brandyglows

In response to the question, “What are you?”, my parents taught me to say, “I’m adopted. And I’m special!”

I learned two things. First, I am special – unique, quirky, set apart . . . AMAZING. Second, I don’t always fit in very well. Growing up, I had this sense that I was abandoned by people who were supposed to love me. It wasn’t true, but it made me feel unwanted.

In reality, my parents waited seven years to adopt me. And my birth mom sacrificed dearly to give me a better shot in life. But the story I told myself conflicted with the story I was born into. It complicated things.

Everyone in Ruckersville, Virginia went to church. Except my family. I wanted to fit in, so I started going, too. I found God fascinating. I asked a lot of questions that made my Southern Baptist youth leaders uncomfortable.

My dad was an atheist. He was also the kindest, most loving, and generous man I knew, and I could not wrap my mind around a God that would condemn him to hell. I became obsessed with the second coming and I prayed for God to hold on while I worked on saving my father. Desperate and worried, I went to my Sunday School teacher.

She looked at me thoughtfully. Finally, she said, “Maybe God will make us forget the people who didn’t get into heaven.”

I know she was trying to help. But instead, she intiated my instinct to run. Her God could not be real, or else he didn’t know my dad. Christianity was not for me. Besides, there were things I’d wanted to do – stuff I knew I’d miss out on if I continued on that righteous path. Cigarettes, sex, alcohol and drugs: Christians had no idea what they were missing.

In the process of pursuing pleasure, I flushed my aspirations down the toilet. I morphed into the kind of person who would lie, cheat and steal to get what she wanted. I didn’t like who I was becoming. But it was getting harder and harder to go back to the little girl I used to be. I wasn’t sure I could change back.

When I look back at that scared young woman, I want to hold her. Everyone in my life at that time was quick to keep me stuck in my horrible habits or tell me what a screw-up I was. If I could talk to the girl I used to be, I would tell her to slow down. I would whisper her worth, her purpose, and her potential.

I was God’s beloved prodigal daughter.

Funnily, God was more real in when I was screwing up than God had ever been in my church-going days. I had no one around to whisper my beauty and worth (least of all myself!), but God had been there all along, wooing me with unconditional love. It was not that God made me see the error of my ways. God believed in me – and so my conversion could be called the moment in which I started to believe in myself, because looking back, I knew the whole time that God was real.

This was a big, big God. This was a God I could trust with my life. And so I did.

And my life, at 23, was a hot mess. Cigarettes, pot, sex, diet coke – I was addicted to all of them. I couldn’t keep a job. I was dead broke. And I was a newly single mom.

We dated for three years and we brought out the worst in each other. I cheated. Several times. And then one day, I hooked up with an old flame only to discover he was cheating on his pregnant fiancé.

It was like looking in a dirty mirror.

It woke me up and shook me from my creepy ways. I stopped cheating, but I stayed with a man I knew I didn’t love. I believed that because he was my daughter’s father, I had no other noble choice. I wanted to do the “right Christian thing”. Jesus didn’t seem keen on divorce – nevermind that we weren’t technically married. I’d messed up so much already. I was afraid to take the chance and screw up again. We went to couples counseling instead.

“He says he wants to be a Christian, but he doesn’t act like it.  Some of the stuff he does . . . it makes me uncomfortable,” I told my counselor.

“Brandy,” She paused and looked at me meaningfully, “Are you sure you want to marry him?”

I stared at her, unblinking, “I didn’t realize I had a choice.”

Leaving him was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. But it freed me in unspeakable ways. I moved back in with my parents and began mending my broken life, again. My counselor recommended me for a housekeeping position at a mega-church. That job saved me. It swaddled me like a cocoon so I could begin healing the damaged parts of my being. My boss was wonderful. He knew I had made a mess of my life and he gave me the space to decontaminate. He supplied me with a state-of-the-art vacuum for extra heady spills.

In return I scrubbed and shined that holy house until it sparkled. He put me in charge of the clothes closet and the food pantry (allowing me to take from them as I needed). Honored, I happily sorted those sacred spaces.

My time of healing nurtured my old love of reading; I frequented the church bookstore, “vacuuming.” One day I came across a book called Velvet Elvis by a guy named Rob Bell. It was in the clearance section and I liked the cover. I bought it on a whim. It changed my life. Rob Bell opened my eyes to a way of following Jesus that intuitively made sense. This was a faith built to last; a faith I would need before the end of that summer.

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She was three when it happened. My little girl’s innocence, ripped away from her.

It was a such strange time. It happened less than a year after I started putting my life back together. I’d made some really good friends and these people rallied around my little family in ways I could not have imagined.

