A brief note to you, dear reader, before we start this journey,
The unraveling of Christianity as I knew it began in the depths of mental health struggles, spiraled out of recognizable form in the midst of my role as a Kids Ministry leader at our small church that I love, and resolved itself in the experience of epilepsy in my child.
This piece, starting at the beginning of the unravel, contains strong images of intrusive thoughts in motherhood that may be difficult or possibly triggering for some. My original intention for sharing my writing is to possibly hold the hand of someone in their struggle with God, like the stories of others did for me. If only long enough to catch their breath. So this was me, feeling like I was under water, too weighted with anger and fear to catch a fresh breath of air, and so began my swim towards the sunlight beckoning me at the surface. You are welcome to join me for my story of resurrected faith.
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“Picturing God must precede any speaking about God, for our pictures accompany all our words and they continue long after we fall silent before God. Images - the language of the psyche- are the coin of life; they touch our emotions as well as our thoughts; they reach down into our bodies as well as toward our ideas. They arrive unbidden, startling, after our many years of effort to craft them.” Ann Belford Ulanov Picturing God
While excitedly awaiting the arrival of our third, I would drive around listening to “There’s no place I’d rather be”. Trying to convince myself of that and believing it just the same. Burgeoning at the belly, ecstatic at the possibility of meeting this buddy, and terrified at what my body needed to move through for our first face to face meeting.
This pregnancy was filled with fun and joy. Perhaps it was the knowing this was the last time my body would feel the closeness of a growing fresh human inside of me, last time feeling her gifts of reassurance through kicks, and those epic giant roll over moments when baby completely shifts from one side to the other, making her presence known to those around me as she did. Stretching my skin, wiggle by wiggle, to lovingly make space for growth.
On the night of this birth, I had lifted dense little brother into his crib, and either peed a little or water was breaking. Both logical, but the latter was true. The moon was full, and hospitals matched that capacity. We were detoured to a small hospital just slightly farther from our house. Stained glass windows, and crosses greeted us at every turn. Given my chill focus and joy, the nurse questioned the status of labor, but the glance I gave Andrew convinced him otherwise. We knew our miracle made in the laundry room was on its way. That may or may not be true. It also may or may not be true that I want to make sure you’re awake, as I can feel this may be a little dry, but it’s headed somewhere. Family/family friends, that was of course a joke, and I will try my darndest to not tell jokes of that nature going forward. I actually probably will. Either way, moving on.
The birthing room was warm, candlelit and the bath took up a large portion of space in the center. The midwife was new to me and knitting in the corner. Yes, yes, you heard that right. I protested that decision by hiding out and yelling profanities in the corner of the bathroom.
Rewind to the moment, the pregnancy stick gave me two lines, the wheels started turning in our minds, of who this baby will be. What will we call her and how will he respond? What will her energy be like and who will he look like? Days of dreaming of what her face will look like. Hypothesizing and expanding through any clues we could gather from the ultrasound.
When Miles was on his way to us, the knitting midwife in the corner had a cold, so while I was in the bath, she kept close watchful tabs on me. However, when baby decided it was time for him to make his full and complete entrance, she passed the baton to me. “Okay, baby is coming”, she murmured, “reach down and grab your baby”. With disbelief, and zero preparation for that invitation, I declined, then with one more beckon coupled with my terror of germs, I obliged and stepped into an incredible gift. While on all fours in the water, Andrew bowed at my head, without thinking any further, reached through my legs and could feel in full dimension, all of my baby’s realness. Baby’s warmth and skin in my hands. I pulled baby toward me and we euphorically stared face to face at one another. Soaking in our realness, already knowing him intimately, and yet meeting for the first time.
When baby was in me, I could feel his essence growing in my womb, influencing my decisions. I could feel his growing presence, but now I could see. And this seeing was the beginning of a new leg of our journey together.
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Beatific vision is the idea that we only will receive the complete vision of God in heaven after we die. The contemplation of God in his heavenly glory. When the journey of our earthly life is complete, God opens the divine mystery to us. For now, we only know a part, and then we will know fully. I wonder if, like when we see our children for the first time face to face, if getting to know God on a deeper level continues to take place in heaven as well, like a continued deeper kind of knowing.
I started having this craving for God's face before I knew it was a thing. Isn’t that how learning so often goes? Ideas are whispered through longing. Seeds are planted. Lessons are experienced, shifting our insides, instincts and thoughts, creating space for new information, and then the cementation of learning. The learning through finally receiving the language to the lesson you have known all along.
My journey with seeking the face of my Creator began after my third kiddo was born. I wouldn’t know it yet, but this was also the time that I began the deconstruction of my Christian faith. The yellings of my mind were louder than ever. I was so happy and content and living my dream, and also, so much of the time my mind would simply not let up. The old girl relentlessly reminded me of dangers. My therapist that I adore, reminded me that anxiety is not a bad thing in and of itself. It comes with having instincts, it helps us and our loved ones survive. We can look at anxiety as information, and that it's mostly what we choose to do with that information that is important. But that took a while for the learning to take root, and for me, especially in the early days of being a new mom of three, it was almost as if this information on how to keep my kids safe had taken over my body and mind, and the anxiety at times swallowed me whole. The lack of sleep, with all of this compounding information on how to care for them took over and rather quickly, I became someone I no longer recognized. This began an unraveling in me, an unraveling of how I understood and saw myself, and also how I saw God.
