Bare your soul

So there's this guy I know; used to know him quite well - we spent a lot of time hanging out back in the day.  He's probably reading this blog right now going - 'yeah, she's talking about me on her blog! That's all me!'  ...bit of an egotistical fellow.

Anyway, back in the day, he would greet me with a hearty, 'How is your soul?'  and actually mean it.  Like, really, how is your soul?  How's the spiritual stuff? How are you and God?  And, for awhile anyway, he expected an answer - and I was happy to give him one.

But then, life, yadda yadda, and slowly the question just became a thing that was asked for the sake of being a thing that we said to each other.  And then... I kinda started ignoring it because, as much as I enjoyed hearing the words, I didn't really know how to answer anymore.

And then, more life, yadda yadda; it's probably a good thing he moved away because I wouldn't want to have to lie to him.  The truthful answer would have been something like, 'black and wizzled', 'torn to shreds and tossed in the wind', 'angry and sad and frustrated', 'just about ready to walk away from this whole church thing to be honest'.  Something like that; you get the picture.  Things that someone who spent time in Bible College shouldn't be saying.

I can't blame it all on church, but my church did go through a very stagnant time.  I found it depressing.  Every week I would painfully sit through yet another boring sermon while thinking about all the dreadfully old people surrounding me, and the complete lack of younger people to pick up the pieces when the older ones were, inevitably, gone.

And then, kids.  Kids makes going to church just a chore.  Like, an 'I don't want to do this' exhausting feat of a chore that has to be endured weekly.  The little rats won't go to the nursery by themselves either, so I rarely hear a sermon anyway as I hang out in Sunday school playing with toy trains.  Weekly turned into bi-weekly, turned into monthly...

Church has not been the loving, worshipful, refreshing place that I need it to be.  And my soul has suffered considerably from it.  And I've considered washing my hands of it and walking away.  My husband would support me in that decision; being from an entirely un-churchy family, even he doesn't think my church does church well.

And then, (all my paragraphs start with 'and then' because it sounds more dramatic than it really is), a new guy shows up.  Well, two guys actually, but this is really only about the one.  He's a reverend, and a doctor of something completely un-medical but of I'm not really sure what.  He acts unsure of himself; you wouldn't know it from a single meeting, but he's funny, a dark dry funny that catches people off guard; he's got a slow southern drawl that speaks of his childhood in the hills of Virginia.

I went to church alone yesterday, child-free for a change, to confirm my desire to walk away from the political nonsense and mundane, flat-lined, worship service I've been experiencing over the past few years.  What I found instead was a spark.

That man actually believes what he preaches!  You can tell from the stories he tells and the glint in his eye, and his body language.  There was an unusually large crowd of people there too, and they were happy, and laughing, and engaged.  There was life there that I haven't seen for a long time. 

And now I'm annoyed because I wanted to quit; it would have been easy to quit.  But now, he's gone a lit a little spark and I don't want to quit so much anymore.  It's going to be an uphill battle to fix what has been left in disrepair over the past 6 or 7 years, but maybe, just maybe, it'll be worth it.