I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. And the truth it, the person who hurt my baby is my worst enemy (I wrote a letter to him in my free book, Think Love Create).

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I met Jermaine on an “evangelism retreat” about a month before the trauma.  Honestly, I thought I could marry him from the moment we met, but how could I expect new love to blossom in the midst of such sadness? Besides, he lived 400 miles away . . .

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I wasn’t running, exactly. But I longed to break free from my painful past. And I didn’t see how to do that when I had to drive by the bars I used to frequent on my way to work every morning. Also, I wanted to get my daughter as far away from her abuser as I possibly could.

Suddenly, I was very thankful for my long distance relationship. This sweet, smart boy was the perfect excuse to fly away. And that’s what I did. I packed up my daughter and filled a U-Haul to the brim. Off we went.

But I then began to second guess myself. It felt like I’d moved for him. And, if I had made this great sacrifice, wasn’t he required to sacrifice something in return? I tried to force it out of him by clinging, fighting, crying beautiful bitter tears.

Yep. Girlfriend of the year. That’s me.

He did the only thing he could think to do. He dumped me.

It seems hardly notable now. We got back together a couple months later. I worked on not being manipulative, and learned what a healthy relationship looked like. My intuition was spot on. We’re about to celebrate our 4th anniversary. Heeey.

The months in between breaking up and getting back together, temptation struck. I bought a pack of cigarettes and got friendly with a guy in my English class. I knew I was flirting with destruction, but I didn’t know how else to cope. Breaking up with Jermaine hurt. And I wanted to numb the pain.

I also didn’t have a church. I had been going to his parents’ church until we broke up, but I had no desire to continue. I tried a few in the area but it seemed I didn’t fit in once again.

And so, I think that’s why, in the midst of our colossal break-up, I remembered Rob Bell.

He mentioned in his book that he pastored a church in Michigan. I went online to see if they taped their sermons. They did! I started listening every week. I have always loved listening to sermons – I was, perhaps, the only kid in my little Southern Baptist church that came on Sundays to listen to the preacher. I think it’s tied up in my love of words.

But Rob Bell did something a little extra. His sermons combined all of the things I was most passionate about: performance, poetry, stories, social justice. His creativity spoke to me.

I continued to listen after Jermaine and I got back together. And, really, I never stopped. Later, a few months after we got married, I heard “Rob Bell” and “emergent” in the same sentence. I was intrigued. I had heard that the emergent church was dangerous and heretical. But if Rob Bell was involved, it couldn’t be that bad. I wanted to see if there were any emergent churches in my area so I went online and typed “emergent church Maryland”.

In Cedar Ridge, we found a home. We found a group of people who were passionately committed to following Jesus and loving each other. I fell in love with the church’s vision and I was moved by the humility of the leaders. I’m not sure they would call themselves emergent (or if Rob Bell would, for that matter). They’re just people daring to imagine heaven on earth.

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One fine day, before Cedar Ridge and after we got back together, I was driving along the highway and suddenly, I was sobbing. I felt it.

God was calling me to become a pastor. Me.

I’d been struggling to figure out what to do with my life. I knew I had been given a second chance. I knew I was a gifted writer and performer but until that moment, I couldn’t figure out how to combine the two. Pastoring fit beautifully.

Still, I couldn’t help but ask, why on earth God would want me to pastor his people?

After all, I was a girl.

I have long considered myself “the screw up”. That was my story.

But I realize now that there is a part in the narrative where it becomes less about me, the perpetual flunk, on the ground piecing my life back together, and more about me, a woman with the gift of wordplay, divinely appointed to a role that’s generally filled by guys.

God put me Cedar Ridge and surrounded me with women and men who challenged the boxes I had placed both genders in. God took my passion for social justice and situated me in the sociology department of the University of Maryland. He helped me reach the conclusion that “He” was not a he at all – that a gendered interpretation of God puts God in a very small box.

Part of this blog’s purpose is to deconstruct the boxes we’ve tried to put God in. My story is now about partnering with God to let our boxes go, and in doing so, to restore Shalom to the world.

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There is more to my story. And every time I read this I find new parts that need editing. But that’s life, isn’t it? I’m working to turn it into a memoir called Emergency Breakthrough. I suppose I’ll have to finalize my editing once that gets closer to completion, but for now, I’m content to tweak this page often. I’ll keep you posted on the progress of my memoir.

If you want to read more about this crazy Shalom restoration mission, check out 7 Steps To Restoring Shalom. It’s a free downloadable PDF. And if you’d like some help keeping up with my posts and purpose, subscribe to my newsletter, you’ll get brandyglows:unpolished when you do. Right now, that looks like pieces of an epic series I’m working on. You can check out the first part of the first chapter here.