Evangelicals get a bad rap.
And for good reason.
Any system that doesn’t make space for questions or that actively excludes others is not a system to be celebrated, but dismantled.

Six years ago I had a breakdown. It had been coming for a long, long time. I kept ignoring it, shoving it into the deep recesses of my mind, but it grew and grew and spread its tendrils to every nook and cranny like ivy overtaking a dilapidated house.

I could no longer live the way the church demanded. I was loud and opinionated and asked questions. I wasn’t cute or girly. And I loved theatre and books and poetry and words. I had zero interest in being told what to do and in not being the captain of my own ship.

I wanted to be in the very center of my life — to soak up every bit of it. I wanted depth and freedom and joy in abundance.

I wanted to kiss deeply and to be swallowed up by someone for the sheer joy of it.

I didn’t want to be married. I didn’t want to have children. and I recoiled at the notion of being submissive to a man.

I wanted all of this, but this is not how a good little Baptist girl lives.

For years I knew I was wrong — I had to be. God would never purposefully create a person to not belong. I prayed and pleaded for forgiveness. I so desperately wanted God to change me. I knew that God was disappointed in me.

But, change never came.
At least not in the ways that I expected or asked for. When the change never came, I prayed all the more. God just must not have heard me.

I pored over Scripture. I read theologians who supported and perpetuated the same theology that kept the yoke on my shoulders heavy and the chain around my neck tight. The light inside me that must’ve burned brightly at some point was now a pile of smoldering ash.

Men stood in their pulpits claiming authority in Scripture and over their churches. They shouted that God desires our repentance, that we were wicked above all things, that we drove the bloody nails into the innocent hands of Jesus. Jesus died because of us and demanded behavior modification and perfection.
Their voices became an echo chamber that tumbled around in a hollow den:
“You will never be good enough”
“God made you but wants to change every single thing about you”

Broken and spent from years of building my own prison cell and calling it faith, I ran to Scripture. I was willing to accept a life of submission and meekness if God ordained it. I would play the part of a quiet, unquestioning, inconsequential woman like so many women before me.

…but that is not what I found. I found a God who delights in every part of me because they made me. God flings the door wide and offers a seat at the table and says “Sit. Eat, drink, and rest”.

God is not walking one road while I stumble down another, just waiting to be rescued and yanked back to the right road. God is everywhere. Ahead of me. Beside me. Behind me. To my right and to my left.

God demands nothing from me.
God celebrates me, God doesn’t simply tolerate me.

Six years ago I could no longer reconcile the messages I was hearing with the words I was reading. Any theology that puts a boundary around God and a barrier between people and God’s love is wrong.

I removed the chains from my neck and stopped building the cell. Then I crawled back into the light.

The heavy yoke of shame was a parting gift, crafted from the hands of well meaning but terribly misguided people “in love”.
“You’re not called to ministry”
“You ask too many questions”
“Wear makeup”
“Dress cuter”
“We don’t talk like that”
“Girls don’t sit like that”
“No man will marry you if you do that”

Broken, weary, and alone, I forged a new path.

The smoldering ash of my soul would take years to light to flame again.
The yoke is taking time to dismantle, but the burden is no longer carried by me alone.

For years I carried this yoke alone. I buckled under its weight, but that was far more amenable to having others hurl more weight onto it by promising unconditional love, but on their terms.

Somewhere along the way we were fed a lie. The lie that if we were bound to each other by a shared belief in Jesus then we had the right and responsibility to share our opinions of how someone ought to live. We call it christian discipline, but for some people, it’s carte blanche to be a jerk.

I allowed too many voices tell me the truth of who I was. I was desperate to know that I was good and celebrated and delighted in without question or cause. I followed all the rules. I played the game. And I sat in horror as I watched the scaffolding fall. … The meticulous dismantling of the yoke of shame is painstaking and nowhere near complete. Some of the pieces have sat stagnant on my shoulders for so long it feels as though the pieces are embedded in my skin. These pieces cannot be extracted. They have to be replaced, partly by my own hands but partly by the gentle hands of others, with deep love and compassion. 

These shame roots run deep. They twist their way down into my core wrapping their cords around my spine. 
I searched for God for 28 years. In the church. In Bible college. In graduate school. In professional ministry. I saw glimpses, but I found God in January of 2015. 

It came as a well timed text from a friend that led me to a small couch in a lamp lit therapy office. 
I found God at the bottom of the rubble when my scaffolding fell. 
I found God at the communion table of the first church I cautiously came back to. 
I found God in game nights and unsolicited hugs from coworkers’ children. 
I found God in a coffee shop where a new friendship was just beginning. 
I found God in text messages and memes. At the end of a pew on Christmas Eve. 
I found God in honest conversations. 
On the stage. In poetry. Over tex mex. 
I found God in the middle of my tears and questions. 
I found God in hard goodbyes. 
I found God on a couch in Florida in September 4 years later.
I found God in the unconditional love of my people.
And I find God in the soft, gentle voice of a friend who speaks the truth of who I am back to me.

6 years ago I thought I had a breakdown. I was certainly broken and everything I had known had crashed down around me, but it opened my eyes and my heart and awakened me into a new way of being. 

The evangelical church gets a bad rap. Deservedly so. It’s fallible and perpetuates harmful and hurtful theology. 
It nearly took me from me. 
I will never stop fighting for a theology that is wide, and open, and celebratory. 
There is far too much at stake.