday. But Sunday morning I’m meeting with a friend to discuss our spiritual lives. To me, this seems like a more Christ-like thing to do than listen to a sermon.
There are wonderful things about attending my church on Saturday evening. For one thing it’s a much smaller crowd so you can find a place to park and to sit much more easily than Sunday morning. The sermons are always good. The music is excellent. I enjoy sitting there listening and singing. I’ve even brought friends to church with me. But I’m not willing to get involved more than that. Not right now. I’m not healed enough to be ready to get beat up again.
Thoughts on being bread
One of my favorite poems about God is “Bakerwoman God” by Alla Borzath Campbell. I’ve often wondered just why this particular poem speaks to me so loudly.
Maybe it’s because I understand the process of bread making. Not the throw everything in the machine and let it do all the work way. But where you proof the yeast and slowly, by hand, add each ingredient and mix it into the whole. I have kneaded the dough for 6 loaves of bread in one big batch. I’ve had bread refuse to rise. I’ve watched the miracle of a small mound of dough rise to a floury pouf then bake into a golden loaf of sweet, nourishing staff-of-life.
I relate to the entire concept of being both the dough and the bread maker. Somehow it hurts less when I realize that I’m sitting, feeling ignored by God, but actually I’m being carefully watched. Over-risen yeast makes poor quality bread. Bread makers watch that dough as it rises carefully, though the dough itself may not think so.
I don’t like the heat of the oven baking me. I don’t like that kind of attention. But it is a necessary part for the bread to be edible.
I want to be kneaded, risen, and baked by God. I want to be broken open and offered to others for consumption to feed their need for spiritual sustenance. I don’t want to be over-risen or under-risen or over-baked or under-baked. I don’t want to be plasticized and put on a shelf to be admired. I want to be a perfect loaf of bread, having endured the process of getting to that point, and used by God to bring health and hope to the Lord’s people.
That’s why I enjoy that poem so very much. It speaks of something I know and what I want. It explains when I’m hurting or feeling ignored. It explains when I’m feeling broken and consumed. It explains why the process continues over and over again. So God’s people can continue to be fed.
Ruth Holmquist
Posted on June 24, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)