Muddy Butterflies

How are you doing, beloved? Answer this question honestly. Don't respond with something quasi spiritual, so find the receipt and take that cliche response, "Blessed and highly favored," BACK! 

HOW ARE YOU DOING? 

Have you ever been on the verge of tears and all you needed to hear was for somebody to ask that question and the levies broke releasing your disappointment, your pain, your anxiety, your anger, just everything wadded up inside of you? I've been there before. Plenty of times.         
If you haven't, I say keep living. 

Now, I've been in environments and relationships where to have feelings was a crime. It was shunned. Tears were considered a sign of weakness. Breaking down was repulsive. And then I've been in situations where my strength was criticized and events were carefully orchestrated to break me for the abusers pleasure. 

I'll be transparent with you when I say this, sometimes I wrestle with emotional detachment and knowing when to care and when not to care. I'm one of those people where if I don't care, you will feel it. If I do care it's the same thing, you will feel it. I have to constantly remind myself, "Tanzy, it's okay to feel." "It's okay to hurt." "It's okay to cry." "It's okay to be vulnerable." 

Not that I have perfected this in my Apostle Paul's voice. Haha! I'm still learning only because I find it safer not to feel, for real. I'm sure God is going to deal with me and this issue very soon. I'm waiting on Him too. Because I give up.

But this post isn't really about me. I'm worried about active committed believers who hide behind their service to the church confusing it with an actual relationship with God so much so, they go home after serving and singing their little hearts out or what not, depressed as ever. Sinking in probably sin, pain, and hopelessness. 

The devil has confused people like this to believe that when God's word said that many are the afflictions of the righteous, that it meant that this sinking feeling is an automatic byproduct of their service to Him. What a WHOLE LIE from the butt crack of hell! His yoke is easy and His burden is light! (Matthew 11:30)

But this is a tragic thing to believe and an oh so terrible way to live as a child of God. 

And we have the nerve to wonder why non-believers don't want our God. They see us come from behind the four walls of the church with no tangible solutions to our problems. We're smiling and shouting on Sunday's but broken and crippled Monday through Saturday. 

I saw a vision last week sometime, of muddy butterflies attempting to fly but falling back into these small troughs of mud. These beautiful winged creatures dripping in the mud of their surroundings unable to experience what it's like to be in true flight. God showed me that He compared these muddy butterflies to His children, stuck in their religious church based rituals and falling victim to unfavorable ruts as a result. 

I don't possibly see how you can have perfect attendance at your church but have a record of truancy in every other area of your life. I can then deduce your participation to the church to either an idol or a form of escapism. You worship your service to church because you use it to boost your self-esteem. Or you run to the church to keep from confronting your issues. And if the church isn't the kind to blast it you go back to your pool of Bethesda and you sit there and you wallow. Then you start the cycle over. 

Why keep with this torture? Why keep lying, saying Jesus is the center of your joy? When He is not?

John 10:10

The thief comes only in order to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have and enjoy life, and have it in abundance (to the full, till it overflows).

Though depression is indeed a real thing, John 10:10 is my reason to believe that Christian and depression should never coexist because Jesus came to give us life and that more abundantly. Depression should have no rental space in a believer's life. I don't care what anybody has to say! This statement is controversial because there are so many Christians eating up this lie that it's okay to be a depressed believer. I CRY FOUL! If depression or any of it's relatives have camped out in your mental fortress, especially if you're actively serving in the church, Jesus has not been given the lease to your mental. emotional, and spiritual property. When Jesus has the lease to all of these properties all of that other stuff has to go! 

If your personal life right now is in shambles and all you have to show for it are some certificates from some classes you completed or graduated from at church, you can keep that! Once you become a member of the body of Christ and then you decide to help to maintain it through some type of service, there should be some outward reflections of your contributions to the body. When you sow your whole self into God's body whatever fruit comes of this should cause a simultaneous reaction in your personal life. In other words there should be ripple effects. Oftentimes this doesn't happen or is rarely seen because service, works, and busyness inside the church is equated to a relationship with God outside of the church. 

We can't keep going at our faith in God like this. It's so dysfunctional! We're going to have to confront head on what is depressing us, angering us, ailing us, confusing us, and stop using our altruism and volunteerism in the church as the sole antidote. 

Don't get me wrong I will always be an advocate for servanthood. It's a beautiful thing. When it's done right. 

You're talking to someone who in their first church was in the choir, the praise team, the praise dance team, was a Sunday school teacher, social media coordinator, and one of the leaders of a ministry called the No Saints Left Behind to stay connected to members and monitor retention levels. To being in the next church I would attend,  on the praise team, was a solo praise dancer for street and inside services, the secretary, the music, sound and tech person, the social media coordinator again, janitor, on call preacher, psalmist, and teacher. There's actually more to this list, but I'm going to leave it right there.

Though the act of serving taught me a lot about the ends and outs of ministry among other things, I was by far the most depressed I'd ever been. I just remember the heaviness of it all because I was doing too much. But I also remember my life looking like a hot Hefty bag of garbage. Basically the more I felt like my personal life was out of control and beyond my reach, the
 more I dug myself into ministry. This is one of the main reasons I broke down at work one day and had to go on leave for two months while I sought therapy. It wasn't until recently, as I put myself on probation, like purposely sat myself down for the longest I've ever sat down, that I realized my relationship with God was like those phony relationships people have on social media that they flaunt and boast about knowing good and dog on well they're NOT HAPPY!!! 

In my case it wasn't God that I wasn't happy with, it was the facade standing in place of Him. Oh what a cute little muddy butterfly I was. Does this make anything that I've said easier to digest? Or better yet understand? You've been running from your problems for entirely too long and using ministry to do it.  You may even be one of those unique believers who uses ministry as a form of an apology to God even though you won't really repent! Needless to say, if at the end of the day ministry is not helping you solve your problems, then that's a problem. Moreover, if your relationship with God is non-existent because of ministry, that is the ultimate problem.  

It's time to return to your first love.