I'm trying

"If you have come to help me, please leave. However, if you have come because your liberation is tied to my own, then let's work together."

How accurately that describes me today.

I'm trying to get help from the church, because I have been told so often in the church that everything is a spiritual issue, that God wants my whole self and will work most powerfully and effectively when I bring my whole self; but I feel like it's a two-edged sword in my side. Here I am, doing what I think God is asking me to do, bringing my problems to the church and then I feel two pushes back.

One is that I don't really want to be this real in church; I want to be a new me, the becoming-idealized me. I want to be the me that is being called out of the old and into the new and transformed into the person God intends me to be. And I don't want the old things to be chained to me as I try to pursue newer, more healthy ways of being. I didn't create the darkness, so I want the justice of not being required to take responsibility for what I didn't do.

The other thing that is pushing back at me is the church, the way that it is structured as pastors having meetings and "doing" the work of the church. But that's never how God intended it. He intended pastoring to be mutual. He intended it to look like me being broken and that qualifying me more so to be able to pastor others, not the other way around. I feel disqualified. I feel like I have outed myself and now I can't be trusted to minister to others. Which isn't the way it should be in God's kingdom.

He intended my most relevant relationships to be my closest relationships; not my most relevant to be these non-intimate business-like connections with a man whose job it is to stand up on the podium and impact my life for Jesus. If my daily phone calls with the people who love me aren't impacting me to choose life and to choose being beloved, that how is the podium guy going to change my life? Other than to make me feel guilty that I'm not choosing enough life or choosing my belovedness enough? I'm not ever doing that enough, but I need people, real live water-based humans to sit in front of me and help me consider my options and choose life.

So I'm trying...and all I've got right now is my trying...

And I'm hoping...for a response...