Christian Bookshops Make Me Feel Guilty

I love the junk mail I get from our local Christian bookshop. I read it and think about it and often 'feel' that there is something there that could really help me in my Christian walk/life/relationships/wardrobe etc.


I then go to the store. I find the book I am after and then discover twenty others along the same line of thought and then get completely swamped by indecision. Should I be looking at one written by a man or a woman? Should I go for one that has a bit of a family focus? Am I bad mother if I completely bypass all the parenting books?  I then carry around with me three or four painfully selected titles, with which I pace the store hoping that I have made the right choice. Will I read them? Will they challenge my faith? Do these particular books encapsulate where I am in my walk? Sigh.


At some point during the visit, I do a 360 degree turn and see row after row, shelf after shelf of books on topics from finding God's will to sex.  And then my brain begins to do some weird chemically thing and it just stops and freezes - I see solid blocks of primary colours with an over dub of elevator music.


There is so much I don't know, about everything, and this store emphasises this like no other. I thought I knew a lot about prayer, but there is a whole aisle on this topic. I thought I knew my bible stories quite well, but there are walls and walls of bible stories. I thought I knew how to be married, but there are entire sections dedicated to this. The other people in the store seem to move with confidence, they know what kind of music they like, they choose just the right bible guide and they choose cards and gifts with barely a nervous tick.


But not me, more often than not, I retrace my steps, put all the books back and slink out to my car. I don't so much like the store afterall.  I have been pondering this, as I tend to over ponder everything.


I don't like the idea of marginalising people. Would someone with a different 'faith status' than me feel comfortable walking into this bookstore? What makes these books so special? Are the writers people who don't sin and who go to church every Sunday? Maybe it is just me, but I like to think that God doesn't just reside between Dobson and Yancey.  I like to think he can be found anywhere.


In fact, one of the most spiritually profound books I have read in the last year was 'Eat Pray Love' by Elizabeth Gilbert. The book follows a girl around my age,  who discovers she no longer wants to be married so leaves her husband and takes a year to find herself. So she lives in Italy for a while where she EATS. Then she moves on to India where she lives in an Ashram and she PRAYS. She then moves on to Bali where she finds a lovely man and learns about LOVE. I loved the texture and grit with which this woman writes and the way that she approached her discovery. I learnt a lot about prayer and meditation, something that I never really 'got' from Christian books.


I also love the Harry Potter Books and the CS Lewis tales and The Lord of the Rings series. I will write more on these another time, but what I am saying is, that God is everywhere in everything. He can be found in the pages of any book, movie or song. The human heart is wired to love stories of good versus evil and being rescued by a good King/Prince/hunk.


There are people out there searching for this kind of story all the time. They go to movies, they read books, they listen to music - searching for something that resonates with the niggle that lies inside them. I say this like I am some kind of expert - well I am! I have known God my whole life, but still I didn't realise that he is everywhere and in everything and can be found in a flower, a song or words on a page - if we are brave enough to look.


Others with the same niggle may not have found God like I did. So they are out there still searching, looking, wanting the happy ending, the rescue, the hunk who sweeps in on his white horse, or the fair maiden to choose him for his heart not his brawn. But these people may not go to a church or associate themselves with a religion - so how do they then find their happy ending? 


I then fast forward to wondering how these people would feel walking into my local Christian bookstore?  Would they have a reason to go there? Do they know it exists? Would they too find the choice of books on every topic imaginable suffocating? Would someone approach them and help them find just the right book to scratch that internal niggle?


Again I fast forward to wondering how these people would feel walking into my church? What would they think of all the rows and rows of well groomed Christians in their Sunday best singing together, looking at a big screen and having 'communion' together?  Yipes, just the thought of it makes me panic.  If our church is not inviting for these seekers, where do they go to find God?


My answer. In us. Not in a bookstore. Not in a church. They find God through a cup of tea. A piece of cake. A friendly smile. A shared joke. A meal. A relationship. A pain eased. A hug given. A hand held. A child minded.


