One year later: A life to bear witness

One year ago today, I started a series with a post called “A life to bear witness” preparing you, my readers, for a lot of hard stories and truths. It was the beginning, whether we knew it or not, of a journey that would end in separation, spiraling, and pain.

In some ways, it feels like I just wrote that series yesterday, but in other ways, it feels like an eternity ago. So much has changed, died, been redeemed, and been lost.

The point of sharing was to tell you of God’s glory even when I didn’t yet know what the glory was going to be. I was trusting His promises, trusting He’d continue to be faithful even when I couldn’t see very far into the future. I knew, from years of following Jesus on a twisty road, I would be okay, but I didn’t know what okay looked like.

A year later, I can tell you okay looks like everything being destroyed and slowly being rebuilt. I can tell you it looks like nothing I imagined. I can tell you it looks like hard work and obedience when it would have been easier to walk away.

Tomorrow I’m sharing an update about our marriage and life at home. Thursday I’m going to write a post to the many, many, many women who have reached out to ask how you survive betrayal and destruction in your marriage, but today, today I want to tell you about the most unexpected lesson I learned in the past year.

In my original post, I shared Rachael Held Evans’ quote from Searching for Sunday that said, “We Christians don’t get to send our lives through the rinse cycle before showing up to church. We come as we are. No hiding. No acting. No fear.”

The way that truth has shaped me in the past year has been monumental. Every fiber in my being is different now. As I shared my story, as I recovered from lies and deception, as I worked to make wise decisions in the midst of unknown, I learned there is not longer room in my life for people who hide, act, or live in fear. I don’t have the bandwidth for it. I don’t have the patience for it. I don’t have the heart for it.

I have become hardened to fake people living inauthentic lives and calling themselves Jesus followers. The Bible says God is more angered by His followers who pretend to be following the law than people who want nothing to do with it.

Listen carefully: God is more concerned with pretend Jesus followers than the ones who want nothing to do with Him. Because we have free will and get to decide; some people decide they don’t want this Jesus stuff and THEY GET TO DO THAT. But the ones who claim to follow Jesus and then IGNORE the hard parts are infuriating to God.

He calls you lukewarm, I just call you fake.

Being broken and admitting sin isn’t wrong.

Hurting and saying you need help isn’t wrong.

Pretending to be one person with your lips while actively living a completely different way is in direct defiance to God.

We Christians don’t get to send our lives through the rinse cycle before showing up to church. We come as we are. No hiding. No acting. No fear.

That means you come to church still smelling of last night’s bender. That means you come to church even though your marriage is collapsing. That means you come to church hurting and broken and asking for help. You enter those doors showing who you really are, asking people to love you and with a spirit of wanting to do better.

But you come to church ready to change. You come to church to do better. You come to church to stop hiding.

If I want my life to bear witness to what Jesus has done, first I have to show you the before. So many Jesus followers love to tell you how they were living, but only after it’s all been cleaned up (like that’s an actual thing). No one wants to tell of the mess they’re currently living in, the mess they’ve created, the mess of consequence they’re in right now, because that means they have to immediately start living differently or admit they like the chaos.

Too many of us like the chaos and, while freedom sounds good, it’s also too hard.

I shared a mess with you last August and said I was trusting God to be faithful, but I was also afraid. It became clear very quickly if I wanted better I was the one who had to start doing better. It was up to me and no one else.

So the first step was being completely honest about my situation. I chose to do part of that on the internet, because I had already been doing it for years. It wasn’t a sudden change or cry for attention. I’d been writing our story–good and bad–for a long time. This was just another chapter.

I was ready for change so I was honest about where we were and how we got there. But it starts with honesty, and it starts with an overwhelming desire to not stay the same any longer.

A friend commented recently this past year has created a foundation shift for me. Everything changed. My marriage. My friendships. My parenting. My family. My heart. My faith. My brain. My work. My writing.

Everything changed.

We Christians don’t get to send our lives through the rinse cycle before showing up to church. We come as we are. No hiding. No acting. No fear.

This started with my marriage, the refusal to live a lie anymore. It has seeped into my friendships and family relationships now too. As I did the hard work of looking at the life I had created for myself, it became apparent I was, in many close relationships, surrounding myself with liars. People who, for one reason or another, refused to be truthful about lots of things. What did that say about me? What did it say about the people I was drawn to? What did it say about the community I thought I was living in?

My counselor told me it was probably time to let some people go, but I wasn’t ready.

I’m more ready now.

Want to lie about who you are? Cool. Have a good life. I can’t be a part of that.

Want to manipulate stories and be someone different to every person you meet? Fun. See you later.

Want to pretend to be a Jesus follower but only when it’s convenient? Neat. Have a nice life.

Want to play the victim instead of be in control of your life? Good for you. Bye.

Need to hide who you are so people like you? Not for me, thanks.

Twelve months ago, I hoped for lots of outcomes. But I could not have predicted the way God has stripped my life down and begun shaping it in new, healthier ways. I could not have predicted who would be around for the healthy version and who wouldn’t be able to keep up.

My therapist says the hardest part about getting healthy is you realize how many areas and people in your life are unhealthy. And it’s not that we can’t love unhealthy people, but we have to put up safe boundaries. That’s what healthy people do, they love unhealthy people, but from afar. You don’t invite sickness and death into your inner circle–that’s not how it works if you want to keep working toward health.

It feels sad and hopeful and unknown. But if one thing has stayed the same, it is I’m trusting God with a story not yet finished. He is faithful in the mess. He is faithful in the brokenness. He is faithful when we are obedient even though it hurts.

A year ago, I shared a post called “A life to bear witness.” I had no idea how true, how hard, or how wonderful it would be. But that’s what He’s calling us to. He says let me show the world my glory through your life. It will be beauty from ashes again and again and again. It will always be worth it. It will always be hard. I will always be with you.

I’m in. I’m all in. Let’s show them your glory, God.

 

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**A word: this is not a post about unbelievers. Jesus followers are called to be love and light and engage with them just as Jesus did. I’m not hardened to that. If anything happened this year, I’m drawn to them more than ever before. This post is about people who call themselves Christ followers who claim it in name only, who do more damage than good, who selfishly chose when Jesus is convenient and when He is not, who refuse to live authentic lives in community with other believers because it’s dangerous. Because that’s when people see their lies. That’s where my heart is in this post: to the people who serve Jesus when people are watching, and do something else when people are not. The deception I’ve lived with the past few years has made my desire to continue in relationships where deception is present non-existent. I get to decide how my life goes, and it will not go there any longer.

 

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