Belief Part 5
Welcome to Part 5 of my post series where I am sharing about my experiences with belief and faith starting when I was young and ending with where I am today.
If you missed Part 1, you can read it here, click here for Part 2, here for Part 3, and here for part 4.
CW: If you have church, faith, or any kind of relationship trauma or abuse, please approach with caution, take breaks, or don’t read my posts at all.
Sometimes reading other people’s stories can help us heal and feel not-so-alone in our experiences, and other times we need to take a break from all the things that open us back up and bring the feeling back to the surface. Check in with yourself as you read. <3
If you’ve ever been married or engaged, you know there is no shortage of advice given to the betrothed. Whether it be during pre-marital counseling or from well-meaning folks who either are married or have previously been married, you can’t walk a few feet without someone sharing their two cents.
Me: “Hello, person! I am newly engaged and very happy! I am showing you my engagement ring now and I am making a very happy face. That sound you hear is me squealing with joy. Celebration time!”
Person: “You know, the first year of marriage is the hardest. At some point you’re both going to feel like you made a huge mistake. You might even feel like you hate each other sometimes. Just try and stick in there and you’ll be fine. Probably.”
But, you know what? They were wrong.
The first THREE years were hard.
I had moved from DC to WV, and then a few months later, moved from WV to FL to get married to a man I had only known for a total of about one year and had only seen in person about 5 times before I moved to FL to be with him.
To say we barely knew each other is quite an understatement.
T’s family was amazing and welcomed me into their family with open arms. T’s parents and sisters all lived within a few minutes drive from us at that time and we were able to easily see each other as often as we liked.
T’s church family also welcomed me with open arms. I was invited into the mix right away.
T knew the area we were living really well and took me around to all his favorite spots.
But that’s the thing. I was welcomed in by T and everyone else, but none of it was mine.
All of the people, places, and things were T’s and I had to find a way to fit into the life T had already established for himself.
I left all I knew behind.
The pressure to make it all work and fit for me was immense from all sides.
Several months after we got married, I left my job working for the plastic surgeon and got a much better job (or was it!?…more foreshadowing!) working as the relationship manager for the president of an international nonprofit ministry. And not long after that, one of T’s dreams came true and he was offered a full-time staff position at our church.
It was happening.
At our church, the first Sunday of every month the congregation met corporately in the church building, but on the other Sundays the congregation met in small groups, called home fellowships. Congregants were assigned to a local home fellowship which was a small group that gathered in people’s homes and was lead by various lay church leaders.
These home fellowship groups would change every so often in order to allow breaks for the host homes and also create opportunity for more people in the congregation to meet and connect.
When T first told me about this innovative hybrid church model I thought it sounded revolutionary, maybe even the answer to the issues I had been having in church thus far. I couldn’t wait to experience it for myself. It sounded like a great solution to being able to grow your church without sacrificing deeper personal connections and discipleship opportunities.
Something else that was fairly new to me was my new church’s supernatural healing ministries. They offered a ministry where anyone could come and get healed from any kind of physical or medical issue via the power of prayer. Another healing ministry they offered was more exclusive and in depth. This was another prayer ministry where you could get individualized, supernatural, God-lead emotional and spiritual healing from past and present traumas as well as receive supernatural, God-lead (read: unlicensed) counsel* for your life. (*they never said they were counselors or lead anyone to believe the counseling was coming from them. Any counsel given came through them from God.)
It was clear to me from the beginning that one of the core missions and visions for my new church was to establish themselves as a church where supernatural signs and wonders occur.
In short, they wanted to be the East Coast version of Bethel Church in Redding, CA.
Their focus on signs, wonders, and miracles attracted the young and supernatural-obsessed from all over the US and even the world.
At my first church in DC they believed in these kinds of supernatural, prophetic practices as well, so I was already familiar -if not a little skeptical- by the time I arrived.
Looking back from where I am now, I feel like the best way to describe these kinds of trendy, youth-heavy supernaturally-focused churches is to call them a more modern and palatable version of the pentecostal snake handling churches.
Similar flair for show and theatricals. Similar focus on miracles, signs, and wonders. And the same focus on faith above all else.
It’s just that with the more modern churches, they can chase the signs and wonders without having to risk getting bit.
One of the first things I was told when I started coming to church with T, by several different people in our church, was that I had a strong “prophetic gift”. Meaning, I could get visions or messages from God to share with people.
Charismatic spiritual practitioners believe these kinds of prophetic practices are edifying to the individual and the church body as a whole as prophetic communication with the Almighty is one of the ways, outside of the Bible, for God to guide us in the here and now.
After establishing myself alongside T as a Godly woman of integrity and love for Jesus, I was invited to join T in more and more aspects of ministry within the church.
T and I started going every month to a supernatural healing ministry where we would join other prayer leaders and invite people to come and receive supernatural healing in their bodies. Again, similar to the healing rooms at Bethel or IHOP*.
