I'm A Bad Christian

Alright. I try to be real and authentic in every blog post, but this one’s a doozy. Get ready for some super real talk up in here!

I’m a Christian. I have been going to church since I was a baby. I was baptized and confirmed. I pray. I read my bible. I listen to Christian radio. I try to live my life in the best way that I can. I try to treat others the way that I would want to be treated, be helpful and be empathetic.

But here’s the deal. I feel very much like a bad Christian. I have been praying for as long as I can remember; yet, I’m pretty sure I don’t pray enough or in the right way. I read the bible, but not as often as I should. I listen to Christian music on the radio, yet also flip it back and forth to pop and country. I’m thankful for the things that I have; yet, always am wanting something more or better. I try to treat others with kindness, but still get irritated and say things that I shouldn’t say. I want to treat people the way that I want to be treated, yet still find myself sucked into gossip from time to time. I know that God says that my body is a temple, yet I don’t treat it as such. I have SO MANY flaws and imperfections. I mess up on the daily. All these things put together with all the events of the past few years make me feel like I’m a bad Christian.

I’ll admit it. I’m often that person that prays only when things are bad, but is not adequately thankful when things are good. The past few years especially, I’ve been praying for a miracle that never seemed to happen. I’ve been praying that my life comes together, from being so broken. I’ve been praying that I can finally be happy. Month after month, year after year, these prayers have seemingly gone unanswered.

Honestly, in the past few years, I’ve grown increasingly frustrated as I’ve watched other people’s lives coming together. Facebook always seems to be announcing another one of my friends’ engagements, marriages, or babies. Yes, I’m happy for them. But why can’t it finally be my turn to meet the man of my dreams and get married and have babies? How is it that my life for the past few years has been hospitals and treatment and secrets and rumors, yet others my age (and younger) seem to have it all together? This has resulted in a growing resentment inside of me and anger toward God for what my adult life has looked like thus far.

I pray when I’m desperate, and mostly ignore God when things are going smoothly. I beg for Him to come into my life, yet I stiff-arm Him away and then get mad when I don’t feel Him close to me. It’s like that cartoon where the person puts their hand on the kid’s head and they are running and running, yet getting nowhere and getting more and more frustrated as they try and fail. Yes, that’s been my life.

It had almost become my mantra. You’re a bad Christian. You don’t try hard enough. You don’t do the right things. You don’t talk to people about God enough. You don’t pray enough. You don’t go to church enough. You don’t read your bible enough. You don’t do enough. You aren’t enough. On and on, over and over in my head, like a broken record. I kept half-heartedly praying for a miracle in my life, but had all but given up that it would come. After all, if I’m a bad Christian, I don’t deserve God’s miracles in my life anyway.

---

Sitting at Chapel one day at the Meadows, Pastor Monte, the chaplain, was preaching about this very subject. In fact, he is the one that I first heard the “stiff-arming God” analogy from. Each and every chapel time, he would remind us in one way or another, that we didn’t have to have it all together to go to God. He would make us look up from the floor and look him in the eye as He would preach to us that God wants us no matter what shape we are in. God wants us to come as we are, He wants to meet us where we are at, and He wants to guide us and help us as we sort out our lives. Not when we have it all figured out, but here, right now.

The first few times I heard it, I sat there quietly, internally rolling my eyes. Yeah, sure, ok. God can love some people, but there’s no way that He can love me considering all the mistakes that I’ve made. Instead of listening and accepting what Monte had to say, I would spend all of Chapel arguing with him in my head and staring at the floor. My stubborn self refused to listen to what he had to say, at first.

Then, several things happened, seemingly all at once. Over the time of just one week, God showered me with signs and messages, proving to me that what Pastor Monte had been saying might just be true after all.

I’d always heard about God’s timing. I had heard people talk about it, read it in the bible, and heard it in sermons at church. But none of it ever seemed quite real to me. In fact, it sounded a little too good to be true. I’d been praying and praying, and all this time I thought that God had been telling me no. Or maybe even ignoring me all together. All I knew for sure was that He was not answering any of my prayers.

