Hard Lessons

It’s been nearly a decade (okay, maybe it just feels like a decade) since I last blogged. Hopefully I will be better about it this summer when I’ve got more time on my hands. Having had an interesting and reflective Sunday, I decided to journal tonight.

So today, as my mom and I were just returning from the 11:30 church service, I pulled up at our house to find my mom’s friend….we’ll just call her Jane. She was waiting at our house because she and my mom were going to go shopping and we were running late. Let me tell you a little bit about Jane. Jane is a very conservative Christian (bordering on extreme) who isn’t afraid to say what she thinks, and who, in my opinion, often doesn’t think before some things she says. Well I have an Obama 2008 bumper sticker on the back of my car that my brother convinced me to sport. I’ve been drawn to Obama for awhile so it wasn’t the fact that it was an Obama sticker that made me hesitant to put it on my car….it was the fact that it was a sticker period---- I think bumper stickers are kind of tacky. Well, finally Brian convinced me that it really wasn’t tacky (unless I were to put…say…15 stickers on my car) and that the stickers really wouldn’t hurt my car. So I stuck the Obama sticker on there and while I was at it, I put on my Alpha Chi Omega bumper sticker that I’ve been too afraid to put on my car since I bought it. I’m not sure where I was thinking I would put that thing when I bought it but anyway….

So Jane noticed my Obama sticker and practically gasped at me, asking “where did you get that sticker?” Here’s how the conversation followed:

“Oh, Brian gave it to me to put on my car.”

“It’s a joke, though, right?”

“ Umm…no…I like Obama..I think he’s really smart/talented (something to that extent)”

“You’re a Christian and you like Obama???”

“Yeah. Obama’s a Christian”

“Oh, I think he’s Satan!!”

“Oh really?” (Not quite sure what to say?)

Luckily, my mom arrived soon and wisked her off to the shopping extravanganza. But I couldn’t help feeling not only shocked but offended after that conversation. I felt hurt that she seemed to imply that I was less of a Christian (as if she could decide) because I’m not conservative, and especially because I support Obama. It left me especially frustrated because this attitude seems to be really prevalent, especially in my hometown. This conversation reminded me of my ongoing frustration of people labeling me conservative because I’m a Christian and many Christians presuming I’m not really a Christian (or at the very least, that my Christian faith is deviant and less true than theirs) because I’m not conservative. As my brother and I ran errands, I continued to sit on my pity potty about how Jane had treated me and then, to make myself feel better, I meditated on the thought “well, it doesn’t matter what she says because I’m right anyway and she’s just a fundamentalist.”

Later in the day, as I was sitting outside pretending to bask in the sun (the sun kept going behind the cloud), I started feeling really convicted. It’s wonderful how God uses the Holy Spirit to hover right over you, almost like the pesky rain cloud that won’t leave in cartoons, just when you are feeling blaming and self-righteous, just when you start convincing yourself that you know everything. I began to feel convicted that I had demonized Jane in my mind as I had, labeling her an idiot. Damn it, God……. Really? I was really enjoying feeling so self-righteous and bitter. But no…no no…God had to kill my fun by reminding me that I actually DON’T know everything (shocker, huh?) and then about that whole loving your enemies thing.

That one really is a kicker. Like one of my favorite authors, Anne Lamott, said, I wish I could just take that part out of the Bible. It’s really quite inconvenient most of the time. Besides, it would be really nice to believe that God endorses my particular political inclinations and that anyone who believes differently is just corrupt or immoral. Plus, it would be easier to believe that her brand of Christianity was in fact idolatry (much in the same way she had done to me) and forget that she is my sister in Christ and one of God’s children. Ugh…hard lessons.

So, all in all, it’s been a day for a big lesson….well, more like a reminder of a big lesson that I still haven’t seemed to have learned. Maybe some day I will or maybe it will just continue to be a cycle of me blaming other people and feeling self-righteous and then God- once again- illuminating my own hypocrisy. Awesome. But I guess Jesus was good at doing that when he lived too. Anyway, thanks for reading as I put these feelings and reflections down on paper (or on the Blog at least). Until next time…