Weeping Season

I should warn you this post is about some of my confusions regarding Christianity especially in concerns to the topic of suffering. You might not find it interesting if a) you are not a Christian or b) if you are the kind of Christian that doesn't like to wrestle with your faith, but Ii would encourage you to read it anyways because I like hearing from people who disagree with me. I am not sure at what stage in my life we knew each other. That is actually one of the things I love about social media. I never know when someone I have not spoken to in years is going to engage with me again and I love nothing more than hearing different perspectives. So, just to make sure we are all on the same page let me catch you up real quick. These days I am calling myself a Christian again after years of saying I was agnostic although I am not a very good Christian. I still have a lot of questions about my faith and I sometimes feel that if you are a Christian with questions then people question if you are really a Christian, but I think honesty is really important. Having explained all of that let us get to the questions on my mind right now:

There is a Hillsong song - As You Find Me - that has this line in it "Your love is too good to leave me here."

Whenever I hear it at my Church, which is often, my brain breaks into chaos.

What in the figurative fire monkeys does that even mean?

Places where Christians can find themselves for very long periods of time despite being loved by God:

• Unable to pay bills
• Jobless
• In a really draining job
• Homeless
• Hungry
• Depressed
• Anxious
• Dealing with an addiction
• Dealing with an eating disorder
• Struggling with a different mental illness
• Sick
• Lonely
• Dealing with insomnia
• Grieving the loss of a loved one
• Dealing with really difficult conflict 

Christians LOVE to talk about how God will provide.

Even the Bible talks about this stuff.

Matthew 6:26-34

26 Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?[a] 28 And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. 34 “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

Matthew 7: 9-11

9 Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? 11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!

If the Bible says God will take care of us why are some people not being taken care of? The typical response to such questions is to talk about God's will and God's timing.

If you ask for something and you don't get it maybe it isn't his will, maybe he has something better for you, or maybe it is his will, but just not yet.

To the God's will point: what if the thing that someone is asking for is something that they were created to need like sleep, clean water, food, shelter, or community. Are you really trying to tell me that it is not God's will for needs to be fulfilled that HE CREATED. He could have built us as robots that do not need any fuel (emotional fuel like friendship or physical fuel like food) but he didn't.

To the God's timing point: it kind of makes sense to me. For example, back in the day before I fell in love I really disliked how people acted like single Christians should just be at peace as if they were not allowed to long for something else when the freaking beginning of the Bible says "18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”" (Genesis 2:18). However, despite the fact that I felt that I was designed to be in a relationship did not mean that it was the time at that point. So if you are created with a need that has not yet been fulfilled what should you do?

Philippians 4:6-7

6 do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

OK, great, but what about when it doesn't?

There are a few other bits of comfort that I have found in the bible, but they are not that helpful.

For one thing there is the whole go to heaven when we die stuff.

Revelation 21:1-4

21 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place[a] of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people,[b] and God himself will be with them as their God.[c] 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

However, I am 27 (almost 28) years old, and apparently the average life expectancy for a female in the United States is 81, which means, if Jesus does not come back soon, I may have to suffer for another 53 years before I go to heaven.

Then we have the idea that God is with us and also the idea that he will help us even if he does not remove a difficult situation.

Isaiah 41:10

fear not, for I am with you;
be not dismayed, for I am your God;
I will strengthen you, I will help you,
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

But if you can't tell that he is helping/ strengthening you and if you can't hear God's voice or understand the Bible very well (I won't be at all surprised if someone lets me know I have misunderstood all the verses I have quoted here I am a very stupid human being), then what comfort is it to know that God is with you especially if you have an unmet need as discussed above?

The only thing I have to cling to after all of this is the idea that maybe sometimes we just need to grieve.

I have been a part of 9 different churches over the course of 28 years spanning everything from Pentecostal to Calvinist and I have picked up this feeling that a lot of Christians really feel like they have some sort of holy obligation to be happy about everything. I don't really understand why. I mean sure, there are verses like Philippians 4:4 (which says: "4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.") which kind of suggest that we always need to be thankful and trust the Lord. Thankfulness I guess I get because even if nothing else has been given to me by God - which is not so as I have my health, my husband, and my mom just for starters - at the very least he has given me salvation. I will probably never understand why sin (something it doesn't even seem to be possible to not do if you are not Jesus since apparently everyone else has sinned - see Romans 3:23 "For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.") deserves to be punished with death (see Romans 6:23 "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord"), but I also would rather worship a God who makes no sense to me because he is bigger than my brain than one I made up so I could understand it even though my understanding of everything else is limited by my humanity. At any rate, I am thankful for the gift of salvation even though I wish Jesus did not have to die for it. However, my thankfulness is still not enough to make me feel capable of rejoicing in the midst of suffering and I don't understand why so many Christians act like it is not OK to admit that. Have you read Psalms? Are you aware of how dramatically sorrowful the author can get? I really relate to Psalm 25:16 it isn't the most dramatic, but in it the author talks about being lonely ("Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted") and loneliness is something I feel all the time.

