You are your own

A piece I made this past week. I’ve been trying to give myself more space to play, to explore creatively while I process a lot of stuff. When I process my emotions, robotic imagery is a common theme; I’ve long struggled to let my organic body have a place in my life, and my engagement in personal relationships is characterized by tightly controlled emotions. I’ve recently realized that my primary “real” emotion is anger, which stands in for most other things I’ve otherwise repressed.

It’s been tough and confusing beginning to sort through this, but for the first time, I feel like I actually have a shot at being human.

Deconstruction Journals ii

Forgiveness is not the same thing as accountability.

It is not for lack of faith that my trust was deeply broken, and that I can’t seem to find it again. It’s not for a desire to sin freely that I choose to hold space for the grief and anger for the ways I was wounded in the name of revival, for the things that were stolen from me in the name of holiness.

“The church is made up of imperfect people,” they say. “It isn’t like that anymore. Forgive, re-assimilate.”

But boundaries continually crossed and emotions suppressed is not healing.

Forgiveness is not the same as accountability. Both are important, but the kind I’m continually asked to assume just feels like a call to loyalty. My betrayed devotion buried, forgotten. Unresolved.

I was born a storyteller, an old soul hardwired to watch the world with eyes wide open, and to tell about what I found. I hold no ability to be untrue to myself, and the things on my heart are the very things the church wishes I wouldn’t talk about.

I take a break, I let it cool down. I go back, yet the environment is the same as when I was a teenager. We can be friends so long as I stay quiet and play along.

And I think, if God put this heart in me, why would he ask me to betray it again and again and again? To shove it down into the dark and watch it sicken and wither?

I was raised to believe compassion has to have the last word, always. We, the children of the fallout, still believe that.