I've started taking my 9th grader to school each morning. She likes to call it "mommy/daughter" time. I am just thrilled that she not only wants me to, but that I've finally found SOME kind of mothering that I can do.
In any event, I was asking her why she doesn't spend time with the youth group at church. When we make it to church, which unfortunately is rare lately, she never wants to go to Sunday School with the other teens. She never goes, almost crying if I try pushing her into going to 'Friday Night Extremes', etc. Her answers just broke my heart.
It's one thing for me, a 30 year old adult, to have thoughts and feelings of negativity about/toward people that my health (or lack thereof) conditions have brought on, but it was quite another to drive along listening to my little girl poor her heart out about church people. While I have known that my family has been (and is currently) affected by my daily struggles, I guess I just sometimes forget.
Some of the examples that poured out of her where the comments that she hears about the church she misses. She said she hears things like, "Oh wow! You've finally decided to grace us with your presence?" or "You know as Christians, it's good and godly to gather together frequently, not once a blue moon." Her telling me this angered me. For starters, she's 14 years old, so it's not as if she has any control over where she goes and when. And then the funniest thing to me is that no one has offered to pick my children up for us when we have made it no secret how we are struggling. Early on, we did reach out to people asking them every week for rides for my children so they didn't miss church, but then having to always ask left me feeling a bit like a nuisance. Never has anyone in the youth department ever offered to assist my daughter with transportation. Ever. And yet somehow, they think it's okay to condemn her?
There are other times, when I'm really sick or hospitalized (and it seems like some may have forgotten that I've spent 2 weeks in the hospital in the last 9 months), that she won't leave my side. You must remember, she was 8 years old one day when I put her on the bus and then she didn't see me again for weeks and weeks. All she was told was that I was very sick. Now I know after talking to her, that she'd overheard adults whispered talks and heard that I could even die. For a couple years of her life, it was just the two of us. We are buddy's and she feels a responsibility to me. If she feels that not coming to church on Sunday, but laying next to me while I sleep or cry, and reading Psalm 23 to me is important, then so be it.
I tried reminding her what I always try to remind myself: Church and God are NOT the same. I told Lexi that Jesus would have encouraged our church to help people like us with things that can be difficult at times, like getting my kids back and forth to church, or cleaning the house, or helping with meals. But one thing I know for sure, Jesus would never fuss at us when we did make it to church for not being there the Sunday before because I was laying in bed crying and writhing in pain.
God is so full of mercy and grace that we cannot even fathom it all... And yet I think that many, if not most, CHURCH people, are totally lacking.
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