Bring out your crap

I had one of those experiences last week that somehow, like a bolt of lightning from a clear sky, manages to instantaneously realign your perspective before you were even aware it was starting to veer off course. While shopping in Tesco (other supermarkets are available, and indeed preferable), I randomly bumped into a lady (let's call her Jane) whom I had met briefly a few months back. She seemed like a nice person, but didn't get to know her particularly because not long after we met she completely disappeared from the world's radar. I was told by other mutual acquaintances that she had been signed off by the doctor with depression. She wasn't answering e-mails, phone calls, facebook messages, nothing. Gone. Vanished Dynamo stylee.

It was one of those awkward moments when you walk past someone you kind of know and recognise but you're not exactly sure. Your brain panics, bombarding you with a dozen questions in the space of a nano second: 'is it really who I think it is?' 'Does she recognise me?' 'Should I be polite and say hello on the off chance?' 'Can I be bothered with the effort of making conversation?' You know the type of thing. Anyway, there in the middle of the automatic doors we simultaneously decided we could be bothered to say hello to each other, and I'm so glad we did.

We were chatting for a good twenty minutes. Jane told me how, around six or seven months ago, her life just got too overwhelming and everything shut down. She couldn't face anything, at least nothing where there were any people. She left work, social groups, and church. Oh, did I mention she was a Christian? Yup. A passionate Christian woman in her mid twenties. That is, until the breakdown. She had to leave all that behind.

It was the pressure you see, the pressure she was under from all quarters, ESPECIALLY the pressure at church to 'be a good Christian'. Every week she heard sermons telling her to do this, do that, act like this, if you do this it's wrong, be a good example, show other people how great God is; and doesn't matter if you're struggling, just fake it. Fake it! FAKE IT!!!!!!!! It all got too much. She left it all.

But now, having been mentally and emotionally blasted by a phaser set to disintegrate, Jane was beginning to rise from the ashes. Slowly, painstakingly, but rising none the less. And she wasn't rising as the same person, with the same view of God. Is she still a Christian? Well, make your own judgement. She says she can't even begin to think about concepts like God or Jesus and definitely can't contemplate going back to church, BUT through her whole ordeal, even when things were at their blackest, she was constantly aware of a light that emanated warmth, and all she knew was that she wanted to be near that light. It was that light's presence which enabled her to come out of the valley of the shadow of death and begin to discover life. The desire to be near it was not forced, it was not something she was told she must do in a sermon, not something she would feel guilty about if she didn't; it was pure, unadulterated, simple desire. And it saved her.

It's important every now and again to remind yourself why you started doing something in the first place. My original, passionate drive to get into the whole minister thing was because of stories like Jane's, stories of people who just could not force themselves into the Christian 'box' they were given when they signed up. My own experience is of spending so much effort trying to conform to the pressures of religion and all the while never knowing anything of that rest which Jesus promised to his followers. I wanted and want more than anything else to be part of a community where people can come with all their baggage, all their crap, all their failures, all their weaknesses and not be afraid of showing them. A community of authenticity and honesty, where no one ever feels the need to fake it. A community where that warm, inviting, healing, mending, soothing light is ever present.

Thank you Jane, I needed that.