God is everywhere and in everything - from books to our hearts. We need to be out in the world being billboards of love to those we have around us. Simple. No panic attacks, steps to take, books to buy, or things to listen to. We just need to be available and willing. Simple right?

Sunday Mornings 2

I am not very good at church. I mean, I am quite well behaved when I am there, I am just not good at the whole getting ready and then being ready to listen thing...  I am hoping I am not alone or I am going to look like a right numpty.  If you really want to know what I am like on Sunday mornings click here.

At cell group the other night - by the by, I do love calling our group ‘cell’ group - it has a rough gangster type feel about it - like we all had cells on H block and can share stories of communal showering - but I digress. I shared a bit about how I just can’t seem to get us all ready on time on Sundays and how stressed I was feeling about it. I have gotten to the point where I am thinking of abandoning church to eliminate some stress from my life. 


Then I decided I should probably pray about and not just make decisions like that willy-nilly.  So I did, and I thought God would find it preferable to have me spend the hours of 9am-11am on a Sunday in quiet reflection on the back deck sipping tea and talking to my children about why Samaritans were seen as bad. But no, I found myself feeling really sad about the way I have been treating Sunday mornings. They have not been a time of preparation to hear from God or to spend time with his peeps. I had turned Sunday morning into a stress filled, frustrating and sometimes teary time of a parent behaving badly. So a new solution came to me.

Now, you must understand, I don’t want to come across as some nutter who claims to ‘hear’ from God about which type of bread to buy or which shoes will help me to fulfil God’s purposes for me. But, I have been in churches and around God enough to know that the still quiet voice that pushes us into a new line of thinking, is God. 

So, this new solution. Instead of me trying to get as much sleep as humanly possible on Sunday mornings and staying in bed as long as I can get away with, the solution is, to get up earlier. Can you believe it? That had to be from God, there is no way I would think of that on my own. So, this week I tried it. I set my alarm for 6am. I was going to give it a burl. And, God being a God who knows my inner workings, had me awake 10 minutes before the alarm. So I got up. 

I had a great morning. I made a lovely date slice for morning tea, I did some dishes and I got my heart ready for the morning rush. I was able to allow my brain to wander around the ridges for a while instead of harnessing it and trying to get it to go faster than it wanted to. My eldest daughter got up and we had the loveliest time together, we hugged a lot, giggled a lot, she kept me company while I shaved me legs (lucky little thing) and we chatted. At a reasonable hour we made coffee for daddy and laid out the breakfast things. Daddy, who was able to sleep in, was woken by freshly brewed coffee and a calm wife and bubbly five year old.

We were all in the car nice and early and, here I would love to say we had ‘No Tantrums’, but alas, we have a two year old princess diva, who did not like something or other and ruined our near perfect record. We arrived at church all in a calm and orderly fashion. It was a great success and this will be repeated. I am hoping that I can go for a walk to my favourite mountain top vantage point (want to say ‘look out’ but that sounds a bit seedy) and spend some time praying love over the valleys.

Thanks God for not giving up on me, 

thanks for always waiting for me,

thanks for the reminders that seem hard but are actually easy,

thanks for my beautiful family who I spent time with this morning,

thanks for the good things you pile into my life.  

Amen.

Sunday Mornings

I am about to admit something that I am not so sure if I should. I really don’t like Sunday mornings. I desperately want to say ‘hate’, but we don’t use that word in our house. 

I am not sure what it is about Sundays that turn me into a military sergeant wanting to be in charge of a vagabond band of unruly and unwilling troupes. To get my family out of the house requires all sorts of cajoling, pleading, tutt tutting and sometimes even yelling. So let’s look at a typical Sunday morning at my house...

7:30am – if the clock shows this time and I am not showered and at least dressed, I am already running late. Not a good sign. Children are usually up being their lovely needy selves expecting cups of tea and stories in bed. Daddy usually obliges while I blast around the house laying out clothes and shoes.

