hollywood housewife

jesus feminist book release party in hollywood

Last week my friend JJ the Blah Blah Blahger and I threw a party for our dear friend Sarah Bessey and her important new book Jesus Feminist. It was a rainy Thursday night in Hollywood, and I was worried that the weather and the traffic would keep people home. I shouldn't have worried. People showed up in droves, over eighty people all told. My favorite little cafe Coffee & Food was filled to the brim.

 

are you there, God? it's me, laura

After I posted I Don’t Believe In God, I got the in car to run downtown to the craft store with my daughter. The comments started to trickle in. A family member called. Several old friends texted. In my naivete, I thought I was posting something vulnerable, not something controversial.

I sat on the idea of the I Don’t Believe in God post for a long time. Months. I wrote it two weeks before I posted it because I wanted to make sure that it had the right spirit, that wanting to “go there” on the internet wasn’t just a passing fancy. Safer subjects are definitely easier on the heart.

Someone who loves me very much lightly mentioned that the timing of the post didn’t seem like a coincidence. At first I didn’t follow what she was saying. I thought she meant The Gorilla’s movie success. I thought she meant the blog editorial calendar. She meant extenuating family circumstances. She’s probably right. In 2011, our family moved into a difficult season of life. A dear, dear friend died tragically. A devastating medical diagnosis hit a close family member. Another family member was hospitalized for months. It was a terrible year, saved only by the birth of our beautiful son. In 2012, still reeling and enduring most of those things, yet another family member fell into a coma around Christmas. She got better, life marched on, there were dishes to wash and a movie to be made.

This summer, at the lake alone with my children for nearly two months, I suffered a mini-breakdown that was, again, all of the other things compiled and then ten more things on top of it. Almost immediately after, we have enjoyed several months of the greatest joy our tiny family has seen. The highs have been high, the lows have been low.

I know that our family experience, and my place within it, is unlike most American families and also just exactly like it. To have been sent up, down, far around like a racquetball has certainly messed with my spiritual equilibrium. I can see that. I can see that my perspective is flawed. But is there ever a good time to write about a faith crisis? It’s not something I can plan. About my summer meltdown, I feel a little differently about it after a few month’s distance. But I am so glad that I wrote what I did when I did. I’m glad I have those thoughts from when they were raw. And I’m glad I shared them. If we waited until we had enough perspective to wrap it all up with a bow, then you’re not actually capturing the experience. You’re masking it in the lesson, in what it meant later. But I crave to read about (and write about) what it is now.

Several people suggested to me that my doubts were directly related to living in LA. I’m not altogether surprised by this assessment (it’s been said to me in various forms for 13 years), but it bummed me out for a couple of reasons. Living in LA hasn’t always been easy, but I am BETTER for it. Traveling and coming to love a diverse group of people is something I will never regret, and something I would encourage everyone from anywhere to do. I am so proud of that part of our decision to raise children here. It has changed my view of God, but it has made my God bigger.

If a faith can only sustain when surrounded by like-minded people, it is no faith at all. I’d like to believe that had I stayed in a small town that I still would have had these doubts. There is much worth questioning. I have many friends who have stayed in the middle of the country, and they have gone through similar bouts of wondering. They’ve ended up on different sides of the road, so to speak. I won’t say that California hasn’t seeped into my bones, but I have the same brain no matter where I call home.

In the last week, what has kept me up at night hasn’t been my wrestle with doubts, but the reaction it provoked. Over a hundred comments on that post. People I haven’t heard from in years texted me, messaged me, strangers sent email after email. The reactions were mixed. A heavy majority confessed that they felt or had felt the same way at some time. A large handful were saddened and/or concerned and I think I landed on some prayer lists, which I’ll never turn down. A rough few got it all so wrong, but that is the beauty and heartache of writing. Everyone reads their own experience into your words. Often this is healing for both sides. Sometimes frustrating. It took every ounce of restraint I had not to reply to each inaccurate assumption about my childhood or my family or my thought process. I realized (after deep breaths) that correcting every point by point is not what it’s about. I felt, from every single reaction, that we’re in this thing together. We live, we love, we die. There’s a vast middle. If you’re reading this, you’re somewhere there. Me, too. How lucky we are.

