2 Chronicles

"If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land."
2 Chronicles 4:17

I've heard this scripture quoted quite a bit over the past few days. I've heard it quoted by men ranting on Facebook about "THOSE WOMEN". I've heard it in the same post as another person saying, "Well, I guess there's a lot of husbands cooking their own dinner tonight," meaning - Saturday, the day of the March.

I've read it and then watched comment after comment appear with people saying, "I don't support these women," and "If you don't like it, you can get out," as well as, "Idiots", "Stupid", "Feminists", "God-haters", "liberals", and "THIS is what's wrong with our country."
I've watched women, christian women, back away and go quiet.
I've wanted to call out, "where are you?"

Oh, I was angry. And I wanted to fight back. The words clambered over each other to free themselves from my mouth.

But then I clicked it off. I am learning this kind of anger doesn't get us anywhere. I have to feel it and submit it. Submit it and channel it.

God's TRUTH is greater than my feelings.
I cried in the truck as Jeff and I drove home from LA. I prayed. I ripped off all my fingernails. I tried to breathe as anxiety and frustration built and clawed and threatened to choke out my breath.

And I thought to myself, "God? I am a christian. I love you. I believe in you. I do my best to follow you. And I can't get behind those comments. I can't."

I wondered if there was something wrong with me. Maybe I don't know God at all. Maybe I'm just a bad egg.

Here's the thing, folks. God is the same. For everyone. Across the board. He does not contradict. He does not show favoritism. We are all fearfully and wonderfully made.
So if there is apprehension and confusion going on, that's on ME. That's on YOU. Hard questions need to be asked. Hard answers need to be found.

And this is tough because guess what? Christians are lazy. We take what we hear, or we read one scripture, and we don't dig or question or read more. We take the easy way.

Jesus never took the easy way.

Loving is always harder than judging.

The woman at the well? He listened.
The woman thrown down in front of him after she was caught in adultery? He listened and he protected. (Let's not even get going on where the other half of the adultery act was. Or, you know, LET's. Interesting how the man wasn't brought out and thrown down, isn't it? Interesting how she was caught in the act because these men, these religious leaders, were obviously watching her, yes? Interesting the double standard that was shown here and even MORE interesting is how Jesus reacted. With love and mercy and all the men backed away.
He. is. my. hero.)
The demon possessed man who ran up to him? He talked to him and freed him.
The woman who was sick for years and banished from society because she was a bloody mess and pushed her way through to touch his robe? He healed her. And you know what? That woman? She was a marcher before her time.
The teenage girl who was pregnant and unwed and gossiped about? Yeah, that was his mother.


I have said, and will always say, God is not afraid of our hard questions.
We are. I am. I get afraid and I'm going to tell you why.
I get afraid because what if I ask God a question and the answer I get is something that causes me to doubt WHO HE IS and if HE IS REALLY GOOD?

I can ask the hard question or I can take the easy way.
The easy way though, doesn't help anyone. Not the maligned. Not the mistreated. Not the sinner. And certainly not the saint.

I started asking questions. I started writing them down. And a thought would come, and then another. And soon I was writing those down. Then, more questions. And I paid attention as my life flashed before me and all the things I have been asked to live and all the decisions and the day I walked into a small church in El Cajon dressed in boxer shorts and anger with eyes that said, "Stay. Away. From. Me.", and I was hugged. I was hand-held. I was looked in the eye. I was loved.

That's why I kept going back. I was loved.
No one asked me first how many drugs I had done or if I had stolen or how many people I'd made sex with or if I hated men or hated God or smoked or cursed on the regular. No one asked me later either.
I was loved.
Foul-God-hurting-MAN-hating-mouth-cursing-middle-fingers-up and all.

And as Jeff and I drove home and I thought of all my yesterdays, I got a word. And that word was freedom.

Someone did awful things to me when I was a child because he had the freedom to make that choice and do so.
Someone was able to choose him and not me because they had the freedom to do so.
Someone can live gay or live straight because they have the freedom to do so.
Someone can hit a crack pipe or hit the gym because they have the freedom to do so.
Someone can go to church and sing with their mouth and hate everyone there in their heart because they have the freedom to do so.
Someone can love others and love God and serve serve serve quietly all their life because they have the freedom to do so.
Someone can love God and be mouthy and go against the church current because they have the freedom to do so.
Someone can grow up in a house that loves God and decide for themselves they don't want to and they have the freedom to do so.

And do you know where this freedom comes from? God himself.
He died for us all. And He allows us all to make a choice.

And yet here we sit, day after day, telling everyone else they can't have one, because we are elevating ourselves to the place of God.

if my people,

I have a confession to make.

who are called by my name,

A number of years ago

will humble themselves

same-sex marriage was on the ballot,

and pray

Proposition 8,

and seek my face

and I did not listen to the hard question nagging at my skull

and turn from their wicked ways,

and I did not ask for a hard answer,

then I will hear from heaven,

and I took the easy way, with the rest of the crowd,

and I will forgive their sin,

and I was wrong.

and will heal their land."

This is the Lord speaking in this verse, speaking to Solomon. And do you know who he's talking about?

US.

Christian. Christian.

If WE will humble ourselves,
If WE will pray,
If WE will seek his face,
If WE will turn from OUR wicked ways,
THEN
He will forgive US and heal our land.

When we don't listen; we are not humble.
When we call people stupid and idiots and say the words "THESE WOMEN" in a tone of disgust and rage; we are not humble.
When we don't stop to ask ourselves WHY ARE THEY HURTING?; we are not praying.
When we don't feel bothered by injustice; we are not seeking his face.
When we condone or remain silent or cheer for someone who promotes treating others as less than himself, ourselves ; we are not turning from our wicked ways.


