2 - Lauren: Her Search for a Place to Belong

(This is the second part in a series of blog posts based on interviews I did with 7 adults ages 26-32 about their experience growing up in an American evangelical Christian church setting. All names have been changed to protect their identities.)

Lauren was 32 years old when I interviewed her. She grew up attending a single church until middle school.

The pastor there “knew my name. I always felt loved by him, by everybody there.”

Her description of this church was “the happy, typical church experience,” but what she described was something almost too-good-to-be-true.

When her parents left that church to search for another, she struggled with feelings of insecurity and isolation. Her entire world revolved around her relationships at church and when they were taken from her, she felt totally alone, unloved, and unknown.

Her family bounced around from church to church. “There wasn’t any one person I could look back at that time and say that person truly cared about me really…. At that point I was a preteen and teenager and I felt like a ghost. I didn’t really belong anywhere.”

This loss of place, loss of identity stuck with her in the following years.

Sarcastically, she described her parents looking for “the perfect church in the county”, she felt like she was placed in very uncomfortable situations week after grueling week.

“So we went to all these different churches and you can imagine, middle school girls aren’t easy for anybody and now I’ve been ripped away from my friends and sort of that comfort and security, and thrown into these awkward, awkward situations of churches making you stand up and introduce yourselves and having you go to Sunday School class after Sunday School class with all these people that you don’t know and looking at you… and being on the outside. I was not an outgoing person at all and really shy, and it was just horrific. When I think back on my life, that was like the most… darkest, and uncomfortable, and just lost feeling ever… and I’m so angry at my parents for pulling me out of church.”

A detailed story that she shared illustrates how this time of transition between churches impacted her and actually helped her to discover strength that she didn’t know she had.

“I went to the overnight sleepover at this church, not really making any friends, nobody was talking to me. I was by myself the whole time. Then, they played a game of hide and go seek.

We hid and I had a really good spot, a great spot, and the game was over and nobody had found me, and I just sort of waited to see what would happen, and they just started the next activity. They didn’t realize I wasn’t there. It was purposeful. It wasn’t like I was stupid sitting in the dark not knowing what was going on. I knew that they wouldn’t notice, and they didn’t.”

This had an interesting effect on her. Instead of feeling unloved and unwanted, she had this feeling of being in control. She had put them to the test and they had failed to care about her. “I remember actually having a better time after that point because I realized that they didn’t care about me, and I was able to have that self-worth.”

When she realized that no one there cared about her, she took control and enjoyed herself without having to test them anymore. She could just take what they had to offer, the program, the event and have fun. She didn’t make an effort to try to build relationships. She knew that wasn’t part of the deal.

She later described these churches in this way. “They were running programs, it wasn’t there because the people that were involved truly cared about what I was going through.”

It was not until years later that she felt accepted, like she belonged anywhere.

Worse yet, Lauren never felt accepted by her parents. She felt like she could never make them happy, no matter how hard she tried.

“I wish I had grown up with the acceptance of people who had flaws, as opposed to this rejection of people who had any sort of flaws.”

A Church Family

Her family finally settled into a church, but she hated it. So, in ninth grade, she decided to start attending church with a friend.

She CHOSE to go somewhere other than where her parents went.

As an adult, she thinks it is strange that her parents would let her do that, but at the same time, she believed that having that choice and that independence helped to shape her identity.

Lauren described her time at her new church as reminiscent of her time at her first church. It was here that she finally felt like she belonged again.

She regained her sense of safety and security. It was here that she felt loved and accepted.

“I always will look fondly at [that church] because I had an Aunt [Rachel] and an Uncle [Bill] and I had Mrs. [Johnson], I had Mr. [Johnson], I had Uncle [Bob]. It was all these people that I didn’t know, they weren’t my family and yet they immediately became my family. You and Rachel, okay now I’m not going to cry, you never made me feel, I never felt insignificant. I always felt important.”

As she detailed many people from this church who became an extended family to her, the emotion rose in her voice. Then, she remembered a humorous story to illustrate how far this love and acceptance went.

As a teen, the youth group was preparing to leave for a retreat when the driver noticed that the headlight wasn’t working.

