Moving on!

I have had somewhat of a revelation... or rather, I got a jolt into back into reality. I attended church yesterday (after a not going for three weeks straight or not ending up in the kitchen helping prepare an after service reception). And I must say, that our new pastor is GREAT! She is spirited to the point of being flamboyant, but she has breathed a breath of fresh, healing air into our church family. I think many of my church members have been shackled to the archaic conventions of the seemingly male dominated AME Church. In the past decade our particular church has been rocked by scandal. Two previous pastors have been accused of stealing money from either the church or state run daycares in Tennessee. One was actually indicted by the federal government along with his wife. The second only received a slap on the wrist from the elder's within the church. That frustrated me because the black community today doesn't really deal with the issues that arise, most of the time we attempt to sweep it under an invisible rug, hoping that the dust will somehow disintegrate under the closed confines of the rug. What we don't understand is that nothing goes away if you don't deal with, it simply attracts more dust, and maybe even creating a layer of mold in the recesses of the rug.

Needless to say I have been a bit leery (I know spelling) of having a new pastor come in. But she seems to have unlocked something within our church family that was either repressed or oppressed... I don't know which, but it is kind of refreshing to see people coming outside from the darkness that had entrapped them for so long. I have been somewhere outside, playing around while people in my church became like the walking dead. I refused to let anyone person tell me how to be a "good" Christian. So I rejected a lot of conventions of the church! Yes, I knew I needed a little religious guidance, but there was no way I was going to my church for it. Now I am more comfortable with myself to know that my relationship with God does not depend on the words emitting from the pastor's mouth. It depends on me and so I have been living and doing accordingly. Yes, it is hard, and it helps to have people that you can trust to guide you. I have gotten to know an associate pastor (who I must say is wonderful and encouraging) and I am excited about getting to know the new pastor and where she will eventually lead our church... whether it will be into the light or further into the recesses of the cave that the church seems stagnated in.

Anyway, I went to church yesterday and the pastor preached about being made well/whole. And you know, it really touched me on many levels. Partly because I have been making excuses about many things in my life. According the the scripture (St. John 5:1-11) excuses merely keep you wallowing in the filth that you have created of your life. Her interpretation of the scripture was that the man who was infirm made excuses, but in the end he was made to stand up, roll up his bed, and walk. Her interpretation of being made whole was that you must do the same thing: get up (stop wallowing and feeling sorry for yourself), pick up your bed (to know what you have come from and to show where you are going/have gone), and walk (tell others about what you have gone through/are going through). All of this makes sense, especially when you are a dialysis patient. You really want to just not get up and question why any of this is happening to you. But you have to always remember that though things happen that you do not control, you must find a way to deal with them no matter what. I am still learning to deal with a lot of things and a lot of people, and I am amazed at how much I have grown and am growing since I began dialysis a year ago. I look forward to see where I will end up over the next few months. I have been motivated to do whatever it takes to get where I want to be in life. Now... I just have to figure out where exactly I want to be over the next year!