What does wrestling with Gods & Giants mean?

In order to answer the question above, I have to give a little background. I know that I said this wasn’t a “Christian blog,” but I did say that I’m a Christ follower. Which means that the label “Christian” has become synonymous with organizations, politics and people who do not reflect the Jesus I see in the New Testament. That Jesus is actually accepted by many different types of people from a wide range of faith traditions. That Jesus isn’t white, Republican or even American. He was born on the wrong side of the tracks under shady circumstances and he hung out with the wrong crowd more often than not.

So I’m a Christ follower. And I’m aware that many women have been wounded and disappointed in their faith experience, including myself. Yet, I believe the person of Jesus is the most accurate representation of who God is and what he/she is like. I believe that Jesus was a defender of women. Every teaching including those in the Christian scriptures must be understood in light of what Jesus said and who he revealed God to be. Let me also say, I’m not Jesus. I don’t have everything figured out and my life isn’t less messy because I have faith. Sometimes I think it’s more messy. Maybe yours is too. Maybe you have thrown faith and God out the window and said to hell with it. I get that too.

I think of life and the circumstances we are dealt as cards, and the God card is a heavy one. How that card is played by you, over you and in relation to you, can have enormous influence in your life and that of others. Amazing, wretched, glorious and terrifying things have all been done in the name of God. That is just a fact. Like it or not, my life and how I see the world and who I am in it, has been shaped by faith and sometimes the lack of it.

The idea of women wrestling with gods and giants comes from three scriptures in the Christian Bible, two in the Old Testament and one in the New Testament, Genesis 32: 27-28, 1 Samuel 17 and Ephesians 6:12. If the idea of using this book as a reference for the title of this blog makes your skin crawl, then maybe you could reframe it as the most commonly read book in the world and leave it at that.

Genesis 32:27-28 recounts the story of when Jacob wrestled with God. The story goes that they wrestled all night and Jacob would not let the “man” go until he blessed him. I have included the most significant part of the story below.

“The man asked him, “What is your name?”

“Jacob,” he answered.

“Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”(NIV)

This ancient text tells me that some of us will wrestle with God. If it happened in the past, it will probably happen again. It tells me that it’s a natural part of our humanity. It tells me that some of us wrestle with God and live to tell about it.

1 Samuel 17 recounts the story of David and Goliath. I think that one is self explanatory and the details are commonly known. David is a young boy and he stands up to Goliath who is recorded as being a descendent of angels. While all the seasoned warriors refuse to face the giant, David defeats Goliath with just a sling shot. Then David went on to do lots of other things both good and bad. Things didn’t work out so great. He screwed up but he kept his faith.

Sometimes we face our giants and win. Sometimes our giants get back up and stomp our ass.

Ephesians stands against the notion that what we see is all there is. It calls us to have a bigger perspective than the obvious. Which is hard to hold onto in our western culture.

“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” (NIV)

I have gone into court on several occasions with all the evidence on my side and it didn’t matter. I walked out stunned by the refusal of state mandated authorities to acknowledge government verified evidence in favor of their own political agenda. I had no idea the amount of injustice a judge can dish out in one day. The lack of accountability for their actions and my inability to do anything about it is stunning.

When I think back on my life, I see a recurrence of three seasons: preparing for a fight, in a fight or recovering from a fight. It’s hard for me to remember a time when I wasn’t in one of those stages. During my Master’s program, one of my professors asked me to describe my functional view of God. He was not thrilled with my response. I said that it seemed that God was like a boxing or wrestling coach. Always trying to teach us another move, wanting us stand up and fight harder and better and giving us water in the corner in those small moments we could take a break. He/She was always either preparing me for a fight, with me in a fight either because I was wrestling him/her or because he/she promises to always be with me, or beside me as I recovered. That pretty much covers my entire life experience regardless of the specific details. My theology professor expressed disappointment that I didn’t have a more loving or gracious view of who God was. My life experience didn’t lend toward the idea of having anyone just willing to love me, so why would I think that of God. In general, it seems my wrestling on a lot of things offend those in the traditional faith community. I’m learning to be okay with that.

