Carry On, Warrior

by Glennon Doyle Melton

  We ate their food and drank their drinks and somebody else opened the wine, thank God. And they all squeezed onto my one and only couch and I sat at their feet because I’m a floor sitter. All evening, I soaked them in. Looking up at all my friends laughing and comfortable, I realized, I can handle this. I don’t have to miss out on this anymore because they’re all the way in and they love me anyway, maybe even more than they did before. The whole evening felt so warm and wonderful, I didn’t even get mad when they stayed until 9:15.

  And now, I am a hostess. Without the r.

  Room for One More

  Craig and I are considering becoming official members of our neighborhood church. This is a big deal for us, because a few years ago we promised ourselves we wouldn’t choose a denomination. We couldn’t imagine the need for it. Still can’t, really. We consider ourselves religious rolling stones. We find it important to be the leaders of our family’s faith life instead of passing off that job. We worry that blindly following others’ interpretations of God and scripture can get dangerous. God can speak to each of us directly, after all.

  But we’ve fallen for this little church, and we started wondering if our religious “freedom” wasn’t just another word for nothing left to lose. Because we know that any faith worth a damn is a faith worked out over a lifetime of relationships with other people. Church is just a commitment to try to live a life of a certain quality—a life of love, of humility, of service—alongside others for whom you will care and allow to care for you, even when that’s difficult. It’s a group of regular old humans trying to love each other and the world in superhuman ways. And so it’s a hard way of life, but to me, it’s the only way of life that makes any sense. When people ask me if faith, if church, is comforting to me, I say, “Sort of.” But mostly it’s challenging.

  Still, I was afraid to join this new church. Because I don’t want to pretend to believe anything I don’t believe. I don’t want to pretend to not have doubts. And I don’t want my children to be taught things about God that I’ll have to undo. Before I joined any church, I needed permission from whomever was in charge to be different.

  So I invited one of the ministers over to my house.

  I was scared.

  We talked for two hours. I told her all of my concerns. I wanted to join her church, but first, I wanted to make sure she wanted me. I warned her that I am a troublemaker.

  I told her that I love Jesus madly and deeply, but my problem always seemed to be that I understand him quite differently than many other Christians do. And I love these other Christians, so I didn’t want offend them. I suggested that maybe it was better for me to remain unattached to any particular church rather than disrupt a perfectly lovely one.

  I explained that I had all kinds of doubts and questions and negative feelings about the church’s role throughout history. But I told her I still loved the church. I felt kind of like St. Augustine, who said, “The church is a whore, but she’s my mother.” If I were to become a member of her church, I would need permission to speak my mind respectfully but freely. I would need permission to be myself. I wanted her to know all the things I believe because I knew that eventually they were all going to come out of my mouth in her church.

  My minister said she understood, and she wanted me. She likes me, I think. She said our church would fit me just fine. She doesn’t mind a troublemaker or two in her fold. She said she had room for one more.

  So we’ll see. My biggest fear when entering any church is always, “Oh, Jesus. What are they going to teach my babies about God?” So guess what I did? I signed up to teach Sunday school. And I’ve already fallen in love with my Sunday school team. I’m not sure they know I’m a troublemaker yet, though. God help them.

  LETTING GO

  Treasure Hunt

  Although I’m fascinated by the idea and have been reading about the subject for years, I still don’t understand what Zen is. For now, let’s oversimplify and agree that Zen is perfect peace derived from the transcendence of human suffering through meditation. Imagine the smiling Buddha, the one who holds the secret to life: he is enlightened, beyond desire, beyond frustration, beyond suffering. Zen. If there is one word that represents the opposite of how I experience life, it’s Zen.

  In fact, I find life to be constantly and excruciatingly difficult. A while ago Sister told me about a mother who came to her East African law office and explained that her five-year-old daughter had been raped by a neighbor. This mother had tried for two weeks to have the rapist arrested and get her daughter free medical attention, since she didn’t have the two dollars to cover her care. Because she kept getting turned away, she couldn’t work for two weeks, and her five children were home starving—still living next door to the rapist.

  In Night, by Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor describes watching Nazis throw living Jewish babies into fiery ditches and grown, educated, uniformed men publicly hang Jewish children.

  I have three dear friends who’ve watched their marriages, parents’ health, and dreams for their families crumble in front of them this month.

  And the oil spills, the animals, our earth—Jesus. How will our children forgive us for continuing on like we have planets to spare?

  As the curtains are lifted and we discover the greed, carelessness, and apathy that led to all of these disasters, I just want to walk outside and scream forever. But how can I rail against it all when I sense so much of that same greed, carelessness and apathy inside of me?

  The paralyzing pain and impossibility of life is why I believe that there is something True about Jesus. Not Christianity, necessarily, the way it has come to be understood, but Jesus. His story. The cross. Because when I look at that man hanging lifeless and bloody, nailed to the cross, I understand him to be just the symbol that a God who knows the states of our hearts and our world would send to represent the Truth. To make us feel understood. Loved, even.

