A Trashy Theology

Following a Garbage Picker God

Some of you will remember my previous post, Garbage Picker God. This post is something of a follow-up to that, composed of edited (and rearranged) excerpts from a spiritual autobiography I had to write for my Spaces of the Heart course with Charles Nienkirchen last winter. I think most people have a compulsive desire to put things right in the world, however they define right and world. My fight has always been in the arena of relationships, with right defined as 'harmoniously interconnected'. The second-born of four siblings, I have often been the mediator in my family, both among siblings, and between siblings and parents. Being the oldest daughter in a family that has since expanded to include two foster siblings and three “other” siblings, I also became something of a counsellor. Peace-making and counselling roles were extended to friendships beginning in elementary, and lead to other positions of trust, such as school peer mediator, camp counsellor, and crisis line counsellor. Much to my surprise, while working as a crisis line counsellor for my practicum I discovered I had a knack for connecting with women and men who were in, currently escaping, or healing from abusive relationships. I am nearly finished a BA in behavioural sciences, which I intend to use for entry into counselling psychology graduate studies. My aim is to one day work as a family counsellor, helping to restore families and individuals who have been damaged by unhealthy relationship patterns. Two activities from my childhood remain salient markers of who I see myself as in God: first, picking up pop-cans and bottles for recycling to save the earth and my parents’ finances; second, recurring nightmares of failure to save vulnerable others, or myself. Three people played into these themes of identity significantly: an elementary school friend, M, my older brother, Nolan, and my youth pastor, Sindy. I met M in grade 5. I was surprised by her offer of friendship. She was a core member of our school’s “cool” girl group, and I had always believed myself to be a sort of geek or outsider to them. My family was lower middle class, average-looking, and Christian. Although never without friends, none of us were ever popular (that I know of). I became M’s protégé: adopted into her group of friends, I did my best to conform to their standards of fashion and social behaviour. However, half way through the year, M became estranged from the rest of the group. One of the other girls “suggested” that I should stop hanging out with her as well. Feeling indignant, and supposing their warning to be spiteful, I told them I could choose my friends for myself, thank you very much. As a reward for my faithfulness, M invited me to a sleep-over that weekend. That night became a turning point in my life, in the worst way. M wanted to play make-believe. I was a very imaginative child, so normally I would have been delighted. However, M wanted to make-believe that I was a John, and she was a prostitute. I should have called my parents and asked to go home right then. But I was too afraid of losing her friendship, so I stayed and submitted. She told me “secrets,” such as what the other kids at school thought about me: garbage-picker, geek, loser, nose-picker, poor. I left feeling dirty and violated. I never told my parents about that part of our sleep-over, and I never hung out with M again, but my view of my self and how others saw me were ruled for years afterwards by the names “others” called me. I began having nightmares of children being sexually and physically abused by adults. I no longer trusted other children to like me and remain my friend if they knew me well. I withdrew deeply into myself, rarely speaking, and maintaining a flat emotional expression around both friends and family members. I rarely invited friends from school home. Unable to cope with my fears of rejection and feelings of helplessness, I retreated into fantasy worlds of my making in which I could be whatever I felt I was not in life: strong, beautiful, rich, powerful. Oddly, I could never imagine myself happy or loved. As the years went by, my fantasy worlds of retreat fell increasingly out of my control, in terms of both content and timing. My character and those she loved would be tortured, raped, and murdered over and over, through most of the day and night. My inability to control my thoughts, especially their sexual content, filled me with shame. I felt like garbage, inside and out. Collecting garbage for recycling, now a humiliating act, became my penance. About the same time my peer relationships went down-hill, my close relationship with my older brother began to crumble as he became inexplicably cruel, looking for ways to hurt my feelings or make me angry. Knowing I felt sensitive about my weight, he used to taunt me by calling me “Santa Clause.” It was an ugly betrayal, since he had always been my fearless hero. In addition, my younger sister followed in his path of unprovoked verbal barbs long after Nolan had repented. But he did repent. In fact, years after we had stopped fighting and I had forgotten we were ever anything other than best friends, he stunned me again. This time, by apologizing with tears in his eyes for “being such a jerk” when we were younger. He is now one of the most conscientious guys I know at respectfully and sincerely telling all kinds of women, including myself, that they are beautiful. Whenever I think of Nolan now, I envision him as he was when we went hiking with a group of people from Epic several summers ago: running (in sandals?) down the very steep