Origin Story: On the Bathroom Floor

 At times, I wonder if I’m qualified to be a Christian writer.  I have no moments of addiction, no near-death crises, no dramatic rescues to form my origin story.  The story of my origin as a Christian is a little more ordinary.  My childhood church planted the seeds of faith, deep within me, in the stories and songs I learned in Sunday School and children’s choir.  Church was a close part of my life, a part of my cultural and ethnic identity as a German-American Mennonite.  So much a part of my life, that after my baptism at fourteen, I walked out of church and didn’t return for about fifteen years.  It was as if I checked that box off my list and went out to explore the rest of the world.

Exploring atheism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Unitarianism left me with a rich and varied theology.  I had the pervasive idea that if I was a good enough person, if I meditated better, if I subdued my ego, if I participated in social justice, recycled, voted for the right candidates and ate local-sustainable food, then I would be at peace.  My Christian upbringing taught me values and gave me sacred stories, but all that sin and redemption stuff didn’t matter to me.  After all, I was a good person; I sent money to Free Tibet and Heifer International.  I didn’t need to be saved.  Don’t get me wrong, I liked Jesus and all, but I didn’t need him to save me.  I had that covered; I was getting pretty good at yoga and I could chant the Jewel is on the Lotus.  I was doing just fine--well enough.

Until the day that I wasn’t good enough.   Until the day when I collapsed on my bathroom floor in tears, paralyzed by guilt and anxiety.  There was no near-death crisis here, merely an ordinary crisis of spirit, a beginning-life-crisis, if you will.  Grieving the loss of my beloved father, contemplating a risky change of career, desperate and terrified to become a mother, I had made some poor decisions.  I failed to love my neighbor (and my loved ones) as myself; I failed to love myself.  I had been brought low time and time again, only to promise to myself and my vague idea of God , “I will do better next time.  I will try more.  I will fix myself.”    Again and again, I promised myself and my God.  No matter how much I tried, I just wasn’t good enough.

In a moment of desperation, I said out loud, “I am NOT good enough.  Do you still love me?”  Ostensibly, I was speaking to my husband, but really I was crying out to myself and to my God.  The answer, to my shock, was “YES!”  Brought to my knees by my striving and my failures, I died to my ego and surrendered to the love of God in Christ.  I didn’t realize at the time that it was Jesus who answered me, but I knew I was loved, particularly, unequivocally, unreservedly.  In the midst of my ordinary sins of omission, the little lies I told myself and others, the posturing, the playing the victim, the gossiping, the every-day sins of life while I was trying to be “good”, I was LOVED!  I felt it, palpably, like a cool cloth on my heated brow, like a hand to lift me up, like a rock under my feet.

The love of Christ gave me the strength to climb up from my knees and back into my life.  The love of Christ allowed me to rest, to stop striving, and to start living, not to “be good” but to do good in the world.  Knowing I was already loved and saved, with all my sins upon me, changed me.  The peace I’d longed for came in drops of water, flowing into a stream, and building to a loving ocean.  I could live a little more honestly, speak a little more kindly, act a little more lovingly, because I was a person already resting in love.

I had missed the main point of the lesson.  I had rejected the idea that Jesus had to “fix me”, because I was sure I could take care of myself.  I missed the whole thing; that Jesus was the love that sustained me, no matter what may come or how I sinned.  I didn’t have to do anything special to find Christ, because he was always waiting for me.  I didn’t have to “take Jesus into my heart” because he was already there, just waiting for to quit doing things and to notice him. As Robert Farrar Capon says,  I didn’t have to plug in to Jesus, because he is The Light of the World, not the Lighting Company.  I just had to open up my eyes and see.