Thanks for being patient with us as we send this issue out a few days late. We have some family from Ireland in town and we’ve been in party mode! Hopefully you find the ramblings inside this issue encouraging. That’s what they’re intended to be. For some reason I (Gabby) found it impossible to produce much of a coherent thought today, so it’s more live journal than structured essay. But these things have been rumbling around inside me for awhile, so I thought I’d bring you in.
Happy Sunday everyone!
Much love,
Gabby + Chris
Rambles on a Sunday Morning
By Gabby Llewellyn
“I cannot say for sure when my reliable ideas about God began to slip away, but the big chest I used to keep them in is smaller than a shoebox now. Most of the time, I feel so ashamed about this that I do not own up to it unless someone else mentions it first. Then we find a quiet place where we can talk about what it is like to feel more and more devoted to a relationship that we are less and less able to say anything about.”
― Barbara Brown Taylor, Learning To Walk in the Dark
Last year I was invited by a friend to a Christian women’s event. And while I often feel out of place a traditional Christian women’s ministry events these days, I knew it’d mean a lot to her if I attended, so I did. As a lifelong Christian I wasn’t prepared to feel as much culture shock as I did participating in an event where everything was spiritually certain and there were a presumed set of beliefs, but that’s maybe a story for a different time.
I remember settling myself into the beautiful, white, linen chair and feeling wildly out of place. Every other woman there seemed so shiny. So settled. Part of a sisterhood of faith and certainty. And while I wasn’t trying to be judgemental, I found myself making assumptions about the women around me. That they belonged to a community of “true believers”, and I quietly assumed that by their standards, I probably did not.
My insecurities weren’t entirely unfounded. Just the year before I was all but ejected from a women’s small group at my old church, and the wound was still fresh. My automatic assumption was that there wouldn’t be room for someone like me. Someone with faith like mine.
And there’s a chance that was true. But as the event carried on I started talking with the women around me and hearing their stories.