We don't have to agree. We are ALL still learning, how to love God, how to love people, how to love ourselves, better. But we can't begin to do that if we have PRIDE.

Ego.
The need to be right.
The last word.

I hope these words shake you. I hope you dig and search and seek and look for yourself. I hope if you are angry, you ask yourself why and then ask God to reveal it to you.

You can stand for what you believe in - it's very easy. Make sure you don't do it. That's it.

I wonder what would happen if we stopped focusing on what others are doing and saying and living, and we began to be more like Jesus? He did not pass laws. He spoke to people. He did not put them on blast. He loved them.

In fact, the only time I see Jesus getting mad and throwing tables and calling people a "brood of vipers", is when he spoke to the religious. Chew on that one for a bit.

"They" are not the problem. "These WOMEN" are not the problem.
We are.

God help us.

XO

and now I see ...

It's been a long time
but I still remember what it was like to hate Him.
It didn't start out that way, me hating him. And I am not sure when it happened. What I do recall is when someone asked me to go see him, hang out, and be a part of what he was doing, my insides began to burn and my fists would clench.

All I knew about Him flashed in front of me, which admittedly, wasn't much. But it was enough. Enough to make me rage. Enough to make me say NO.
I remember saying ... "After all that has happened? After everything I have gone through? No. I'm not interested in any Jesus. I don't need a savior. AND I will never, ever worship (practically spitting the word out of my mouth) any God that walked around as a man."

You see, men made me want to want to step inside a scalding shower and scrub all my flesh off until I disappeared. Specifically, middle-aged, white, religious men, with poochy bellies, short statures, and glasses that doubled the number of eyes that stared at me with lust and hunger. Men that said "Jesus!" and "I am SAVED! I am FORGIVEN!" and "Gawd bless YOU!" and then took me upstairs for "naps". Men that made me do things I did not want to do and then told me I better ask for forgiveness later because I had been a bad girl, a naughty disgusting girl. Men that whispered to me in the dark and covered my head with pillows when I begged and cried.

Men. Man.

No thanks. I'm out.

I was told over and over by his daughters and my mother, that he had been forgiven. Jesus (Jesus!) had cleansed his heart and his life and the thing in his pants (he has been SAVED Shannon! Saved!)
and now I must forgive him too. (this is what good Christians do Shannon, this is what they do!)

I remember thinking to myself, "I don't want to be a good Christian. I don't want to be any Christian at all."

It took a long time before I understood how people can twist even a good God like Jesus into something mangled and different so they can feel better.

People can twist him up so much, he's not recognizable anymore.

I remember the day I sat in the church and felt Jesus next to me. I knew it was Him. I knew, because I wasn't looking for Him and I didn't want Him to be there. I was there to listen and then leave. I didn't expect anything other than what I had seen my whole life - empty words that weren't real.
And so when He was, it was so obviously plain to me. There was night. And now there was day.

I was almost offended by it.

I didn't want Him to be real. I didn't want to reconcile anything in my head or in my heart. I knew what the twisted Jesus looked like. It was safer to hold on to Him that way.

But I couldn't.

Because what was next to me wasn't twisted at all. The full force of His LOVE radiated on to me. It was warm. And gentle.
And it ... waited.
It waited for me to say "ok". It waited for me to say, "Yes, I will let you be with me".

Isn't it funny, in an incredibly heartbreaking non-funny way, we can become so used to the wrongness of life that any rightness that tries to introduce itself is threatening and shown the door? Don't let it hit you so hard you fall on your face and crack it open on the way out.
Or do.
It's all the same to me.

But this day, I did not show Him the door as I had so many times before. I couldn't. I felt a craving start to gnaw inside me, a fierce need I didn't even know I had.
My love-starved soul woke up. And it demanded to be fed. It had gone without nourishment for far far too long.
All I could do was sit in it.
and cry.

I could hear him, hear him (!) whispering to me, and not like the whispers before, not ones that made me afraid and want to curl into the tiniest of balls and hide....
No.
These were smatterings of love. Gentler than a moth's wings. Quieter than tall grass waving in the wind.

"It's ok", He said. "I love you."

I love you. I love you. i love you. i love you.

i love you. i love you.

i love you. i love you.
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you youyouyouyouyouyouyouyouyouyouyouyouyou

iloveyou.

I got up. I walked with shaky legs and a shakier heart to the front ... wanting so badly to throw myself down at the feet of Him. To crawl into his lap and have Him hold me and rock me and tell me again how much He loved me, like a mother would do for her child. Or a father.

I knelt and I put my face in my hands and my soul ripped open. I couldn't stop the tears if I tried. My insides, my body, my spirit knew better than my head what I needed
and i needed to let go.
to be free.
to empty myself of all the junk and the black and the rotten that had taken residence inside me.

A good soul scrubbing.
A renewal.
A gift.

Now it is Easter. It is Saturday. The day after he would have been beaten and tortured and ripped up and nailed; left bleeding and naked and exposed.
And for what? Because He loved. Because He healed. Because He took away all the junk and the black and the rotten.

Because He is God.

I imagine how his followers felt on that Saturday.
Lost. Disappointed. Confused. Afraid. Bereft.

They didn't understand what was happening. They didn't realize what it meant. They thought all hope was lost. They thought it was dead. They thought they were on their own.

They didn't know
that on Sunday
Hope would rise ....

and they would never be alone again.

I
will never be alone
again.
And all the junk,
and the black,
and the rotten

is now white in Love.