I was thinking about my issues with church. I read a post yesterday about a boy with special needs, being asked to leave a service, because he was a distraction. The comments displayed outrage, but in my head, I had trouble picturing a church that wouldn't at least want to ask them to leave. Our church had a policy regarding ALL children. It was very rational, even logical. A couple noises are ok, but when they become a distraction, we have a parent room available.
Let's be honest, a rare child would make it through a service without being a distraction. I've spent a better part of the last 3 years in the parent room. In part because we don't have a nursery, but also in part because, for the first six months of my children's life, I have not been more than a cries distance away.
I pretended it didn't bother me, I rationalized that I too find children a distraction, and wouldn't want to be a distraction to someone who really wanted to worship, or hear the message. Deep down though, it cut my heart a little that I wasn't included. I'm a nurse, I should know what happens when a dirty cut is left untended, or a speck in the eye not dealt with. It begins to fester. I used joking, and sighing to slap a band aid on a wound that had grown so large it had no edges to stick to.
Then…I acknowledged it. First to friends, then to my pastor. I ripped off the bandages and realizes that it was a deep, infected wound. My pastor apologized and committed to finding ways to do things differently, but like a wound, you can stop the growth by tending to it, but healing is a process. The fear that grips my heart now when I enter churches with my children that I am not welcome, the shock when I breast fed for the first time in a service (at a different church) last week and it was so hard, won't disappear in an instant.
We attended a small "organic" church gathering and if I started crying, I might have never stopped, when one of the pastors used my daughter to break the bread for communion. It was such a novel experience to me that my children were viewed as a valuable part of the gathering. I now physically loathe the parent room at our church, and haven't even been able to drag myself there for the last two weeks.
What shocks me the most is how often people who feel "left out" at church seem to see where I'm at as the pinnacle of participation in church community. I'm like the poster child for fitting into to church, I'm young, married with two beautiful children. I always though that these are the people who don't feel left out at church. Well, now that I'm here…I'm wondering who doesn't feel left out at church?
I'm taking a little church "holiday" to try and work through the nastiness that is spewing from this wound I have left unattended for so long. While I regret that I didn't deal with this earlier, I also want to honour what I'm going through, by learning from it. I'm reading, praying, meditating, walking, having coffee with friends and sharing my story. I'm dreaming dreams of something different, something better. I'm studying places where people do feel included no matter what, and trying to glean wisdom and hope. I want to believe it's possible, even earth-side. Do you believe it's possible?
