I am what they call cradle Orthodox. My mother and father are both Orthodox as is almost every family member on both sides, I was baptized as a baby, and as I grew, it was all I knew.
When I was in my twenties and had moved away from home, there were weeks when the only time I would see my mother would be when I met her at church on Sundays. We didn't go every Sunday, her job periodically required that she work weekends, but when she was free we always made time to go together. For me, it was something special that the two of us shared and somehow in my mind church became somewhat indistinguishable from my mother.
I adamantly refused to go to our church after my mother died. The iconography, the incense, the choir, every little bit of it reminded me so much of her and flooded me with such feelings of sadness and confusion that there was just no way I could step one foot inside that place, no way.
It didn't feel as if I was having a crisis of faith exactly, although in retrospect I imagine it was one of sorts because during that first hard period after her death, I was quite regularly displeased with God for taking my mother away from me. I still loved Him, I still believed in Him, I continued to try to talk to Him and periodically listen for Him, but I just wasn't sure I trusted his promises or his wisdom or his love for me all that much.
To be honest, with no church to call home, no mother to call my own, and at a disconnect with God, I felt... homeless.
I tried a number of churches during that time. The littles had been baptized Catholic, so I tried that. For me, it was a little too much like my own for comfort. Too many similarities. Too many memories. I joined a local bible church, attended for a bit and got involved in the new member ministry. I chaired a small group, I taught vacation bible school. I loved the insight and the learning and I loved that I always seemed to be yearning for more when I attended services at that church. A reader by nature, I could not get enough of the in depth study of the bible, something I seemed to have missed out on when I was a child. To this day, I will see notes I took then in the margins of various passages in my bible, along with thoughts of my own that I penned, and all that learning comes flooding back.
In mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis writes...
I hope no reader will suppose that “mere” Christianity is here put forward as an alternative to the creeds of the existing communions…. It is more like a hall out of which doors open into several rooms. If I can bring anyone into that hall I shall have done what I attempted. But it is in the rooms, not the hall, that there are fires and chairs and meals. The hall is a place to wait in, a place from which to try the various doors, not a place to live in. For that purpose the worst of the rooms (whichever that may be), is, I think, preferable. It is true that some people may find they have to wait in the hall for a considerable time, while others feel certain almost at once which door they must knock at. I do not know why there is this difference, but I am sure God keeps no one waiting unless He sees that it is good for him to wait. When you do get into your room you will find that the long wait has done you some kind of good which you would not have had otherwise. But you must regard it as waiting, not as camping. You must keep on praying for light: and, of course, even in the hall, you must begin trying to obey the rules which are common to the whole house. And above all you must be asking which door is the true one; not which pleases you best by its paint and paneling. In plain language, the question should never be: “Do I like that kind of service?” but “Are these doctrines true: Is holiness here? Does my conscience move me towards this? Is my reluctance to knock at this door due to my pride, or my mere taste, or my personal dislike of this particular door-keeper?”
I believe those years were exactly that, my hall years. I would tentatively knock, I'd slowly enter and maybe stay for a spell, but eventually I would get antsy and perhaps sensing deep down that I wasn't where I was supposed to be, I would find myself once again on the outside. In the hall.
A few years after my mother passed, my cousin Mark and his fiancée, Sarah, were married in Louisville. Mark and his brother, David, grew up in the church. They began chanting with their father before either could probably walk and Mark is one of those truly holy people. The ones that just get it somehow and I always love being around him because sometimes I like to believe it will rub off on me. He waited a long time and trusted that God would bring the perfect woman into his life and Sarah was exactly that.
I almost did not go their wedding. I had only been inside an orthodox church once since my mother's death, because as strong as the pull was and as familiar as the space was to me, there was also a little part of me that felt somehow unworthy. As if I had deserted God in that place and in doing so, I had no right to enter. How little I understood then about God's grace.
Mark and Sarah's wedding was beautiful. There are so many pieces to an orthodox wedding service, from the betrothal to the crowning to the common cup, that are incredibly symbolic of a couple's love for one another, but even more so, of God's love for us - his children. And as I, alongside all our family and friends, watched Mark wed his bride, Sarah, all the anxiety and trepidation I had felt about being in that place, just kind of melted away. And I realized that the door I had been bypassing for so many years as I searched this way and that, had been standing wide open right in front of me the entire time, just beckoning me to enter.
God was here and He had been doing what God does, He was waiting. For me. To be quite ready to come... home.
xxo.
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