This weekend will be full of emotions.
Friday was my last day of work at my work-parish of 3.5 years. I didn't leave things as perfectly as I'd hoped. So I spent Friday feeling the full weight of my inadequacy.
Tomorrow is Mother's Day. I'm one of those that will sit in the pew a little heartbroken if/when the moms are invited to stand for a blessing.
I want to hide a bit. Or be somewhere else...somewhere they don't know me.
But God has been saying, pretty directly and unmistakingly, "Stay. Don't run. Lean in. I'll feel everything you feel. I'll feel your humiliation. I'll feel your shame. I have taken on your humiliation. I have become shame...I have resurrected it into glory."
It's ok for me to experience and acknowledge my failings in my work/ministry position that I just left. It's true, for every success I may have had there were about 10 ways I didn't step up. And that's on me. By acknowledging it, though, it also allows me to invite God to fill in where I failed. If I pretended I did everything right, well, that just wouldn't be sincere. If I just wallow in my failure and didn't bring it to God at all, that is pride, as if it all depended on me, which is the greater temptation. God is crushing that right now and making me confront the past 3.5 years in all it's brokenness and glimpses of glory. Stay. Don't run. Lean in.
It's ok for me to feel sad in the pew on Sunday. No one needs to feel worse because of it...I still want all the moms to feel blessed and spoiled and appreciated tomorrow. I know I won't be the only one sad, some have different crosses than me that I can't imagine bearing...birth moms who have given up children for adoption, miscarriage, moms who have passed away. I know that any other Sunday, there are other people hiding back tears for other reasons...broken relationships, broken dreams, broken faith. It is better for me to stay with my community and welcome them to carry my cross with me and carry their crosses too. Stay. Don't run. Lean in.
Full disclosure, I have been preparing my heart for this weekend by hiding my heart within the lyrics of a worship playlist and trying my hardest to make the lyrics my own prayer. Sometimes that involves scream-crying "You're a GOOD GOOD FATHER" and convincing myself that He really does love me, or whispering "Lead me to the cross" when I know I'd rather stay away from it. Stay. Don't run. Lean in.
