You Will Find Me Crying in the Pews...again.
On Grief and the myth of getting over it.
I went to church two weeks ago. It was the first time in a very long time that I went to church as a parishioner, not as the pastor. I went to church for a lot of reasons, because despite the way this greater methodist church has hurt me, I still believe in the Body of Christi meeting locally together. Because I want my kids to have a place to find extra grown ups, because the restaurant I work at doesn’t open brunch until eleven. Mostly I went because it is still the place that feels like home.
7 years ago I found a congregation when I was exhausted, confused, and crying in church every week. 7 years ago I found a home there. I was sent, and encouraged, and supported from this church, even as I was serving other churches as the pastor, and so it seemed when there was no pulpit for me to preach at I could rest my weary soul in the pews once again so I did. And I cried all the way through the service and four times more when people asked me how I was.
The truth is I am grieving and I wish I wasn’t. The truth is I thought I could think my way through all these feelings and that is simply untrue. Grief is squarely in the realm of the “bear hunt” the only way through it, is through it. The truth is I wanted to be over “it” by now even if the “it” keeps compounding.
I wanted to be over not being ordained. I wanted to be over it but the reactions to so many people I know excitedly posting about their new congregations tells me I am decidedly not over the fact that I don’t have a pulpit, or an announcement about a bold new place God is sending me, or a reassurance from a huge organization that actually I am called. It’s just me and God and the internet, figuring out what ministry might look like.
My dad has been dead for six months, and while I know that isn’t nearly enough time to be over the passing of a parent, even if it wasn’t totally out of the blue, even if you are almost forty years old, I still am shocked by the grief that continues to wave over me. On his birthday, on fathers day, and now on the brink of going to the lake house for the first time ever without him, I find myself wiping away tears at all the wrong time.. Sometimes I think if I read enough and understand enough about grief then I can circumvent the process. It turns out that isn’t how any of this works.
The cold hard truth is that seven years later it feels as though I am back where I started. The pew is familiar and some of the art is now made by me, pieces I had left when I thought I would never be a parishioner again. And the other not unsmall solace has been the people, those who have cheered me on and are aware that I am like this, that I weep in church because I can’t help it, and if you ask me how I am doing I tell you the truth, even if it is kinda rough and we are in the midst of passing the peace.
I need to be in a space that believes in practicing resurrection. It seems that things have died in my life again and I need to walk through the pain to get to the place where I am new again. I no longer expect to be free of this grief, but I am hoping that the practice of resurrection means that some of this pain will be turned into something beautiful. Something new. Something not so sad. But I don’t know how to do any of that. So I sit in the pews and I cry. Hoping that one day I will be made new.