Born Again: A Journey from Daughter of the Kingdom to Sacred Feminine Goddess, Part 6

Read Part 5 here.

Was it true? Was God REALLY telling me I was not supposed to go back to that place? The place where I had made lame attempts to worship him. The place where I  had studied to show myself approved unto him. The place where I was buried with Christ in baptism.

Was this message really telling me that I was NOT supposed to fight for change within that group of believers?

Some have suggested I was very stressed and dreading interactions with those who had chastised me. They indicated that maybe I had “manifested” the emotion and the migraine symptoms due to the trauma of the meeting with Mr. Elder. I guess that’s the way lots of outsiders see one person’s personal encounter with Divinity. Maybe I did manifest the episode. However, it is hard for me to believe I could be determined to stay as an agent of change in one breath and with the next breath make a leap to expecting cherubim with flaming swords to greet any future attempts to enter the place.

I don’t believe I manifested it.

I believe a message was delivered to me…a very clear, painful, emotional message intended to shake me enough to sever the tap root. My faith was rooted in soil that no longer fed my soul. I likely would not have been able to transplant myself out of that environment, so God did it for me.

In hindsight, I realize that hug was my farewell hug. The emotion was the letting-go of something that had been a part of me since before birth. If tears are truly a release of toxins, then I expelled a ton of poison that morning. A ton. The freaky vision? Maybe it was God’s way of letting me know that what I had always seen and expected to see weren’t real. Or maybe it was God’s wisdom knowing that it was the least it would take to get the message across. Whatever it was, it worked on me.

That evening, I sat on the porch in the cool shadows with my sweet man. We talked about what had happened that day. He was supportive of my thoughts, and when I suggested that maybe it had been a sign to experience some different types of worship, he agreed. We visited with my oldest who was 15 at the time. She was the one most likely to be affected by being pulled from the only church environment she had ever known. She was active in the youth group. She was (is) also a very intuitive person.

Her response was one of anticipation and excitement. She craved a taste of something different.

It was decided that we would check into some other groups in the area and experience their worship and their beliefs. I was looking for something more. Something mystical. Something miraculous. I wanted that first century church. I wanted a Jesus experience.

There was a church in a nearby town where my daughter’s best friend attended. I was good friends with her mom, so I didn’t feel like a total stranger walking in alone. We spent several months driving those 30 miles one way to experience whatever it was they were offering. I owe a good part of my spiritual growth to that experience. It was there that I discovered the works of John and Lisa Bevere. It was there that my oldest encountered high school kids speaking in tongues. When I asked her if she believed it was real, she replied, “You can’t fake what I witnessed tonight.”

It was late one night on the way home from that church that I realized the source of a deep hurt within me….a pain that I had repressed and ignored like a soldier ignores the human tragedy witnessed in war. It came to me with sudden clarity, and overwhelming emotion. I cried most of the way home driving alone in the dark.

It was that night I realized that for the first time in my life, my dad had not rescued me. He sat in silence watching me dual for my faith as Goliath dealt blow after blow. My dad had always been there to rescue me, if I needed him. That day, when he did not, when the code of the brotherhood overpowered the code of the father-daughter relationship, when he stayed in that room instead of immediately coming after me to  hold and hug me and tell me he was proud of me,  I knew I was on my own. Scared. Angry. Hurting.

In hindsight, I can clearly see several things. He did not abandon me. He allowed me the courtesy and the space to fight a battle that was mine and not his. He gave me space to work through my tears and grief. He stayed in that room and fought a private battle of his own after I left. He did come to check on me, but I was not where he expected to find me. I had run not to the arms of my father, but to the arms of a sacred feminine goddess…a mother.

By sitting in silence and allowing me to stand on my own, he permitted the severing of my faith from his. He allowed me to stand for my beliefs while not interfering by inserting his own. It was most certainly a precious gift from father to daughter, yet not without the pain of a knife wound in both my heart and his as that severance occurred.

I clearly see now how horribly unfair I was to put him in the position of having to be both elder and dad. I wanted him there to be my protector, because I was afraid of what I was about to experience. He came because I asked him. He came knowing that his heart would likely be ripped apart as he made his choices moment by moment. He came just in case his baby needed rescuing.

I thought I did, but I did not. Whether he knew it or not, he knew it.

He did the best he could do in that moment.

Part 7