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In
the last days of pregnancy with Moses, my blood pressure started rising, which
meant I was no longer allowed to have my baby in the birth centre. Arriving at
the hospital in the final stages of labour, I was therefore ushered into a
small examination room to wait for a birthing room (we later found out that one
was being used by a doctor trying to get some sleep). In between intense contractions
a cannula was inserted into and taped onto my hand, in case everything suddenly
went pear-shaped. My body was telling me to push my baby out; my midwife was
telling me to wait. She wanted to check that I actually was ready (and she was
the expert on birth, after all; I’d never done it before), and she couldn’t do
that until we were set up in the right room. Finally on the proper bed in the
proper room, my midwife gave me the go-ahead; I knelt on the floor, and Moses
was born soon afterwards.
Sarah,
Sonia and I have been talking about faith recently on Ms Sundays, and this interval in my labour came to mind as I pondered the distinction between what’s happened with
faith and what’s happened with church for me over the last couple of years. I’ve
been treating them as though they’re all wrapped up together, but actually they’re
two separate things. For many years I’ve had questions and doubts about the
theology I’ve grown up with, as evidenced by various blog posts processing things
I felt I needed to either let go of, or make more sense of, such as my church’s teaching on women and the doctrine of God’s providence. Throughout
this journey, my shifting views have worried me only as much as they’ve worried
the church I was in at each stage. Reading back over my blog now I can see how desperately
I wanted to be able to embrace my increasingly-greying views while still
remaining part of very black-and-white churches; I loved those people, and I wanted
so much to belong among them. When we left our church at the end
of 2013, I assumed my faith had undergone a massive shift, but I see now that my discoveries that year were no bigger than the ones that had reshaped my faith in the years leading up to that point.
And since that time I’ve assumed that I’ve been grieving some kind of fundamental change in how I understand God, but I think now that I’ve actually been grieving my break up with a
much-loved church/denomination. And though I know that it was the right
decision to call it off, it hurt – still hurts! – and there have been many
moments I’ve wished I could go back to pretending we were a good match just for
one more snuggle and the possibility of hearing it say, “We respect you!” and “Maybe we could make
it work!” (this would never happen, but a girl can daydream). It makes sense
now that starting to date a different denomination soon after we moved was
too painful and didn’t work out; I wasn’t yet ready to move on.
So. A church shift, rather than a faith shift, caused the disruption. I see now that it was only my social identity feeling loss and confusion; my spirit remains hale and hearty. And my faith’s evolution has
only been uncomfortable and scary because I was always in churches where I was
told that my questions and doubts were to be feared, where the leaders prepared for
the worst and told me, “Hold it back! Stop pushing! This isn’t the right place
for that!” and I trusted
them rather than my gut. I lived in the interval for too long, naively believing that my church would change, and that I had the patience to wait until she was ready to join me on my journey. Turns out I couldn't wait, and she was never really interested in coming along anyway. And
now I’m free. My faith can continue to morph, just as it’s always been doing, and
from these pangs something beautiful and new can be born.
