Coming clean about my struggle with faith.

I've been putting this off. Writing that is, since the middle of March, and to be honest, I can't be stagnant anymore. I can't keep stuffing things deep down, my sorry heart hasn't anymore room to swell.

All the while its suffocating and stifling, and has greater effect on my emotional well being then I am interested in giving the simple act of writing credit to.
But if we believe...if I believe, God gives us great gifts and great treasures, then I can't forsake the gift that writing has been to my healing process. In fact, sometimes deep parts of me, hope that God's gift of writing to my little heart would be more then a healing process for me, but in turn a catalyst for others, a place that leads them deeper into personal reflection and ultimately where God meets them, face to face, in a very real way.

So where do I begin? It has been seven months since my last post, since the last time I've truly taken the time to feast on one of the ways I delight in worship!

To be honest, this is going to be a process, involving more then one "updating" post. Because I want to talk about all the joy and all the sadness I have seen in so many facets along this journey, in getting engaged, losing a beloved grandmother, returning to Chop Point, losing a friend, questioning my faith, planning a wedding and getting married to my favorite person.

My heart is swollen and I can't keep from weeping thinking about it all.

The place I'd like to start, which feels like a giant elephant looming over me every where I go, is the journey I've been on in regards to questioning my faith. I want to start here, because I believe its the underlying piece to this season of my life and this season of healing.

I haven't wanted to open up about it. Especially when all I've done since I was 15 was throw myself, wildly into the arms of the church, wildly into the arms of ministry, wildly into the palms of other broken, hurting, lost people. Who want's to admit they've been wrong about something they've believed and put everything into? Who wants to crawl back, naked and afraid, wondering how delusional they could have been to spiral this far out of reality.

It is so painful for me to think about the morning that I was awoken this summer with a violent nightmare, one that played all around me, one that I couldn't escape. I began to see religion for what it was, ugly, controlling, manipulative, striving, corrupt and evil. I wanted to run away from God, the church, my christian friends, I wanted go home and tell my family they were right all these years, and that I would gladly conform to the greater thought of the Universe and humanism.

But mostly, like many other pivotal moments in my life, I wanted to dissolve. And I lived most of the summer and early mornings of fall wanting to dissolve into nothing. Wanting to escape the ever present questions of how I could have fallen so deeply into something so shallow.

Until my sweet Jesus met me one morning, oh how He laughed when He saw me, He was filled with such joy. And I thought to myself, I have really lost it now, I am beyond help, I am not even a christian, I don't know the first thing about love or Jesus.

And that's where God stepped in and told me I was wrong. He wasn't gentle, the usual approach to which I had attributed God, He was urgent, persistant. He was clear- I was wrong, so wrong it was awful. I had fallen into one of the many deceits religion has to offer, which is putting my own human qualities and expectations on God, thinking God judges like we do, thinking God hates like we do, thinking God is intolerant and impatient and unloving and unforgiving like WE ARE. Like you and I, like the world is, like the church and the unchurched alike.

I had wildly chased the church, ministry and people, seeking wisdom, acceptance, status and this summer Jesus intervened and ripped me from the depths of religion. He opened my eyes to what I worshiped- which was a far, far shot from the true cry of my heart. He beckoned me, come wildly chase Me, come wildly chase My heart, come wildly chase people the way I see them, come see how I feel about the world and all My beloved children.

Stop chasing the church, stop striving after ministry, stop giving yourself to hungry, hurting, lost people. Just be- sit in My love, My energy, My healing, My thoughts, just be yourself. Stop feeling like you have to change, stop feeling like you can't be who I made you to be because those who are rigid and scared and need love have told you that you're not doing it "right".

And so here I am- again. Just Raelyn, the ragamuffin, baptized in a Bob Marley shirt, who loves to talk about pornography and wild love, who has struggled with depression for years and usually makes conservative christian's mildly uncomfortable on a regular basis.

Right now I am tender and healing and fragile-That's okay. I am allowed to question and dig through my hurt and challenge the church and challenge the world.

There is freedom in Christ- I can be who He made me to be, washed free of religion, washed free of expectations, washed free of labels.

Thank you for loving me, even in the chokehold of religion, thank you for freeing me and giving me a glimpse of Your heart for the the world, thank you for giving me revelation on how to love better and more fuller, on what's important. And most of all thank you for showing me that You love ALL your children and that all the hurtful and excluding boundaries that the church has set up all these years are not YOUR boundaries. I love how radical and outside of the box You are Jesus. Please keep me in your secret place forever and teach me how to love the church, give me a heart for the religious, give me more compassion Jesus, lead me into deeper wells of humbleness and empathy.

I want to be wild for you-

RL