I don’t need no man, no fancy blood diamond ring. To hell
with your white picket fence, country club, and lake house by the sea.
Answering my questions with “because it’s biblical” has never done any good to
this cynical heart of mine, and I assure you it never will. And if that’s
honestly what it means to be a Christian woman, then, shit, I don’t want to be
one. The more I read, the more I realize how little I know. It’s getting harder
for me to hope, to celebrate and see beauty through this doubt. It’s all too
big, too much for me to handle. One most days I walk these cobblestones
teetering on the brink of despair. I’m sick of toiling over what is and what
ought to be. I’m exhausted. I swear to you, one day I will withdraw from society,
and it is there I will be free. There are indeed moments, when the brokenness
of this world crushes my every last bit of hope, leaving me crippled. All I
want is to seclude myself with nothing more than a vegetable garden and an
aluminum airstream.
Ignorance is bliss.
Yet, those moments are fleeting, and I am reminded that
seclusion in a mansion or seclusion in a trailer is seclusion all the same. And
I refuse to be a reclusive woman.
There are indeed sleepless nights when I am wide-eyed,
staring at the ceiling thinking of worse case scenarios.
That one day I’ll wake up, and find myself sleeping next to
a man of white collared conventionality, both of us locked in the never-ending
pursuit of fleeting promises of the American dream—with the dreams of living in
an airstream or in community on a farm that once filled our youth completely stamped
out, as our California King swallows us in our master suite. Creativity,
whimsy, spontaneity replaced with a bureaucratic personality.
There are indeed nights when sleep does not come easy, and
my thoughts are filled with fears of worse case scenarios.
That one day I’ll wake up, and find myself numb to
injustice, violence, poverty--it’s all hopeless, I’ll say one day. That this cynicism
will grow to eclipse all things beautiful and the power of extravagant love,
that there would be limits to my compassion, that I would distinguish between
the deserving and undeserving poor. That I would pledge allegiance to the land
of equal opportunity, pull yourself up by your bootstraps! Equal opportunity my
ass, I don’t buy that. That I would come to use the rhetoric of democracy and freedom
to justify violence and war.
Sleep does not come easy when the future is on my mind, with
the fear that I will become the very person I don’t want to be.
That one day I’ll be a USDA agro-bureaucratic prick that
delights in oppressing the honest farmer that is growing food with care and
integrity. That I would work for Tyson, your abuses “justified” in the name of
capitalism. Yeah, I don’t buy that either. That I’ll have a flashback to the
years when I was young and full of life, and I’ll regretfully wonder how the
hell I got here, and why I didn’t take more risks. That one day I’ll value my
possessions over people, and consider the needs of the poor solely a
responsibility of the state. That one day I would come to justify extravagance
and why I will need a 5 million dollar house. That all of my attention would be
placed on the kingdom to come, and not life in the present—that religion would
become my opiate, as I sit submissively (like good Christian girls are to do!)
in a pew, careful not to wrinkle my church clothes.
There are indeed these sleepless nights when I am convinced
that complacency is inevitable as I finally drift off to sleep. That as hard as
I may try, I will end up back in that false sanctuary, the 1%, ignorant. That
the most adventure I will have is when I take my kids to the water park. That the
only time I will encounter someone of a different socioeconomic status or skin
color will be when the cleaning lady or landscapers come.
Oh, Lord may complacency never wash over me.
Yet, in my wildest dreams of distant lands, you are already
there—I know it.
For you set the rhythm of this wander-lusting heart of mine,
beating relentlessly for justice, peace, resurrection, and redemption.
Oh, and I am left with nothing but to trust in your
goodness— a goodness I so deeply denied
in the constant wake of tragedy, a Sovereignty I slowly learned to lean on.
And it is in the wee hours of the morning that I am only comforted
by the reminder that complacency is impossible, complacency is impossible, if all
that I am is woven to the heart of my Maker and Redeemer.
Here I am—I stand in your presence—your broken daughter,
full of contradictions, paradoxes, wrought by fears, filled to the brim with
angst. Impatient, inconsistent. A rich girl acting poor. A hypocrite of
hypocrites. But dammit I’m trying, oh trying to navigate these tensions that
you have so clearly placed on my heart. I’m waiting to see how you will take
these two opposing tensions to form the perfect synthesis. Oh, I’m trying to
build this bridge between theory and practice.
I am fumbling, and falling, and tripping, and crawling. But
navigating, nonetheless.
Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est
[Where charity
and love are, God is there]
