Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

faith & spirituality

My book club friends went to the movies with me (and how that’s restoring my faith)

It’s been more than a month now since I saw Redeeming Love in the theater with a group of book club friends who were either humoring me or genuinely curious about this story I can’t let go of.

Not our best photo but proof we were there!

But let me back up–say 20 years or so. Redeeming Love is one of the first “Christian” books I remember reading after I decided to align my life with this movement called Christianity. I don’t remember who recommended it or when exactly I read it but I remember being moved by it.

To back up even further, for those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, Redeeming Love is the first book published by Francine Rivers in the Christian market. Before that, she wrote romance novels–like sexy-shirtless-guy-on-the-cover novels. Then, Jesus entered her life and she wrote different kinds of novels. Redeeming Love is sort of her testimony of the change in her life and it’s based on a book in the Bible called Hosea, where God tells this man Hosea to marry a prostitute.

Phew. You still with me? It gets weirder. Not to recap the whole story but in the Bible, it’s an illustration of God’s love for a wayward people (Israel). Francine Rivers turned it into a love story set in 19th Century California during the Gold Rush.

I have cried multiple times while reading this book, moved by a love that would pursue someone despite the odds. (I even wrote this glowing review a decade ago when the book was re-released. I can’t bring myself to re-read the review, so just keep in mind that a different Lisa wrote those words.)

Fast forward to present day. Some of my beliefs have changed and my circle is wider than it used to be. Offhand during a book club meeting when we were discussing which book we should read next, I suggested that we read Redeeming Love so we could go see the movie when it released.

I was unprepared for the reaction. As a result of our conversation, i did a deep dive on why some women find Redeeming Love problematic. I was shocked at what I read–because their perspective hadn’t occurred to me. Some women argued that the book is misogynistic and encourages women to stay in abusive relationships. (I doubt this was the author’s intent, but as a writer myself, this terrifies me, that what I write could be interpreted in a way that I didn’t intend.)

This is the shortest and most ineffective summary I can make of the complaints against Redeeming Love. I went back to book club and admitted that they might be right. It might be a horrible book. It pained me to admit this, but one thing I’m learning is that it’s good to consider all perspectives, especially about something I might hold dear. My perspective (and the one I was taught for decades) is not the only one or the right one. I opened myself up to the possibility that a beloved book is harmful, and it made me uncomfortable.

Which is good.

What happened next surprised me, though.

Two of my book club friends wanted to read it, even after our discussion. One, an atheist, read the entire thing (for me, as an outside perspective) and gave me her thoughts. (This kind of friend is invaluable, and I’m so grateful.)

And they STILL wanted to go to the movies with me. (We planned an axe-throwing excursion afterward in case we needed an outlet for our aggression toward the patriarchy.)

Going in, I sort of dreaded seeing the movie, even though these friends had made clear that it had no bearing on our friendship if I liked this book or movie. (This, too, is a gift: not needing to conform to any standard to be accepted in a group.)

And, friends, I did like it. The movie was better than I expected, even as I heard the whispers and comments and gasps from my friends on either side. I had so many thoughts that I drove in silence to the axe-throwing place. Fortunately, we had a long wait for our turn to throw axes, and we talked about the movie.

Because they are such a gracious and generous group, I could share openly that I actually enjoyed the movie more than I expected. Some of the concerns women voiced about the plot and the way the male lead relates to the female lead were less of an issue in the movie than in the book. There’s more consent. (My biggest issue is with the way the movie ends because of the message it sends: just turn to God and everything in your life will work out! Some of that is a product of the genre of the book and movie, though.)

I liked the movie and that surprised me.

It also caused me to wrestle with some emotions and feelings I’ve been having about my faith journey.

For the past several years, I’ve been in a process of deconstruction–dismantling and examining what I believe, what I was taught to believe, what I actually think/believe–and it’s painful. Some days I wanted to throw out everything I’ve learned about faith and light it on fire. Good riddance. Other days, I remember the joy and comfort I found. For a time, I needed to step really far away from the traditions and practices of my early adulthood in order to evaluate their continued role in my life.

