Women of Faith?

My pastor, Ryan, asked me if I'd be willing to speak for a few minutes in church about a woman who had helped shape my faith. I told him I'd think about it and get back with him.

Looking back, the first and most obvious choice would be my mother. She has always been a devout follower of Christ. She reads and rereads scripture like she's poring over an intimate letter from a dear friend. She finds such encouragement and hope from her faith, and it shows. My mom's spiritual gift is... hand-written cards? She sends cards to people who are sick, who are celebrating, or who might just have crossed her mind on any given day. She is an encourager. She wants very much to please God.

One time, we had been in a bookstore and as we made our way through the parking lot, Mom said, "Did you hear that girl crying?" I hadn't. Mom had asked her what was wrong, and had gotten the girl's whole life story in the end. This struck me and made me more intentional about noticing other people who might be hurting. I've now approached numerous strangers, awkwardly asking, "Do you need anything?" with no idea where to go from there. But I've never regretted it.

Yes, my mom was the earliest and most earnest example of faith in my life. And it might not be the case, but being "good" always seemed to come easy for her, as though she didn't experience many of the temptations that mere mortals like I did. So, in a way, that faith also seemed inaccessible at times. In fact, my sister and I used to quote a friend of mom's, just to annoy her, who called her "God's perfect person."

So, upon further rumination, I realized that there is one woman who shaped my faith as it is today even more than my mom did...

She was Billie, the pastor's wife where I attended church and served in various positions of lay leadership for the better part of a decade. We weren't close, but when it became clear that I was divorcing my husband of thirteen years, she was called in to "counsel" me against pursuing the separation.

She said many things that day with which I took issue, but two things she said forever changed how I would look at what I believe:

1) "Well, he's not hitting you and he's not cheating on you, so you're pretty much stuck."
2) "... And, you know, life kind of sucks, anyway, so..."

"You're stuck, and life sucks."

As it says in John 10:10: "I have come that they might have life... which pretty much sucks."

This well-meaning woman was feeding me propaganda from centuries of fundamentalist patriarchy: The one and only way for you, a woman, to bring glory to God is to surrender to an untenable situation. The end.

The thing is, for all of the problems I had with my church during this time, I never doubted that the hand of God was on it. I believed that he had a way for my child and me to enter into a more full existence. And I was right.

But because of Billie, I was able to see something in stark daylight that had never occurred to me before: I could not be part of any faith that discounts someone's pain or truth and tells them the only way to please God is to continue to allow themselves to be hurt or marginalized or discounted.

I would never have someone look back on a conversation with me and call it "spiritual abuse."

I wanted to love, genuinely, on behalf of God. If a religion told me to do otherwise, it was not the worship of the God I believed in.

I'd rather have the faith of... well, here we are: back at my mother.

We do not agree on the letter of the law when it comes to what God says, but I do know that my mom's faith informs her desire to see people who are hurt, to hear their stories without judgement, and to try, in whatever way she can, to shoulder some of their burdens.

She believes it's possible to achieve what Romans 15:13 says: "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit." And so do I.