In the last full day that I was at the Ranch, my therapist placed a book in my hands. The book was Fight On by M.H. Clark. She told me that she really wanted me to take the time to read it that day so that I could return it to her before I went home. It’s a super quick read, and full of inspirational messages. Admittedly, being a “judge the book by its cover” kind of person, I fell in love with it as soon as I saw its gorgeous cover. Then I turned it to a page, and I read, “Just because your miracle doesn’t look like the miracle you were expecting, that doesn’t mean it isn’t the one you’ve been waiting for.” Wow. I just froze right there in the middle of the milieu. I stared at that page and read it over and over again. The wheels in my brain started turning. As I flipped through more of the book, I came to another page that metaphorically knocked the remaining air right out of me. This one said, “There will be times when you find yourself right in the middle of the place you are meant to be. Invite those times. Notice those times. Live for them.”

In that moment, I realized that God had been listening to me. He hadn’t been ignoring me. He hadn’t been saying no. He had been making all things work together for my good all along. There was a reason that I was there, in Wickenburg, Arizona right at that moment. Every person that I had met along the way had been placed in my path for a specific reason. He had his reasons for my struggles, and they had brought me to the desert, where I found my true authentic self again, but also where I found Him again. The miracle I had been waiting for had been given to me after all, and it was nothing like the one that I was expecting. But it was a miracle all the same, and it was meant just for me.

You see, I almost didn’t go to the Meadows Ranch. I almost didn’t go to treatment at all. When I became resigned to the fact that I needed treatment, I seriously considered another facility in Illinois. One that was closer to home, one that was more lax on rules and even let me have my phone and laptop. Those things were very tempting to me. However, by God’s grace, that place fell through and I was left with the Ranch. Boarding that airplane to Phoenix with my heart in my throat, I had no idea the ways that God was going to work in my life and make these beautiful plans known to me.

"Your love is strong enough to meet me where I am."

In that last week at the Ranch, I was also introduced to the song, “Never Let Me Down” by Mosaic MSC. My therapist was showing it to another one of the girls, and I tagged along with them on our walk back to the house. I had never heard of the group before, let alone this song, but God placed it right in front of me for a reason. Sitting in the airport heading home a couple days later, I felt the tug at my heart to look up this song again. I added it to my Spotify and it has been on repeat in my Recovery playlist ever since. The words, “Your love is strong enough to meet me where I am,” have been resonating with me ever since I heard them for the first time. Even on my hundredth time listening, they still give me chills. They give me chills, because this is God’s answer to my doubts. This is God’s way of telling me that I don’t have to have it all figured out. I don’t have to argue with Pastor Monte in my head anymore. He was right. I don’t have to have my life put together to go to God, I need to go to God to get my life put together. His mercy and His forgiveness meet us where we are, no matter what we have done, whether we think we are “bad Christians” or not. He loves us and wants us to come to Him.

---

I still feel like I’m a bad Christian a lot of the time. I still don’t hear God’s voice when I pray like some others do. I don’t read my bible enough. I don’t always treat people with enough patience. Sometimes I feel more like listening to Eminem instead of Matthew West. I still have lingering temptations to treat my body badly, and am still guilty of pushing it harder than it deserves to be pushed. But I’m working at it. I’m also (reluctantly) realizing that I’m never going to be perfect, as a Christian or otherwise. My life still does not look like I want it to look, yet, I now know that my plans often do not coincide with what God’s plans are for my life. I’m still praying for the life I’ve always dreamed, and for the pieces of my life to continue to be put back together, but in God’s time instead of my own. I’m learning that even though it feels like God is ignoring me sometimes, or saying no, His timing is always perfect. My best thinking has got me into a lot of trouble in the past few years, and it’s time to let the Maker of the Heavens and the Earth dictate where my life goes now, not me.

So, am I a bad Christian? Maybe so. At the very least, I know that I have a lot of room for improvement. However, the past few months have shown me that God’s love is strong enough to meet me where I am, right now, perfectly imperfect in this moment. I believe now, stronger than I have ever have before, that He has a beautiful plan for my life. The bible tells me so in Jeremiah 29:11 and reminds me from the tattoo on my wrist every single day. A few weeks ago at church, I heard the song, “Yes and Amen” for the first time. Its chorus says: “Faithful you are, faithful forever you will be, faithful you are, and all Your promises are Yes and Amen.”

It’s time. It’s time for me to rest in His promises, put my trust in Him and see where His will for my life takes me. <3