The Dithering of a District Diva

In my first post of 2015, I’m happy to say there’s some light at the end of this spiritual crisis I’ve been writing about. Coming up on a year of this roadblock in my faith I’ve been stagnating at, I’m finally feeling like God is making some headway with me. In typical God fashion, He hasn’t been working at all in the ways I anticipated He would work.

I’ve written about 3 pastors I’d had very hurtful experiences with in the past year who didn’t cause but certainly didn’t help my crisis of faith. What I was expecting from God, then, was for those same pastors to help bring some restoration and healing to the holes I was feeling in my walk with God. After all, God promises in Jeremiah 3:15, “And I will give you pastors according to mine heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding.” That’s not quite how things have been shaking out.

I was so blessed to receive some fantastic advice and encouragement from a pastor in Virginia, Dr. Leonard Smith, via Twitter, who doesn’t know me from Adam, but still graciously took the time to read my first post about my crisis and offer wisdom through his #LeonardLessons. I’m also enjoying attending church and a small group here in Harlem with a great pastor and congregation, the lessons of which have been exactly what I need to stretch my faith and encourage me to continue on my walk with Christ. Then there’s Pastor Peter Scazzero in Queens who has been one of the biggest helps to me thus far and I’ve never even met him. I just finished his book, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, and had some life-changing and intentional conversations with 4 people this week–all prompted by my reading of this book. They were painful conversations where patterns of behavior and years of hurt surfaced, but the healing that resulted was worth the effort and brought me four steps closer to the kind of emotional health that’s necessary to mature spiritually.

But I thought my healing and restoration would be spurred by one-on-one sit-downs with a trusted pastor God would send me. I thought wholeness would come from me returning to one person in particular who’d hurt me and having that person say all the healing things I needed to hear. Neither of those anticipated and desired things, happened. Yet here I am, still on the ladder, and rungs higher than I was this time last year or even last week. Another lesson I’ll eventually learn to accept: God doesn’t work how I want Him to; God works how I need Him to.

The other “pastors” God promised to send me–the ones with hearts after His own heart, who would feed me wisdom and understanding–have certainly come, but they’re not licensed to preach. They’ve come in the form of beautiful friends who have sat with me and listened to my rantings and met me with compassion, love and prayer; they’re folks whom I haven’t spoken to in a long while who have reached out to check on me, remind me that I am loved and never alone. One “pastor” was a friend who called me up to share her own spiritual crisis with me and what God taught her through it; another invited me to the church I now attend, and another is the friend who attends with me and exchanges spiritual growth tips with me over brunch every Sunday.

Because pastoring doesn’t just come in the form of a state licensed minister, a church board of trustees appointment or a salary; it’s a heart condition and a lifestyle. Pastors aren’t just leaders of a church, they are all of the people God has placed into your life to pour into you and pray with you and care for you and fast with you and love the Jesus in you enough to recognize your needs and seek to meet them.

So when I look back over this past year of struggles, I see good, beautiful pastors all over the place in my life. The times I felt abandoned, overlooked and discarded by Christians and Christian leaders, God was still there, speaking to my heart and sending me the love I needed to fill the voids I felt. While I kept wanting the folks who caused the void to come back into my life and apologize and fix them, that just wasn’t in the plan (except for one person! I’m forever grateful for that unexpected closure) and I’m learning to be okay with that and to recognize the love God has surrounded me with to help me heal is more than enough.

And as I recognize the love of God so clearly present in my life, I’m learning to release those people who couldn’t see my value and didn’t care to see my need. As Pastor Scazzero notes in Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, the more you know God for yourself, the better you know yourself and the better decisions you’ll make about who you allow to have space in your life. The more I understand who Christ is, the more I understand that I don’t have to try and convince someone to love me or see me as valuable or even human. I can just walk away from those people, knowing I am unconditionally loved by God, inherently valuable as a child of God and fully human, allowed to experience every emotion and pre-destined to exist on earth, the way God intended. 

I am learning to repeat to myself: YOU ARE LOVED! As James Baldwin wrote, “[You were born] To be loved, baby, hard at once and forever to strengthen you against the loveless world.” That means every time you encounter the many people–Christians included–who will just not see your humanity or recognize Christ in you and will treat you accordingly, you can shake off every lie the Devil ever told you about yourself. You can rest in the truth that your very existence is proof that you are an inherently valuable, unconditionally loved, born worthy heir to throne of the Almighty God your Father. Be still and know that nothing you can do can earn nor deplete God’s inevitable, unshakable love for you. 

When you understand that about God and about yourself, there’s some mess you just won’t stand for any longer. The dysfunction that you’ve grown up with and are attracted to because it’s comfortable and familiar–so much so that you replicate it in all areas of life and accept dysfunction when its offered to you–that mess starts to make you uncomfortable when you really get to know yourself. Dysfunction becomes unattractive to you and when you see it headed towards you, you get up and go the opposite direction.

The more you know God and the more you know who God made you to be, the more God will raise your consciousness to cycles of dysfunction and generational abuses so you can break every one of those chains. It will take tremendous effort to deprogram and decolonize your mind and there are many forces working against you to keep you in emotional turmoil and spiritual stagnation: racism, patriarchy, misogyny, family traditions and gender roles chief among them. But with a good support system, therapy, prayer and determination through the Holy Spirit, you can walk in the freedom that is our birthright in Christ.

Step one is always to recognize the problems and to call out what’s shackling you by name. I’ve had to ask myself some painful questions about why I’ve accepted some of the things I’ve accepted and I’ve had to drag up some ghosts that weren’t quite as dead as I thought and certainly not that deeply buried. But as Christ tells us, “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.”

And that’s the point of all of this; that’s why Jesus came and died and rose again, so that we could be free of everything, even ourselves. My past can’t haunt me if I stare it in the face. Generational curses can’t afflict me or continue on through me if I break them. No sin that I’ve ever committed can keep me from moving ever closer to God if I just accept that God has already forgiven me.

Some people won’t forgive me; some people won’t see my value; some people won’t love me. And so what? What can man do to me?! If they take my job, will God not provide? If they beat me down, will He not strengthen me again? If they take my life, won’t my soul still be anchored in the Lord? What can’t I face, and what can’t He change?

The Lord is on my side. I have nothing to fear. And neither do you! Believing that truth is the beginning of emotionally healthy spirituality.

If you’d like prayer for a spiritual crisis or any situation you’re going through, please email me at diva AT districtdiva.com. I’d love to pray with you!

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