8:00am – must have at least started eating breakfast. Needs to be inhaled, I mean ingested, within about 15-20 minutes, shame my two year old cannot read the time and thinks mummy’s pleas to eat quicker are hilarious. No porridge, eggs or French toast on Sundays at our house, Weetbix or toast - don’t spill any crumbs.

8:15am – I finish getting ready and begin getting the girls into their clothes.  It is usually at this time that my husband, who is enjoying a morning not rushing off to work, disappears, for quite some time. I fluster about with our two daughters and their beautiful hair, requiring lots and lots of brushing, product and agonising over sitting still so styles can be performed in a reasonable amount of time.

8:30am – ensure all teeth are brushed and shoes are in place. Hide snacks in handbag in case service goes long or children become noisy.

8:45am – everyone in the car through a cloud of questions about toilets, teeth, hair, jumpers, permission to allow toy monkey church attendance and a final nappy bag check.

8:51am – walk calmly into church, shake hands with greeter, find seat (number 74, blue on aisle) and finally, look at husband and sigh.  Phew, made it.

Does this sound familiar to anyone? It is so hard getting everyone into their Sunday best and their butts on a seat by 8:59am. But why? I get my children ready for school all the time and we leave well before 8:45am.  I ponder these things between when the service starts and when my husband finally accepts that he has to love me despite my nasty pre-church behaviour.

I have two theories regarding my utter dislike of Sunday mornings.  

Theory number 1:  It is hard to keep it all together. ‘Sunday Best’ means just that. We have to look ‘right’, despite the pants kind of week we have had.  Lippy must be in place and hair done just right; ensemble selected and pressed on Saturday. Who makes up these rules? Me. I was raised believing that getting dressed in our best clothes was a sign of respect to our faith, which I still accept. And, I like to look as if I do have it all together; I mean really, what would people think if I turned up in my Oscar the Grouch pyjamas with bed hair, eating yoghurt straight from the tub? I would be whisked away into a quiet room given a cup of tea and a comforting hug from the pastor’s wife. Yipes! Not that Wendy isn’t totally lovely....    

I know that I say I don’t care what people think of me and I want to be as individual as the next person, but I don’t want to rock the boat. I want to look as if everything is okay, even when it perhaps isn’t. It can be easier to carry the illusion of togetherness rather than be vulnerable about where we really are at.  It is a shame, but an unfortunate reality in big churches.

Theory number 2: The Devil loves Sunday mornings at my house. I truly believe that Satan loves heading to my place on Sunday mornings, in fact, I think he comes somewhere in the middle of the night so he can get front row seats for the show. He then lets fly with his trickery, spite and impatience, revealing the worst in our family (me in particular). Why would he bother? Have I mentioned anything about God at all in this diatribe about church? Hair dryer malfunctions, spots on clothes, arguments with spouses, children who go crazy with Crayolas while wearing petal pink linen minutes before getting into the car, these are all things that distract me from thinking about God. Sunday is meant to be a day of rest and reflection, yet I have turned it into a mine field of potential disasters.

A few months ago I seriously considered not going to church again until both my children could tie their own shoes and make me a decent cappuccino.  It was all too much, but it was then that I looked down and saw my eldest daughter singing her little lungs out to ‘How Great is Our God’ and my younger daughter spinning in circles at our feet with her hands raised.  I realised that church is about worship and fellowship.  It wouldn’t matter to God how I was dressed or what my family ate for breakfast, but what does matter is that I give myself time to appreciate all that God has poured into my life.

I am getting better at Sunday mornings; don’t ask my husband, he may disagree.  But I am trying to learn the art of worship through the process of getting ready for church.  Beautiful music to listen to, earlier out of bed to calmly get myself together and taking the time to smile at my family have helped.  However, just for a laugh, one day I might turn up to church in my Oscar the Grouch pyjamas, ready to worship God and thank him for giving us a venue and an outlet to worship freely. Oh, and if I do, Wendy, I take my tea white, with ¾ of a spoon of sugar, not too strong please.