and very shaley side of a mountain, tireless and without fear. It was a challenging hike for me to reach even the lower summit, let alone the upper summit Nolan ran up and down without me. But I went because Nolan invited me, challenged me, believed in me. Our deep friendship is a constant reminder to me that God can heal any relationship he is invited into. Sindy was my youth pastor. From the very beginning of her employment, she made it a priority to get to know me on a deep level, and to find ways to affirm beauty, strength, and goodness in me at a time when I frequently felt like garbage. Her personal stories of hurt, sin, and healing gave me courage and permission to more fully express myself with others and with God. Sindy became my friend and spiritual mentor, a relationship that has endured even after our church dissolved. She provided me with my first introduction to the spiritual disciplines, and through them gave me the tools I needed to begin facing my fears of rejection and abandonment. At an evangelism training course she convinced our youth group to attend, she encouraged and supported me in finding the intercessors whose prayers and guidance finally released me from what had become a six-year addiction to fantasy world escapism. For the first time I recognized how my loneliness, fears, low self-esteem, and addictions were interconnected and had been used by Satan against me. Released from those things by a renewed relationship with Christ, I was freed to love others more fully and openly. My last year of high school, after a one month fast from fictional book reading, God revealed to me that I was to become a psychologist so I could help others attain what I had found in my relationship with God, my family, and my youth group. Since beginning my studies in psychology, one of the most poignant moments in my learning came when I began learning about signs, consequences, and treatments of child abuse. I suddenly remembered for the first time in many years my friend M, and realized with shock that she was probably being sexually abused by someone in her family at the time when I knew her. I think of her often now, wondering where she is and who she has become. God only knows, so I ask him to protect her wherever she is. I cannot. I doubt I'd recognize her if I saw her on the street somewhere. I suppose the danger for anyone in a helping vocation is the risk of mistaking yourself for God in others’ lives. I always have to remind myself that God is the healer, and I am just a sign post for other people to him. I have to be careful to be humbly honest with myself, God, and others about what my limits are, because otherwise I become burned out, depressed, disappointed, and resentful of people’s needs. I need to remember to go to God for my own renewal, and to let go of burdens I carry for myself or others, instead of just trying to hide from them by distracting myself with movies, books, music, day-dreams, or endless internet communications. In fact, as my experiences with broken people have increased and I have learned to rely on God in prayer to heal both them and myself, I have come to see myself as a sort of garbage collector. I have always known I had some kind of gift as a mediator or peace-maker: even during my darkest and most lonely years classmates, friends, and family members would come to me with their problems and hurts because they knew I would listen. I was repeatedly stunned, yet honoured by their trust in me. At the same time, I felt overwhelmed by their needs. I was like a garbage collector who didn't know where the dump was. All my own garbage, as well as the garbage given to me by others, simply got piled on me, rather than recycled or disposed of. I think that is why I used to have so many childhood nightmares of people dying or being seriously harmed and finding myself unable to help them. Now I feel like I'm finally learning how to sort through life’s garbage (my own and others’) to look for treasures to redeem, and to truly dump the rest where it belongs- at the foot of the cross. Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30). As I was reflecting on this new identity in Christ on the Friday afternoon before I had to write this paper, I came home and noticed for the first time an inscription on our family’s garbage can lids: “Gracious Living.” I stood on the curb and laughed out loud. God has a great sense of humour. That is the where my spiritual autobiography ended. Now let me show you something cool: this is a link to an organization that builds homes out of trash that are self-sufficient in water, food, and energy. I'm very excited about these buildings because they have the potential to incarnate so many of my integrated passions: reducing waste and pollution, living in close community with others, creatively recycling things into functional art, making organically produced kosher foods readily available and affordable to anyone so we ('we' also includes ridiculously poor people living outside of the obese western world...) are not so dependent on pharmaceutical companies and medical practitioners. Very exciting:) Nolan is excited, too. Actually, he is the one who first showed me the u-tube clips about how the earthship houses are built and function. Thus, I may yet get my wish of living on shared property with my siblings and their (present and) future spouses and children along with mine. Yes, I'm very aware that I'm a geek. And I'm quite all right with that.

Creation, contamination, condemnation, isolation, Grace, restoration, communion, calling, Creation. This is where my spiritual autobiography begins and ends.