I Am Tired

I've known a certain lovely woman for the better part of her life, since she was a rather wild teenager in a very staid Christian family. B was always considered a "problem". Raised by a depressive father and a mother who was an uptight enabler, B --though very bright-- didn't get much attention by being a good girl, so she wasn't one.
I've helped walk B through her first disastrous boyfriend and through an only slightly less disastrous marriage (or was it two?). I've heard her say, in varying forms, the same things all her life. I've seen her ups and downs, her stable times and her flip-outs. I've always loved her, though she can be difficult. And I rejoiced when she remarried.
All her life, she claimed what she really wanted was just to be married to a decent Christian man, live in a certain part of our city and raise children. That's the life she has, for the past 10+ years, been living. And now she imagines that she'd be happier as a single mom of young children, chasing after a fantasy relationship that is highly unlikely to happen at all.
I hear from a mutual friend she wants my advice about it -- again (we have discussed it and I gave her my opinion, which hasn't changed). And when I saw her name on my cell phone, I instinctively didn't answer.
I confess, love her as I may, I just don't want to talk to her right now.

I have found over my many years of pastoral ministry that people will do what they want to do if they want to do it hard enough; and nothing you or I say about it, however wise and inspired it may be, will make a shred of difference. This is B's life, not mine. Unfortunately, her decisions also strongly affect the lives of her husband and 3 young children, but I have already given her my opinion on that. What she is considering is, in my opinion, a selfish act hurtful to everyone who loves and trusts her, and most especially to her children. But that is, however I believe it to be true, only my opinion, and has no binding effect on her choices.
Every parent knows: you don't have to approve of someone's choices in order to love them. You may grieve at what they choose, but sometimes all you can do is wait for it to fail and be there when they need you in the shards of their life. I regret that I won't be here to walk B through the consequences of her latest poor choice (yes, I have judged it as being a poor choice, but I still affirm her right to make it).
I watched my former husband make choice after choice after choice which reflected what his heart really wanted, irregardless of what his mouth was saying or what he thought he believed was right. The only warnings he responded to were those regarding how his actions looked, which (I had to conclude) was what he genuinely cared about. But in the end, against the warnings and advice of every single person he consulted with about it, he made his choices (thus freeing me to make mine, which I do not at all regret).

I mention that to emphasize that the reason I don't want to engage with B about this any longer is that I sense her mind, too, is already made up. And
I AM TIRED
of making judgements on other people's decisions.
I AM TIRED
of being expected to, as a "Christian leader", carry a certain responsibility for what others choose to do with their lives.
I AM TIRED
of the CAWKI expectation that I should use guilt, shame and condemnation as "weapons of righteousness", bludgeoning someone into doing "the right thing" when their heart is simply not in it. (How can that last? And if God looks on the heart, WTF are we doing trying to con him?!)
Now, I'm certainly not against people genuinely choosing of their own free will to do what they believe is right rather than what they want to do in the moment. And sometimes they need an outside perspective to reach such a decision. This is how society stays stable and how personal maturity is won. But I am against joining with the Accuser of the Brethren and expecting his tools to do God's job. If it is really sin, only Holy Spirit can genuinely convict the heart, anyway. And if it's just my scruples, what business do I have inflicting them on you?

I can hear the voices now: Oooh, you've gone soft on sin! This is what happens when you over-emphasize love and grace, you lose sight of God's holiness and righteousness and the REALITY OF HELL!!
Well, I've stated before I'm not at all convinced the Bible teaches that the default setting for all of humanity which does not belong to a small portion of the world's population who has "prayed the prayer" is hell (a fairly modern concept). And the more I learn from people who have spent their lives studying this, and not just gone to Bible school like I did, the less I can buy that.
Soft on sin? Well, if Jesus is my example, he could certainly be accused of being soft on sin.
I'm not soft on my sin, which is the only sin for which I am responsible. I just no longer believe it's part of my job to monitor yours.
Mark Lowry says it well: “Love the sinner, hate the sin? How about: Love the sinner, hate your own sin! I don’t have time to hate your sin. There are too many of you! Hating my sin is a full-time job… How about you hate your sin, I’ll hate my sin and let’s just love each other!”
"I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” —Jesus, in John 13:34-35
That is what we are to be known by. Not by our "righteous standards of living". Not by our hatred of sin. Not by our disassociating from those we consider sinners. Not by trumpeting abroad what we believe to be wrong. But by loving, a more powerful voice than any of the above, and certainly a more attractive one. Why was Jesus a welcome guest among tax collectors, prostitutes and other sinners of his day (and, conversely, why so abhorred by the religious establishment)? Because he loved them, and not just in principle; they saw it, felt it, experienced that he treated them --as he treats all of us-- with respect, honor, understanding and affection, not with condemnation.
And he still does. So who am I to do differently?
I'm not saying I'm there yet, or even anywhere close to it. But I'd like to get there, and I can't see wasting my time and effort on anything else.

And that's… about all I have to say about that, at this moment.

Full Circle

My ex is re-marrying (finally) in May.
I found out about it on facebook; his fiancée announced it subtly. Then I checked with my kids, who confirmed it. Then I got an email from P himself, informing me personally (and explaining why he wouldn't be inviting us, giving much the same reasons I'd had for not inviting him to mine).
Several people have asked me, "How does that make you feel?" and my response has been "It's a relief, actually; he's finally doing what he left me and his old life in order to do." It really does feel like a kind of closure. And I'm glad it will occur before I leave Austria. P has chosen to live out his life here, and I choose it elsewhere. Close this book and start a new one.

In a strange twist of fate, my ex is getting married in Graz (ironically, in the same hall A & I used!) on the very same day my spiritual advisor is getting married in California: one man who drove me crazy and another man who kept me sane. In the last months of my marriage to P, D was the one to whom I could pour out my heart, bring my questions and doubts, frustrations and fears. I was continually describing the situation, asking "Am I crazy?" and he continually affirmed no, you are not crazy. Yes, what you are experiencing and how you interpret it is true, although it is only part of the truth. Yes, no matter the outcome, you will survive, and even thrive.
I really don't know how I would have survived, though, without his life-giving advice, prayers, friendship and mentoring throughout the toughest period of my life. Thank you, D, with all my heart.

