the Empathy List #118: Can't Spell Valentine Without Lent

The love of God is the story of Lent.

Hello friend, Liz here.

I’ve been on a spiritual journey for some time now—nearly four decades and counting.

I was brought up conservative, nondenominational, and firmly evangelical in a (nearly) all white suburban American East Coast city. I asked Jesus “into my heart” at age four—in the dark, snuggled beneath a Sesame Street comforter, hands clasped in my father’s.

And surprise! Since then, my faith has shifted mightily. I had a dramatic experience spinning under the stars during the seventh grade, away at summer camp in the mountains of Colorado, where I finally felt God. That’s the moment I knew God was real in my bones. I met the Spirit of God and the Spirit began to change me.

At that time, the Spirit’s renovation looked like no longer experimenting with swearing, doing the dishes more willingly at my aunt and uncle’s house, taking up prayer journaling most mornings during the eighth grade, and snipping my secular CDs in half, trading them for CCM all the way.

But American evangelicalism wasn’t anything new to me. Every Sunday of my childhood, my parents brought us to our big box nondenominational church. They volunteered and led a home group. I brought a sleeping bag to youth group lock-ins and filled-in-the-blanks of many teen bible studies. I joined the church dance team and a bunch of us mostly white suburban teenagers chastely performed a choreography to Mary Mary’s “Shackles.” (THANK GOD, no video of the dance exists on the internet, though it would serve us right if it did!)

I raised money from relatives to spend weeks abroad in Mexico, constructing concrete block houses and babysitting local children as part of a short term mission team. (No, obviously, I had no experience either building houses or working with concrete. What an irrelevant question to ask!! We had something more important than experience: a white savior complex!)

I even gave up dating anyone other than Jesus. (Not that I was allowed to date anyway, not since I had sorta-kinda dated and been dumped by the older tuba player in the highschool marching band…)

And I was a straight A student at my private Christian school and my evangelical college!

Really, I used to be such a good evangelical, friends. But I’m not anymore. And that’s because, as it usually does, shit hit the fan. Actually, piles of it hit a row of fans.

And through the depression, unrelenting anxiety, and clarity that followed from a series of very kind therapists who asked me tender questions as I wept in the wingback armchair across from theirs, my faith shifted. God took on a different hue. Actually, everything about my life changed color.

I realized I had experienced emotional abuse growing up. And I had experienced spiritual abuse after that. And I had seen unrelenting scandals in which most of the male church leaders I trusted had failed. And then I had walked through a disabling illness which lost me half my vision. The faith I had once known with such certainty failed me.

Yet, in all this, I discovered that failure is a gift. Through it, God opened a window.

Over many years, through much suffering, and through the patience of many therapists to whom I paid thousands of dollars out of pocket (BEST INVESTMENT EVER), I have come to understand that faith in Jesus does not look one single way.

Christians are not primarily white, American, rich, or Evangelical, HALLELUIAH! Jesus makes room for such a huge variety of believers that one type of church actually does not possess enough chairs to seat us all. We need the full range of colors, flavors, languages, and architectures. Each denomination and each expression gives us a glimpse of the range of personality possessed by the God who created the cosmos.

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REPLY TO THIS EMAIL: Where has your spiritual journey led you? How are you a different believer today than you were last year, or five years before that? What remembering are you practicing this Lent?

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Question: why rehash my story of faith now?

Answer: For me, Lent has always been the season of remembering.

Roy Lichtenstein’s “The Kiss V”

On the one hand, I remember my own sin, the ways I have not lived up to the promises I made to God, to myself, to my children, to my husband, to my friends and extended family members. I cannot keep myself in control of my body, my plot of land, my consumption, my desires, my household. No matter how hard I try to let delight be my guide, to live minimally, to banish my greed and reign in my appetites, I fail eventually.

I also remember the ways that others have failed me just as dramatically as I have failed them.

This is not an exercise in self-flagellation as much as a clear-eyed view of reality. I have failed; so have others. This is simply the truth.

I am a natural addict, a glutton, a woman who cares more about sticking to my budget than those who labor overseas to prepackage my groceries and or to sew my cheap fast fashion clothing. Can any of us escape ourselves?

Yet, on the other hand, Lent is also the time that I remember the grace of God. The grace that transcends every failure by means of the person of Christ. Christ, hanging dead on a tree, lynched by those he counted as more dear than his life.

“Woman Crying (Comic) #2” by Anne Collier, Courtesy Anton Kern Gallery, for the New Yorker

I believe the symbol of the cross is meant to evoke equal parts shame, horror, and wonder, and Lent holds space for each emotion in turn over the course of these forty days.

The vivid imagery of Christ’s death and resurrection offers the key to my own story, too.

Because my own failures and the failures of others do not have the final world on my life, nor on the fate of the universe. I fail this planet daily, every afternoon when I get in my car; yet the planet is not ultimately doomed by this act. Why? Grace.

Though my faith has shifted dramatically over the years since those hormonal teenage days of earnest devotion, I remain a full-throated believer simply because I have seen a glimpse of this powerful mercy of God within my own story.

Do I deserve healthy children, a mortgage, a functional marriage relationship? Yes, because of grace. That’s it. There is no other answer to the life that I have.

And by this showing of grace, my hope for the future has broadened. Though politics rage, natural disasters demolish, markets climb and crash, relatives and friends decline and heal, I will continue to seek a new way to know God because God will continue to seek me. Though tomorrow will certainly look different than it does today, I’m here for the ride. Because I do not ride alone.

So, rather than giving something up this Lent, I commit to remembrance of the mercy that upholds me, encircles, surrounds, never fails me. The love of God is my story.

Thanks for reading, my friends!

By the way, if you’re a new subscriber, would you introduce yourself?

I love to meet those who’ve invited my writing into their inbox. You all are a special breed of human and I don’t take you for granted. :O)

Warmly, Liz Charlotte Grant

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P.S. Can I ask you a favor?

I’m polling my followers to learn how progressive Christians view the Bible, and I’d LOVE to hear from you, too. (This poll will likely take you 10 min.)

Ever since my theology took a left turn, I've been mulling on the Bible. What is it for? What authority does it hold in my life? Do I still think it's "inspired" by God? Is it inerrant, and if not, is it authoritative in any way over my thinking and living? Should I still read it? Obey it? What do I make of this ancient book now that I'm no longer an "evangelical"? In fact, I’ve been so obsessed that I wrote a whole book about these questions! (Coming soon…)

But my hunch is that I'm not the only progressive Christian who is now reimagining how they interact with the Bible. So, I’ve created a poll in order to a bit of informal research about how progressive Christians view the Bible now, and I hope to write about the answers I receive.

I'm grateful for each one of you who takes the time to think through these questions with me—I hope it will be a healing practice for you.