During this time of deconstruction, I read a lot of tweets from #exvangelical (ex-evangelical) Twitter that led me to believe I needed to discard everything, including any kind of organized religion/spirituality, that everything associated with western Christianity is garbage. In the wilderness of leaving evangelicalism, I still sought belonging, and I thought the only way to belong was to adopt a new fundamentalism–one where I trash everything from before and wade into another place of black-and-white “rules.” Maybe not all of deconstruction is like this, but I felt pressure to question everything (which is good) and reject everything (which is not good) and find my own way.

This whole Redeeming Love situation showed me a different way forward, the way I actually want to follow.

I can acknowledge the ways people have been hurt by books and teachings and policies and power structures and mourn with them for the ways the Christian faith has been twisted and used to hurt. I have been hurt by it, too, though not in the extreme ways that some have suffered.

And I can recognize that there are people and teachings and books and communities that helped me through difficult times, and I don’t have to agree with or disagree with everyone in a particular group in order to belong.

Redeeming Love is a book that was meaningful to me in a time of life that I really needed it. So I’m going to hang on to that.

For years, I wanted to put the Bible in the same category of things I needed to discard. But after a recent series at church where we talked about what the Bible is and isn’t and how it’s been used in hurtful and helpful ways, I’m on a journey of rediscovery that I’m not quite ready to write about yet. I miss the days when my faith was easy, when I had a lot of joy about the path I was on. And I don’t want to go back to that because not everything I was feeling or experiencing was true. It was true for me at the time, but not all of it fits where I’m at in my life now.

I’ve grown and changed and so has my faith. Maybe I’m not so much deconstructing or reconstructing but more like remodeling my faith. Just like in a house, the rooms we may have loved that suited us when we moved in eventually need an upgrade. A refresh.

I think that’s where I’m at with my faith. I don’t want to tear down the whole structure, but I want it to reflect more of where I’m at now as a person.

It’s a process, and it’s messy. Like any remodel (so I’ve heard). But in the end, I think I’m going to like the result because it will be a truer reflection of who I am now.

—

Can you relate? How has your faith journey changed since you started? And if you’ve read Redeeming Love and/or seen the movie, I’d love to hear what you think (even if it’s different from what I think; especially if it’s different from what I think.)

What I Learned in 2021

I shared the following thoughts with our church community on February 13 as part of a series to start the year called “What We Learned in 2021.” Images added for blog purposes.

A friend recently shared a meme on Facebook that said: “What I learned in 2021: no one learned anything in 2020.”

Obviously, that’s meant to be a joke, but on some of my worst days in 2021, I could believe it. 

What I learned in 2021 is rooted in 2020, though. Last year, after the summer lull of COVID cases that gave us a sense of normality, fall brought us more of what the early days of the pandemic did: rising numbers, uncertainty, confusion. Except that this time, we were still expected as a society to sort of carry on as normal. 

Sometime late in 2021, I realized that I was happier in lockdown. 

Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash

Remember lockdown? It feels like a lifetime ago. And maybe “happier” is the wrong word because I definitely didn’t enjoy being unemployed, and my kids were struggling with online school, and I was afraid for my husband’s health and safety because he worked with the public. But there was something good about that time for me. Life was boiled down to its simplest elements. We spent a lot of time together as a family, which can be a blessing and a curse. We hiked almost every week. I sent a hand-written letter or card snail mail to a different person every week. We reached out to more friends and family via zoom and FaceTime. Some of my best memories from that time are things we never would have done if we weren’t in lockdown: a board game night with friends in Pittsburgh and North Carolina via Zoom; watching a parade of teachers from my kids’ school as they visited all the neighborhoods where students lived; virtual adventures (we picked a destination at random and watched a documentary and made some food that reflected the culture of that area).

The expectations from society during lockdown matched my own longings: to slow down and stay home more and take care of people. There was a sense of camaraderie, like we were all in this together.

Generally, I’m the kind of person who will just keep going along on a certain path until I’m forced to make a change. I don’t seek out change. That’s an unhealthy go-with-the-flow kind of attitude because I let other people or outside circumstances determine the “flow” of my life. Before March 2020, life was hectic and busy, and even if I wanted things to be different, I didn’t know how different things could be or how to make them different.