I have known D maybe 12 years now. I met him within 6 months of his first wife's death by cancer. Whenever he's visited over the years, we've had rich times together. D is a deeply spiritual man without losing any of his masculinity; sort of a long and lean Christian Marlboro Man. He has great wisdom and much experience, coupled with a good sense of humor and proportion. (Plus, he is always ready for a good glass of red wine!) In other words, he is precisely what I needed in crisis. And he was the only one A & I could imagine officiating at our own marriage ceremony.

So here we have come full circle: D has been an essential part of my New Start, and now I get to share in his. No, we won't be going to CA for the wedding, but he and his new wife B will be traveling to Paris for their honeymoon (B is, not to put too fine a point on it, loaded) and there, they will hold a reception A and I will definitely attend.
Paris in the spring? You bet! I have friends who have nagged me for some time to come to Paris and visit so I think housing will be affordable. It will likely be our only holiday to speak of this year, since our energy and money will go into moving to another country.

And I see a kindness of God in all this, too. In case the thought of my ex marrying the young woman he left our marriage for should ever twinge a bit, I now have something else to remember on that very date, something I can unreservedly celebrate and be glad in.

I genuinely wish them all joy in their new lives together.

In Good Faith

In processing all has has occurred in and around my life in the past several years, I've been thinking lately about the term "in good faith". What is normally understood by the phrase is "honesty; a sincere intention to deal fairly with others". As defined in legal dictionaries, "good faith is an abstract and comprehensive term that encompasses a sincere belief or motive without any malice or the desire to defraud others. It derives from the translation of the Latin term bona fide and courts use the two terms interchangeably."
One legal dictionary was particularly helpful to me in that it added:
"Effort made, information given, or transaction done, honestly and without a deliberate intention to defraud the other party. However, good faith does not necessarily mean 'without negligence'." (Italics mine.)

What am I understanding through this, that I did not see before?

One of the enduring pains of the breakup of my first marriage and the lack of understanding or support by my local church, was how almost all people instinctively leapt to P's defense, believing he was acting in good faith. Sometimes I felt that in their minds, good faith excused almost anything, including directly contradictory behavior. And I realize now that part of the reason I was seen as the baddie in all this is that I had stopped believing in P's "good faith" years before, at least in regard to me and to our relationship. So in their minds, I was acting in bad faith by not supporting what they saw as P's good faith in seeking counseling, which I knew he only entered after he realized he was in love with someone else. In other words, to my mind, I was never worth that effort, but she was.
P does have a way of being apparently completely open and honest in the moment, which is admittedly very disarming and appealing and for heaven's sake, you want to believe him. I did for many years. In that moment, as far as he is aware, he IS being honest. There's just a whole lot going on under the surface that will most likely torpedo that good intention as soon as it touches certain core issues. The problem in our marriage was that these fleeting revelations P genuinely had never translated into habitual supporting actions, in fact, often quite the reverse; and when one challenged that fact, one was somehow made to feel one had misinterpreted everything which had gone before. Not even written accounts of previous conversations or agreements could shake his viewpoint.

How can one continue to believe in the good faith of someone who can genuinely believe his re-write of history to his own advantage?

Since reading the book "Why Does He DO That?", I've gained a much greater understanding of P's protective, narcissistic mindset, the fruits of which I had experienced for years but the cause of which I had not been able/willing to identify. Years of painful experience, including attempts at counseling, had continually confirmed that when push came to shove, P seemed constitutionally unable (and certainly unwilling) to place anyone or anything, but most especially me and my needs, above his overriding felt need to protect himself. (This wouldn't have been so bad but for his retaliatory lashing out and making this fact my problem.)
But because I genuinely believed marriage was for life, and so much of our marriage did work, and we had a good family life, eventually I concluded he had an emotional disability I just had to live with; so I adjusted my hopes way downward, stopped challenging him, and tried to simply keep the peace at my own expense. That sounds so martyrdomish, but I really didn't experience it that way, and it was not particularly noble. I figured it this way: if he were a paraplegic, we would find ways to work around it; so if he is crippled emotionally (and the more I found out about his childhood, the more I understood that!), even if he couldn't see or admit he was the problem, I could still work around it.

Which I did, with varying degrees of success, until I found out he really could love someone above himself after all.
It just wasn't me.

So in one sense, I understand that people around him read his late efforts toward inner healing as being in good faith. And I can understand them thinking I was cynical for not believing that. (Though even the fact I was proven right in the end doesn't yet seem to have entered their minds.) They read it correctly in a sense, because having developed such strong compartmentalization capabilities, as far as he was aware of his own motives P genuinely had no "desire to defraud others". So the fact that he repeatedly did do so may fall under the category of that last definition quote: "However, good faith does not necessarily mean 'without negligence'."
Yes, P repeatedly neglected our marriage and my needs within it, whenever those conflicted with his primary need of self-protection and the need to be in control. The fact that we had adjusted the marriage to work in spite of that doesn't change the fact itself. And when push came to shove P, through his choices, also effectively betrayed his church and the people who had most tried to help him. But before those actions became visible, what the church people and I were seeing differently was perhaps more along these lines: they were seeing what appeared to be P's genuine good faith, and my disbelief in that, without being aware (as I was) of the negligence that had been going on a long, long time.
In law, one can be prosecuted for provable negligence even if one did act in demonstrable good faith. So my sense of injustice finds corroboration here. (The same can be said for the financial disaster, which had very similar dynamics.) However, I personally have made the choice to live under grace and not under law, and to extend grace and not law. All this knowledge really does for me now is help me understand what came about and how, not open a new court case against anybody! But this understanding that good faith does not exclude the possibility of negligence was helpful.