  • • •

  As I finished reading Night, forever changed, I imagined Elie Wiesel, after the war, sitting in my living room and telling me the story of how the Nazis killed his family.

  He would tell me that this happened to thousands of families. While the Earth kept spinning. While people all over the planet kept eating their breakfasts and getting dressed and going to work and having picnics and listening to the radio. And how it’s still happening now. Right now, to powerless people all over the world. How humanity has not learned from his family, from his people’s suffering. That our world has yet to say . . . ENOUGH.

  But he would add that he still has hope. That despair is not an option. And then the room would get quiet.

  I can’t imagine, for the life of me, showing the young Wiesel the smiling Buddha. I cannot imagine suggesting to him that his suffering could possibly be transcended. I can only imagine showing him a picture of Jesus hanging on the cross, bloody and beaten and mocked and spit upon and abandoned and God forsaken. And I can only imagine whispering, with trembling hands and voice: Is this how you feel?

  I’m curious about people who have found a way to transcend the world’s collective pain and their own personal suffering. But I respect people who don’t try to escape permanently. Who run toward the pain. Who allow themselves to suffer with others, to become brokenhearted. I respect people who, enlightened or not, roll up their sleeves and give up their comfortable lives for suffering people. Or who don’t do any of those things but pay close enough attention to know and admit and care that life can be brutal. Who understand that their comfortable reality is not enjoyed by all.

  • • •

  Years ago, my hopeful, faithful, joyful minister surprised our congregation by saying: Life is pain, and anyone who tells you different is trying to sell you something. I squirmed in my seat and thought . . . Jeez. How negative. But now I’m older, and I think . . . How true. Life is hard and terrifying and unfair and overwhelming. Life is the cross. And if you
think that’s overly dramatic, please pay close attention to the evening news. After that, read up on the international child sex trade and spend the next afternoon in your local middle school cafeteria observing how kids who look different are treated. Finally, on your way home, stop by the children’s oncology unit at the hospital. Then we’ll talk. Life is pain.

  • • •

  BUT.

  There is beauty to be found in the pain. Life is brutal, but it’s also beautiful. Life is Brutiful. So I look hard for the beauty. I try to drown out my fear voice, which wants me to run away from the pain, and listen instead to my love voice, whom I call God, and who is asking me to run towards it. To allow my heart to be broken open, because a broken heart is both a badge of honor and the most powerful tool on earth.

  That love voice—she’ll help you find treasure. But she’ll guide you right into the minefields first.

  So that’s why I write—to find the treasures in the suffering. And as I write, my memories change ever so slightly. Reality and writing work together to create my memories, and the final result is that I remember events more beautifully than they actually happened. Or maybe in writing them down, I’m able to see for the first time how beautiful they really were.

  • • •

  I do not know Zen. I just know gratitude. I am grateful for the beauty in the midst of suffering. I am grateful for the treasure hunt through the minefield of life. Dangerous or not, I don’t want out of the minefield. Because truth, and beauty, and God are there.

  Jubilee

  Let’s talk real estate.

  Several years ago, Craig and I bought our first single-­family home. The home was within a comfortable price range, but we chose an interest-only, adjustable-rate mortgage because back then, we still believed in shortcuts. Recently we woke up and started asking tough questions about our loan—questions like who are we really paying each month, and how much, exactly? We learned that we were $100,000 underwater, and the details of our loan meant that we could pay our mortgage faithfully ’til the end of time without putting a dent in the principal. We also learned that when our rate adjusted in the very near future, our mortgage would increase by $1,000 per month.

  Craig and I worried and agonized and prayed, and we finally decided to sell our house. We planned a short sale, citing a Lyme-induced move as our “hardship.” But after breakfast, Craig went to the bank and stood in line behind a single mom who was crying and pleading with the manager to help save her home, which she was about to lose to foreclosure. Her two young children were hanging on her legs, looking more weary and afraid than kids need to look. Craig came home, walked into the kitchen, and said, “Honey. No short sale. We’ll save those for people with real hardships. We’ll just cash out everything and start over after the house sells.”

  I said, “What? Let’s think this over.”

  Craig raised his hot little eyebrow at me, and said, “G, it’s the right thing to do. If we needed to do a short sale, we would. But we don’t need to. We have the money. So we’ll use it.”

  I said, “But neeeeeed is such a tricky word.”

  And Craig said, “No it’s not.”

  And I sighed loudly and said, “Okay,” and felt terrified and wildly proud to be Craig’s girl.

  We went to see a financial planner and explained our predicament. He asked questions about our money and marriage and goals, and we told him that our dream of home ownership had been replaced with dreams of peace and freedom. We said that there were things we wanted to do, places we wanted to go, money we wanted to spend and give, moves we wanted to consider, but we felt paralyzed because we’d allowed our mortgage company to become the primary decision maker in our family. We told him that we wanted to know what kind of decisions we’d make if we fired our mortgage company as the boss of us. I told him I wanted Craig to be free of the pressure of our sky-high bills. We shared that we wanted to be more conscious and careful about choosing the companies to which we gave our money. And we said we wanted to live a little simpler, travel a little lighter. He asked us why we didn’t just do a short sale, and we explained that we thought short sales were perfect for some, but not for us at this point, since we couldn’t honestly say that we didn’t have the money. We said we thought the right thing to do was suck it up and start over.