In addition to the Psalms as proof that it is apparently OK to not put on a fake smile all the time there is also Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

3 For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
2 a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
3 a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4 a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5 a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6 a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
7 a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8 a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

I guess I am just in my weeping season. I have no clue when it will end or how exactly to weather these storms, but maybe there is a purpose to weeping. Have you seen "Inside Out"? It is one of my favourite movies. Maybe I am asking you a question about how to have peace in Christ, or maybe I am showing you that it is OK to grieve. I have no idea.

Thoughts on Self Care

Note: This is a blog I created a million years ago when everyone and their neighbour's chicken had a blog. I honestly do not remember too much about the other things on here. My guess is it is mostly angst filled attempts at poetic prose expressing my frustration with religion, so explore at your own risk because I am not technologically savvy enough to figure out how to hide all the  past posts, I am too lazy to save them all elsewhere, and do not really want to delete any that I disagree with or find embarrassing because it is like an archive of past me. I never kept journals because it felt so pointless to write if no one was going to read it, not that I had anything worthwhile to say, but anyways, I stopped writing because I got quite busy and blogs kind of stopped being a thing, but now I am super bored and lonely, I have all these thoughts in my head and I do not really have anyone to talk to about them, so here we are. 

The topics on my mind right now are burnout and self care. 

I believe base line self care is taking care of our basic needs. By this I mean eating contextually appropriate food*, drinking water, sleeping, exercising, and taking any needed medications.

I believe it is OK if you need to say no to something else to find time to do these things, even if that something else is helping someone. 

However, I do think we need to be careful that self care does not become an excuse to be selfish. 

I have discovered that almost everything in life is about balance. I need to be careful not to judge other people who are trying to figure this self care thing out. It is complicated. I think it is pretty easy to get out of balance. I do not know the full back story behind other people's actions and at the end of the day I just want everyone in the world to know peace. That said, I definitely sense a trend of self care that is really just selfishness. This is often tied to the self care that is just capitalism. Spas, baths, herbal tea, candles, face masks, yoga classes, and meditation apps on your phone are all products associated with self care. If these things help you find peace without costing you more time, money, and other resources than it makes sense to you for you to be spending, then OK, go ahead, have fun. However, I think we need to be cautious about three things. 

1. We should not want to be taken advantage of by companies that claim to be our tool to peace, but are really just taking advantage of our misery and receptiveness to buzzwords to take our money.

2.  We should not just swamp our to do lists with self care activities and stress ourselves out more that way. 

3. We should not stop caring about the least of these in our lives. 

On that last point I have some more to say, and again I really have to be careful not to judge because I do not know the full picture, but I can share what I see and hopefully it will get you thinking, I am probably wrong about everything, but how will I ever know that if you don't read my thoughts and set me straight? (That was not sarcasm, please set me straight!) I see some people who are like "butter scraped over too much bread" (thanks Tolkien) because they are trying so hard to be there for the people in their life. These are the people who may need to make sure they are eating, drinking water, sleeping, exercising, taking any needed medications, light a candle, go to a spa, have a bath, drink some herbal tea, put on a face mask, take a yoga class, meditate, pet a puppy, hang out with friends, or take up a fun hobby. However, there are some people who talk all the time about leaving toxic people behind (but in a way that makes me wonder if the people they are leaving are really toxic) and who seem to do all of the above activities all the time and never seem to care about anyone who is hurting. Honestly, it is entirely possible that I am just being judgmental, but if so I am not the only one. Heck, College Humor even created a video on this topic back in 2016 called "You Can Be Terrible if You Call It "Self-Care." I mean unpopular opinion, but I don't understand why so many people are worried about being taken advantage of. If you can give then why not do it? I worry that we are going towards a world where no one cares about anyone else and the only relationships allowed are those that are perfectly give and take meaning that people really struggling who do not have much to give will just get left behind. I do also worry for those who are actually falling apart because they are giving too much. However, at the end of the day only you can decide if you are doing too much or too little for the least of these. Only you can decide if you need more self care or not. I just ask that you put some thought into it.

The last thing that I have to say is that I think that some burnout is systemic making self care next to impossible. I believe some jobs are set up in ways that naturally break people down. In these cases, self care is actually an excuse to blame individuals for breaking down saying the work load is fine and they just aren't taking care of themselves when what is really needed is some big picture change.

If you actually read all of this I really hope that I did not hurt your feelings. I do not care if you like candles and face masks and leaving toxic people behind or if you like spreading yourself too thin. I may not understand it which means that I do not know what I should do which is why I need to process it in this matter, but I am not judging you. I just want you to find peace and I just want to find peace.

*I subscribe to the philosophy that there is no bad food or good food, because such labels can be harmful to those struggling with an eating disorder, however, I think it is important to listen to our body and give it what it needs which is what I mean by eating contextually.