After all, don't we all know this about ourselves? We can have the very best intentions (as far as we know) and still act with disastrous consequences. We can do the best we can with what we know, and find out that neither our effort nor our knowledge was sufficient. We can put forth all the faith and hope we can muster and find it was misplaced.
Acting in good faith is good, but not always good enough. The Cross has to cover our negligence too, or we are hopelessly doomed.
Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift! - 2 Cor.9:15

Why Is This Okay?

A said something just as an aside the other day, and it's stuck in my mind ever since. I don't even remember the context clearly, but he mentioned (as if it were obvious) that the evangelical Christian church is the only workplace in which it would be tolerated that I would essentially be fired from my only money-earning position, simply for having divorced. In no other sector of society but the Church would that be grounds for losing one's livelihood, especially when the agreement to divorce was a direct result of my partner's extra-marital relationship.

And I realized I had simply accepted this as part of the price of choosing, in the face of his choices, to end my marriage to P. I was, of course, hurt and at first quite angry that it didn't seem to occur to anybody in leadership of the church I had co-founded that some sort of monetary recognition for my 20 years of service might have been in order. I did eventually ask them for a continued monthly pittance of €100 in order to keep my health insurance payment covered, to which they agreed; but now I find myself wondering if anything at all would have been offered had I not specifically requested that. And that too ended, of course, when I resigned my membership.
I did eventually hear that P had tried to convince the then-LT that it was their responsibility to take care of me financially, which they resented, and they wanted him to take responsibility for me financially, which he resented. In the end I suppose everyone may have assumed the other one did it, so nobody did. And it's quite true that I took poor advice (from, as it turns out, an enabler of P's) and did not request much in the divorce settlement, nor any alimony beyond 1 years' support. I simply did not have the energy to fight for more (and believe me, it would have been a fight), nor did I think it was necessary. After all, I had assured plans to sell part of the investment which was a large part of the settlement-- not having been informed that it was already spent and thus worthless. That would, as I have mentioned in earlier posts, have been a few years' assistance.

Don't get me wrong; the price has definitely been worth paying. The life I now live is in so many ways much simpler, freer and happier than the one I had before, though more financially constrained. I would not go back for the world. But it does seem odd that it has been pretty much universally accepted that of course I could not possibly continue in any of my paid competencies within a local church context.
I understand compassionate leave was in order, and I did continue to receive a reduced paycheck the second half of the year we divorced, though I was not "working". I suppose that was considered a form of severance pay. It's true that I had been ministering more in an outside context than within for several years, but I was still considered "in leadership". And it's also true that, by that time in a very long and painful process, I was trusting nobody in that leadership team, so it's likely none of them felt they could even talk to me without running the risk of getting their heads bit off. (To be fair, they didn't even try.)

But it's still a bit odd that we all accepted this, if I may call it that, financial abandonment (no pension, no lump settlement) as a matter of course, after 20 years' service. I know people in the congregation were hurt and confused by the divorce (did they think I was not?!). And I myself was certainly knocked back and did need a break from active ministry.
But I didn't lose all my wisdom, practical knowledge, spirituality and authority just because my marriage failed.
Nor have the other "ministry ex-wives" out there who got the raw end of a male mid-life crisis. One effective bilingual missionary girlfriend of mine (whose husband was indisputably the cause of the breakup) ended up moving back to America, though the call on her life is missions. Yes, she has a place to live but after several years she is still single and she is still poor, that last mainly because her ex (who remarried the day the divorce was finalized) has never fulfilled his responsibilities to her required by the settlement contract --and nobody, including her own believing children whom their Daddy treats and pampers, seems to either be aware of that or to care much if they are.

I can't help feeling that in a community of which Jesus said "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:35), this sort of thing
simply
shouldn't be
considered acceptable.

Matron or Bride?

Awhile back I wrote a post called "Sorting More Than Clothing", in which I related sorting out the Ministry Clothing I no longer need. I could have jumped off that introduction to any number of related subjects, but in that post I chose to go the way of exploring titles and the expectations attached to them. Today I'd like to jump off this base onto another aspect of what MC represented to me, and how my thinking has since developed. Below I repeat two early paragraphs of that post and then continue rambling on:
The purpose of this wardrobe was, while well-dressed enough not to give offense, to draw as little attention as possible to myself or to the fact that I am a woman. I think part of that motivation was a good one; ie, especially when in ministry, I want people to be able to look past me and see Christ ministering to them. I consider myself a delivery person of God's blessings, and the packaging should not detract from that... However, I think I went a bit too far in the opposite direction... When I looked at my row of businesslike blazers, matronly trousers and shirts I wouldn't pair with my usual jeans or leggings, I became a bit thoughtful. Why was I being someone else? Whose expectations was I trying to meet, besides my own?

My thinking has changed partly because, in those same years when I was speaking and ministering in many different contexts, wearing my rather matronly MC as a matter of course, God was in the process of taking me on quite a different inner journey: that of morphing from Matron into Bride. I know, I know; at my age? And isn't that a little backward anyway? Isn't one first a bride, then a mother, then a matron? In human terms, yes, very much so. But since my identity in the natural as a bride had never really been developed, due to deficiencies in the relationship with my first husband, Dad had an agenda to focus on that area of my spiritual/inner development.
This may sound rather weird to you; I know it did to me. But it is undeniable that my relationship with Dad and with Jesus changed quite a lot during those years of working closely with Holy Spirit.

In the relatively quiet years just before beginning to travel internationally in 1999, I had developed quite a close personal relationship with my heavenly Dad. There was a period of parallel development of my relationship with my natural father; each seemed to reinforce the other, and gave me inner confidence I'd never had before. In the early years of traveling it was very easy to, as it were, curl up on Dad's lap and be his favored daughter (his term for me). But when I started visioning, it was mostly Jesus whom I encountered. So that relationship began developing along deeper lines as well.
Early on I had a few quite intimate visionary experiences with Jesus in which I, to my disappointment, realized that I could not quite relax with him as my Bridegroom. The intimacy problem was all on my side and I knew it. But as always, there was not even a hint of reproach from him, simply a loving willingness to patiently love me at whatever stage I was in.
At the same time he was in a sense "wooing" me from the outside; I repeatedly got unsolicited personal words from people who had no idea about my inner journey, speaking of the beauty Jesus saw in me, "engagement with the Bridegroom", "entering into the love relationship of the Godhead" and such things: all pointing in one direction and confirming my rather shaky, because unprecedented, inner journey. I also (re)discovered some of the old Christian mystics, many of whose experiences closely paralleled my own, if not even wilder. I didn't feel so alone.