  Then we stopped talking and waited for him to tell us we were nuts. But he didn’t. He looked at us and said, “I hear you. All of this makes sense to me. You need to be free. I get it. I think you should go for it. And I agree that you should do it without the short sale. You have plenty of time to rebuild, and I believe you will. Free your family, and do it your way.”

  We put our sweet little house on the market, and it went under contract in two weeks. We brought $140,000 to the table, just to walk away. We left our retirement accounts, our entire savings, and Chase’s college fund on the closing company’s big fancy brown table.

  So we started over, with nothing again.

  For now, starting over looks like spending a third of our old mortgage on rent. It looks like narrowing our belongings down to what would fit in two small storage units. It looks like shrugging when something breaks, calling our landlord, and waiting for it to get fixed. It sounds like Craig saying whatever, at least our bills are next to nothing after losing a big deal at work. It also looks like buying my new hair color at the dollar store. Based on those results, I might suggest finding other corners to cut. But you know, it’s actually sort of cute, in a vampirish kind of way. Whatever.

  Whatever is our new spiritual motto and mantra. Whatever is divine.

  Most important, starting over feels like knowing in the back of our hearts that if we are needed anywhere, anytime, we can go. We’re free. And what better use of money is there than to buy freedom?

  We live in so much fear about money: what if it all goes away, what if we’re left with nothing, what if, what if, what if ? We’re scared to take risks, to relax even, because what if . . . But here’s the thing: Craig and I are in the middle of the what if right now.

  It’s all gone. And it’s fine. It’s better than fine. We might have nothing, but we also don’t owe a damn thing to anybody other than God and each other. We’re still laughing and singing and dancing over here, just in somebody else’s kitchen. I think ownership of anything might be illusory anyway. It’s like we can hear God saying, Hey guys, did you really think it was the house and the money that kept you safe and warm and joyful? I feel like a kid who finally found the courage to jump off the edge into the pool and realized, Yes! Daddy caught me, just like he promised he would. How fun!

  Craig and I feel wide awake and very young. You know that feeling you had when you first got married? Like it was just you two setting off like pioneers into the big world and anything was possible? That’s how we feel. Like newlyweds. Without a bank account to depend on, we’re left with God and each other. So we get to relearn every day that God and each other are enough. We get to live on faith for a little while. The strange truth is that since we’ve abandoned the responsibility of providing for ourselves and given that burden to God, we feel free as birds.

  Wherever You Go

  Bubba is a wise man. I believe the same things about life that he does, with one important exception: Bubba taught us to never quit. Growing up, it was important to think twice before taking up gymnastics or the viola, because you knew you would be turning cartwheels while fiddling at your own funeral. I have a different opinion about quitting. I think that sometimes quitting is exactly the right thing to do. Quitting something that’s not working requires self-awareness and courage. So Craig and I decided to go for it. We quit.

  We responded to a feeling down deep in our souls, in that place that won’t be ignored, that our family needed a big change. We needed cheaper, simpler, and slower. I was drowning in the details of suburban family life: the PTA meetings, birthday parties, fundraisers, thank-you notes, athl
etics, playdates, girls’ nights out, and storytimes. I felt like a girl on a roller coaster who preferred to be pulled along gently in a red wagon. Lyme has taught me to pay attention to what I need and to honor each of the deep desires of my soul, in case God put them there as the stepping-stones toward my best life. My soul’s desire is to live in a place that matches my insides. My insides are slow. I wanted to live in a place where it’s okay to be slow.

  I wanted time to enjoy my kids and read and write and pray and heal, not just from Lyme, but from everything. I wanted fewer options, less noise, fewer cars and stores and outings that require dressing nicely. I wanted more space—not walk-in-closet space, but I-can’t-see-another-soul space. I wanted more empty time. I wanted to know fewer people more intimately. I wanted to go to a small-town church every Sunday morning. I wanted there to be fewer things I had to buy. Fewer meetings to miss. Less, less, less. I wanted my family back. So after we sold the house, we moved. We pulled our kids out of school, packed our bags, and rented a little house on the Chesapeake Bay in a Norman Rockwell town in which the only store is the ice cream/gossip shop. It’s everything we dreamed it would be.

  It’s Family. We’re a WE here. Instead of five I’s, we’re a WE. What little there is to do, we do together. We watch Chase stroll down to our dock with his net thrown over his shoulder like an Asian Tom Sawyer. We watch him catch NINE SHRIMP, MOM! and we clap and hoot and holler. We drive our golf cart over to Bubba’s and Tisha’s to sell Bubba the shrimp. We let Amma do the driving. She’s little, but she can maneuver our golf cart like nobody’s business. We giggle with Tisha while Chase and Bubba haggle over shrimp prices, finally settling on ten cents a shrimp. Bubba hands over the ninety cents, grumbling about inflation. We all know that the second we leave, he’ll pour those shrimp right back into the bay.