Time to Grow

Do you pick a yearly word?  It took some meditation and days of reflection but I decided in 2018 what I need to do is

TRY

I spent the end of last year learning about a personality tendency of mine that questions everything, and must have a reason for each type of action.  This keeps me studying, and reflecting, and weighing pros and cons sometimes long after other people have chosen a path and progressed along it.

I would be happier at home any day, reading about life than taking risks in the messy painful living of it.  Reading, learning, changing, and forming views has its place, I just know that in order to grow more risks are what I need.  So this year I will show up.  Show up here to write, and scarier still, show up to church. 

Why is church so scary for me?  It's kind of the opposite of my safe space.  I got PTSD from community shunning as an 18 year old.  I got best friend shunning as a 38 year old when I started to face my traumas and question the all-powerfulness of the group's belief system.

I still face frustration and sorrow and fear every. single. week. as I sit in those pews and face that what *I* believe in my heart is so very far from all of the other people.  I feel like a foreigner in belief systems and vulnerable to shame and shunning at any step were my mouth to open.

This is part of why I keep going, and keep MAKING myself go (it really isn't easy).  When I pray in frustration after services on Sunday I realize what is keeping me frustrated is that I don't share.  I never answer a question in a class, I am not given a forum to ever share my weird differentness.  I just sit there stewing in my "otherness."  But then I think about what it would sound like if I did say what I believe (or don't) and I realize how vulnerable I would be to all of the traumas I've already been through.  It is difficult because sometimes I think I should let myself off that hook.  People quit churches all the time.

But for now, I grow.  I search for the way I could be more christian or be a light in someone's life and I find those things at church.  So I will TRY.