In early 2006, my then-husband P and I went on a sabbatical. We'd been in ministry in Austria for over 20 years without one. It was supposed to be a time of rediscovering and enjoying each other, as well as looking toward the future and seeking what God had in store for us next, as it was clear to us when we'd left that we should soon be moving on from VG. However, due to the unhealthy dynamics in our marriage, this didn't really take place (and we never left VG until forced out). Most difficult for me was the fact that, because we were together for 5 months 24/7, I was unable to have enough space for my usual life-giving "down time" with God. By the time we returned to VG in May I was physically refreshed, but spiritually gasping for air.
You see, my times with Dad had been a counter-balance to (some would say a compensation tactic for) the emotional privations I experienced in our marriage. I was anything but a bride to P. He preferred a different body build, disliked many of my personal habits, disapproved of many of my personal choices, yet he also wanted motherly nurture from me (household functions) to compensate for what his own mother could never give him. I had accepted the matron role partly as the easiest way out of never being ale to satisfy P on most other levels.
With Dad, though, I was loved as just me; not only loved, but affirmed, treasured, appreciated, called forth, found beautiful-- all the things missing in my marriage. So as you can imagine I was very eager to crawl back into Dad's lap and "fill up" again-- and I was devastated when I found great difficulty getting back into that place. It was as if a door had shut. I simply couldn't enter in, and it was driving me mad. I did the usual "Have I sinned? What is wrong on my end?" agonizing but got nowhere.

Until Dad made it clear to me that nothing was wrong, that this was a deliberate stage on my journey. He wanted to introduce me to Jesus in a new way, as a bride and not just as his little daughter. It was clear he thought I was grown up enough now to take a journey I'd bypassed. As a new Christian I was very enamored of Jesus and rather afraid of The Heavenly Father (as he was represented); I'd picked up the wholly inaccurate idea that Dad was pissed off at sin, and therefore at me, and it was only Jesus' standing protectively between us that kept me from being smited on the spot. Hard to love a Dad who's holding a belt.
But somewhere along the way of developing into first a conservative biblicist, then a renewed Evangelical, then a River Rat... I found Dad to be completely different to that picture, and basked in his fatherhood. I suppose this basking filled some holes that had been there from my childhood; my own father was of the era that didn't really show affection. He was a righteous man but not a very warm one. And as I said, growing closer to my own father after the death of my mother was part of this healing process.
But Jesus as Bridegroom-- not just of his Church, but my very own? A concept I'd certainly heard expressed, but could not identify with. Isn't that what single girls who'd like to be married console themselves with? How does this apply to me?

As my marriage deteriorated more quickly after our return from sabbatical (and in hindsight, it's clear to me that it did-- we did not have the same goals, passions, or values and our personal choices increasingly reflected that), I drew inwardly closer to Jesus. This is hard to put into words, but he comforted me the way I had always wished P would. He understood me even when I was being unreasonable-- and since menopause was starting, I know I sometimes was, and am! He became very real to me.
So real, in fact, that we went through my wardrobe at that time and he -- this does sound strange, I know-- pointed out to me which clothes were just too matronly for me to keep. Shapeless dresses, baggy trousers, things I had worn to cover up the body P didn't like. Things that did not reflect what Jesus thinks of me: lovely and loveable, just as I am.
Then Jesus brought a flesh-and-blood bridegroom into my life, one who shares his opinions of me! This was such a surprise to me (and to A). I'd known A for some time as a friend, liked him very much, and knew we shared values and worked together well. In my hardest times of the past few years, A was the one friend who faithfully stood by me when it seemed everyone else was too full of shock, anger, and judgement about my divorce to recognize that I was really hurting and in need.
And there came a day I looked into A's eyes and saw what I'd prayed for years to see: Jesus' eyes, full of love for me. Not all too surprisingly, just as Dad had done when the development of my relationship to my natural father supported and undergirded a similar development in my relationship to him, through A I have finally been able to identify with Jesus as my Bridegroom. I now know what bridegroom love is like (you can find it in 1 Cor. 13). It is protective, kind, thoughtful. It thinks of the bride's needs first. It is not at all blind; it sees the bride's failings, but they are simply irrelevant. It delights in what she considered foibles or quirks. Most of all, it simply, faithfully, quietly loves in all circumstances.

If I ever do stand upon stages again to represent my Dad, I will do so not only as his favored daughter, but as his beloved daughter-in-law. Jesus is my Bridegroom, and A is my bridegroom: I am a bride, not a matron, and my clothing will reflect that. Whereas I earlier wrote: The purpose of this wardrobe was...to draw as little attention as possible to myself or to the fact that I am a woman, I now know that my glory is in being a woman, not a man. I don't need to (nor should I be expected to) dress like, speak like, or otherwise minister like a man, because Jesus' delight and Dad's glory is that I am a WOMAN.
Over half the Body of Christ has been disenfranchised (this is a large subject for several other posts!) for far too long, and even when "allowed" to minister, have had to conform to male standards in a male-oriented environment. I call to mind an intern in the ministry with which I formerly served. This was technically a woman, yes, but all her mannerisms and her ministry style were masculine (and no, she is not gay), because that was the acceptable standard. I no longer have any interest in conforming to or supporting that system. What you will get will be me, Just Holly, and that includes all my gender roles, not only the inoffensive ones.
So although I still won't wear a plunging neckline (for my own peace of mind) while ministering, I won't wear 3-piece tailored suits, either. I will wear what I find comfortable, practical, and-- dare I say it-- feminine.
Because that, world, is who I am.

Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee

I have two male friends, both middle-aged, both of whose friendship and personality I treasure. They are both committed Christians, they both live a life of service, and they are both gay. One is a leader in a local church, one leads a non-profit charitable ministry. Both love Jesus very much, serve him and people around them effectively, and have lived with God a long time. After each struggling for many years with the fact of their gender orientation, one has chosen to live celibately (though with a male flat-mate), and does not refer to himself as gay, though everything about him declares it. The other one (less outwardly effeminate) has chosen to "come out" and lives in a monogamous sexual relationship with his male housemate.
Each has made his personal decision after much honest heart-searching, questioning, counseling, and attempts at reorientation. Each has now reached a place of peace in his identity in Christ and accepts the limitations each one's choices has brought about: on the one hand, a life without fulfilling personal partnership and on the other hand, ostracism from most of mainstream church.
Who am I to say categorically which has chosen "rightly" and the other "wrongly"?

Here are links to two brief 3-minute videos which discuss some modern viewpoints on homosexuality and Christians' response to it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYl6hbBYvqo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyweHjwLrYM&feature=endscreen

I find myself somewhere in the middle of the two positions so baldly stated in the first one. Even had I the best will in the world to do so, I cannot honestly affirm homosexuality as normal, natural and designed by God as part of original creation. I don't think one even has to believe in God or the Biblical account of creation to see the fallacies in this attitude.
Quite aside from the fact that mankind would have died out long ago had a critical mass of humanity been homosexually oriented, plain and simple biology teaches us that, for example, the orifice primarily used for male homosexual gratification was clearly designed for waste matter going out, not for foreign objects going in. (Have a chat with any doctor serving in a largely homosexual neighborhood and let him inform you of the rate of hemorrhoids and other common health issues specifically caused by this practice.)
The animal world confirms that mammals are, with a few strange evolutionary aberrations, clearly designed for male + female = the race continues to exist. Female/female sexual relationships also mean no babies, without extraordinary and "unnatural" measures. Arguments I have heard trying to prove that "animals are gay, too" have been largely specious and, to me, laughably far-fetched. I'm sorry, but that's been my (admittedly limited) experience.
On the other hand, I know too much to blindly believe that the Bible, in the form in which we now have it, is perfect, without fault and error-free. (This is not even what the doctrine of biblical inerrancy teaches, by the way, which refers to the original documents -- none of which are extant, so who can know? -- but it is how the term "inerrancy of the Scriptures" is commonly defined and held to by fundamentalists.) I do not worship Father, Son and Holy Book but Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who leads us into all truth. Sometimes said truth he leads us into is not containable in a collection of documents written at best 2,000 years ago, in other languages and cultures.
Every denomination and church grouping values some Scripture over others, and will even clearly violate (what appear to be) certain direct commandments, because we have differingly discerned some of these as culturally irrelevant.* Why these and not others? is the question that haunts any serious seeker of truth. And often, the answer is to be found not in lofty bursts of eternally-binding revelation, but in such banal roots as having inadequate understanding of the original culture or audience or situation, of taking too literally a story, hyperbole, parable or even joke; the fact that we are all, to some degree, inadvertently bound to our own forms of cultural blindness.
So when the Bible in the OT and some of the NT letters condemns homosexual practice as sin (though Jesus never mentions it one way or the other), I have to agree. I agree it is sinful in the sense that it is a symptom of brokenness, and all brokenness we experience in the world we live in is in some degree connected to the fact that we live in a fallen creation, in a broken world.
What I have come to believe is that homosexuality is, like so many other brokennesses we daily deal with, a result of the Fall and one of many broken forms of identity and/or sexuality. There are countless forms of broken identity/sexuality in the heterosexual arena as well, most of which are not named specifically in the Bible. Why is this one glitch somehow more sinful than another glitch? (The NT does not specifically prohibit twisted heterosexual men from beating or sexually abusing their wives, so should we assume that's okay? Rhetorical question.)
The argument of whether or not homosexual orientation is inborn or learned behavior has been hotly debated for many years by people much more informed than I. I don't intend to enter it here. But what I do know is that we are all imperfect. Some of us are born with genetic glitches which affect our lives negatively, such as a tendency toward certain diseases or physical or mental weakness. Some of us are raised in environments which negatively affect our lives; I myself was raised by two chain-smokers and as a result, many years later, I still have what is known as a "weak chest": a tendency for colds to settle in my lungs and turn to bronchitis (though I myself have never smoked). My ex was raised by religious emotional and sexual abusers, which of course negatively affected both his personality and his sexuality.
We are personally responsible for none of these things. I know there are people who choose to experiment with various forms of sexuality and lead a promiscuous lifestyle, which the Bible also condemns as sinful. But these two friends of mine, neither promiscuous, do not know themselves ever to have been different in their sexual orientation. As far as they are aware, they never chose this wiring-- in fact, as "good Christians" trying to live a holy life and believing themselves to be sinful, they both fought living it out. It remains, however, an essential part of who they are and how they are, whatever they decide to do about lifestyle.

The question may remain: who is right and who is wrong, of the choices each of my friends have made?
And my reply has to be: actually, that's none of my business. They have each made their decision before God as honestly as they know how, and they are responsible to him, not to me. Did Jesus' death on the Cross, his resurrection and his ascension really take care of the sin question once and for all, or did it not? Am I still required to measure up to a standard of law, however admirable, which is impossible to attain (see Romans), even when doing so violates my conscience --or my very being? Maybe I'm wrong, but isn't there such a thing as being dead right, and isn't that what Jesus consistently condemned in the Pharisees?
Even if a practicing homosexual Christian is considered to be "in sin", is he therefore my enemy? And even if he were my enemy, I thought I was commanded to love my enemy and do good to him. Am I not also in sin, every day of my life, often inadvertently but sometimes knowingly, and doesn't Jesus' blood cover me-- why not him? I don't believe I was invited onto the committee to decide who is "in" and who is "out" of the bounds of God's love and forgiveness.
Bottom line: My assignment is to love, not to judge. I love God, and I love both my friends-- and we all love Jesus. We each stumble forward trusting in the grace that we believe the Cross purchased for us. I know it's messy, but you know what?
That's the way life is.