“He told me to hit it, and I decided to kick it. I don’t know why. I wasn’t like that. And I broke it, and it wasn’t something like, it wasn’t even the light that broke, I broke the…, the whole thing kicked in. The light stayed intact. I was horrified.

In my house, I would have been done. And here they were totally—I will never forget, it was the most, one of the most embarrassing times in my life—I remember they were both, they were cracking up that I had done it, and they were so loving and caring and it shocked me.”

She perceived the church family as being even more accepting and understanding than her own parents. This allowed her to grow in her identity and self-worth. She went on to say, “I think the churches that stick out in my mind are the churches where somebody noticed me; somebody cared; somebody paid attention; somebody KNEW MY NAME; somebody asked me a question; somebody cared about me.”

With this confidence in herself and guided by her understanding of what God wanted for her, she was able to move out on her own after high school, go to college, get a few jobs that she really felt good about. She became successful.

Perfection vs. Imperfection

As an adult in her twenties, she was actively involved as a volunteer at church and unknowingly had adopted this attitude of rejecting people who showed signs of imperfection. At one of the volunteer Christmas parties, Bill gave her the book, Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning, which is all about God’s gracious love for broken people like the author, who was an alcoholic.

She recalled, “I read that book and this is literally what I said at the end, ‘This book is a joke. This isn’t true. You shouldn’t be allowed to mess up like this and then be able to write about it and make other people think it’s okay.’ That was my impression of that book and I couldn’t understand what [Bill] or anybody saw in it. I thought it was absolutely wrong and that nobody—you shouldn’t promote things like that.”

Her inability to accept others stemmed from the feeling that her parents could never accept her. She never felt good enough for them. So, she made sure that no one else was good enough either.

During what turned out to be a pivotal time in Lauren’s adult life, she felt frustrated with where her life was headed and decided to take control. She decided to stop trusting her future to God and doing what was expected of her by people at church. She was going to do what she wanted to do so that she could be happy.

Soon after this, she stopped working with the church youth group because she wanted to focus on herself and on getting married.

“You figure at that point I was 25 and every girl feels they are going to be alone forever at that point (which is totally irrational but now looking back that’s what I thought). I decided to focus on myself and so I met this guy who had two kids and was not a [Christian] and I was ready to throw everything away. I was going to date this man and just ‘Ha, ha!’ to everything else.”

Everything changed one day while she was brushing her teeth. She remembered

shouting out to God.

“I remember at that point God told me, ‘You’re doing something dumb. This is not the plan for your life. This is not what you’re supposed to be doing.’ And I remember shouting out to God and saying, ‘Oh yeah, what have You done for me?’ Because, by 25, I didn’t have a good relationship with my family. I had been moved a thousand times. I didn’t have a typical story. I didn’t have boyfriends. I didn’t have proms. I didn’t have these things that other people have.”

Lauren’s entire life was playing out before her. She could feel all of the injustice. She had sacrificed so much to be a Christian. All the normal things, the fun things that kids get to do, she had given up to serve him. She had done so much for Him and was so angry and challenged God, “What have You done for me?”

She was “just so angry and that’s what I said to God. And, you know those moments where God just talks to you? God said, ‘I sent my son to die for you on the cross’ and it was the most—I don’t want to even say like the most humbling—It was the most loving point, like I totally—It wasn’t a moment of like that God punished me and made me feel guilty and made me feel—cause that’s a horrible thing to say, you know that’s awful to say to God but it was like this moment of absolute purity and love and simplicity and I was like, ‘You’re right.’”

She struggled to find just the right words to express the inexpressible presence of God. The presence of God overwhelmed her with love and she no longer felt that he had abandoned her.

Her sacrifice seemed reasonable when pictured alongside Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. God loved her and had not forgotten her desire to get married and be loved.

Soon after she broke off the relationship with this man, she started dating the man who would become her husband.

God’s grace did not culminate in Lauren finding a husband. God wanted her to know that he loved and accepted her for who she was and not just because she had sacrificed so much for him.

Lauren found herself in a very difficult and confusing situation when she “got pregnant before I was married, all of a sudden I [understood] that Ragamuffin Gospel. And now I get it because it’s not about—it’s not about perfect people and what he said in that book, the Gospel is not for perfect people.”

