Hi again! Welcome to the pink room. Alrighty. Grab a seat, get comfortable… we might be here for a little while.
First, if you haven’t read the intro post to this series yet, I suggest you do before continuing on… of course, I won’t stop you either way but might just help you get your bearings and all.
Alrighty then. I will assume everyone has read the intro from last week.
Let’s get into it, shall we?
This is the post I have been meaning to write. Too scared to write really. Because. I guess. I was scared of what it meant. What it means. Afraid still to accept change. That things have changed. That I have changed. To speak the truth. But as I write this as we near the end of pride month, I wonder what it might mean to be brave.
Okay, that sounds a little corny. I only mean to say my whole life changed a couple years ago and well this is that story. Alright that’s still not quite true given that my life changes every year well it changes every day and each moment. It’s my. Well, let’s just say. It’s my exit story. The story of my leaving. The kind of leaving an explorer does anyway. The leaving to keep discovering. To create. To become. It’s a story about newness and beauty and bewildering uncertainty. I think this is why I finally mustered the courage to write it.
Because it’s not just of loss but one of profound love. And I will no longer be ashamed of listening to the God I discovered was not just spirit but flesh… in my fleshy gut and salty tears.
For those who are familiar with the particular community of churches from which I come, you will probably understand immediately the fear or grief that comes with this story. Or maybe you won’t. There is a way in which every one of these stories starts as a desperate attempt to get anyone who they used to know or at least used to know them to see them. A story to be believed. To be validated in a grief so big it threatens to overpower you. But then without fail every story grows tired of pleading and becomes a love letter perhaps to themselves or to the truth or to love maybe. It becomes a protest. A manifesto.
And truthfully part of the reason I didn’t want to share mine is I didn’t want to give it so much power. I didn’t want to be ruled by it.
And now those of you who at this point have no idea what I am talking about. Stay with me okay. I promise I going to let you in on the well-kept secret.
It’s just. It’s important for me to say that this is not a story for those who will never believe me. And I won’t say I don’t need you. Because the truth is I do. I need you. I need you because we are human. And humans need each other. And yet, I learned that you can mourn and also not return. You can grieve and fall in love at the same time. This story is instead for me. Because my life did change. And I am still grieving this. Because I am real. Because I don’t want to live under the shadow of this particular story any longer. I want to live in light of it. I don’t need to outrun it. I want to integrate it into the story of my constant becoming. And so it is the first story I must tell.
In October of 2021, I left.
In truth, it was more of a soft leaving. Like I left before I really knew I was leaving. I had been a part of a church, well really like a community of churches known as the International Churches of Christ or the ICOC for short. We had this term for the kind of member I was, “a kingdom kid”, which essentially meant my whole life was buried into the walls of this international church movement. It was everything I knew. It was the only thing I knew. And so in October 2021, I left my life as much as I left the walls of that church behind.
It’s often hard to explain to people what I mean when I say I left. A lot of folks leave churches behind or attend new ones. And although, I am not so interested in spending our time digging into the details of the history or frankly even the critique of this movement (there is much to be found on the internet if your heart so desires), I do think it is worth giving some frames of reference.
So here it goes.
The ICOC thinks of itself as a non-denominational Protestant family of Christian churches. It is relatively new, having had its official start in the mid-80s. Yet it is also convinced, it is one of the few or perhaps the only Christian movement that has finally gotten this whole Christian thing right. And frankly, who could really have faulted them for it. I mean by the way their numbers grew. I am talking about what might as well have been overnight. They went from 5 dedicated convicted men of faith to hundreds. and then thousands. and soon tens of thousands. Like in a couple years.
It was. A revival. They were going to be the ones who made every nation a part of the kingdom of God. As a matter of fact, that’s what they colloquially called themselves or at least their churches… they were the kingdom. To be in the ICOC was to have access to the kingdom of God. And I mean frankly, who wouldn’t want that.
But there was a cost to the kingdom.
The ICOC grew like wildfire. And I am not just talking about one racial or ethnic group. Sunday brought people from everywhere into the same room together. They planted churches across the globe. On any given worship service you could have folks visiting from South Africa to India to Japan and back to Mexico. In a moment when church still remains the most racially divided day of the week, the ICOC was different. It was the kingdom. And the kingdom didn’t have room for segregated worship.
And yet the cost. The cost was to lose your life. I mean what good is it for man to gain the whole world and yet lose his very soul. So. What good was it to keep any life that kept you from the kingdom here on earth. The ICOC knew the will of God. It was written plainly in a 12-step study series.
And God declared.
Women were never meant to lead. At least in name or in the front or with their full chest. God declared that queer people were born as proof or at least an apology. They were born to prove that they could live almost straight or at least give way to earthly desires and not upset their fellow straight neighbors. As an apology. for taking up space. for upsetting the teen girl sleepover. for asking questions no one had time to in the mission to save every nation.
God declared the world was scary. God declared agency is too much for any fellow believer to hold themselves. God declared respectability was divine. God declared you must befriend those who are safe. Those in the kingdom. You must only date those who are vetted. Vetted by the kingdom. You must never leave.
For who would ever want to leave the kingdom of God.
God declared. And the ICOC leaders etched his words into stone.
And of course, as I say it now maybe it doesn’t sound that attractive. But I swear. It really was like being in the kingdom of God. You had family across the globe. If you were in, you knew, where ever you went, you would have a place to call yours. No searching. For a new church home. when you moved or went to college. No confusion about right or wrong. It was a community of all ages. And the best part was there were no more questions really. You were certain. Or at least certain about the important things. And if you weren’t it was only because you didn’t read your bible enough. Or you read something not pre-vetted by the ICOC publishers. Or you weren’t praying as often as you should. Or maybe you didn’t confess to your “discipler” that mischievous thought you had a boy that was not a member.
And so on October 29th when I got up on Sunday and didn’t want to go to church. When I swore if I did I would never believe in God again. When I sat in a cafe sick to my stomach as 10:00 AM filled my phone screen. When I felt ashamed that I could not deny myself long enough to be Christian enough to remain.
I cried.
I cried because I never wanted to leave God. I didn’t even think I was worth it over God. But my body demanded it.
My body would no longer sacrifice itself in the charade to be loved by God. It needed a bigger God. It needed a God who could dream of her. Not a Christian. But Jamie. A God who had dreams about Jamie. A God who was not afraid of her existence.
Alright, that’s all for now. This story is a long one… so join me back here next Friday to hear what happens after the leaving … that is the leaving like explorers do…
See you soon!
From the Pink Room 