(*International House of Prayer. Yes they did. If Christians can figure out a way to remake Sam Smith and Kim Petra’s song “Unholy” into a Christian Bop version, then they can and WILL turn an acronym created by a pancake house into an acronym for a charismatic house of prayer. Don’t challenge Christians on their ability to Jesus-ify any dang thing. They will have already done it by the time you open your mouth.)
Anyway, back to the prayer ministry at our church.
The people would come in and we would lay our hands on them, pray, and declare them healed in the name of Jesus.
At the end of these events there would be a time of testimony where anyone who had gotten supernaturally healed or anyone who had supernaturally healed someone could testify to God’s goodness in front of everyone.
“I was praying for a man who came in with a limp. He said his legs were different lengths and this had caused him pain all his life. As I started to pray for him I felt my hands get warm. I looked down and his shorter leg had grown several inches to meet his other leg. I asked the man if he could see how it had grown or if he felt any different and he said he could. He told me his leg had grown and he was fine now! His whole life he had suffered and today he was healed. Praise GOD!”
"I came in today for healing because my eyes were bothering me. I was having trouble seeing. This young man laid his hands on me and started to pray for me and asking me over and over if my vision was improving. I kept telling him no. And then he looked at me and said ‘You thought you came here to get healing for the vision in your eyes. But the Lord has just told me that He brought you here today to get healing in your SPIRITUAL vision.’ And when he said that to me, I felt a weight lift off of me. I needed to see God more clearly than I needed to have healing in my vision. I am so thankful to see better in my spirit. God is faithful. Amen!”
Then one weekend, I was partnered with someone else while T was praying in another section of the church. This woman walked up to me and my prayer partner, leaned in really close, and said, “I am here to be healed from HIV. I saw your sign outside that you were offering physical healing prayers. I want to be healed of my HIV. I’ve been so sick lately and I can’t do it anymore. I need to be healed of this HIV.”
My prayer partner looked at me and I looked at him, and for a moment we didn’t say a thing. Because we knew. Part of us absolutely knew she wasn’t going to get healed of her HIV. And yet, another part of us -if we were being truly honest- wanted to be the people who God used to miraculously heal a woman of HIV.
We had been convinced we could.
I mean we wouldn’t take the credit or anything. To God be the Glory, yada yada yada.
But. Come on. God would only trust someone truly holy and righteous with just such a task, would God not?
And sure, there was another part of me that wanted to see God do it. I wanted to believe in miracles instead of just wishing for them to be real. All it would take was witnessing one true miracle and I would believe forever. Just one.
But in the end, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t pray for her healing from HIV.
Just as my prayer partner had laid his hand on her and had opened his mouth to pray, I stopped him and said, “Ma’am. I’m sorry. But we can’t heal you from your HIV. I don’t want you to get your hopes up and feel let down when it doesn’t happen. I don’t want you to feel rejected or ignored by God when you aren’t healed. God loves you and very much cares about your health. I am happy to pray for you in any other way, but I can’t, we can’t. We shouldn’t. I’m so sorry.”
She started to cry. My partner looked up at me; clearly upset at what I had said. He had a very “I’m going to be speaking with the manager about this” look on his face.
So he prayed for her healing from HIV. And as he prayed and declared her healing in Jesus’ name, I laid my hand on her and prayed inside my mind for her peace. I prayed for God to bring people into her life that could support and encourage her. I prayed she wouldn’t feel rejected or unseen by God when she wasn’t healed of HIV.
I prayed for her to know she wasn’t alone in her struggles.
And when he said “Amen” she looked at him and said, “I feel healed. I believe I am healed of HIV. Thank you for your faith, young man."
I never went back to that healing ministry ever again.
What happened at the healing ministry wasn’t the only issue I was having with my new church.
I was disappointed to find that all the problems and issues I had faced at the other churches prior had followed me to this one.
All I had to do was stay long enough.
One day, not long after T had started working at the church full time, I wrote a FB post in support of gay couples adopting children. Our church had lots of couples who had adopted children and we had recently had sermons focused on the Christian’s call to adopt.
Within a few hours of my post, where all I did was share a video from an adopted adult testifying in support of legalizing gay couples right to adopt, T was contacted by the pastor of our church and others about my post.
They were surprised and upset by my post and stance.
I was surprised by their surprise. (Or was I!?)
No one reached out to me directly about it, of course.
They all contacted my husband instead.
And the message they had for T was clear: “You are a church leader now. You need to get your wife in line.”
I worked for a ministry full time and T worked at our church full time.
Church wasn’t just a huge part of our lives. Church was our lives. Our bread and butter. Our friend group.
All of our everything.
By the time I got pregnant shortly after our first wedding anniversary, one of T’s goals had been realized. He was not only on staff at our church, but he had also become a home fellowship leader for the first time.
T and I were both still bloggers at this time and we were both very active on social media. I was sharing all I was learning from the Christian leaders who were inspiring and informing me the most. The people who I felt were similar to me in their love of God but also in their discontentment with unhealthy church culture.
But the leadership and some others at our church didn’t meld as well with Rachel Held Evans, Glennon, Preston Yancey, and Matthew Paul Turner as I did.
