Saying Goodbye to 'My' Church

I'm mourning again. Not for my son this time, although that continues, but for my church.

After a lot of soul-searching (no pun intended), my husband and I have decided it's time to find a new church home.

That may not seem like a big thing to a lot of people, and there was a time when it would not have been hard for me. It wasn't hard for me to leave my childhood church and I've drifted through a number of congregations during my adult years. But over the last six years my church has become a very important part of my life. I volunteered in the nursery and watched babies grow up. I trusted my Sunday school class like best friends. The people I saw there every Sunday and sometimes at other times became as precious as family. There are people I hug and kiss and say "I love you" and mean it from the bottom of my heart.

But in the last three weeks, things have changed, as they often do.

Initially it felt like a death, like someone I cared for had been taken from me. I couldn't believe it was gone. That the music and preaching I'd looked forward to each Sunday wouldn't be happening again was hard to grasp. At odd moments, I would weep. It hurt to drive by the building (still does, in fact).

For two Sundays I went back, hoping there was enough of what I loved to help me through the transition, but instead I found faces I loved missing. Not all of them, but enough to know that there would be no going back. I found myself crying during service because it wasn't what I wanted, what my soul craved, the way I needed to connect with God.

Now it feels more like divorce. The relationship is damaged beyond repair and I'm going to leave and try to start over.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more it does feel like a divorce. There's the initial estrangement, and the fact that I still love and care for people I'll be leaving, and the fact that right now it's ugly and raw. And there's also the fact that like a marriage, a good relationship with a church requires some work and occasionally forgiveness and compromise. I've stuck it out before. It's not that I'm unwilling to work out the kinks in a relationship. There was betrayal before and it hurt, but it was clear cut and so obviously wrong that the congregation didn't split although there were gradually a number of people who left.

This time I'm one of the people leaving and like all those who vacated their pews already, I'm not waiting to see how all the dust settles.

People outside of a church may look at it as a sign of what's wrong with Christianity, but the fact is that although we may be a group of people who are Christians, we are still people. We are subject to the same desires and needs as everyone else and our efforts to get through life will follow different paths. We all may be genuinely trying to follow the same guidelines for doing so, but read our instruction manual (the Bible) differently. Just as Americans in general want the best for their country, yet sometimes split along ugly lines in politics, we are not always united in the path we see as best for our churches.

When that happens, we disagree and sometimes the disagreement is severe enough to split churches. Until I went through it, I didn't really understand why a group of people with the same goal couldn't get along. Now I do. The same things that divide us in our communities still make their way into church, regardless of how we try.

I realize that sometimes we choose to stick it out, expecting the tide to shift or deciding that the things that are not affected by a change -- maybe something as solid as proximity or family tradition -- are enough to see us through. Sometimes we watch the accumulating changes like weights being piled on a scale until it tilts and we decide the things that would keep us coming are outweighed and cannot hold us.

I'm still grieving for the fact that wherever I land, a large group of people that I dearly love won't be there and for a while, at least, I'll be struggling to fit into a new place. But six years ago, I was still feeling my way at the church that until recently felt like home, so I know it's a task worth doing.

Worship is too important to me to let it slide or let it be anything less than fulfilling. My relationship with my God demands it of me.

Sometimes Love Requires A 'No'

Ever since I first said "No," to Ethan's addiction, I've struggled with balancing that "no" with mother's love and plain Christian charity.

Any mother or father who's ever had to turn away an addicted son or daughter's request for anything ranging from a few dollars to a place to stay for a few nights, or months, has felt that pain. Couple that with handing a few dollars to the homeless person on the corner who may well be using it to feed their own addiction, but doing it because of a desire to show Christ's love, and you'll get an idea of what I'm struggling with.

Add on the sudden death of that child who you've denied time and again -- not love or necessities, but other things -- and you can look for a boatload of guilt. A big ol' boatload of guilt.

In Sunday school this week one of the class members talked about loving without the "buts." Setting aside prerequisites on love and just loving, how he'd been able to do that with a person he was having trouble with and help that person, and I was in imminent danger of leaving class in tears.

Days later, I was still grappling with myself over whether my love had not been the quality it should have been. But there are no coincidences.

When an older gentleman who I've known for years called Wednesday needing a strong back (thinking of my husband) to move some items out of an office, I volunteered pointing out that toting 80 lbs. of granddaughters has given me a fairly good set of muscles. The deal was lunch, and during lunch I raised the subject with him as he's a sober alcoholic, a retired substance abuse counselor, and an Episcopal priest who has known my family for years and attempted to counsel Ethan at one time.

"I think you probably did for Ethan all he would let you do," he said, "because you're independent and I think you raised him to be independent."

Well, yes. He was right on those points. Pretty much the only things I turned him down for were allowing him to use and live under my roof (or a roof I provided) and his last request for a Playstation 4, an outlandish gift under the best of circumstances, but one that given the circumstances has plagued me all the same.

"I always saw these 45-year-old men who were calling their mothers to use their social security to bail them out," he continued. "When I was showing my ass and called my mother to go my bail, she told me to use my wonderful gift of gab and get myself out, that she wasn't responsible for my drinking. When I got sober, I thanked her for two things: the gift of life and making me take responsibility for myself."

His words brought me some comfort. Had Ethan ever managed to get straight, perhaps he would have been thankful for the same things.

Although he never achieved the independence he so craved, Ethan owned his addiction. He had a certain sense of warped responsibility about it. He shoplifted dextromethorphan rather than use money my mom occasionally gave him. He quite likely committed food stamp fraud to swap his food for drug money. He worked an odd job now and then if he needed money for pills. Sure, he'd use food stamps and take rent and utilities money from my mom (after exhausting my reserve of help), but he owned his addiction.

Still, it hurts that I couldn't do more for him. That he didn't ask for the normal things, like a good phone, new clothes, or his computer fixed -- the things I could have given him and been glad to do. Despite efforts not to, it bothers me that people probably judge our relationship not knowing the facts and decide I didn't love him enough.

Was I not a good Christian when I didn't do more? I don't know. The prodigal son's father never chased him down when he was living with the swine to make life better, so the only example I can find anywhere close doesn't say I was.

Still, when I give money to one of the homeless people I see so often in Winston, when I pray for them, it's in the memory of Ethan and who he might well have become had he lived life on the path he was taking. It's my love for him and for them as people who have their own struggles that makes me dig into my wallet instead of turn away.

Do they always use the money wisely? That isn't the question. The only question is whether we give in love.

And still wrestling with this question in the evening, I realized something else. Sometimes, even with love, the answer is "no."

We don't always give our children or anyone we love everything they want, addictions and other struggles aside. Sometimes we have to say no for their own good or because we simply cannot.

Sometimes, in this Christian walk, our answer is no as well, whether we are being asked or doing the asking.

If the answer were always yes, then I would have had the healing touch I sought and Ethan would still be with me today.

My limited, human, mother's love was right sometimes to say "no," because even with infinite love, the answer, sometimes, is still "no."