At the Jesus Feminist party, several different sets of HH readers approached me and mentioned the God post. Tears shining back at one another, we said Yes, this is so hard, isn’t it? It was no small gift to me that the occasion fell days after the post, and that a roomful of non-traditional truth-seeking women gathered in Hollywood.

Despite the incendiary title, I do believe in God. I meant for that to come through by the end of last week’s post, but maybe it didn’t, or maybe people didn’t read that far. That’s the clarification I’m making today. All week, with my heart open and sensitive, this belief strengthened. Signs, sentences, little things were a nod to the Big Question. I do not believe in the God of my youth, who grants parking spaces and favors certain nations. I do believe in a God who hears our muddled prayers, whose very essence is power and love. I believe in a grace not bestowed, but a grace that just IS, that lets us navigate this life and this conversation, together.

Theres more, so much more, that I’m seeking. I’m going to try not to hide from these things anymore, even though hiding has been pretty easy at times. I realize a bullet point list would be more digestible, but I’m not there, nor are many of you. As we move into the week where our country collectively gives thanks, I’m thankful for the freedom to discuss these things, and thankful that you (and God?) are willing to listen.

 

photo from the Jesus Feminist party, taken by Nish Weiseth

i don't believe in God

For years I’ve avoided writing too much about my faith. I’ve avoided, for the most part, thinking too much about my faith. And now, on the back end of this year, it’s the only thing I can think about, the only thing that is bringing me back to the blank page over and over. It’s not a renewed sense of hope that is driving these sentences, it’s the deepest doubt.

I awoke in the middle of the night last week, restless after another trip down the hall to a child’s bedroom, my body rhythms out of sync for most of this year. I wasn’t thinking about anything coherent, was probably loosely formulating the next day’s schedule or replaying an earlier moment, when a thought dropped heavily as if from the roof and down through the ceiling fan:

I don’t believe in God.

It was so big as if to ring out through my ears. Of course I’ve entertained an atheist notion, or suffered through valleys of doubt, but this was charcoal in certainty. This made me feel foolish for recent conversations, ideas for change within our family, things I’d put out on the internet. Who was I to celebrate Jesus and feminism? Why do I keep pretending to be something I’m not?

I do not believe in God. I do not believe in God. I do not believe in God.

But of course I do believe in God. I think. I can’t imagine one single other explanation for the beauty of this world, for the miracle of my children, for the thread of humanity that connects us.

It has been a long time since I’ve broken from the Christianity of my youth. The legalism taught with smiley sing-songs was so much easier to swallow when life was more homogenous. But as I’ve aged some, traveled some, made friends who didn’t look like me, held in my arms and called friends Jews, Muslims, gays, Democrats, my view of God expanded, quadrupled, became bigger than I was able to digest. So I didn’t.

Since I’ve moved to Los Angeles, I’ve never stopped missing Oklahoma and I’ve never stopped missing Jesus. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve confused the two. Is what I miss about church just what I miss about childhood? The innocence? The faith like a child? The community?

A moment ago, I pulled my hands back from the keyboard and stared out the window to a warm California day. Instinctively I prayed about these words. Should I post this? Should I even think this?

I do believe in God. I do believe in God. I do believe in God.

Some part of me does, anyway. I believe something is listening, somewhere. What to do with that, with all the rest of it, I’m still wrestling. I want to seek, but that is tiresome. I want God to come to me, but then again I really, really don't want that at all. My crisis of faith began a long time ago, I've just ignored it. If I could, I promise you that I would just keep on ignoring it.

So I guess God has come to me. If I believe in that sort of thing. Which I don't.

*

UPDATE: This post garnered such a strong response, I wrote a follow up called Are You There, God? It's Me, Laura.

books by bloggers

If a blogger I read and like comes out with a book, I'll buy it. Since I am WELL aware of the hours that goes into blogging, providing regular quality content for (in most cases) free, by the time they have a book deal, I'm more than willing to plunk down some dollars.

Here are a few that I've read in the last several months that I recommend:

one day 2013

The link up for the #OneDayHH project is now live. Link up your blog post or your Instagram profile!

Ever wish you could go back to a certain year in your life and just look at one day? See the details? Remember the kind of makeup you wore then, notice the packaging of your favorite snack, sigh over that annoying bedtime ritual that used to make you crazy that you now fervently miss?

This is what the One Day project is about. Taking just one day and documenting it from eyes open until eyes closed. Noticing especially the things that your eyes normally pass right over.