They didn’t like what I was believing. They didn’t like what I was sharing.
I wasn’t getting in line.
I tried to sit beside T like a good little pastor’s wife like everyone expected from us while he lead our home fellowship, but he wasn’t a pastor and I wasn’t a pastor’s wife.
This wasn’t the life I had envisioned or signed up for. My ideas about the kind of ministry I wanted for me and T had zero “pastor’s wife” vibes and zero leadership hierarchy between the two of us. We would lead together equally, not one lead and the other pass out the cookies and hold everyone’s babies.
One day T and I were told we were assigned to serve in the children’s church. I had worked with older kids when I did youth ministry with my brother, but all of those kids were potty trained. I tried to tell them I would prefer to be assigned somewhere, anywhere, else, but it was mandatory.
The day we showed up, they assigned us to the baby and toddler room.
I nearly panicked.
As the assignments were being given I spoke up and said I couldn’t be in the baby and toddler room. I admitted I had never changed a diaper and was uncomfortable being put in there because I wasn't prepared.
I was standing in a room with all the leaders. And everyone started laughing at me. Like, for a long time. Big belly laughs.
“But you’re PREGNANT! What do you mean you don’t want to work with the babies?! You’re getting ready to HAVE ONE! Omg! You’ll be fine.”
T had never changed a diaper before either, but no one was laughing at him. But in all fairness, he was fine going to the baby and toddler room and wasn’t nearly panicking about it like I was.
I know this little event may seem like a small thing, but I was mortified, embarrassed, and ashamed. I felt like a little kid being called out in front of the whole class in school.
I wanted to run away and cry in the bathroom.
The reason this wasn’t a small thing for me, was because it felt like one more way I didn’t measure up as a woman, wife, church person, or future mom in the eyes of my fellow Christians.
And so to the baby and toddler room we went.
The one person who didn’t laugh at me, S, walked up to me and kindly said she was assigning herself to the same room as me and T. She talked to me in calming words and promised she would be right by my side to help me if I needed it or even change all the diapers herself.
People came in droves handing us their tiniest, most delicate baby humans and walking away without giving any instructions at all. I was flabbergasted. All the babies and children were crying at the same time and none of them could tell us what they needed.
The noise level was unbearable.
All of us survived, but I left church that day feeling absolutely CERTAIN I was never going to make it as a mother and I carried that feeling with me for many years. I was so panicked about motherhood after that that I had a panic attack when T and I went to our baby and me classes together.
It’s amazing what a little laughing can do to someone’s psyche.
The further along in my pregnancy I got the more I couldn’t abide in these spaces that were trying to make me assimilate. But even more than that, I couldn’t sit in the church one more moment and hear unnecessarily complicated sermons, witness anymore harmful, bullshit supposedly-supernatural healings or happenings, or be told by one more person that I needed to start using this amazing essential oil they sold for a million dollars a bottle or try this new diet all the church ladies were doing.
I had tried. I even wanted to assimilate.
I didn’t want to crush my new husband’s dreams. I didn’t want to disappoint anyone.
And yet, here I was. Disappointing him.
T was confused and hurt when I told him I couldn’t come to home fellowship anymore. The home fellowship he was leading. His dream.
I told him I had tried so hard to make his church and his church friends and his already established life work for me, but I just couldn’t do it. I confessed how panicked I felt having to go to church or home fellowship.
I tried to explain the things I had heard, seen, or experienced. I tried to tell him the things that were happenings that made me feel uncomfortable.
He listened. And he wanted to understand. He wanted to support me.
He loved me.
But he also loved his church and just plain didn’t see what I was seeing.
His experiences weren’t the same as mine. He didn’t understand.
“Everyone loves you,” he would say.
Everyone loves the version of me that doesn’t make them have to examine their beliefs.
Everyone loves the version of me that stopped sharing her opinions on gay marriage and abortion and any other thing that pushes up against what they feel is the only right way to believe in God.
But I couldn’t do it anymore. I knew it was going to disappoint and hurt a lot of people, and possibly even be the end of my marriage, but I wasn’t willing to make myself into someone I wasn’t or be small or less in order to fit in at church when I knew full well that God wasn’t asking it of me.
Looking back I feel like if anything supernatural and unexplainable was going on it was me harnessing some of the bravery to stand up for myself from that little life growing inside me.
Now that I have had 9 years to know my wonderful Izzy and see his bravery and tenacity in advocating for himself and others, and I can’t help but muse that I somehow imbibed some of his bigger than life determination and courage while he was growing in my womb just when I needed it most.
I was advocating for myself, yes. But I was also advocating for Izzy. I didn’t want to raise my child in an institution that would squeeze the fire and individuality out of him like it was trying to do to me and so many others. I didn’t want anyone to have to be a part of a group that required assimilation for acceptance. I didn’t want my kids growing up and hearing that being LGBTQ was a sin or that women shouldn’t have control of their own bodies.
But the trouble was only beginning for me…and for T.
Stay tuned for Part 6! I know there are a lot of parts, but I have a lot to share. The best is yet to come! Thank you for coming along.