*a note about this post. I think it’s pretty clear that i am being vulnerable in this space. This post is about my process with faith and stories from that part of me. Wherever you are in your process of becoming more fully yourself, love and hope to you from me. Also feel free not to read this if it’s not the vibe right now. (Also, as an aside, Audrey gave me permission to write about her as part of my process).
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“So I’m shotgun in the car
And we’re just shooting the shit
And predictably the talking turns to God
So I throw him forty lines
How I don’t think he exists
And he just smiles and
Takes a dignified pause
Says, “it’s ok to feel unbelievably lost”
But God is full of grace
And his faithfulness is vast
There is safety in the moments
When the shit has hit the fan
Not some vindictive motherfucker
Nor is he shitty at his job
What words to hear
And I’m a mess by now”
I think that I’m learning about God in the ways that this song is talking about. Also if you are curious, it’s persevere by gang of youths and I can’t recommend the entire record enough. I think back over my life as I think about the line, “there is safety in the moments when the shit has hit the fan”. Especially the last 5 years of my life. I’ve gone on a prolonged journey out of the faith of my youth. (I am realizing now how tied to codependency that faith was). Also, watched Encanto again and I also can’t recommend the film enough. Talk about a discourse on codependent structures that keep us trapped. Holy shit.
There were just some moments when the shit has hit the fan for me. About two years ago, my plans and the future I had mapped out for myself completely hit the fan. I had this vision of what my life was going to be and it became clear that it wasn’t going to be that. I felt lost. Unbelievably lost. I spent the majority of 2020 trying to figure out what the fuck was happening. Cycling through self hatred and self sabotage and staying in spaces to long and calling it selfless love, (it’s what I call self erasure now and has kept me from actually having deeper, more fulfilling relationships).
I took a lot of mushrooms (with intentions) and took an ego death trip on mushrooms that was beautiful and definitely has been something I can look back on with a sense of curiosity and feeling like it was pointing to something. “We are going to be okay” being the most prominent take away. At this point in my journey, I’m pro substances that naturally occur on earth, I think they can absolutely help on the healing journey and I think there is to much evidence to support this to say otherwise, including my own lived experience. I also think they are incredibly powerful and that it is advisable to know why I’m using them and what I’m using them for. I think there are ways of falling off the edge (so to speak) in that process. I’m also not recommending them to anyone here, btw. You gotta figure that out for yourself.
I have to say that there was safety in 2020 and earlier in 2021 (although the talks with suicide scared me a lot). I was searching with an intensity that I don’t think I’d ever known in 2020. I was so hungry to know something real. I had this friend, named Audrey, who was maybe the person who most exemplified the other voice in this lyrical conversation. (Sans the very explicit language). She had a way of engaging with my process that wasn’t codependent, while remaining true to Jesus. I was really intrigued by this and it impacted me in a big way out there in the process of piecing together a worldview from a completely disassembled spirituality that was blending plant medicine, shamanism, meditation/mantra practice, yoga, fasting, intentions and various other aspects of Buddhism, Sufism, Hinduism and Christianity into a potent elixir.
One time, in the midst of that, Audrey came over and listened, brought me a home made mango probiotic beverage because I wasn’t feeling well. She told me “I love you and Jesus loves you” and it hit different. Like she actually knew the person she was talking about, not just some “bible truths” and the “right” language about him.
I grew up inside ChristianityTM, so I know the code language. Throughout the past season of my life Audrey has been a voice that has often been at a distance, but when she has shared into my life, it’s been powerful. She introduced me to Andy Squyres, (his work has been bread in the wilderness for me). She told me to write like crazy out here in California. I missed her wedding this past summer because of my own mental health struggles and I’m sad about that. I told her that though and I’m glad to have friends who meet me with care, compassion and invitation. I think what I’m trying to say with all of this is that meeting Jesus has been a wild experience.
I remember going to a night of meditative worship that she was hosting towards the end of 2020. It was a heavy time in her life, due to the death of her Mom earlier that year and I just remember sitting there and weeping and being drawn into something so precious in that space. One of the things she sang out that night was, “you are turning the bitter into sweet, you are turning the winter into spring.” It hurt. Still, it was just apparent that my friend trusted this God of hers and she knew he was good and worth following and I walked away from those times in her sphere of influence unsettled in a good way and also comforted.
Someone recently asked me how I got to a place where I would say “I know Jesus” as an experiential statement. It’s been a hell of a process. I kept going. I kept seeking truth in honesty. I have related to the words of Pilate when he says to Jesus, “What is truth?”. My heart stayed in a position of wanting to know something real and I think through the wilderness that heart position was vital, but I also think that he’s been seeking me as well. Through the chakra work, psychedelics and other things I was working with, I was still looking for this beautiful God. This humble, lovely, incarnated God.
A tender God, not like the murderous one I thought he was, not the codependent version of Jesus I knew (my friend Levi used the term ‘codependent Jesus’ and it fucking hit). The ape dressing up the donkey in lions skin in the last battle. That’s what I think about the god I knew (whispers of something real while locked inside a prison of fear and punishment). The language of the parable of the man who finds the pearl of great price in the field and sells everything he has to buy the field. That sort of beauty is worth pressing full send on. I think God is full of grace and his faithfulness is vast. There is safety in the moments when the shit has hit the fan. Not some vindictive motherfucker, nor is he shitty at his job. It’s not some disembodied heaven, he assured me then he laughed, and said through tears, you got to persevere.
I began to experience the goodness and kindness of Jesus and it truly wrecked me. It has softened my heart in ways I have wanted for a very long time. I am moving out of a performative, toxic, false framework of being, into being more fully alive and there is so much room out here for other folks experiences (something I never had inside the codependent framework I came from). I’m so grateful for Audrey and the others who have born witness to the reality of Jesus in my wanderings in ways that were unique to them. What a precious thing it is to be alive and learning how to be more fully human. Keep going. There’s more to find.
structures of home 