A Story of Leaving, In Parts (This is Part Two)

[Part one can be found-->here.]

Yet, alas, here I am.

A personal tidbit, in the ever humorous saga that continues to be my futile attempt at co-parenting with a narcissistic ex: my ex-husband is taking me back to court, for the second time in two years. One of the items of contention is our daughter's attendance at her current school, which is a private, non-denominational Christian school that she has been attending since Pre-K.

We initially enrolled her there because we were married at the time, and the town in which we resided did not offer full-day kindergarten--but this school did. I was ready to pull her out of the school in first grade because we were moving and I couldn't afford tuition on my own, and my ex-in laws generously offered to pay her tuition so she could stay there.

Initially, I was so overwhelmed and grateful for their generosity. I even sent them an edible arrangement as a thank you.

Yes. I did that.

Because if I had the foresight to realize what this meant for me and my daughter in the long-term, nothing says "thank you for now locking me into a school decision for a child that IS NOT YOURS" like melons shaped into stars on wooden skewers.

And, now, here I am.

My daughter is now in the third grade.
I live right next door to an excellent public school.
I am the custodial parent.
I wish for my daughter to attend this public school.
My ex-husband says he wants her to stay where she is.
I remind him that we agreed a year ago that she could attend public school for 4th grade.

What does my ex-husband do? Slaps me with a court motion requesting that the court to compel her attendance at this school. Why? Because as long as his parents are footing the bill, there is really no need for her to go anywhere else.

Here we are.

Last week, a flyer came home from school in Peyton's folder, advertising a presentation on March 5 by an organization, Family Policy Alliance of New Jersey. This particular presentation is in regard to "public policies in the state and their impact on religious and parental rights," with a focus on the organization itself and LGBT curriculum in public schools.

Immediately, red flags were waving and warning sirens were blaring in my brain.

Why is my daughter's obviously private, obviously Christian school holding this event if the primary topic deals with public school curriculum and policy? I already know damn well they aren't teaching and LGTBQ+ friendly curriculum--which is one of the many reasons I want my kid out of there.

A quick Google gives me this organization's website, which boasts a belief that "...human life is sacred. We're all created in the image of God, so we respect and protect life, including preborn babies [author note: WTF is a preborn baby? I believe the term they're looking for is "fetus," but that doesn't quite fit the narrative I suppose.], the elderly and every other condition of the human experience through natural death."

Warning sirens continue. I click on the "Issues" tab and navigate my way on to the section on sexual orientation and immediately want to smash my phone against a wall:

"Family Policy Alliance advances policies that protect the right of Americans to freely exercise their faith (including disagreeing with sexual relationships apart from God's design of marriage) and opposes policies that seek to force families to accept, and even celebrate, the LGTBQ+ agenda."

Wait, what now?

On one hand, this organization boasts about how ALL life is sacred--but then I realize it's only the lives that fit into a purposefully defined boundary--created by men--that are worthy of the moniker of sanctity.

Conservative Christians are so good at getting it so wrong.

I cannot stress this enough: this cannot be God's design. This is simply bad, hateful theology.

Are these people not made in the very same image of the God they claim so wholeheartedly to love?
From the lips of Jesus himself, who exhorted his believers to love their neighbors--do they not count?
Does the Christian definition of love, taught by Jesus, not also equate to equity and inclusion?

It is abundantly clear to me that my daughter's school does not believe our LGTBQ+ brothers and sisters deserve to have their lives and very existences celebrated. Not at their school, and not anywhere else for that matter. The sanctity of life they so boldly claim to uphold does, in fact, have lines drawn. Inclusion and protection can be denied because a book tells them it should be so.

But, really, who says so?

If Evangelical Christians believe we are all made in the image of God, then that means there is a spark of divinity in each of us. We are all innately holy, regardless of who we love or what we look like.

What I want for my daughter is to grow up in a world where radical love and inclusion is the norm. Where every life--gay, straight, trans, black, white--is celebrated because these people are our neighbors. These people are God. Reverence for God means having reverence for everyone.

Full stop: reverence for everyone.

If we cannot find the inherent divinity in the marginalized and the persecuted, we are failing. That is not Christianity.

Or--maybe it is and I've just been wrong about it this whole time.

So here I am.

My daughter attends a school who believes that there are human beings on this earth that are not worthy of celebration, my ex-husband is dragging me in front of a judge to keep her there, and all I can do at this point is sit here with my heartache.

I mourn what I wish Christianity could be--the Christianity I thought I was a part of, one of love and peace and justice--and I abhor what Evangelical Christianity actually is: white nationalism, with a healthy side of misogyny and homophobia, with a cross slapped on it.

My heart aches for my daughter, who loves talking about God, but is also being taught in no uncertain terms that inclusion, equity, and justice is not an inherent right for all people. I wonder how to approach these topics with her, because I can see the confusion in her eyes when we talk about radical love, diversity and what that means for people of color and people who have been marginalized.

I don't know what to tell her about her great, big God who pours out love, mercy, and grace on some people...but not so much on other people.

My heart aches for me, who has to be paraded in front of a judge next Friday--to make a decision about where my daughter should attend school because, let's face it, my agency as her mother has been discarded by her father. I gave my ex-husband an answer he didn't like, and now I have to pay for it. Pay the court fees, file the paperwork, take a day off work, wait at the courthouse for our 15 minutes. The system continues to baffle me. It is not my intention to make this a first amendment issue--but rather I'd like to point out that oppressing dissenting, differing voices seems to be an ongoing trend here.

And that, dear reader, makes me angry.

I thought long and hard about whether I wanted to share these thoughts in such a public space, but honestly...I needed to say it. I've carried a deep guilt in my bones that I slapped a smile on my face every Sunday and spent anywhere from 2-5 hours at church, depending on the day, talking about how much I loved God and how great God was, but forgetting how little U.S. conservative Christianity cares about anyone who isn't already a heterosexual believer or one that could be convinced to come to their side.

