The ever changing faces of God.

Today I’m guest posting over on Dianna Anderson’s blog, Faith & Feminism, in her “Account and Countenance” series.

This was a very difficult post to write. It is “Of church, feminism, and safety” in story form. It’s my experiences, the way they shaped my understanding of God, and where that’s left me now. I crave your gentleness and understanding — and if you cannot offer that, then I crave your silence.

After years of squelching doubts and emotions and fears, I finally began talking.

I began to tentatively share my questions, my problems, my fears with a small but growing group of people. They told me about a God who really doesn’t hold past sins over our heads to beat us with. They told me about a God who understands fear, anger, pain, and doesn’t shame or punish for those feelings but instead listens, loves, cherishes, and comforts. They told me about a God who isn’t abusive, who isn’t capricious, who isn’t cruel. I hardly dared to believe them.

But there it was, that seed of hope.

And God became someone I really felt I could wrestle with, because He might really want to engage my heart and mind, no matter what that meant. Even if it meant waiting until I was ready.

Read the rest of this post at Dianna’s.

Learn more about the Account and Countenance series, or read the other posts.

On stunting emotions.

You know, this is a post I meant to write when I was feeling stable and secure. But maybe my panic will somehow magically aid my writing. Give it that “realness” that people praise me for, though that always baffles me beyond belief.

Elizabeth Esther wrote a great post this week that kind of inspired this line of thinking. She and Hännah of Wine and Marble talked about purity culture, and how the conservative Christian culture in which they were raised taught them to strip themselves of their emotions. And it got me thinking and beginning to analyze my relationship with emotions over the entirety of my life. Then I stumbled upon this post of Elizabeth’s entitled “We Will Tell You How To Feel” and I sort of emotionally and mentally went into a crazy spiral of panic (which is really nonsensical considering the post is awesome).

Panic. Honestly, that is the single driving emotion of my life. It’s the constant. I can’t remember not being afraid. My earliest memories are chronic nightmares and coping mechanisms I had for calming myself after a nightmare.

Sad thing is, I still have chronic nightmares. I still employ these 20+ year old coping mechanisms.

Why? Why? Why am I afraid?

I’ve always been afraid of feeling too much.

Existential perfection, problematic cultural systems, and being okay.

I am completely and utterly overwhelmed by the response I’ve gotten from “The body I have.”

On the one hand, I keep checking my stats with ever-widening eyes and a grin that I can’t quite get rid of. “People…are actually reading what I wrote? They like what I had to say?”

Then my introversion comes out, and I think, “I’ll just hide under a rock for a while until they all go away.”

And then my depression and anxiety kicks into high gear, like it has right now, and I frantically feel like I’m a fake and everyone will hate me if I’m discovered — until someone brings me back to planet earth with a reminder like this:

@danileekelley I know this was rhetorical, but my admiration of your piece isn’t contingent on you being existentially perfect. — evil fizz (@evil_fizz) January 5, 2013

And now I can breathe a little easier.

Why did I write that piece in the first place?

I’ve been asking myself that a lot.

I think it boils down to me being sick of our culture.

The body I have.

That leopard print thing in the bottom left corner is one of Sherlock’s fabulous coats.

I am fat.

And for the first time in my young life…

I am okay with that.

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As I write this, I am sitting in my size 20 dark-wash skinny jeans.

You read that right. Skinny jeans — that somehow miraculously hug my butt, hips, thighs, and calves without making my stomach protrude unnaturally. Skinny jeans that make me look, well, really good.

On top of these magical jeans, I am wearing a size XL faded teal 3-quarter-sleeve fitted shirt with buttons halfway down the front, mostly unbuttoned so I feel neither choked nor awkward. It hangs just at my hips, which is remarkable considering my tall torso.

I am happy with how I look, even though I still have bulges I’d rather not have.

But it most certainly has not always been the case.