Lockdown changed all of that.

So when life tried to get back to some kind of normal, first in the fall of 2020, then in the fall of 2021, I was anxious and conflicted. I still wanted some of that lockdown life, but now I felt pressure to abandon it for what life was like before the pandemic began. The desire to get back to “normal” is a strong one, but I started to wonder what exactly “normal” meant.

Before I go on, I want to say that I understand that my experience of lockdown came with some privilege, and I don’t want to ignore that. Yes, I was unemployed, but I was receiving unemployment and my husband was still working. Yes, I was stuck at home with my kids, but they’re pre-teen or teenage and moderately self-sufficient. Lockdown was more challenging for some people than others: like those who live alone or who have small children and for those of us who struggle with mental illness. I don’t want you to hear me say “Life was better in lockdown” and tune me out because that’s not how it was for you. Lockdown was hard. I know that.

But I like how author Matt Haig, who openly writes about mental illness, evaluated the tension between lockdown life and “normal” life. In May of 2021, he posted on Twitter: “Lockdown posed massive mental health challenges. But our ‘normal’ world of long working hours, stressful commutes, overstretched lives, hectic crowds, shopping centres, pointless meetings, eco-destruction and 24/7 everything was hardly a mental health utopia. A new normal please.”

That’s the tension I felt. That I no longer wanted the kind of life where I was stretched to the extremes daily, where my health suffered because I was trying to meet all the expectations of work, family and society. Lockdown gave me a glimpse of what life could look like and helped me evaluate what I want it to include. I realized I have more choice than I thought about the kind of life I want to live.

Photo by No Revisions on Unsplash

That sounds really simple in theory. Putting it into practice is another thing entirely. It’s definitely a work in progress because aren’t we all? But I’m trying to pay attention to what adds meaning to my life and what doesn’t. Sometimes it’s little things like lighting a candle for no special reason or sitting in silence. Sometimes it’s a choice that seems counterproductive but adds to my overall health like taking a walk before starting on dinner prep or napping before finishing some household chore. I’m trying to cure myself of always needing to DO something and letting myself just BE from time to time.

In 2021, though, it also looked like taking my anxiety seriously. Late in the year, I started taking a daily anxiety medication. I have lived with anxiety for so long that I didn’t know life could be any different. I was scared to make a change because I had learned how to “manage” my anxiety. But the pandemic has also taught me that I don’t just want to “manage” through life. I don’t just want to survive. Some days, that’s all I’ve got, but in the long run, I want to live a whole life. 

Photo by Ryan Moreno on Unsplash

2021 was also the year that brought our family to Life Church. We had been stuck in our previous church community and our faith was becoming stagnant or starting to die out. We felt like we needed to leave but weren’t sure how or when until COVID hit. 

I remember the first few Sundays that we tuned in online to Life Church and as the songs played, I felt angry. Not at Life Church; I was angry that I’d been experiencing such a limited piece of the Kingdom of God. There were inclusive songs? Songs about justice? Songs of lament that didn’t have choruses with easy answers? As with my anxiety, I didn’t know my experience of faith could be like this. But we’d had to leave what we’d always known and venture out toward something relatively unknown.  

We recently watched the movie “Free Guy” as a family, and I won’t give anything away if you haven’t seen it, but at one point, the main character says “Life doesn’t have to be something that just happens to us.” So much of my life has felt like it was happening to me and those words stir something inside of me. That also scares me a little because it requires change.

So I guess if I had to sum up what I learned in 2021 in just one sentence, I would say: “It doesn’t have to be this way.” I hope that doesn’t sound naive because I know that sometimes, for a season, life does have to be a certain way. There are things I can do now that I could never do when I had babies at home. And there will be things that I can do years from now that I can’t do now because I have teenagers at home.

Maybe the changes I’m looking for can be made immediately. Maybe others will take more time and planning. But when I feel tension about the way life is going, this is what I keep coming back to. 

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Which leads to some follow-up questions: if it doesn’t have to be THIS way, then how do I want it to be? And what can I do to work toward that?