Washing, washing, washing because I'll never be clean

I am not sure what you think about when you are washing the dishes, but for me its a great time of contemplation. Since I can remember I spent hours washing dishes (usually because I was lazy and was either going really slow or i had "invented" a new way to wash the dishes which would make things easier) I think in the past it was a time to dwell on the unfortunate nature of it being my turn to do dishes, now it's perhaps a time to just dwell on the unfortunate nature of what we go through often.

This past reminder makes me giggle a bit, but it also helps me remember that there is a past to every story. I won't go into the details of my past or that of my family much, but just understand that there are things of regret, frustration, hope and peace all intermingled together.

Today as I was washing the bowls from last night's pea soup, or even earlier as I was hanging up the washing on the clothesline, I couldn't help but think about the emptiness and loneliness I feel in the mundane. I keep thinking I should call my family, but I don't have the motivation to reach out. I talk to my sister online occasionally and she tells me that Mom has asked about me. I guess Mom isn't concerned enough about me to actually make a phone call herself and I feel like that's the situation of every person in my life. But who do you have when you don't have the energy to reach out to anyone?

Facebook is a way I keep in touch with my family, but I don't know if I have posted anything of myself in a month. Too much drama there--way too much. Too much comparing and complaining. It helps us to take sides and to forget about that little detail I mentioned earlier about everyone having a past, but also it limits people's ability to see beyond, that every person has a future as well. I am guilty of comparing and I have done it for years, I remember when I was younger and single and wishing I had somebody as I glanced at all the pictures from my friends happy weddings, and even now when I look at so and so pregnant again, as we struggle with PCOS and infertility. We try to comfort ourselves with platitudes of gladness and by comparing ourselves to some poor couple that has children and is really struggling, but inside we are angry because if they can have a family--in what we judge to be a bad situation(again not knowing the full story)--why can't we? I think of the bills that are coming due and the fact that my husband is out of work right now, and I wonder if it really is a good time to have a child. I wonder if I would get the Mother-in-law tick of approval on our decision to try. I wonder if it will even be possible, as I lay in bed in pain this morning because of the cysts on my ovaries and the fact I haven't ovulated at all this cycle and here it is day 56 twice the "normal" cycle.

But as I stood hanging up the laundry and doing the dishes, a deeper sadness came to me. The realization that I have nobody to share these trials with here. It's been long enough so I figure I can finally talk about some of these things. Talk about how some of the ways it's been too hard. I moved to Australia 2 and a half years ago. I attended a church with my soon to be husband, and before I ever got there we were outcasts. We were treated differently than everyone else at the church and singled out on many occasions. In a time when I needed to form crucial friendships and establish support--I had few. Something that was said to my husband on our wedding day was the straw that broke the camels back. So we looked elsewhere for a church.

We quickly found a new one, one that seemed open and supportive and encouraging. We finally felt we were able to be servants in a way God wanted us to serve. But once again our past failures were made to control our future. Slowly we were pushed out of our ministry positions and it became impossible to jump through all their hoops. We made the decision after 8 months to leave that congregation too. With that leaving close to 100 connections and possible friendships, it was so hard in fact we made the decision to pretty much cut all of those connections. Here I was in my first year of marriage, in a foreign country, without family, without full time employment and no government benefits on my own.(I had my husband, but we are one.) We have for a year now attended another church in our local community, but I rarely go. It's hard to trust anyone anymore.

When I had coffee last September with one of the few people we remained connected to at the previous church, she said I looked tired and that all the joy and bubblyness was gone from me. I think it was the truth that I had been avoiding. The pain and isolation was unbearable, meanwhile back in the states my family was going through a crisis, and I couldn't be there. Trapped. I love living here, I like the weather, I like the public transport, I like the lifestyle-mostly, but my heart just craved what I gave up to be here--my family, my friends, my house, my support base, my church.