The culmination for Lauren was realizing that there was a lie that she had believed and accepted from her family. “I had adopted exactly what my parents did to me, which was “Reject everybody.” … If somebody has an issue, you reject that person, and just that perfection and that lack of love.”

This started her on a yearlong journey of trying to understand what love is. Her perspective on everything had begun to change, for Lauren, “it was an absolute break in the way that I have viewed the world for, up to that point, 30 years. It was a massive change of a worldview and absolutely I had adopted that [lie], probably unknowingly, because what’s the worst mask, [thinking that] you’re doing what’s right. So why would I ever doubt what I was doing was wrong because I was doing what was right.”

She recognized the lies of perfectionism and judgmentalism that had become her perspective. By God’s grace, she was able to begin the process of learning to love unconditionally.

She is still following that path, attending church and feeling very connected with her church family.

Belonging:

Lauren felt like everything was perfect in her world as a young child when she belonged, when she was surrounded by people that loved her and knew her.

When she lost that sense of belonging, she felt like she lost her identity.

Finding a new church, people that loved her and accepted her brought her a new sense of identity. And, typical of adolescence, that new identity formed apart from her parents.

She didn’t realize until years later that she had adopted some of the same judgmentalism and perfectionism that isolated her from her parents. As they had pushed her away, she had pushed so many others away.

When she had a moral crisis, she was forced to face her own imperfection and her own need for God’s grace.

In this place of humility and a desperate need for grace, she found her true identity in Christ. Finally, she truly belonged. She belonged in her own skin. She could accept her own imperfections and therefore accept the imperfections in others. Her understanding of what it means to belong was transformed and became a strong foundation upon which to build her life.

3 Relationships Parents Should Promote and Why

My 11 year old son, Ethan, was at pitching boot camp the other day preparing for the upcoming baseball season, and I overheard a pitching coach telling a young pitcher to keep his hands on his chest when preparing to deliver the ball. Sometimes pitchers, like this young man, raise their hands above their heads like the one in the picture as part of their wind up. He went on to explain that, back in the day, pitchers wore long sleeves and used this upward movement to get their long sleeves out of the way and give their arms full range of movement. Why do kids still do it today? Because that’s what they thought they were supposed to do.

As parents, what are we supposed to do?

What is our role in our children’s lives?

Too often, we just follow the example of those who raised us or, determined not to repeat their mistakes, we follow some other example. But do we really know why we do what we do?

The 3 Relationships Parents Should Promote for Their Children and Why:

1 - Be their Provider

As parents our primary role is to provide security and stability for our children. This includes lots of things including each of the layers of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs shown below. Of course, the top level, self-actualization, is up to them, but we can certainly help give them a strong foundation to build it upon.

As parents, we also make and enforce boundaries – some of which are important and good and others which are fear-based, overly constrictive, dangerously lax, obsolete or even just plain wrong. We are fallible and though we try our best, we often fail to set healthy boundaries for our children.

In a nut-shell, that is our primary role as parents. Daunting, isn’t it?

There is more. And, here is both an added responsibility and an added support system. We have the responsibility to introduce our children to other significant adults and provide an environment where they can development meaningful friendships. These relationships play different roles in our children’s lives, but they are both essential to their development.

2 - Help them Find Supportive Adults.

At about 7 years old, children start to see themselves as something more than just a member of their immediate family. They begin to let other people in and accept them as members of their inner circle of trust.

Adults that are not in the home can be in that inner circle. And this can provide tremendous support to parents. Significant adults in a child’s life can be grandparents, teachers, coaches, spiritual leaders, etc.

Ideally they will share the same primary values and beliefs. As the children see that adults they trust agree on the main things, they will feel more secure and confident about their core beliefs.

They will also begin to notice differences among their parents and these significant adults. Differences of opinion on certain behaviors like diet and exercise, political views, choice of entertainment, views on wealth and prosperity, ways of relating to others, and any number of other differences. These differences create space for the child to test their own individuality within the confines of the larger sense of security and well-being that the values and beliefs held by their role models provide.

They learn that they can grow up to be different and still be true to their core beliefs.

Even as toddlers, children need to test their boundaries and distinguish themselves as individuals. They long to be one of a kind! And, they are. Their uniqueness begins to take shape at a very early age. 

As agonizing as it is, our children need to say, “No!” when we tell them to eat their green beans or brush their teeth. This is a crucial step in forming their identity.

