The Rubbing Place

I traveled nearly an hour for my mommy group.  It's a far drive by any account but in Joburg traffic, up the N1, it can be particularly beast-like.  I get to see a lot of things in that hour.  People shaving their heads in the car, people talking on their phones, endless advertisements.  It's an early drive, usually too early for the people who tirelessly offer you paper advertisements through cracks in your car window.  I was making the trek a few weeks ago when a billboard caught my attention.  It said, "Don't let Christians stop you from coming to church" and then stated the church's details of services and all that.  It made me laugh out loud.  The same laugh-out-loud reaction I had when I saw the sign at my kids' swimming class that said "Unattended children will be given a free puppy and an espresso."  The idea of both seemed so absurd that it was laughable to me.

Truth be told though, there are many, many people who would adamantly agree Christians have put them off Christ.  I'm not sure when or where, but I feel this.  I'm in that space where I find I've deeply opened myself up and been rubbed in such a way that says, "This isn't right.  This isn't how it's supposed to be."  In much the same way that an American teenager going to Mexico over Spring Break on a church mission trip can pray to see with Jesus' eyes and then gets rubbed by the widow neighboring a church who has been totally overlooked by said church.  They've opened their hearts and are then rubbed the wrong way when they see something is off from the Gospel they know and believe.

Some people will never pray a "thy will be done" type of prayer.  It's a hard and brave thing to really carve out time, sit down and claim the footprints you're standing in.  It's hard to not want to be over there, further along, or not shamed by how much further it is to the finish line.  Every time I've found myself wanting to hide away because I just feel like I'm failing my Lord, I'm comforted by the fact that every single writer, theologian and contemporary I value, trust and look up to say the same thing;  I'm not there yet.  I'm here.

My here isn't very pretty at the moment.  It's total transition of heart, mind, and soul.  I struggled so much when we got to South Africa because for twenty years, I'd felt called to be a missionary (in Africa if I'm brutally honest) and then I arrived and went, "Now what?  Now what do I do?"  Then Jesus and I had to go a few rounds for me to be able to see the purpose.  My anchor of someday being a missionary was severed because I was a missionary.  My context had to change.  My dependence and focal point had to change in order for me to open myself up to the things Jesus had for me.  And while it was changing, while my heart was open, it was rubbed.  In some ways I wish I'd opened myself up more, been more available to see with eyes wide open.  Even still, I now ache at times: words said in haste, missteps along the way by others, dreams that have been a bit tattered and tarnished.  Because the billboard is true.  Those that take on the mantle of being called a Follower of Christ are real human beings who have issues and faults and often operate from their own strength. I'm the most at fault in that respect.  I worked for so long from a place of pulling myself up by my own bootstraps.  Frankly, it's exhausting.  I remember the point where I realized that I simply could not operate in my own strength any longer.  Once I gave it up to God (as a last-resort), oh the places I could go!

But I had seen the dark side of my own heart, and I could sporadically recognize it in others.  And it rubs.  It hurts.  It aches.  Because living life open to other people will always be less than it was supposed to be.  Ask anyone who has been married longer than five days and they'll tell you, giving grace to your spouse, over and over and over... and over, is hard.  They hurt you.  They disappoint you.  They make decisions that downright anger and infuriate you.  And the Church, not the buildings, not the individual congregations of people who more or less look and speak the same, but the big, broad sense of all the people who are following hard after Christ, is the same way.  My here is that space.  I'm where I see and feel the hurt, the disappointment, the decisions I feel were and are still wrong and that make me angry.

We were missionaries for five and a half years and we then left Africa.  We went back to the US and the decision is such a complicated mix of right and horribly, terribly, gut-wrenchingly wrong.  We did not leave because of any one thing except this:  God released us from South Africa for something else.  That's it.  There's no earth-shattering revelation, no grand fan fair, just the simple truth that we learned or did or whatever it was that we came to South Africa for and now it's time to leave.  I didn't want to go... I still desperately want to go back.  I feel like there's so much left unfinished, but even as I say that I see in my mind's eye my four-year-old who screams and fights going to bed because there's still so much more playing to do.  I'm angry.  I'm disappointed.  I'm hurt.  But I also know this is right.

I was honestly dreading going back to the good ol' US of A.  I dreaded it for a thousand big and small reasons.  Big like, how do you keep your child rooted and grounded in the culture that is theirs by birthright when you don't live there?  And many of you won't get that but others of you know that that's why, even after leaving the US you still celebrate Thanksgiving or even after leaving the UK you still have Boxing Day traditions- for your kids, so they will know.  Small like the fact that I'll never have the overwhelming canopy of vibrant purple jacarandas trees overhead as I make the drive across town.  My heart has found roots.  Deep roots for the amount of time we called Johannesburg home.  Roots that have been nourished and roots that are protesting the transplant.  I dread the people who make trite comments of how everything will turn out fine without caring to enter the space we're in.  I know it will be fine.  I am so, so glad that I can say honestly and sincerely that this is well with my soul.  But that doesn't make the transition any less of a transition.  And it doesn't make the rub hurt any less.

There are things, I think, that will always rub me.  Walking into a church and being told the seat is "taken" or people doing church rather than learning how to be church.  I can't put my finger on it but somewhere I've changed, and I can't go back.  I can't go back to being busy and focused on just me, just my family, just my circle of other people who look and think and talk like me.  Right now, I'm so incredibly tempted to run from the hurt, hide my head in the sand, circle the wagons and take care of me and mine... only.  I've done it in the past and I know it's the swiftest way out.  But it won't serve in the long run.  I was built for community.  I was created to participate in the messy and complicated lives of those God has placed around me.  Sometimes, I get to bring help and peace into their lives, other times, God uses them to bring peace into mine.  I've been chastised a few times for some of the company I choose to keep, but the truth is, I'm learning so much about my God and His Church through so many people who would be shocked to learn that a God they're not sure they believe in, is teaching me grand things through them.  I pray for these friends, every single day.  By name.  I pray for my church-going friends every single day.  By name.  I've found, especially here, in a place of hurt, that healing can come from so many different venues.  I don't have to be in a church listening to a preacher to find Christ, because He's here, with His creation, in every interaction if I'll let Him.  I've also learned that when I enter into someone else' life, when I'm invited into their chaos and messy Saturday mornings or sick Thursday nights, Christ is there too, and those are the moments I cherish, because more than any sermon ever could, those are the moments where healing, honesty and peace enter in.  If I have to take the rawness of being rubbed in order to have the peace that has flowed so freely, so generously than bring on the rubs and bumps and scrapes.