Saturday, September 5, 2015

Meditations on yes




Growing up Christian in America, I was thrown into overlapping cultures of a yes mentality. 

In American culture, yes is often associated with positivity; possibility; hope; risk; openness. In Christian culture, there is possibility and hope, but yes is more often synonymous with faith; obedience; selflessness; service; discipline. 

There is a bit of a fake-it-till-you-make-it approach to yes in Christian culture. Say yes, whether or not you feel like it, if that is the Right Thing to do. Your emotions will follow, but more importantly, you will reap the spiritual rewards of obedience. 

So I grew up saying yes. Yes to weekly and twice weekly and sometimes thrice weekly church gatherings. Yes to daily bible readings. Yes to Christian books and Christian music and Christian friends. Yes to abstinence and promise rings and True Love Waits. Yes to mainline doctrine and theology and everything I was told to believe. Yes to raising my hands in worship. Yes to one-sided relationships with needy people - the more, the better. Yes, in fact, to whoever wished to be my friend. Yes to giving people second chances and third chances and endless chances, always the benefit of the doubt, no matter how they hurt me. Yes to volunteering, to leading, to ministry commitments. 

Yes, ultimately, to God.

Still, I thought this was the way I was choosing, all these yeses. I want this, I told myself. It's what I've always wanted.

Until I landed in my counselor's office in the midst of a spiritual breakdown and utter life unraveling. And she said to me, more or less: "You can't say a genuine yes unless you've first been given the freedom to say a genuine no." 

Because sometimes yes is a liberation and sometimes yes is a captivity to fear; we need to have the maturity to know the difference.

* * * * *

All along, many of those things and people and belief systems I was instructed to say no to were out of fear. 

No, you cannot ask those questions. No, you cannot read that, watch that, enjoy that, listen to that, participate in that; they will corrupt you. They will rob you.

But what if yes, in itself, can rob us of freedom?

And so, I started learning to say no. Tentatively, quietly at first, growing steadier in my voice as time and ground grow firmer beneath my feet. No to saying yes out of fear.  No, I won't be in church anymore. No, I can't read the bible right now. No to so many certain beliefs. No to Christian gatherings that trigger spiritual unrest. No to hiding who I am in order to make others more comfortable. No to friendships that no longer feel safe or life-giving. No to offers of friendship that feel counterproductive to my healing. No to endless games of catch-up in relationships. No to doing so many things out of obligation alone. No to a constant battering of self-doubt and shame. No to ignoring, stuffing, annihilating my needs.

No, even, to God.

That's right. I said no to God. 

Not the no of a hard-hearted rebel (because haven't we Christians loved to paint people with such broad strokes?), but the no of a weary soul working out her faith with fear and trembling.  No, I cannot be close to you right now, I say. No, I don't know what I think of you or what I believe, but somehow I know that is exactly where I need to be right now. No has become, for the time being, the most honest, courageous, soul-searching word I've said. A spiritual milestone. A practice of deep faith. 

For surely, a God not big enough to hold me in my no is not big enough to sustain me in my yes. 

Surely, a God this big deserves a yes coming not from obligation, fear, upbringing or familiarity, but from a woman having stared her nos in the face, wrestled with them, made peace with them and decided what she can say yes to. And so I give myself permission to hold these nos without condition. Some of the nos will remain, and others may transform, with time, into yeses. But I will know each yes coming from my heart, for they will be my own, honest and firm and unreservedly free. 

* * * * * 

It's been a long, long while since I linked up with Five-minute Friday. But here I am, writing way more than five minutes, to the prompt of "Yes."  

 




12 comments:

  1. I'm learning there is power in saying no too. And freedom, yes. Hope you continue to find freedom as you learn when to say yes and when to say no. Good post, FMF neighbor!

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    1. There can be freedom in power in a well spoken yes or no, can't there? Thank you for your kind words and presence.

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  2. I can really relate to your words, and I absolutely love the title of your blog. Thank you for linking to FMF, I'm glad I got to read this. :)

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    1. Grateful to know you can relate to some of these words. Thanks for being here :-)

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  3. Amber, profoundly honest and deeply vulnerable. It's those qualities that always bless me when I visit you. I have also been blessed by reading about people who have struggled with a *blind faith* - but who have also wrestled their way to something deeper and more real. One writer that I have always appreciated is Philip Yancey. He left a legalistic background, and essentially left God, too. He finally found a truer God, and his writing always resonates with me. And, of course, my favorite author C.S. Lewis called himself a most reluctant convert, dragging his heels into the Kingdom.

    Yes, I believe God is big enough to handle our truest thoughts and emotions. His Word is full of *wrestlers* who were honest enough to express their deepest soul. And, every time, He met them there.

    That is the biggest *yes* - when He meets us in our no...

    GOD BLESS.

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    1. Sharon, you've given me a huge gift with your words today: safety. Thank you for being someone I can trust with some of these truest thoughts as I share them here. xo

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  4. I can really relate to your words, too. I'm 53 years old and landed in a counselor's office 15 years ago from an emotional breakdown. Mostly because of the yeses I'd said to unhealthy relationships and even to the church. I've spent the last 15 years learning to have freedom to say no and the freedom to say yes. Thank you so much for this post! Blessings upon blessings to you!

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    1. Anne, what a journey you must have been on, are still on, learning a new way of freedom and being. Thank you for saying so here. I appreciate you.

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  5. I love you forever and ever, friend. And I so, so deeply honor your journey. Such courage and raw beauty here, too. Really. Thank you. This is a gift.

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    1. The greatest beauty of your words to me, Dana, is that I already deeply experience them to be true. You show me your love in so many ways, again and again, and wow, what a gift that is. xo

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  6. Makes me want to hug you! Knowing what you believe and why YOU believe it is important. God knows us better than we know ourselves and He knows how to love us from where we are. From what I have gleaned from the Bible is that most of the people in it are real people with real struggles. Read the psalms and David was as real as they come in his ups and his downs. I think church has become different than how God intended it to be. It has in many places become a place of hiding, bullying, and arrogance. Struggling to find my place too. I believe the road to heaven is narrow, but the love of God is broad.

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    1. The funny thing is, knowing what I believe and why alwasy came easily to me - until it didn't. Until those WHYS started looking awfully flimsy and fell away, and I had to either pretend this wasn't happening or choose the hard path of wrestling my way into new WHYS and a great deal of I DON'T KNOWS.

      So, yeah, it's hugely important. And terrifying. And beautiful. This road to authenticity. Thanks for your words and presence, friend.

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