3 - Help them Develop Meaningful Friendships.

During adolescence, our children begin to identify with their peers and look to them for support and a sense of belonging. They long for the approval found in fulfilling others’ expectations. They still draw their security and stability from their family, but friends give them a sense of adventure and are will to take risks with them in their mutual search for identity.

These peers offer our children the courage to explore. All parents are wrong sometimes, our boundaries are too loose or too tight, our motivations are screwed up by our own insecurities and misplaced fears. At this age, our children want to know which of our boundaries are good and right, which are stupid and overbearing, and which are ones that they will choose for themselves.

In a sense, they want to figure out what boundaries they would set for themselves and try them on like a costume. The consequences of this can sometimes be harmful emotionally (like when our son or daughter gets their heart broken because they started dating too early), physically (like when they ride their bike over a homemade ramp that you told them wasn’t safe), spiritually (when they entrust their soul to someone who abuses their trust), or even fatally (when they participate in some life-threatening activity like cutting, car surfing, huffing, or any alcohol or drug use).

Faced with these realities, of course, as parents we want to protect our children. That’s what giving them security is all about.

Rather than trying to find a safe balance, a compromise or middle ground, we actually need to push both extremes, live in the tension. We need to let them express themselves, experiment with different boundaries, take risks and experience the consequences of their actions. And we need to protect them from themselves and their own lack of ability to evaluate risks.

Recent research on teenage brains confirms what we all have known, teenagers are bad at evaluating risks. They make dumb choices that can be disastrous. This research suggests that they actually do stop and evaluate the risk before doing something, but they are less afraid of the unknown than their adult counterparts.

This is vital for survival and thriving, since the adolescent has to face numerous unknowns in order to move out into the world and become an individual. But, it brings with it a limited ability to accurately gauge the risks involved in facing the unknown. 

Makes sense, doesn't it? Why else would teens be the most likely to start smoking, to begin having sex, to be converted to Christianity (or any religion)? Teens are less afraid of facing the unknown because so much of life is unknown to them.

We need to let them take all kinds of risks and reap the consequences good and bad. We also need to protect them from those risks that just aren’t worth it. We need to be that part of their brain that says, "No, not this time. That risk is just too great."

In the examples given before, maybe we say yes to the dating heartbreak but protect them from physical and sexual intimacy, maybe we allow them to scrape their knees on the bike ramp but move the ramp to the grass to prevent broken bones, and maybe we allow them to participate in other spiritual experiences and listen to and help them process their mixed reactions to them. And, definitely, we shield them from taking life-threatening risks all together.

Peers help our children to take appropriate risks, to press against the boundaries and find out where we have gone too far or been too lax. As much as possible we want to encourage these peer relationships with those who share similar core beliefs and values, but who they choose as friends is ultimately up to them. We can set appropriate boundaries to help them take risk in a controlled environment.

Throughout their lives, our children will be experiencing God and finding their own identity amidst a world that would gladly shape and morph them into its constantly changing image of enlightenment and happiness. These three interpersonal relationships provide a community of people to travel that road with them to act as guides, load bearers, travel companions, and comic relief.

The mutual dependence of these relationships cannot be over emphasized. In all three relationships (with parents, significant adults and peers), our children must perceive that they are responsible for their own thoughts, feelings, actions and the consequences of each and responsible to those with whom they are journeying. Each of us has times when we are the guide and others follow and when we are the load bearer carrying more than our share.

Our children need us to provide the basics and also to help them create mutually beneficial relationships that will support them along their life’s journey.

By the grace of God, we can do that.

Our Family Rules! and Our Family Rules.

"Our Family Rules!" My oldest daughter, Anna, said the other day that she has the best family ever. This is especially encouraging since this has been a tough year and a half for us. In the past 18 months, I secluded myself for an extra few hundred hours (on top of regular work hours) while I was writing my doctoral dissertation, I graduated with my doctorate of ministry degree, I lost my job, our family left the only church any of of us have ever really known, we started a home church and our children changed schools majorly disrupting their social lives. Only a few of those friendships have withstood this upheaval, so they are still in the transition time of building new friendships.

I'm glad that she feels our family has been the rock that it needed to be to offer her the security and confidence to go through this difficult time.

