Today was our last Sunday. Calvin gave a particularly good Sunday School lesson this morning, and the students were exceptionally attentive and engaged. We sang some songs, and then the Pastor preached a good message, as he almost always does. And then…we left. Without even one goodbye. The only family that appears to care that we are leaving didn’t say goodbye, but that is because we have already mutually agreed to continue getting together, and so it’s really not goodbye for us. But…no one else. Not a single student. Not a single adult. So we just…left.

Calvin pointed out to me that he noticed I didn’t give the church the finger as I walked out, as you may remember I once posted I wanted to do. (Although as I mentioned to him, that was in the context of the Church, capital C, not our church specifically.) I thought about that some more, and honestly, I really didn’t feel like it. I didn’t feel anger or bitterness toward the church or anyone in it as we walked out. Just grief. The same, deeply embedded grief for the Church and its state that I have always felt, and which has now touched my life in a very real and personal way. I could only feel sorrow that this was how it turned out. And broken-hearted for the students who were the indirect victims of this situation, who must now ride out yet another wave of changes they didn’t ask for. And I felt sadness - sad that no one cared enough even to say goodbye.

I never thought things like this were supposed to happen to normal people. You know, lay-leaders. Volunteers. And certainly not to us. And though we weren’t “pushed out” of the church, those who believe we (or specifically, Calvin) would have been better suited to other ministries delude themselves; eventually, they would have realized they didn’t want us in those either. They would have never found a place for us they could be satisfied with, because of a basic philosophical belief that no one seemed to want to dialogue about. A philosophical stance that suits Calvin and I and our giftings, and one that doesn’t make us the typical Youth Pastor and wife. Nor the typical anything in a church. And most churches…well…they don’t want atypical. They want the stereotype. They want you to fit into a mold. We would never have fit into a mold that they set forth. And that’s okay. I’m sure they’ll find someone who will.

But meanwhile, we will search for the place that can accept us for who we are and what we’re passionate about. I’m not sure if a place like that exists. Through this, I think Calvin and I have become even more “radical” in our philosophy than we were when we came here. This situation has produced some good: we know even more than before where our place is, what our giftings are, and where our passion lies. We know what we are strong in and what we are weak in. It has certainly been a learning experience (though not quite what I had in mind when we said that’s what this would be!). I know that I, for one, will never again play the Christian game for the sake of the approval of man. There is wisdom, and there is deception. There is shrewdness, and there is insincerity. I am more than willing to be gracious and understanding of those who have not reached the point I am at in my faith and understanding of the Bible, and I will not be a stumbling block to those people, but at the same time, I will not be fake to do so. I am me, and no one else.

If we can find a group of people who can accept that, we will be golden. Once again, I’m not sure a place exists in this area, and that is my fear. But we will try. And what happens if there is none…? I don’t know. Calvin and I, with God, will cross that bridge if we come to it. I am, and fear always will be, a loner in American Christian culture, which is merely a sanitized copycat of secular culture. I am after something deeper than most people want to go. I am not after perfection, I am after genuineness. The star is always just out of reach…like grasping for the wind, in the words of Qohelet.

I pray that it will not always be so.