On Absolutely Not Wanting to Go to Church on Christmas Eve and Coming to Guatemala

My mother asked me if I wanted to go to church on Christmas Eve. 

"No."

The vehemence with which I responded surprised even myself. 

"I absolutely do not."

The past several years, it's been my sister and I coercing my parents to join us at our home church. My parents do go to a church of their own, but Jade and I started going on our own not long after I got my license when I was 17, which means we’ve called it home for 8 years, and we have loved our church.

I have loved our church.

I've sung its praises to so many: of its worship, teaching, and guiding values. It's been a place that I've been prayed for through some of my darkest times, and was given the opportunity pray with others during theirs. It's where I learned what it was like to hear from the Spirit and operate in its gifts. It's a place that I've been challenged and encouraged and grown. I've worked in the nursery, greeted, ushered, attended a weekly recovery ministry and small group after a sexual assault, taken part in an 9 month discipleship program, completed an Alpha course, served in India, talked about orphan care, and my favorite, been a part of prayer team. And in all of that, I've always looked forward to the attending Christmas Eve service as a family, walking in to the Sufjan Stevens Christmas album and hearing the story of Christ coming to this world with a creativity and freshness that makes my heart want to dance inside of me, and singing that joy to the Lord.

But I absolutely did not want to go to church this Christmas Eve. 

You see, over the past several months I have felt systematically unloved and rejected by the church that I had called home, in particular by its leadership. And do you know what my Flesh wants to do? It wants to tell you exactly why. It wants to show you screen shots and emails and recount conversations in which words were said to me that I don’t think should ever be spoken, but particularly not by those who are paid to be in ministry. I want to show you how I reached out and how I tried and sought reconciliation and how I was ignored in graphic detail, with dates and names. I want you, reader, to cry out in sympathy and support until those who have hurt me are forced to acknowledge the error of their ways and repent… I want them to hurt, too, until they’re truly sorry.

Yes, if I’m being honest, that’s what my flesh really wants. I would never say I was sharing my story vindictively or selfishly: I would say it was for the sake of genuine transparency, because I am very passionate about eradicating the patterns that I’ve been a victim of from the Church, and that I was sharing for the sake of justice and for the sake of the name of the One who loves. But if I search my deepest heart, I know that I’m not in a place where I can truly tell you about my experiences in detail without my flesh grasping for its own agenda. So for now, I will simply say that I have felt systematically rejected and unloved by multiple churches, including the one that I’ve called home.

My experiences filled my heart with pain, and eventually each new experience planted bitterness that sank down into that pain like seeds into fresh soil, and those seeds took root deeply. I began to feel repulsed by anything that reminded me of the patterns of unacceptable and unloving behavior of both “ordinary” Christians who I had considered brothers and sisters and those in vocational ministry, who are literally paid to love and seemed to be failing me so grandly. When I somehow ended up at my parents’ church on Christmas Eve, I couldn’t handle it: when the music started, all I heard was dissonance and hypocrisy  (and If I speak in the tongues of men and angels but do not love I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal resounding in my head). I mouthed the words but I couldn’t force any sound out. Every cell in my body was screaming at me to get out of that building, and after about five minutes, I did. I straight-up left and went home. The experiences had taken such a deep hold of me that I couldn’t even sit through a Christmas Eve service, and I no longer felt able to sing.

So there’s some background, and here is now: in the midst of all of this, and opportunity came up teach a bilingual school for orphans and abused kids in Huehuetenango, Guatemala, for 10 months. I’d heard about the opportunity last January and had come close to applying, didn’t, but couldn’t quite shake the thoughts of it. I felt my soul suffocating in both the comfort and complacency of Orange County and the crippling bitterness that was continuing to wind it’s way around my heart like a fatal vine, and when a position opened up last minute, I knew God was opening the door. I had a Skype interview, and I had a job offer less than an hour later, and less than two weeks after that, I arrived in Guatemala.

Guatemala is dirty. Trash lines the streets, stray dogs roam and scavenge, and a thick layer of dust coats everything. I live in a house with ten other teachers, four to a room and we share a bathroom. You’re lucky if the toilet flushes, and it usually smells like sewage. You’re absolutely stoked if you get a hot shower. We’ve been dealing with a bedbug infestation and I’ve had a bad bout of bronchitis. Most of the kids at the home that we work with have been severely abused, and understandably often have some pretty challenging behavioral issues as a result. I’ve been almost completely physically exhausted, and it turns out, I brought all that bitterness from home with me.

But when the kids call my name and run to me with open arms and unabashed joy on their faces and I scoop them up and hold them close, everything else melts away. When little Ulalia, who has been so severely abused by her father that she and her three siblings were removed from their home in a country where domestic abuse is considered par for the course, smiles her radiant smile with her missing front teeth and sings to me in Spanish that no matter what I am doing I will always sing to You—my heart is full of waves from the ocean of Your love!, I start to remember the power of Jesus. I never have a free hand while walking the kids to and from school because a little one will grab it and hold on, and when I look down at them walking by my side, my heart overflows.

There are challenges in Guatemala, and working with orphans does not automatically make one spiritually healthy nor holy, unfortunately. But I’m shedding all of the pretense and politics and getting back to the heart of the Gospel, and I’m getting to practice what James 1:27 calls pure and undefiled religion. In a dozen little moments each day, God is whispering to me and cracking the cement that’s formed around my heart, and breathing life and healing into my wounds. I’m in a situation were it’s very apparent that I’m absolutely incapable of doing what I’m here to do without God’s Spirit empowering me. Last week He laid His hand on my chest still swirling with bitterness and indignation and said, “This isn’t about the people who hurt you anymore. This is about you now, you and Me. This is you holding on to what will bury you, and refusing to forgive—refusing to give the grace that I continue to give you day after day.” And as usual, God is right. So with God’s help, I’m working on that forgiveness.

I have a new best friend named Antonio, called Anton in his native Mayan tongue. Anton is incredibly bright (he speaks three languages), very sensitive, and when he smiles he lights up all of Huehue.

 One day when we were wandering around the playground at dusk I started singing absentmindedly, as I am prone to doing. His little face lit it up and he cried, “You are a singer!” I laughed. “No, I just like to sing, that’s all.” He shook his head. “Eres una artista Jazz, en serio!” Now his eyes get bright and he makes little sounds of delight whenever I sing anything, and looks at me as though I’m the most beautiful singer in the world, and it sure does pour something into my soul that makes me bloom. As he held my hand and walked me to the gate that night he said, “Canta.” Sing. “What do you want me to sing?” “Cual quieres, whatever you want.” So I sang the first thing that came to mind:

Over the mountains and the seas

Your river runs with love for me

And I will open up my heart

And let the Healer set me free

I’m happy to be in the truth

And I will daily lift my hands

For I will always sing of

When Your love came down…

His hand tightened around mine, and warmth spread over me as his little voice joined my own

I could sing of Your love forever

I could sing of Your love forever
I could sing of Your love forever
I could sing of Your love forever

I know that this is a process, a journey, and that I will likely need to travel through more mess and pain to get where I need to go, but I'm happy and have peace about being where I am, and I’m excited to be moving forward… and for the first time in awhile, I’m remembering how to sing like I mean it.