But, that's not what I am writing about today. Today, I want to tell you about our family rules. As in The 10 Commandments of the Zirilli family.

It was suggested that it might help bring some sanity to our home to have some set of basic rules, guidelines for our lives. A reminder to us as parents and to our children what life in the Zirilli home is all about. So I decided that we should have a family meeting to discuss what our family rules should be.

As you might imagine, I was really excited about the awesome potential!

I explained that if we had a set of rules that was constant, it would be easier for everyone to follow the rules and discipline would be more cut and dry. "Sounds great doesn't it!"

Our kids hated the idea and immediately shot it down. Katie, my very practical 14 year old declared, "It will just give us more random stuff to get in trouble for. No thank you."

I was taken aback. I guess I approached that subject all wrong! So, I dropped it and tried to figure out what God was saying and if my enthusiasm was off or my delivery.

Then, I found these pictures online and decided to try again, with a more positive spin.

 

Traditional Porch design by Chicago Interior Designer Your Favorite Room By Cathy Zaeske

Contemporary Living Room design by Los Angeles Interior Designer Jill Wolff Interior Design

"What do you think about doing something like this."

Katie pipes up, "Can we paint on the wall? ... Then, I'm in!"

"But what do you think about the idea?" Not satisfied with their enthusiastic response, I wanted to put a damper on it right away. (Why do I do that?!?)

So now, we just need some time to think it over and keep throwing out ideas and mulling them over. In a couple of months, we will hopefully have our list, our design layout, and then we can paint.

I'll keep you posted on how it goes!

Does anyone else have Family Rules? What do you wish were your family rules? Katie's first suggestion was, "We do whatever we want."

The Blessing of Anna Rachel Zirilli

The Blessing:

"Anna Rachel Zirilli, you are our daughter, whom we love; with you we are well pleased. You are no longer a little girl. You are now a woman. You are well equipped with everything you need to fulfill your calling as a woman of God," so ended a ceremony of blessing our 16 year old daughter in the company of family and friends, and some of the women who have been a blessing to her over the years. many of these women took the opportunity to speak and bless her. We collected their words in a scrapbook. And, we put together a word art collage incorporating some of those words, framed it and gave it to her as a reminder of who she is.

Word Art blessing given to Anna

 

My sixteen year old daughter is amazing. We love her. We looked at her and realized that somewhere along the way these past sixteen years she stopped needing her diapers changed, stopped needing us to cut up her meat, and stopped sticking car keys in electric sockets. And today, my wife will bring her to go get her driver's permit. She is no longer a child, but a woman.

We knew that we wanted to celebrate this with her, and so we dreamed up a way to do just that. For the past month we have been secretly contacting old teachers, family and other acquaintances who have had a part in Anna's life inviting them to participate in a blessing ceremony. Here is the blessing I read over her at the end of the ceremony:

"Anna Rachel Zirilli, you are our daughter, whom we love; with you we are well pleased. You are no longer a little girl. You are now a woman. You are well equipped with everything you need to fulfill your calling as a woman of God.

Before the foundation of the earth, God Almighty planned for your life and planned for you to be a woman. He knew this day would come. Psalm 139 says that He created your inmost being. He knit you together in your mother's womb. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. All the days ordained for you were written by God even before you were born. There is nothing that you will ever need to do to become a woman, because God has already made you one.

Today, we are simply recognizing publicly the work that God has already completed in you. Anna, you have heard what we think of you today. We see in you honesty, integrity, love, strength, grace, humility, power, weakness, intelligence, wisdom beyond your years, self-control, spiritual sensitivity and spiritual hunger, frugalness, compassion, a love for your Lord and Savior, and a desire to share that love with others. God has made you intelligent—you have a strong mind. God has made you beautiful. We've also noticed since the time you were a little girl that our Lord has given you a great ability to understand right and wrong, good and evil. You get along with everyone and are well-respected and well thought of by others, young and old alike. You are a leader and have used your leadership skills to make wise decisions concerning your friends and in many other areas of your life. We are filled with joy that God has given you to our family. You are a gift. You are a wonderful daughter

We love you and we bless you with all that God has for you. You are His and have been set apart from the world for his Holy purposes. We bless you with God's everlasting love, wisdom, peace, and joy. We bless you with sexual purity and if the Lord wills, marital fidelity and children of your own.