__________

* If you think this too strong a statement, consider that in John 13:14 Jesus, after washing the disciples' feet, says: "So if I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you must wash each other's feet." This is a pretty strong direct command of our Lord and Savior, even though it's often translated more weakly as "you ought to wash each others' feet". Yet we in today's church have universally written this off-- legitimately, I think-- as applying to the humility expressed by the act and not the act itself; just as most churches have also -- with some very conservative exceptions-- come to the awareness that women covering their heads was an ancient cultural expression of a desired quality. We do not live in 1st-century Palestine, wearing sandals on dusty roads; nor is a woman with her head shockingly uncovered automatically considered a prostitute! It is the desired quality that matters, not a particular cultural expression of it.
In a similar vein, we still use literal bread and wine as a sacrament of communion (some are very particular to use only unleavened bread, yet tolerate grape juice. ??!!)-- when actually the intention of the gesture at the Last Supper was probably more that we remember Jesus' presence with us any time we eat together, making every meal, in a sense, a sacramental experience. Bread and wine, being present at every meal in that culture, were therefore ideal for this symbolic purpose.
I'm not against the fact that we do these things, just pointing a couple of them out. Every church tradition interprets various verses according to their overriding and often unexamined cultural values, and most of us simply accept as unbreakable truth valid for all time much in Scripture which is actually culturally irrelevant, negotiable or limited in scope.

Yes, You...

So... I've been thinking all day about this mis-identity crisis in which I currently find myself.
Being taken seriously by a professional strange to me personally should not really surprise me. In the context of my ministerial life it eventually happened as a matter of course, and I grew to expect it. After all, though I may not personally feel special I have been a foreign missionary, if not in the classic, supported-by-denominational-funds sense, for 30 years now. After losing all our US-based missionary support in 1991, I think I thought of myself more as a cross-cultural minister.

In this time period I have co-planted 2 churches in Austria and assisted others elsewhere in Europe. I had the primary responsibility of raising two children in a society foreign to the one in which I grew up, and practiced an "open home" hospitality policy for most of my first marriage, hosting up to 12 people at a time in our -- by American standards-- small home. I built up a worship sector in our 2nd Austrian church which has had a ripple-effect on many other European churches and their bands.
I've attended countless seminars, conferences and courses on almost every aspect of spiritual life, and have myself been a teacher at many of them. I've sat on several committees and leadership councils, some of which were ground-breaking in their time (the first inter-denominational Round Table in Austria, for example). We were in on the ground floor of developing the Vineyard movement of churches in the German-speaking world.
I've long preached, taught, and developed course materials in both German and English, plus translating reams more. I've pastored, counseled, prayed with, wept over, rejoiced with members of my congregation. I've "done the stuff": healing prayer, deliverance, prophecy, and taught it to others. I've led teams of novices into other foreign countries and helped them minister to, and learn from, the culture into which I took them. In my last 10 years of ministry I was in some demand as a public speaker, trainer, and minister. It sounds like a lot, but living it myself didn't seem particularly taxing; I loved much of it. None of the above is boasting, either; it simply describes my life as I have lived it.

Although I am aware of all these facts, somehow the penny had not dropped that through such life experience I am essentially qualified for --indeed, I have been exercising-- managerial-type position. Much of the above does describe management, or rather leadership. There is no question --in most peoples' minds-- of my competency. The issue has been in my own mind, failing to bridge the gap between my life of largely undefined "ministry", and a "regular job" in which I could imagine anyone willing to hand over cold hard cash for the life wisdom, skill set and experience which I have developed in another field.
Part of the unspoken agreement one enters when one decides for missions is that one will be seriously underpaid, and that has also been a fact of my last 30 years. With the exception of a privileged high-profile few, Christian ministry (apart from American mega-churches) is remunerated in rather more arcane coin --personal fulfillment, a genuine sense of being useful-- than actual funds. By itself, it generally does not pay enough money to live on, unless one is very fond of baked beans or ministers in a nation where the support/exchange rate is favorable. This is one reason why "tent-making" (having a paying job alongside ministry) is so popular in modern missions.

Another large factor is the repenting I need to do-- that is, the change of mind I need to develop-- about my competency levels where I have bought into what the most negative factors in my life to this point have told me about myself, rather than the positive or even neutral voices. At some core level I have believed lies from two main sources about myself and my abilities, indeed about my very identity.
I long received a message and impression of my own competencies from a husband who, for all his many other good qualities, also had an abusive mindset. I understand where it came from and I have great sympathy for the suffering that caused it in him, but the fact remains that P's not dealing with his own stuff damaged me for many years and in the end, made our marriage not worth fighting to keep. Part of this mindset is that he experienced it as his personal loss for me to thrive in areas he felt the need to control. Though he publicly supported "my ministry" and believed he actually did, emotionally I was punished when my increasing success in an arena outside his influence made him feel threatened or abandoned.
I only started to come out of the fog when what Dad was saying to me, not only in my personal dialogue with him but through Scripture, through teaching I received and through prophetic words from people outside my situation, consistently directly contradicted what P was telling me. In 1997 I vowed to start believing what Dad said about me more than I believed what anyone else did, including P or even myself. This process goes on to this day, and I believe I am moving into a deeper phase of it now.

The other main factor is that I listened to (and as a result, felt excluded from and disqualified for) a political and administrative system built on obfuscation. This is a downside of Austrian society and this negative factor is unfortunately not only the ruling factor in governmental hierarchichal administration, but was very present in the administration of VG-- an Austrian church. There were times, especially in the past few years, when I very much identified with St Paul's plea in Galatians 4:16: Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth?
The bottom line is: I have received at least part of my identity built on lies, with the result that I am now surprised when someone unbiased states what seems to them to be an obvious positive truth about me.

