NO LEPERS NEED APPLY

(Addendum: It's another recycled, edited blog post from my first Blog)

     I have this really fabulous on-line pastor. He is retired, but he speaks once in a while, does weddings and funerals. He lives in Texas. He has known me for about a year now.  He knows my entire story, because he has read every single word I have written. He said that my blogs stretched him and his faith, and cause him to think so much deeper theologically.  He is there during every dark night of the soul, when hope deferred has me so low, I can barely get out of bed. He celebrates with me when I have some kind of victory. He prays with me. He is a happily married man, several decades, a father and grandfather, and never ever once spoke or said anything inappropriate to me.

  About six years ago,  I stopped going to church, and I have no intention of ever going back. I'm divorced now, against my will, but I might as well be a leper because no one wants me around anymore. When my husband and brewed of eight showed up we got the huge welcome hugs.  Even if they don't try or do deny it, church people and pastors, in genera, avoid the divorced wife, the rejected abandoned ones.  Not all are like that, but tell me, is some happily married pastor who has been married 25, 40, even 60 years going to tell me how it feels to be divorced against his will, or how he recovered?  Is he going to be able to tell me what it's like to have a houseful children living below the poverty line while homeschooling and popping out five babies in ten years? Maybe he can tell me how it feels when an adult child becomes estranged, or two, or three?  Some can tell me how they got through cancer, but rare is the one who had dual cancers in their homes, well at least it was that way before the VAX!  Yes, I just said that. 

       I fought off cancer, ALONE, six months after I nursed my husband through his.  Smack dab in the middle of radiation hell, which I had to travel to and bear all alone, my husband told me that the treatments were done he was going to file for divorce. The congregation which we attended until then didn't even know I had cancer, because the Sr. pastor hid it from them. He hid it from the elders and even his wife. He knew we were having marital problems and he just plain did not like me. He did the pastor duties when my husband had cancer surgery, but wouldn't lift a finger to even dial the phone to check on me for the three months of hell.  Pastors don't like me and I don't know why. Maybe because I am a Yankee and a bit forthright. Maybe because of my thirst for all things Biblical is too radical, too intimidating, or just too out of the norm for today's average church member, I don't know why. Maybe because I am an abandoned rejected wife. They claim not to treat divorced people different, but they do, they surely do. Maybe it's because I dream big and felt a great calling on my life from an extraordinary encounter with God that lit me up like never before, six years ago. 

     Since then, around the clock, I have studied, written books prayed, and written two blogs. I've cried a Noah's flood's worth of tears, prayed and fasted while trying to raise a Godly family, for the most part all alone. We tell our congregates to shoot for the stars, but when they do, what do we secretly  think, "Who does she think she is, writing seven books and two blogs. God couldn't want or do anything with her, after all, even her own husband doesn't want her."  You see, the people most opposed to someone who wants to do a great work for the Lord, is her brothers and sisters sitting in the next pew.  I don't understand why people are so opposed to someone close to them who aspires to do all that the Lord had called her to do. I am assuming it's because I am not only just a woman, but a rejected one. Surely, God wouldn't use someone so broken and covered with warts as her. After, all, how is that going to make the church look to world with a spokesperson like her. We can't let the world see a "leper" as His vehicle to reach other broken lepers. It's better they have a better model to aspire to becoming.  

     May I present the notion that a "modern-day-leper" is the perfect choice for God to use to reach other disillusioned broken lepers. It's a radical idea, but I do believe Jesus was pretty radical in his approach, which went completely against the religious right. Unfortunately, the slick and well-put-together Christian church slipped right back into that model as a modern day Sanhedrin. Man tends to corrupt all of GOD's work, and just like man corrupted what Moses intended, he also corrupted what Jesus came to do, which was to teach the Torah and be the Passover Lamb. I wouldn't be surprised if GOD does something completely radical and different in His approach to getting out the Gospel in these last days' harvest. I'm not talking flashy, spot-light show, concerts disguised as church worship services. I am talking one broken heart reaching out and loving another broken heart and aiding in the heeling with the weight to their words. Gone are the days of the model family, the "lepers" are in town, and GOD is going to raise them up.  They are hidden, ignored, pushed off to the corners, welcome, but avoided, nonetheless. GOD will use a former drunk to bring in his current drunk friends, the recovering drug addicts to bring in their current friends who are addicts suffering and lost, and believe it or not, gay people who love Jesus to bring in their friends to the the good news of the Gospel.  

     Yes, the polished, refined church may find it repulsive to even suggest such a thing, but I think we have plenty of Biblical examples to prove that GOD can and does use broken people with messed up heads and hearts. Polygamy and forms or "incest" were just as repulsive in the Patriarchal system to GOD, yet, He used them. The greatest example being Tamar, the daughter-in-law of Judah who thought she was a prostitute just making her dollar a day.  She most certainly knew that a son from that line was due her, and if he was not going to give her the third son as a husband, she was going to get a son straight from the original source. Her son is in the line leading to Jesus.  Abram married his half-sister, Sarai and we get Isaac, the son of the promise. Isaac married his first cousin Rebekkah, and from them we get Israel/Jacob.  Jacob had not one but two wives and two concubines. And what of Solomon?  It was the 2nd son of two former adulterers who built GOD's holy Temple, yet with 700 concubines and 300 wives, the Bible says that when he died, he rested with his fathers.  How about that King Manasseh, one of the most evil, barbaric cruel disobedient kings, who sacrificed his children, but was later restored after he truly repented and changed his ways. Even King Ahab got a couple of extra chances when Elijah put the fear of GOD in him.  It didn't stay, but GOD relented for a few years and gave him a few more than he should have had.   

 We rejects have a powerful testimony, we've been broken, battered, bruised, and have grown some pretty tough callouses.  Compassion and Agape love are gifts from GOD, but empathy is earned, and the hurting one  needs one who hurt in the same way, rather than the model family who wants to portray a certain type of cookie-cutter Christianity. There was nothing pretty about a flogged and beaten Jesus hanging on the Cross, taking on the ugly sins of the world, so our debts could be paid in full.   Well, that's my rant for now, maybe someday I will be of some good use, I'll never stop trying to reach out to the broken, despaired, depressed, disillusioned, discouraged, and the dissident from cookie-cutter Christianity.