As a woman, I was expected to fix a marriage that was already irrevocably broken. My ex-husband was abusive, yet somehow the onus was on me to make things right...if I just let Jesus take the wheel.

I left that marriage four years ago, and my ex-husband continues his assault via the court system when I've displeased him since he no longer has direct access to me.

I recognize my privilege as a white, straight, cisgender female. While the system is occasionally rigged against me, I recognize that there are groups of people in this country that the system is simply steamrolling--because systemic oppression from institutions like the church believe it should be so. There is so much work to be done, I still have so much to learn about how to become a better ally, and I can't sit back and just subtly call out the church when they are clearly bastardizing the very definition of the word "sanctity" on the back of Jesus Christ.

I simply cannot allow that to happen. I left the church, but I am not leaving the side of the vulnerable, the persecuted, the marginalized, the disadvantaged, and the poor.

I might be heartbroken and angry, but I am still whole. And here I am:

I see you.
I love you.
You are whole.
You are worthy of celebrating.
You are divinity.
Your body is sacred.
Your very existence is holy.

No matter what your skin looks like,
who you love,
or what you believe.

And I'm not going anywhere.

A Story of Leaving, In Parts (This is Part One)

I've spent a lot of time thinking about this post. I've drafted many, many versions of this post. I've let them sit in a queue, untouched and unpublished, for about three years now.

For many who follow me on social media, the writing may have already been on the (proverbial Facebook) wall.

I find myself in a place where subtlety no longer has any value or benefit to my faith system, so here goes nothing.

About three years ago, I made the conscious decision to leave the church.
Or rather, I have wholeheartedly and unabashedly rejected the institution of the church.

And now for the tipping point that finds me here, now, writing this: I find myself backed into a corner by the systemic patriarchal oppression reinforced by this maddening institution, and I am...well, I'm fucking tired of it.

So--let's burn it all down, shall we?

I don't want anyone to get it twisted: I believe in God(dess). I believe in the universe. I believe in angels and guides. I believe in the Earth. I believe in Spirit. I believe in energy. I believe in intuition. I believe in crystals and tarot and meditation. I believe that Jesus was one cool-as-hell dude and had things to say that were important, radical, groundbreaking, and worth a listen.

But Christianity, with a capital C? Especially that of the evangelical variety? You can keep it, because I don't want it.

____________________________________________________________________________

Aside from my current predicament--which I will address in an additional post because the level of WTF requires it--the dominoes of deconstruction have been falling pretty hard and fast since 2016:

Shortly after the 2016 election, a member of my church sent me a private message on Facebook messenger in response to a post questioning how I'm supposed to explain to my daughter that a man who boasts about grabbing women by the pussy and had raped one of his wives was now the President of the United States: "Don't worry! At least Mike Pence is our Vice President. He'll stand for good Christian values. Trump probably won't even make it all four years and then Pence will be President" (this is a paraphrase, but the general idea intact--totes cool, v. Christian).

I was absolutely horrified at the lack of self-awareness that this woman was demonstrating by allowing the most un-Christian president ever a pass, simply because his number two was a devout conservative Christian.

It was, dear reader, not a good look.

Christian values can be bought for a price. Whatever it takes. Just look the other way. Hold your nose, it makes it easier to accept.

Jesus wept.

The constant barrage of thinly-veiled hate, oppression, fear-mongering, and downright misinformation I see being shared by Christian friends and family is mind-blowing. The outright dismissal of basic human rights, equality, decency, science, and reason because of selective interpretation of a book written thousands of years ago by fallible men? It knocks the wind out of me.

The blind allegiance to Donald Trump is akin to idolatry, and the hypocrisy makes my skin crawl. Donald Trump. This man. A racist, homophobic misogynist. In the people's house. And my conservative Christian acquaintances foam at the mouths with glee about everything they think he stands for. Except...he doesn't stand for them. He doesn't stand for America. He stands for himself, and himself alone.

He feeds off fear and hate.
The most powerful man in the world.
And they love him, worship him.

Jesus weeps.

And at the earliest stages of separation from my now ex-husband, after admitting to them that he had been emotionally and verbally abusive toward me, several members of the women's group I was a part of had this advice for me: pray for him. Pray for myself.

Take a critical look at MYSELF because perhaps there was something I was doing wrong. Perhaps I could find ways to be a better wife to my husband, and maybe he wouldn't do awful things like call me fat, lazy, or hack into one of my electronic devices and proceed to harass and threaten my friend and neighbor (I know you're thinking that is oddly specific, but yes--I watched him send Facebook messages from my account using my Kindle at home--watched from my phone, while I was at church).

You wanna know what I did?

I fasted. I prayed. I cried and sang worship music and begged and pleaded with God on my way to work every day for nearly a month. Was it me? Was I so broken that I would drive the person who exchanged wedding vows with me before God to treat me so badly?

You wanna know what my ex did? Abso-fucking-lutely nothing.

And at the end of it all, we got our divorce.

But on that day, I like to think Jesus smiled. And I celebrate that day, every day, as the first step in breaking so many different types of bondage and finding wholeness.

Except this wholeness didn't come from surrendering at all costs and shrugging my shoulders when things didn't go the way I wanted them to because, "It wasn't on God's timing."

This was wholeness that allowed me to see that I was not, in fact, broken.
This was wholeness that looked a lot like self-determined worth and value.
This was wholeness that was mine alone, grasped at and formed through my own agency.

Wholeness without crutches or caveats.
Wholeness without shame.
Beauty without the ashes.

Jesus smiles.

[Part two can be found-->here.]