This must change!

Who, Me?!

Today I woke up feeling ...in German, I would say "unrund". Simply out of kilter, unmotivated, blah.
The past few days have been, considering what our usual social life involves (i.e. yawning emptiness!), very full indeed: an overnight guest on Wednesday night, Thursday my fitness time with the girls in the morning and a family birthday celebration here in the evening, Friday night dinner and, as it turns out, rather a lot of drinks at the house of friends. Three late nights in a row; maybe my blahs were due to social exhaustion. Maybe because I'd enjoyed myself and there is no more socializing coming up any time soon. But I am thinking more of it has to do with what happened Friday morning, as a result of which my brain has gone into overload.
I think most people I know here have not quite realized that my divorce plus the financial disaster at VG has meant that I no longer have a job, employment, a regular income, MONEY; and that I am not supported financially by my ex. Since September 1st I have, for the first time in my life, been drawing unemployment benefits. This will pay our rent for 6 months and will then be re-evaluated, always assuming I have not found a job by then, which I am not expecting to do. Part of the agreement to draw unemployment is cooperating with AMS, the organization which evaluates one's situation and is sort of a clearing house for placement.
The first interview I had with AMS back in July, knowing my work relationship with VG would be coming to an official close at the end of August, was not very encouraging. But the second one, with a different woman after I had filled out all the many forms required, was much more pleasant. I still didn't expect any cash but hoped they would see their way clear to at least paying my health insurance. Imagine my glad surprise when I found they will pay enough to cover the rent!
My employment record here is unfortunately not very reflective of reality. As a church-planting missionary mommy, for the first 15 years of my 30 years here I basically worked full-time without pay. That's just what parents do, whether of natural or of spiritual children. The second church P & I had planted (which became VG) began after their first couple of years supporting us to the degree they could afford, but that paycheck was in P's name, not mine. We lived from that (which was never enough for a family of 4) and from what my father gave us each year as a sort of down payment on my inheritance. But I did not appear in Austrian records as being employed. And I have no retirement fund.
Later VG decided it would be good to make me more official, so in order to save the church money they hired me as a freelance worker, which meant I was not actually employed by them but presented invoices for my services each month. Anyway, to make a long story short I was not actually employed until the last few years of my sojourn with them -- years when I did far less within VG than I ever had before and much more outside the church, as "Minister At Large".
Not surprisingly, it now turns out that being a 54-year-old woman with a spotty employment record I fall into the "hard-to-place" category. My second advisor at AMS recommended a program to me with which I am currently engaged. This is called, appallingly, "Stop&Go" and is specially designed for hard-to-place unemployed over-45s. (Sigh. I do wish Europeans without a masterly command of nuance within the English language would stop trying to be chic by randomly choosing English monikers which end up sounding inappropriate and/or ridiculous!)
Stop&Go tries in 6-8 weeks to help people, especially those who have been unemployed for a year or longer, to re-orient their careers and find out what else they might be suited for. I've had an initial orientation class and taken a battery of psychological tests. Much of it was fairly familiar ground to me, having taken such things many times over the years in various contexts. One part of the test, though, seemed to me to be geared toward middle-aged mildly alcoholic men who'd been unemployed a long time and had anger management issues. I'm a freshly unemployed (technically, though I haven't "worked" in the classic sense for some time) woman without the other issues so got a little impatient with that bit! I've also seen Frau M, the psychologist assigned to me, twice now. This second time was on Friday morning, after she got the results of the tests I took on Wednesday.
The first thing I noticed was that Frau M seemed more relaxed with me this time, more as if she were treating me almost like a peer (we are not too far apart in age, I think) than a "case". Our initial chat was warm, and she actually seemed interested. When we got down to the nitty-gritty of the test results, it turns out I tested out far more balanced than I thought I would. It seems clear that, though I have not yet fully recovered from the emotional blows of the past few years and that is reflected, on the whole I am fit, balanced and once I get back up to speed will be a desirable employee. We did a little brainstorming about what, if one left aside such trifling considerations such as who would ever pay me to do it, I would simply love to do. What have I enjoyed before? I waxed eloquent on a few attractive ideas which, as far as I know, are not remunerable.
And then Frau M dropped the bomb. She handed me a paper and said she would like, when my time with Stop&Go is over, to recommend a further program to me. This one goes for 12 weeks with the possibility of extending another 12 (which means my rent and health insurance would be paid the whole time I was attending it) and is in the field of ... management training.
I tried not to look too put off. I had never considered myself organizational management material, and can't imagine myself in such a role, particularly in Austrian business society. But frankly (and mercenarily) I could really use the unemployment money for the remaining months, however many they end up being, that we live in Austria. So I tried to look interested. Frau M acted very matter-of-fact about it and seemed to assume I'd naturally known that I was management material. I thought about this all the way home, and then some.
When I talked to A about what she had recommended, his first reaction was, "Well, DUH." Seeing my blank expression, he proceeded to explain to me that leadership skills and organizational skills were not the same thing, that I clearly have the gift of what he calls "Ruler" which has been inaccurately confused with the ability to organize, but is actually the unction to lead in a way that others want to, and generally do, follow.
And I began reflecting on what I have actually spent the last 30 years doing.
Hmmmm.
Damn... I think Frau M is probably right.
What do I do now?!

What I Miss About Ministry

This is what I miss about hands-on ministry: knowing that, in this moment, for this person's life, I am consciously and actively working together with our loving Daddy to make a positive difference. That sense of fulfillment is not easily found anywhere else.

Not the "ministry buzz", not being onstage, not the seemingly inescapable respect shown anyone who is, but rather the quiet knowledge that Holy Spirit and I have a job to do and we love doing it together, right here, right now. The awareness that prayer is efficacious and that the one being ministered to is benefiting; even if I cannot see or feel that in the moment, I have learned that every prayer does something positive. Every prayer.

