My God of Floyd

 

Sometimes I feel an immense sadness that my life didn’t turn out how I dreamed it would. The dream: the white picket fence, multiple kids, loving-devoted-godly husband, Bible studies. You know, days filled with making baked goods, keeping a clean house, decorating for each holiday, scrapbooking each chapter, and writing a novel.

I never feel like I measure up – morally – and truth be told, in the church is mostly what I’m talking about. As I’m putting the pieces of my life together, I realize that that feeling of not measuring up and that feeling of missing out on “the good life” – the remorse and the sense of loss – has always been there.

It’s the exact feeling I had in kindergarten when we attended Central Iowa Christian Academy (CICA), a rigorous Baptist institution. Here I was taught my morality measuring stick, directly out of scripture that we memorized because our very lives depended on it. Sins included lying, drinking, smoking, dancing, women wearing pants, anything sexual outside the institute of marriage (and likely even inside the institution as well), country and rock music, cursing, movie theatres, witchcraft and Halloween and dinosaurs. The list was exhaustive. To sin or to have sin in your life was the road to hell and I wanted to be good. I wanted to be perfect and I wanted God to love me. I wanted to do everything I was supposed to do and how I was supposed to do it.

But home was different. At home it seemed we followed very few of these moral guidelines. My dad sometimes cursed and he definitely drank alcohol – he even let us drink it if we wanted it (I did not). Mom and I wore pants. Mom enrolled me in ballet. We would go to the movies and my dad and my oldest brother listened to rock and country music. I will never forget sitting in chapel as they told us the evils of rock music and looking back at my big brother back there with the 6^th graders, and being terrified to the very depths of my soul that my brother was going to hell.

Something we didn’t all even know, just I knew, was that sometimes someone would crawl into bed with me in the middle of the night, and what would start as a backrub would end in what I was told was an abhorrent abomination. And part of me sometimes even liked it. No one could know about this – to speak it would give it life I didn’t want it to have. To give it life meant that everything that was already wrong would be even more wrong and I had to fix it and I could fix it and I would fix it. But I couldn’t fix that.

Every day my brothers received spankings (I would even say beatings) – first at school, and then again at home, to show that my parents stood in solidarity with the school administration and authority. I’m pretty sure everyone was trying to beat the sin out of my family, and I knew we needed it. I could hear my brothers’ screams in my classroom, and felt all the eyes on me from my peers as the lesson was halted due to the disruption. They never beat me.  Christy Nether couldn’t come to my birthday party because – well, because we were not good people. I was ashamed and understood the shun. We were outcasts.

And why? Why were we outcasts? Because we were not Baptist. We were Episcopalian. Try as hard as I might – try all I wanted – I could be perfect till my stomach hurt and puke on the floor over my shortcomings – produce straight A report cards and win awards for memorizing the most Bible verses – I would never be good enough. You can’t just scrub Episcopalian off, or even beat it out of you.

It would be okay if I didn’t care. But I did care. Ever so much.

In my 20’s I got angry at God because I could not measure up. A divorced failure – the biggest failure of them all aside from maybe abortion and murder. It was unforgivable (I asked just to be sure) and in the wake of rejection by the Church, I finally said that I didn’t care. Not caring was the only line of defense. I rejected God right back. Tired of not measuring up, tired of trying so hard, tired of failing, tired of no one protecting me, I dropped the measuring stick and considered the entire ordeal nothing more than a fairy tale.

But I would pick it back up, again and again and again and beat myself with it. The more time that went by, the less I measured up and the more outcast I felt and the more I wanted what I could never have, what I would never be. Some people can hide their sins and shortcomings and failures – but I have to change my name every damn time. And I also have a living, breathing miracle to prove it.

I have to ask myself, is that who the God of my Understanding is? Is this the God of Floyd whom I seek?

 

                                                                                NO.

 

This is not the God of Floyd. It might be the God of Abraham or Isaac – I thought they were the same when I first heard of this God of Floyd, but now I am not so thoroughly convinced. Do we not the serve the same God? The God of Abraham was rigid and cold and demanded sacrifice and obedience - the God of the Baptists for sure. I don’t know – but what I do know is that this rigid, harsh god is not the God of Floyd whom I seek. I don’t even know who Floyd is, firsthand, but I do know his God is the God of my Understanding. How do I know? I don’t know. I just do. My God is kind and loving, full of grace and forgiveness. He holds me inside and outside, all the time.

Have I held myself accountable to Pharisees?

 

                                                                                YES.

 

My life didn’t turn out how I dreamed it would, that is certainly true. Yet the life I have is beautiful and wonderful, and the person I am constantly evolving into being is someone I love and respect immensely. I know that I am beautiful, strong, kind, loving, fun-loving, adventurous and resilient. I am a good friend and a wonderful mother. I run an amazing business and I inspire others. I do not stand alone - my God is always at my side – my Comforter, my Love, my Light. 

And a white picket fence wouldn’t even look right with my house, anyway.