The Four-Letter Word

I remember being small, maybe 4 or 5 years old, when I first heard my preacher speak about love.  Now, I knew about love before then.  We sang Jesus Loves Me in Sunday School, I knew my parents loved me.  I knew what it was to love something, someone.  But the first time I heard my preacher speak of love, I got the subtle message that love was maybe not a good thing.

I remember his words to the effect of, "These people who are saying God is love are weak and sinful because God is not love, he is wrath and judgment and I will not preach about God's love, I will preach about God's wrath.  If you don't like that, go to church somewhere else."  No, not his exact words, but pretty darned close.  I heard that sermon time and time again as I grew up in a Fundamentalist Baptist church in the South.  I heard it so often that without even consciously knowing it, I began to think of God as the great equalizer.  Sure, we sang Amazing Grace and learned John 3:16, but love was not something we were encouraged to nurture or embrace.  Not our love for others and not God's love for us.

Our duty, I learned, was to get Saved.  It was to separate ourselves from the rest of the world--to set ourselves apart as different, special, BETTER.  Along with that idea of separation came a long list of rules that grew ever-longer.  A defeating scroll of man-created demands that demeaned us as females and exalted the males became our new Bible.

With our effort to "separate" came the ever more urgent need to find things about ourselves that were not like the rest of the world.  We became finger pointers, condemners.  We often said things like, "Well at least I don't do THAT."  Or we'd say, "You know she wears pants....goes to the movies...moved out on her own before she got married...etc..."  It didn't matter that we also sinned.  It didn't matter that we were also imperfect and in dire need of God's grace; we suddenly felt justified in our judgment and condemnation of other people, Christians and non Christians alike.

I grew up immersed up to my neck in a church that espoused thinly veiled hatred for all things different.  Martin Luther King Jr. was referred to as a heretic so often that by the time I reached high school and listened for the first time to the "I Have a Dream" speech, I could hardly reconcile what my parents and my preacher had taught me about him with what I was hearing in his speech; a speech that brought tears to my eyes even back then.  I don't recall anyone ever saying "Don't love black people" but I don't recall anyone ever saying "Love you neighbor" either.

I grew up confused.  Our church collected money and supported about 50 different missionaries all over the world.  My best friend when I was 11, moved with her parents to Papua New Guinea.  I didn't see her for a long time but  I knew that her parents were there to teach black people about Jesus.  I knew they attended church together, ate meals together, cared about each other. But at our church, black people were not welcome.  They weren't welcome because our pastor worried that allowing black people to come to our church would encourage interracial relationships between our young girls and black boys.  I never completely understood any of it, but I went along with it because I was a kid and I did as I was told.

Problem is, as I grew up I actually adopted some of those beliefs.  It was not out of hatred that I embraced those beliefs but out of ignorance and a sincere desire to do right.  These things, I was taught, were right.

In my late teens I started working at a daycare center where I cared for children of every race.  I remember a little Japanese boy who cried for his mom all day, a little Hispanic three year old who knew how to curse in Spanish and get away with it.  I knew a sweet, dark skinned, big smiled boy named Danny who stole my heart.  Danny was adopted by a white woman who was a senior citizen. She brought him to the center every day to get a break and to give him the chance to play with other kids.  He was long and lanky, a fast moving little creature who couldn't nap without a back rub and a blankie.

At the time I was pregnant with my first daughter.  On weekends I sometimes babysat Danny.  One weekend in particular my ex husband and I took him to a carnival near our house.  I was walking around at one point, carrying Danny, his skinny rear perched atop my pregnant belly, looking for my husband, when I noticed sidelong glances being shot my way.  Every white person I passed looked at me in utter disgust.  I heard people make comments behind me as I passed them.  One person even yelled the N word as I walked by.  Perhaps he was referring to me, or to Danny but in that instance I realized I had been wrong all my life.  It took coming face to face with that kind of hatred for me to realize people are people.  Love is love.  Hate is ugly and it always will be.

I grew up attending a church where known sex offenders took up space on pews every Sunday.  They held office, sang in the choir, had continued access to new victims.  I witnessed a leadership in my church that turned a blind eye to sexual assault and abuse.  It seemed so easy for them to do, that I began to think it should have come easier to me too.  I forced myself to be kind and gracious to my own abuser, and to the abusers of other girls and women in our congregation because that's what was modeled for me by my church leadership and even by my family.  I shared Christmas and Thanksgiving dinner with my abuser, year after year feeling it was my duty as a Christian to forgive even though he was not repentant.  Feeling it was my duty to not speak of it, to pretend it never happened.  It was easier for everyone to ignore it, gloss over it or claim their Salvation undid the harm these men caused.

One of them had the gall to come up to me at my dad's funeral a few weeks ago.  He's old now, shaky from Parkinson's Disease, but still as bold as ever.  He stood there trying to hold a conversation with me, wanting to tell me all about his illness.  I walked away.

I know now what I didn't know then.  I do not have to accept anyone into my life, especially someone who is harmful to me or to others. I know that I can deny them access to me without hatred in my own heart, and that it's okay to hold people accountable for their unacceptable and harmful behavior.  I no longer have to look the other way or pretend it never happened.  I no longer want to.

It's easy for me to see how so many people were able to overlook the sexually predatory behavior of our president-elect.  I grew up seeing the same thing in my church. Here is where I get to my point.

My heart is broken, not because a man I don't support won the presidency, but because on a smaller scale, right before our eyes and in front of impressionable young minds, these same attitudes and abilities to gloss over things so atrocious are affecting people in deep, lasting ways.  It brings back the trauma of seeing my abuser sing in the choir.  It makes me remember that my being victimized was not a problem for the adults in my life--but my inability to forget about it was.

It makes me remember the time I wanted my friend Benita to come home with me on a Friday to spend the night, so excited to spend time with my friend, and having my mama say she couldn't come after she found out she was black.  It makes me ashamed of where I came from.

However, there is hope.  If someone like me, someone who was raised in such a bubble or racism and ignorance can find her way out of that mess, other people can too.  For me it took getting away from my hometown, creating distance between myself and those who would have held me back, and it took really getting in the trenches with my fellow man in places of servitude.  I've worked with people of all ages, from infants to old people, people of all races, all sexual orientations, all religions.  I've worked with them as they came into the world and as they took their last breaths.  I have seen what humanity is, and I know that at our core, we are all worthy of the same love, respect and positive regard.  I learned better.

Other people can learn too, but we might just have to take them by the hands and pull them along. We might have to show them that they have nothing to fear from opening their hearts and minds to people who are different from them; to people who believe differently, look different, love differently.  It might still take time for them to learn that another person's way of life doesn't threaten theirs, and that their beliefs can stay their own without becoming a threat to others.

I'm not losing hope because I know where I came from.  I know I haven't arrived at perfection, and I know I have a long way still to go.  I will try to have patience and extend my hand to anyone who is brave enough to come with me to a place of love and acceptance.  I hope we can find mutual understanding of the fears and heartaches we have all endured, and realize that humanity makes none of us immune to hurt.  I hope we can all learn to treat each other as equals, that no one is ever promoted over another as superior or favored by God.

Love is not a dirty word.