A and I have a friend who is battling cancer. She goes for chemotherapy every two weeks, and she comes to us for "alternative therapy" (prayer) in the same week. We spend as much time as we need to, just letting her relax and "soaking her" in blessing and healing prayer. Since losing my old life and all its ministerial trappings, I've rarely had the opportunity for this, and I am finding I'm loving every moment of it. Sensitivities that had been somewhat hammered into dormancy by the repeated heavy events of the past few years are stirring, coming to life again: sitting up, sniffing the air, looking about with bright and curious eyes. My spirit is coming back to life. That's what giving out does for me.

I did this sort of private ministry for many, many years in a hidden sense before I ever stood on a stage and taught others to do it. It doesn't matter to me now if I am ever visible again, or not; what matters is this awareness that I am useful for the Kingdom, that because I am partnering with Holy Spirit to get Dad's will done on earth as it is in Heaven, this earth can become, for the few lives I am able to touch in my short lifetime, a marginally improved place.

Isn't that what it's all about, really? Bringing God's Kingdom of peace, health, life, shalom-- all as it should be. Different types of people will do it in differing ways, according to how they are made, according to their particular passion: improving water facilities for poor villages, teaching illiterates to read and write, adopting children-- whatever. It is all Kingdom activity. It is all about bringing the nature and character of the realm where Dad lives and rules into our poor, dark substitutes and watching Light change our surroundings.

My way is not better than your way or vice versa. And when I stand --or rather, stood-- on stages encouraging others into this way of life, it's actually no different than when I casually pray for a neighbor with backache (and also, of course, help her carry her groceries). But I have to say that what feeds and satisfies my own spirit the most is laying my hands on another human being, for a short time having the honor of seeing them through Dad's loving eyes, and along with my friend and partner Holy Spirit speaking life into them spirit, soul and body.

And I don't need a church building or a special healing meeting or a conference to do that; I just need an outlet. Someone in need, who wants what I can offer; someone who can benefit from words of life, from loving touch, from caring.
Can't we all?

A Muffin By Any Other Name...

...would be just as fattening. ;)
I've always been interested in cooking and baking. I remember I baked my first cake at about age 8, took it to a school party, and was very upset when nobody believed I had baked it myself. As a child I fed on my mother's Gourmet magazines, and I still read cookbooks as if they were novels. Finding and sharing recipes on the Internet and indulging in what some call "Food Porn" (trolling beautiful photos of foods) are some of my favorite down-time activities. This often inspires me to try out a new recipe, or it gives me ideas how to creatively use what's moldering away in the fridge.
This hobby has its perks; I am regularly entertained by the names of dishes. I've often wondered over the years how recipes come to be called what they are commonly known by. Germany and Austria are generally not very creative in their choices of "official" recipe names; the name more or less simply describes the contents of the dish, or is named "in the style of --- (town or region)". But what country people and local farmers call their traditional dishes can be very creative indeed: Schäufele (little shovels), Späetzle (little sparrows), Maultaschen (mouth pockets)...
The most intriguing name I have come across for a purely Austrian dish is the local nickname for a sausage officially called a Käsekrainer. A Krainer is a coarse, farmer-style pork sausage and a Käsekrainer is the same recipe with bits of white cheese added. (They're both delicious, by the way.) When grilled, the bits of cheese quite naturally melt, causing the sausage to leak or squirt somewhat alarmingly. You can imagine what it looks like when sliced. So it's not surprising someone came up with the name "der Eitrige" for this, which is what you'll most often hear requested at late-night sausage stands. What does that mean? "The one full of pus".
Sorry (but not very)!
England especially has some rather queer names for what turn out to be quite innocuous dishes: Toad in Hole (sausages baked in batter), Bubble and Squeak (leftover pan-fried cabbage and potato), the unfortunate Spotted Dick (sponge pudding with raisins)... But what really surprised me when I first got to Europe was the fact that no French person I ever met had heard of French toast, no German is familiar with what Americans know as German chocolate cake, and Salisbury steak is unknown in Salisbury. It turns out all these dishes are purely American; their misnomers mislead us to believe they originated in the places after which they are named.
When I did make German chocolate cake (plain chocolate layers with a filling and topping of pecans, shredded coconut and condensed milk) for my German friends, they loved it! But it's still not German in any sense of the word.
Looking toward moving to the UK, I realize I have a lot to learn. What I grew up believing was an English muffin is, in fact, much closer to a crumpet. An American muffin, on the other hand, would be known in the UK as a fairy cake if sweet, a bread if savory. (American sweet muffins have changed from when I was a child; now what is usually sold as a muffin is far closer to cake than the slightly sweet bread it used to be. And they are now 3 times the size!)
In the UK pancakes, flapjacks, and griddle cakes are all vastly differing foods. A sandwich can be known variously as a bap, a butty, a roll or a cob, depending on what bread is used and which part of the country you're in. In the USA and in Austria, if asked would you like some tea and you reply yes, the second question will be: black or herbal? But in the UK tea is always black tea unless stated otherwise; an herbal tea is a tisane.
Both A and I love soups, especially in colder weather. Many dishes I would probably call stew he calls soup. What we each call dumplings are two different dishes. No matter; we enjoy eating it whatever we call it, as long as it tastes good! A name can influence one's desire to taste the dish (or not), true; but it's the flavor that is convincing, not the name. For an example in English, who would ever think that "sweetbreads" meant "innards"?! But in Austria I have eaten and enjoyed some innards I would never have touched while still in the USA-- and all of them have euphemistic names.
That could, in turn, lead me to musing on many other things we-- perhaps wrongly-- assume, because of our misleading cultural appellation for a certain thing. Maybe we unthinkingly accept its origins as authentic and definitive, when perhaps they're not. Maybe we know the same flavor under an entirely different moniker. Maybe we have refused even to taste it because the name has put us off... et cetera.
Some examples:
what is "family"?
what is "evangelism"?
what is, for that matter, "a Christian"??
...but it's a Saturday morning, laundry needs to be done, and I've spent enough time on this already.
Have fun thinking about it yourself!