Messy Church
I’ve always considered myself a rational, linear thinking, non-emotive female. I often wonder how it is that other women can cry at the drop of a hat, at any little thing and in front of anyone. It’s actually always mystified me. I save my tears for behind closed doors and when my husband gets home. I could probably count on one hand the number of times I have shed tears publicly. Until recently.
Now, at odd times and without warning, I find myself breaking down in tears. You see we recently had a falling out with good friends. People we raised our children with. The type of people that you think you will grow old and grey with. The friends we have journeyed through life with. The type of friends that you think will always “be on your side”. I’ve experienced hurt in my life. I had a terrible childhood. An alcoholic mother with several suicide attempts, group homes, strained relationship with my father, living with relatives because my parents were unable or unwilling to care for me. I know hurt. I know abandonment. But I’ve realized lately that friendship is different. We don’t choose our family. We are born into them, without any choice. If your family isn’t the best, you learn to survive as best you can. However, friends are a whole different phenomenon. You pick your friends. You make a conscious decision to open up to them, to trust them, to hand them the “whole of you” and know that they will use the utmost care. When that relationship falls apart; when that sacred trust is broken; it hurts.
I had another outburst of episodic crying today. We had someone over for lunch. They asked a simple question and the tears started rolling. It happened at least 4 times during lunch. AFTER I had told him that I tended to be less emotionally oriented than my husband. HA! He must think I’m a complete nut. He was very kind and understanding, regardless of how nutty he thinks I am. He said something very wise. He said, “We tend to think sin is something that goes in a neat little box. We have sanitized it. But this is the type of thing Jesus died for.” Very wise. Jesus died for the people that hurt us. He died for our hurt. He died because this world is a messy, ugly place where sacred trust is broken, relationships fall apart and friendships fail.
“Only that fellowship which faces such Disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God’s sight; begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it. The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community, the better for both.”
“Even when sin and misunderstanding burden the communal life, is not the sinning brother still a brother, with whom I, too, stand under the Word of Christ? Will not his sin be a constant occasion for me to give thanks that both of us may live in the forgiving love of God in Jesus Christ? Thus the very hour of disillusionment with my brother becomes incomparably salutary, because it so thoroughly teaches me that neither of us can ever live by our own words and deeds, but only by that one Word and Deed which really binds us together - the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ. When the morning mist of dreams vanish, the dawns the bright day of Christian fellowship.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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