When I drive to the grocery store, I
like to park in the same row. Sometimes, if I am feeling particularly
brave, I will think to myself, “I'm going to park in the next row
over, today.” But never two rows over. I'm not a masochist. Since I
feel mostly “okay,” though, I park in the same row.
I have worked out a specific routine
for going to the gym, as well. Parking there is variable, but I
organize my belongings in a specific way so as to be as efficient as
possible. I tuck my membership card and sugar tabs in the front pouch
of my insulin pump bag. Then I clip my keys to the bag, put my cell
phone in my pocket, headphones around my neck, and wear the insulin
pump on my non-dominant wrist. I go straight to the machines,
exercise, wash my hands on the way out (using a paper towel to turn
off the tap, of COURSE), and go back to my car. It's an extremely
streamlined process.
So when I tell you that I am very
scared of heaven, I want you to know where I'm coming from. I like to
tour places before actually going there for the first time. I like to
park in the same row—the same SPOT, if I can. I want things in
order. I will wear the same old comfortable pair of shoes until I've
worn holes in the toes—I HATE searching for new ones. I am
terrified of the unknown. I don't know whether I'll feel like me. I
don't know whether I'll have the same body—or any body? Will I know
my family? Will I get bored being happy forever? Is there food there?
I know literally nothing about what to expect.
It may seem an obvious thing to you,
but no one on this earth has experienced the afterlife. There is not
a single person on this chaotic, teeming planet that can tell me
definitively what to expect. And now Rachel Held Evans is getting to
know this vast uncertainty, and she is a person whose doubt and fears
I have seen mirrored in my own heart.
I would say she is my favorite
theologian, but she's kind of my ONLY theologian. I'm still a little
angry at my brother for introducing me to her book, Faith Unraveled,
because it was the beginning of the end for me. It ended a long and
illustrious couple of decades of successful ignoring my doubts and
fears about religion, faith, and myself. It nudged me along a
completely different path than I'd been traveling—and I really hate
traveling, by the way.
I don't write about my faith (or lack
thereof), because I've come away with the distinct impression that we
can't KNOW much of anything definitively. The chance that I was born
into the correct denomination of the correct “form” (Protestantism
vs. Catholicism) of the correct religion is infinitesimally small.
The chance that I know all the correct rules and practice the correct
ordinances is even smaller. And the desperation to believe that I was
“right” had led me to be judgmental and cold-hearted.
The only real unifying factor I could
figure out that made sense and could be known intimately was love. It
was so corny, and it was something I'd always poo-pooed as kid stuff.
Love God? Duh. Love people? Double duh. And yet I'd done everything
but that. There was too much at stake for me to risk believing that
God gave grace to EVERYone. I remember, regrettably, telling a Jewish
girl in 8th grade that she would go to hell if she didn't
believe in Jesus. She had asked me, and I was uncomfortable giving my
reply, to be sure. But how short-sighted it was.
The thing about admitting that you
don't know the answers and about loving people completely regardless
of whether they're going to change or not is that it's actually way
harder. Like, way harder than what I was doing before. It was SO much
easier to ignore them and write them off. It was so easy living in a
middle-class neighborhood that didn't have any drug houses (much less
3 within a block of me) and where you couldn't hear the parents
screaming at their kids through the cracked windows in the summer and
where everyone wasn't drinking, flicking cigarette butts on the
ground, or using “fuck” as a filler in everyday conversation.
I've told myself about a hundred times in the past 10 years that we
need to move out of here, but I've actually grown really attached to
the neighbors and kids on our tiny block. (My brother, when I told
him I was writing a blog post, asked whether it was going to be about
the neighbor girl who just came and rang my doorbell three times
while I was napping. I told him I was saving a whole book of stories
to write about her.) I think moms of only children are sometimes Kid
Magnets because kids see that we have a little extra time to listen
and free hands, and so though I roll my eyes every time Q and the
neighbor girl pound on the door asking for something instead of ever
going to the girl's house, I secretly enjoy having a spare moment of
myself to give. Of course, sometimes I also tell them that if they
ring the doorbell ONE MORE TIME, they are BOTH going to their
separate houses and the playdate is over.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is, I
have no idea. Love is the only part I've figured out so far, and I
haven't come close to perfecting it. I'm still full of bitterness and
sadness and so, so much fear. I try to take Q to church every week as
a way of saying, “Hey, I really don't 'feel' any of this, and I'm
not sure if I can even KNOW who You are, or which version of the
Bible is right, or whether praying for things actually affects the
outcome, but I just wanted You to know that I showed up.”
So thank you to Rachel (and her
wonderful husband, without whose support I'm sure she wouldn't have
been the prolific writer and theologian she was) for shaking things
up for me, for telling me it's okay to stare my doubts in the face
and draw lessons from different religions, and for teaching me that
God is excited to have everyone at His table—whether they're
attending a Bible study in an affluent neighborhood or chain smoking
cigarettes in a weed-choked yard on the least reputable block in
Medicine Hat.