Most of my life, growing up, I felt good about my ability to function in a crowd of people. To listen to others, to woo, to tell a captivating story or let someone else feel captivating. Felt comfortable in that space and being that person.
As I became a mom, in my early 20’s, with each child I birthed, it felt as if I gave them a piece of myself. A part of my brain to be exact. It was as if, one part of me is here, another here, yet another there. So after three kids, let’s call it ¼ of a brain that I am working with in any given social situation. With this new found way of socializing, came with it some anxiety and uncertainty. About myself and my kids. For me, it was mostly about their safety and well-being.
My mind would not rest from showing me the scary possibilities that surrounded me. Walking past the knives in the kitchen, turned into the flashing of terrifying mental images that threatened my safety. Along with that, the old girl also kept telling me about the children without parents. The ones that had left earth too early, and the ones that were under oppression or being abused. I was a lot of fun to be around. My struggle, so modest compared to most, and yet the world was so heavy then. Fears sat as sandbags in my face and gut. While my mind was heavy, I swear my children and I still giggled and played constantly. We let the dishes pile high, so we could soak in extra snuggles. Those angels were my saving grace.
The main place my mind was calm was rocking or nursing my littles. Singing, holding them tight, holding them dear, holding them safe. The world outside of my home, became something that triggered a racing mind instead of something to relish. I was in mental anguish and frustrated that my beloved babies might have to feel me under the weight of this heaviness I was carrying, and what on some days felt like a perpetual fight to get out of sadness. My mind hurt, my gut yelled at me in pain. I was beyond a state of tired and had been forcing myself to take steps through the haze. This particular afternoon, I had lost my patience with one of my kids, or was it that someone was not going down for a nap, when my brain was asking desperately to take one. The details are unclear, but the truth that is still in my bones is that, more than just being tired, the heaviness of needing help made me collapse to my knees, grasping my side in pain. I couldn’t let go of control enough to receive what I needed. Even when I did receive help, it was all still too much. The needs and pain of the world creating a fog in my mind. Somehow, the prayerfulness and the steps I was taking for connection were not cutting it. I got to the bottom of the stairs and yelled up to God- “Why would you let your daughter hurt like this?! What is going to save me now?” Then, a vivid image of God - a faceless figure that felt strong, loving, and well intentioned, reached under my arms while bent at the elbows, scooped me up and, almost effortlessly, set me on a high rock. A beautiful one with lovely, peaceful views, some forms of green and lavender.
“I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; He set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.” Psalm 40:1-3
Not long after that, my brother and I were together at my house. He is a beloved Bible teacher at a nearby high school and well studied in the Old Testament. We were hanging out as a family and he happened to be the last one to leave that night. He was just about to get in his car, but almost as a plea before he left, like it had been needing to be questioned from my soul the whole time, I asked him something to the effect of “Joe, I just cannot justify for God...all of the crap in the world. The children diagnosed with and dying of cancer, the suicides, the tragedies, people dying too soon and unjustly, all of the unbearable pain...if God is truly in control, how can this make sense?”
My mind swarmed with the sayings so often thrown around by common Christian culture in the midst of heartache and struggle. God’s plans are bigger than my plans, let go and let God and God is in control. Don’t get me wrong, I wholeheartedly believe and know God brings holiness out of the shit, and if this brings you comfort, my deepest fear is to steer someone in the wrong direction. But for me, and maybe others, when I felt in the thick of the muck and the struggle, the saying God is in control felt a lot more like abandonment than it did comfort. If He is in control, and I am in pain, why do I not feel Him with me? Where is His presence?
While asking this from my heart, felt a lot more like pleading, because in this question too was my own pain, depression, this foreboding joy and fear of losing my healthy kids, and new found uncertainty in social situations. He tenderly looked over his car door at me, and with certainty said, “Kate, God doesn’t have his hand on the trigger.”
Something about that felt jarring, and yet peaceful. The words gently shifted a mindset within me and inspired a deeper reflection and beautiful journey on how I view God.
So if God’s hand is not on the trigger, maybe he was the one scooping me up, placing me on solid ground. Maybe God is on the side of healing, resurrection and life.
I didn’t know it then, but this is when the unraveling of my Christianity as I knew it began. I grew up loving and adoring my God and friend. Despite protesting confirmation classes, and being the only sibling to not move through the family tradition, because in my mind ‘I had God in my heart and didn’t need classes to prove it’, we still met on the regular. (The irony being that now I love soaking in as much theology and writing about God as I can muster, and have a thing for a good liturgy.) God and I had spent time together in my journals since I was a little girl. We had known each other for a long time now.
The circumstances of the world felt too out of control and wrapped in despair for the idea of God being in control to make sense. If God is in control and so many are in such pain, what does that say about the character of God? My God and friend? I knew I needed to see, face to face, who is in charge of this mess. My faith had been forming a love of God’s presence inside of me for a long time now, and life’s circumstances felt an awful lot like birthing pains, it felt like time to meet my maker. While still on this earth.
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“You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.” John 16:20-22