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I am a Christian. (But not like, one of THOSE kind.) I always feel the need to add that caveat because sadly, I totally understand the staggering array of knee-jerk negative stereotypes that come with that word. I was born a Southern white female to Christian parents, so you know, religion kind of came with the package, like egg rolls. It was dang near a pre-existing condition. But my parents had a very authentic and real relationship with God and they not only taught that to me, they lived it out in front of me. When I was nine, I did the "every head bowed, every eye closed, raise your hand" statement of faith and was duly baptized by Pastor Small (I know! And he was!) in a Bible Church in Little Rock, Arkansas. Though never what you'd call pious-- I'll take a moment here to let those of you who know me stop laughing hysterically-- I weathered my adolescent years without too much spiritual angst, and entered my twenties with a brand new marriage and my Christian faith intact. Then Real Life happened. Throughout the next thirty years give or take, Real Life handed me a veritable smorgasbord of experiences of the" Destined To Knock The Faith Right Out Of You" variety. I'm not special, life does that to everyone whether you profess a belief system of some sort or not. But if you are raised a Christian in this country (and you are very honest with yourself), in your secret heart of hearts there is usually a tiny part of you that thinks there should be at least a little bit of an exemption in the pain department for people of faith. Not a free pass, but come on, shouldn't getting up on Sunday mornings when all the agnostics are sleeping in count for something? Yeah, well, apparently not so much. The rain falls on the just and the unjust. (Oh hi. I just quoted scripture! Touchdown dance!) Anyway, to cut to the chase and save you the reader from having to endure my litany of sorrows, suffice to say I got my fair share of soul-shattering, bone-crushing, teeth-gnashing life experiences that fundamentally changed me--- hopefully for the better in some cases, but they also left a kind of sticky, grimy residue in my heart. It was what remained of my untested childhood faith in the aftermath of life's scorched earth policy. My faith wasn't destroyed, it just slowly and wholly mutated, evolved if you will, into something that could accommodate the lessons I'd learned, and reconcile what I had walked through with what I'd always believed to be true about God. Asking myself the hard questions didn't precipitate a huge crisis, it wasn't a desperate search for meaning. It was just a season of the soul. I needed to re-evaluate everything I'd been taught in the Christian tradition and weigh it against actual experience to see what measured up. And more importantly, what didn't. What came out of that time wasn't really a new faith, but it was MY faith. Not my parents', not the church's, not our founding fathers', not my husband's faith--mine. It was stronger than I'd expected, but also surprisingly elastic. It was much more inclusive than exclusive, and was full to overflowing with what I believe to be the personality and character of God; an endless, fathomless ocean of unconditional love and grace. Always, always. Now since I have spent my entire adult life in the belly of professional Christianity, I understand that some of the things I just wrote might make a few of my fellow believers nervous. Some of the 'buzzwords' I used are seen by some fundamentalists as divisive, and could automatically indicate to a lot of people that I am teetering on the brink of a fate worse than death-- liberalism! OHHHHH NOOOOO!!!!! Ok, can I just tell all of you in the family of God that, honestly? I don't even know what that word means. Either one, really-- fundamentalist, liberal, whatever. I mean I'm not stupid, I know the political implications, I know why people who fall under both categories inevitably end up yelling at each other, convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that the other guy is
