My Letter To God

Dear God,

I’m grateful for the life I have now. This one life you’ve given me. Since I handed my life over to you, it has not been easy. I feel peaceful this morning though. Leaving my beloved church behind has been enlightening. I lived that way for 35 years because I believed with all my heart that there was no other way to live but our way, but you showed me the fallacy of that thinking.

Reclaiming My Freedom

The kingdom of God is not eating and drinking but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit (Romans 14: 17)

My quest for better spiritual awareness came after years of being an innocent.  As a Christian, I needed to stay in connection with Jesus Christ, the source of spiritual life. The Vine. Righteousness is not based only on works of faithfulness, but faithfulness to the voice of God. It is Him we must please in our daily walk. He is the decider of what is holy and acceptable, and He is the king of peace and giver of real joy. Salvation is for everyone, of every culture, every background, and circumstance. The details of people’s lives cannot be dictated to them by other people.  Instructions must come from heaven to the heart. The above scripture from Romans 14 holds significant meaning. What truer sentiment could have been written about what constitutes the kingdom of God.

It is not the tangible that makes up the kingdom but the intangible. My soul belongs to God, and it’s a part of me that no earthly person can touch or judge. Only God can know the intricacies of motive, backgrounds of understanding, and depth of heart. Therefore, Paul said it best because who are we to judge another man’s servant, to his own master he stands or falls, for we must all give an account in the day of judgment.

In the circle of church attendance that I’ve been in for the last 35 years, people don’t just leave individuals in the hands of God. They tend to just pick at one another. When you put this kind of power in the hands of humans, they tend to wear each other out. After a while, people grab a badge and arrest whomever they wish, with the consent of the authorities.

Part of my journey towards greater spiritual growth involved identifying the things that came between Christ and me and personal, Spirit-led decisions about myself. I had to shake off the control people tried to have over my family and my life. For example, in our congregations,  for reasons I never understood, no one could wear Afrocentric styles or cut their hair in styles. Mind you, these are black congregations. We had to go around like we were in the 1950s wearing just curled-set hair or permed styles that didn’t involve any cut or shape. Go figure.

One minister even tried to sneak in the idea that cutting off split ends WAS cutting hair. She was quietly booed.

.

So where does that leave a black woman in the City of Chicago? How does this even work? Insane.

We were pretending to be white southern belles from the 1950s and ’60s with perfectly coiffed tresses while living in the 1980s, 90s, and 2000s.

No showing of blackness allowed.

I hear this obsession still goes on. Of course, after studying I Corinthians 11 for myself, I threw up my hands. Who was going to listen to the Bible at this point?

Yeah, that thing.

I was a small minnow in a sea full of whales. What was seemingly important in our congregations was how the Pastor’s wife saw it, not the scriptures. Their hair rules were ingrained in our religious group. Unfortunately certain of our black congregations still have this pre-occupation about what is HOLY HAIR. One group even said that using a relaxer is worldly! You must PRESS your locks with a hot comb.

But, the pressure was real. Conform or else. Or else what? Thou shalt be stared at and talked about and preached against as a rebel, a breaker of unity, a breaker of our laws, vain, worldly …. (don’t ask, you get the idea).

Can you fry it or dye it and still be saved? Can you feather it, relax it? Can you wear twists or twist outs? Can you braid it or put extra hair in it without being accused of vanity, and then how MUCH extra hair is too much, and who gets to decide that? The person who has no hair?

One time, my poor daughter ruined her hair on a weekend trip with friends while she was swimming. It was “toe”-up, not just torn up. She had allowed the chlorine to stay in her hair all weekend. This was the summer before she entered high school. We had to cut off the damage and do something cute with it to help it grow back. My child, bless her heart, was already pulling and picking at her hair as a habit. The best way I saw was to put braided extensions in her hair so she’d look cute and it would solve the messiness of daily styling a 13-year-old girl who had damaged hair. My husband agreed. He said to our daughter and me,

“Look, if anyone, I mean ANYONE, the Pastor, whoever, I don’t care, says anything to you about your hair, you have them see me. I am NOT going to have my daughter going to a new school with her hair to’ up!”

Thank you, baby.

Since I became a Christian, that struggle remains daily and real. People always try to put the spiritual whammy on you with their opinions or traditions spun out of everything but prayer and scriptures. They feel their views are the Holy Ghost and trust me if they can’t cover it with the Bible, it ain’t. If their opinion is the Lord, why don’t they have the grace of Christ to act nice about it?

We Do Have Liberty

In the Spirit, we have liberty in Christ to follow as He leads and practice what we understand to be sacred in our lives. Yet, there are people in this world who would have you believe that YOUR standing with God is through them. We shouldn’t give away our freedom in Christ to other people. It never ends well. Bottom line if you place yourself in that position you will find in the end that people simply like controlling other people. In the end, you will not even know or understand why you’re doing what you’re doing, but you will feel that you must.

A good, solid Christian told me one time, when it comes to people and authorities, don’t go asking; go telling. Tell them what God showed you, what He wants you to do and then go do it.

When you ask permission, that’s too much power and people like playing with power and half the time, they don’t even know how to use that power.

God saved me as an individual. He individually sought me, and forgave me of my sins and gave me light to walk the path of salvation. I know that God is watching over me as a person to keep me on the right track. If I’m sincere, God will lead me the right way. The way that’s best for me. Yes, we all need community and guidance and shepherding and mentoring and help with our joy and faith. These are things the body of Christ provides by building itself up in the love of God.

I had trained myself to be tethered to other people’s opinions.  I was not alone. But now, I’m aware enough to reclaim my freedom.

Think about the following story and let me know your thoughts below:

Elephant and the Rope

As my friend was passing the elephants, he suddenly stopped, confused by the fact that these huge creatures were being held by only a small rope tied to their front leg. No chains, no cages. It was obvious that the elephants could, at anytime, break away from the ropes they were tied to but for some reason, they did not. My friend saw a trainer nearby and asked why these beautiful, magnificent animals just stood there and made no attempt to get away.

“Well,” he said, “when they are very young and much smaller we use the same size of rope to tie them and, at that age, it’s enough to hold them. As they grow up, they are conditioned to believe they cannot break away. They believe the rope can still hold them, so they never try to break free.” My friend was amazed. These animals could at any time break free from their bonds but because they believed they couldn’t, they were stuck right where they were.

–the Unbound Spirit

My Miseducation About Perfection

I’ve written about perfectionism before, and yet as I go on in life,  I see more clearly the dangers of this insidious disease.  I’m reminded that the wrong type of perfectionism comes from damaged homes and false signals.  Some people bring this wrong mindset into their life and into their spiritual walk.  Years ago while participating in a married couple’s class at our church. The question on the floor was what is it that your spouse does that irritates you and how do you cope with it.   A minister’s wife got up and said, “Oh my husband is perfect.  He doesn’t do anything to irritate me.”  At first, I thought they were joking, but they weren’t.  How can that be?  Is he a clone?  Is he in a coma?  I couldn’t comprehend this at all. What had gone wrong there? Did she expects people to buy that?