Going back this march to those friends and that church and that family, showed me that I can't live there. My life, my worldview has shifted so much, I don't fit. While it is great to go back and visit, this is my home. There is great sadness in that as well. Because I grieve, because I have no place on earth. I guess that's what the bible talks about when we store up our treasures in heaven. But we were never meant to go it alone. I don't know why God chose this path for us to walk. Most days I don't even know what I am doing. At least doing dishes and washing accomplished something instead of feeling like how I imagine the children of Israel feeling as they wandered the wilderness. This is my wilderness. But I am mad, mad at the way the body of Christ has treated us. mad that when I desperately needed to build support and friendships that we were isolated and controlled by the church, not out of love for us, but the false sense of protection they think they need. They desperately wanted to protect the church from redeemed sinners, because that's the most powerful gospel there is. I don't really understand their motivations for what they did, and I don't lose sleep over it any more. But I miss the friends and support. I guess I need to keep seeing them like God sees and forgive and to love and to think that each of these people have a past and a future too, but when you are alone and there seems to be so little help, and fellowship and love it really limits how much you can reach out. so this is where I am.

Do you remember the story in Acts? You know the one where the sheet came down with all the "unclean" animals in a vision that Peter had and he was told to Kill and eat, but he didn't want to because he had always followed the clean/unclean rules of Leviticus? But really it was a symbol of going to the Gentiles. I think this sums up my issue with the church as I have mentioned in this post. Acts 10:15 "But the voice spoke again: “Do not call something unclean if God has made it clean.”(NLT) I guess in this way when I am washing dishes and hanging out laundry I am reminded of this truth that God spoke to Peter. In a sense when I am cleaning, it is a reminder of God's work in cleaning my own life. I guess that's why it brings all this stuff to mind. I wish that I could see beyond myself and see that God has cleaned others in this way too.

I think that's what church is supposed to be about. It's not music or fancy preaching or meeting up with your buddies, all those things can be good things. I think that we are so broken because we have brought our pasts and the redemption that happened to the church in honesty and they have treated us like outcasts. But God has made us clean, and now between the mistrust and the constant comparison and the teaching of morality over salvation, we collectively as the body of Christ have forgotten what it was like to bring nothing and let Jesus be our everything. If our righteousness is filthy rags, then what do we have before Christ?

I haven't written much about this publicly, because it was just too hard. I also don't want others to be too discouraged by the church, and the ministry that they have. It's not perfect, because it's full of people that aren't perfect. If this was just an isolated incident, I would just chalk it up to the leadership at a given church, but I have seen it time and again at a variety of churches all over the world, we are missing out on something BIG. I know the inclination is to think "it's not my church" I used to think like that too, until it was me that the church was coming after with such hatred. It's easy to think that "it's not that bad" or that stuff like this doesn't happen, but I would challenge you to look for the trodden down and broken-hearted, to look at the community your church is located and see how your church reflects Christ to them.

Anyway, I have dishes to wash.

Dear Mrs. Williams*

I know it has been quite some time since I have seen you or helped you. I was that teller at the bank that you told off for asking for your ID the first week on the job. When I wouldn't help you, you went to my manager and told her I was racist. I just want you to know I am not. I also want you to know that you can't play the "race card" because you are throwing a fit when you don't get your way. We are all adults here, start acting like one. Being any colour doesn't give you any more right to courtesy and respect than anyone else. Furthermore I don't care if you are black, white, yellow, orange, green, purple or blue, whether you are gay, straight, bi, transgender, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Atheist, or whatever else you may or may not be, one thing we have in common is that we are human beings. Racism is just one form of discrimination/hate. Racism is judging someone by the colour of their skin, along with this it should be noted that judging how my interaction with you is going to go based on the colour of my skin is equally as racist. As much as this repulses me that you act this way, and as much as I wish on some technicality I could not give you what you wanted, I continued to serve you and act as if I were the one in the wrong, when in fact I was just doing my job and in no way was infringing upon your rights. What I would also like to point out is the error in your judgement of me, is that you don't know my ethnic history, you don't know if my forefathers fought oppression and strived for equality. In fact you don't even know if I really am "white". You can't see that my grandmother might have been black, or Native American or Hispanic, or Asian. All you see is the colour of my skin. You don't know that I was a minority once too, and all the shit I put up with, because I got spit on, I got slapped, I lost all my friends in Junior High because there was this "back to Africa" movement, and there was a denial of everything associated with "being white" whatever that meant. I'm sorry for the fact that slavery was, and that so many people were forced into it. But I will also remind you that it was Africans that sold Africans to the slave traders, A conflict between clans which still exists in many parts of the world that we would do better to pay mind to. The slave trade is not/was not solely a white vs black issue, as today there are more people all over the world in slavery than there was during the time of the greatest abolition efforts. So I just want you to know that I am happy to serve people because that's my job, but I will not be treated this way by you, or by anyone else. *names have been changed to protect the guilty.