Would you gather around Anna, lay your hands on her as we pray together.

“The Lord bless you, and keep you;
The Lord make His face shine on you,
And be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
And give you peace."'

Lord, we are here today because we love Anna. We want her to know that we can see the work that you have done in her life in making her a woman. We commit her to you and we trust You to continue the work that you have begun in her. Make her into the masterpiece that you have designed her to be and You alone can create in her. We thank you for her. In Jesus’ name, Amen."

“Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life!”

It was an amazing day! Hopefully, one that Anna will never forget.

This blessing ceremony was our way of giving Anna a milestone to mark her passage from childhood to adulthood. We don't ever want her to believe that she needs something in order to become a woman. We don't want her to need a relationship, a job, a calling from God, a degree, or any measure of success in order to feel like she has become a woman.

We want her to know that she is a woman because God has created her to be just that. She doesn't have to prove it or earn it. She is.

Whether you have a child who needs to hear this or whether you just needed this reminder yourself, make sure you believe it. There is no greater waste of time than pursuing something that you already have. Finding it comes in resting and trusting in God, not in the endless pursuit.

"Meaningless. meaningless, everything is meaningless, a chase after the wind!"

Maybe today you need to look in the mirror or in the eyes of your teen and speak these words of truth.

You are a child of God. You are loved beyond all measure. You are an adult who doesn't have anything to prove. You are valuable because you are valuable to God. You are important because you are important to God. You are special, you are successful, you are all that God wants you to be. Surrender your great expectations.

Let God's opinion of you trump your own.

He's a much better judge than you or I.

(Here is the basic outline of the Blessing Ceremony that we used.

And, this is the intro and explanation that we prepared:

We believe that there is one God and Father over all and in all and through all. We believe that there is one Son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, through whom all people can be saved. And, we believe in the Holy Spirit who indwells all those who believe to convict, encourage and comfort them. We believe that Anna, based on your confession of faith, we believe that you are His. We believe He chose you to be our daughter and that He chose us to be your family and friends. We believe that He has your life preordained according to His abundant grace and plan for your life.

When you were still in Mommy’s belly, there was a time that we committed you to His care. You were, then, as you are now, very active. Since you were our first child, we were a little scared when we would see your heal or elbow push out and travel across the front of her belly, jutting out. And, then one day, you were quiet. You didn’t move for about 24 hours and here you sit, nothing wrong, but at that moment we weren’t sure what was going on. You probably just needed a long nap from all those gymnastics.

We climbed into bed that night and mommy turned to me and said that you hadn’t moved that day. I said, “Oh,” and preceded to go to sleep. She said, “The baby hasn’t moved all day.” “Oh! Are you worried that something’s wrong?” “I don’t know.” For those of you who don’t speak woman, that means, “Yes.” And, for once, I understood it. So, we prayed together.

As we prayed, God spoke to us. We felt like He was telling us that we were powerless. That we would have to trust him. That we couldn’t keep this little baby of ours alive, keep her heart beating, keep her lungs breathing, protect her from every disease and every evil even if we made it our only goal in life. We were powerless. This was sobering and our tears flowed onto our pillows.

But, He didn’t leave us there. He told us that he was able to protect and guide and hold our baby every single day of her life. And, that whether she died in Rachel’s womb that day or lived a hundred years, that He could hold her for eternity. He told us to trust him, to trust you to His care. And, we did. We didn’t have a promise that night that you would be ok. But, we had a promise that God was responsible for you and would care for you. That he was trustworthy.

We have clung to that promise every day until this one for each of our children. Today we want to celebrate Anna becoming a young woman. It is in conjunction with her sixteenth birthday, but it is not really about a number of years or a day of the year.

We want to celebrate what God has done and is doing in Anna’s life. He has guided her each day and he has made her a woman. She has graciously received His blessings and desired His leading in her life. We don’t know when it happened exactly, but we chose today to recognize that it has.

Anna Rachel Zirilli, today we acknowledge that you are a woman, a woman of God, and we who are gathered here today, will continue to love you and help you find your way on this next phase of your journey.

Some of you here have written something to Anna for this occasion and have come prepared to read it to her. Please do that now.)