Due to my lack of functioning parents, I didn’t grow up in one particular faith tradition. I lived with many different families, and most of them were hyper spiritual in some way or another. On one side there was every flavor of Jesus people and on the other side were people who ascribed to every flavor of something else, Wicca, Satanism, humanism, new age spiritualism and the list goes one.

As a child, I was very spiritually aware. I often dreamed about spirits and even would say I saw them while awake. Since I’ve always desperately wanted to belong and to be loved when I was told that Jesus loved me and then in the next breath, that I would go to hell if I didn’t do the right things. I was terrified of doing the wrong thing. What if I did the wrong thing before I knew it was wrong? My mother obviously had one version of what seemed right to her and my other family members had a very different idea of what was right. What I did know is that rather they said they loved Jesus or not, when I “wore out my welcome,” because I did something wrong or they were just tired of another mouth to feed, I was sent away to live with someone else.

Sometimes I would hear those I was staying with talking about my mother and me. How long would they have to keep me this time? Where else could they send me? How could they keep me rubbing off on their own kids. I knew I wasn’t wanted. So I tried harder to be good.

My mother was a free love teenager when she had me. She had no idea which man was my father, so she lied. She picked one, but he didn’t really want the title. I learned my mother’s choice meant I was a bastard. I heard that I was born from sin. I’m not sure what I was supposed to say when they would talk about how I was bound to end up just like her. So I didn’t say anything.

I wrestled with what was true and what wasn’t. I wrestled with measuring up and being good enough. What is good enough anyway? It seemed to be something you were either born with or you weren’t, like the haves and the have nots. I was obviously a have not.

One thing for sure, regardless of which flavor of god you preferred, talking about a girls virginity seemed like a big deal. In some ways its like the measure of your value as a female. And being a virgin has a lot to do with your parents keeping you away from boys who want to take it. So what about when your virginity is taken as a little kid? Then what? What if you didn’t even know you weren’t supposed to know about those things? Oh, I’ve heard some evangelical ideas about “re-claiming” your virginity after it’s been taken or given away. Felt like nonsense to me. Once you’re old enough for your brain and body to finally catch up to what’s happening to you, there is no not knowing. But I tried. I tried to not feel like everything about me was obviously a mistake. I shouldn’t be on the planet. Sometimes I felt like I was already too tainted by the time I knew what the measurements were, at other times, I wrestled with how a “loving” God could choose this for me. Because that’s what I was told. God wanted me to learn something.

It took me years and one too many “Christian” weddings where the bride’s virginity was talked about like a badge her dad could put on a lapel, to realize those notions reduce a woman’s value to a tiny piece of skin, she can’t even see. I wrestled with shame over things I had no control over before finally realizing that it makes no sense to base a woman’s value on rather or not her Hyman’s in tact. I mean some could argue that not having a Hyman means not being fed to a dragon or not being married off to a fat, old man whos willing to pay a high price just to be the first.

And obviously, I think a lot.

Most of my life, I have wrestled with the societal expectations placed on me because of my gender. I wasn’t submissive enough. I had too many opinions. I was too pretty or not pretty enough. My dreams were too big. I didn’t dress right. I was supposed to let the men lead, even if they were reluctant or ill-equipped. I asked too many questions. I got angry at the unfairness of it all. No matter what I did. I never measured up. Even when I did something well, it was the wrong thing because I was a woman. I couldn’t seem to stay in my box.

I tried so hard to get everything right and none of it seemed to matter. I still felt alone, a misfit looking in from the outside. A fraud in a world where I didn’t belong. Now, I look back and I wish I could have taken that little girl in and kept her. I was worth fighting for and I still am. So are you.

This blog is a place where I will share my wrestlings with the gods and giants in my life. You may find that you share a few. You may face a few that I don’t. I’m going to be real. I don’t have all my ducks in a row or even in the same lake at times. Regardless, I’m here in the arena too. I hope you hear me cheering you on. I hope that you can find the strength to stay in here with me, even when the battle seems like it will never end. I am here too.