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New Beginnings


First, Happy Easter to all of you who celebrate Easter.

It is that Sunday and, as predicted, the egg and basket hunt took all of ten minutes and now we clean this grubby family up and head to church. For the record, my kids are wearing athletic apparel because Jesus doesn't care what they wear to church and I got no fight in me today. I grew up in a great church where the attendees probably qualify as family and everyone had an unofficial assigned seat. Ours was about six rows from the front, left side, every Sunday. I was raised to church.

As I logged more years, I struggled to believe what I was taught and what everyone around me seemed to believe so hard. Let's be honest, the Bible stories are a little far fetched and yet bazillions of people are all in, on fire for Jesus. I had so many questions and I fought the mainstream hard on it. I even fought it at the Lutheran college I attended. I fought it when I had a professor who was a Doctor of Religion and a Doctor of Psychology and he believed it. And this will come as no surprise, the nail in the coffin was the time I walked into the Wednesday chapel service and Chapel Girl (the one who greets everyone with a Jesus fueled hug of pure religious joy because she attends every thing she can) walked up to me and said, "Wow! You're here! We haven't seen you for a looooooooooong time." I looked her and said, "Actually I just stopped on my way to Joe's (the bar). I'm not staying." To be fair, I can be a little stubborn and Chapel Girl was NOT going to tell me what to do. But for someone who already struggled, this was not exactly the greeting that was going to bring me closer to God.

From 1997 (the year of the Chapel Girl incident) until now, I have made on-and-off efforts to try and connect with what I "was missing." Maybe if I just stop asking questions and tell myself to believe all of it, it will happen for me. A sort of fake-it-til-you-make-it mentality. But that didn't work. I maintained my holidays and a few odd Sundays status. Even today I am not sure about all of it. It all seems like a stretch. So in my head I say to myself, hmmm...the pages of that book seem a little fishy (no pun intended there) to me...but all of these really smart people believe it so maybe I should too.

And then this happened.

I joined a gym. Stay with me here people. Lots and lots of the people at that gym go to the MegaChurch. I really like the people who go to the MegaChurch. They are not the stereotype I created for people who go to MegaChurches. Would I like the MegaChurch?

Last Easter I wanted to try out the MegaChurch because I wanted to take my kids to church on Easter. With heart palpitations and sweaty palms we followed the traffic - and I mean TRAFFIC - and filed in. We were greeted immediately but no one said, "Wow! You're here! We haven't seen you for a looooooooooong time." They just welcomed us and pointed us in the right direction. There is a band and lights and sometimes a fog machine and screens and lasers and all of it. All of the things I thought had nothing at all to do with Jesus or church or the Bible. All of the things that I fought so hard.

But here is the thing about my MegaChurch which is now my church and has a name (Browns Bridge). Every single time I have been to Browns Bridge Church, there is a message that INCLUDES people like me who don't know what they believe and what they don't believe. It INCLUDES the "unchurched" and the non-Christians. It INCLUDES the weary and the tired and the strugglers. Every single Sunday there is a message for the people who Jesus brought in. And there is also the band and the lasers so that's cool.

They say Easter is a time for new beginnings and, for me, this new church beginning is about letting go of the struggle and letting in something that feels comfortable to me. I go, I sing so loud my throat hurts, I listen to the message/pep talk for me and all of my struggler friends, and I leave feeling happy. And maybe what God/The Universe/Whatever you want to call it wants from me is to just take that feeling and spread it out a little bit. Maybe its ok if I am not "on fire for Jesus," but more of a back row dweller (literally that's where we sit with our friends) and a feeling spreader.

Sometimes new beginnings take the most ironic form...for me it was something I fought really, really hard and yet, here it is. So happy Easter. Happy New Beginnings.

Comments

  1. jjwinogradApril 16, 2017 at 12:17 PM

    Brownsbridge rules I agree. I always walk away with something positive to think about and don't feel like a bad person when I leave there haha. Great read Jessie thanks for sharing.

    ReplyDelete

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