Pollyanna pins.

I'm back-tracking.

I went "Christian-bowling" (as I now call it), with my Life Group on Sunday. The thing is that I really am not a huge fan of bowling. That's a lie. I enjoy Wii bowling. I just have really bad emotional associations with actual bowling. Honestly, aside from Sunday, I can't remember the last time I went. And the times I do remember all end with me crying in the bathroom. I know that's weird.

Nonetheless, I was feeling pretty indifferent to the Life Group outing. Until we actually started. During my first two turns, not one pin was touched. And the reason for the bathroom-crying came back to me. I bowled incredibly poorly. Someone (most likely my brother, and/or cousins) made fun of me, ceaselessly. That made me feel awful. I retreated to the bathroom. And thus another cycle in the life of an American Family. This is, by the way, why I have very strong feelings about not just accepting sibling awfulness as "normal."

Sunday night, I started to feel that way again, and thought, uh-oh. But then realized...no one was making fun of me. In fact, these people were being crazy nice. Encouraging. Cheering, clapping, saying things like "It's ok, you'll get better." And they meant it! They were not placating me. They weren't patronizing me. These people have goodness in their hearts.

I think that sometimes, we like to make fun of really positive people. Surely, they can't be the saavy, intellectual sophisticates that we are. We mimic, and mock, and act as though there's something wrong with that kind of "pollyanna" (to steal my own phrase) happiness and encouragement. Maybe because they're telling us something about ourselves that we don't understand? Because when we haven't truly internalized the reality of God's love, receiving that kind of incredible love from others is difficult. Am I stretching this?

Turning around after the fourth gutterball to the undeserved cheers of my Life Group, and knowing that they honestly don't care that I can really tank a game of bowling...I found myself uncomfortable. I had to force myself to accept their love (do I dare call it that?). I had to get over myself, to stop thinking, "Oy, these people will give praise for anything," and just bask in the warmth of relations with His People. In short, I had to trust.

I don't consider myself an untrusting person. I used to be. And then I did a lot of work to reverse that. I promised myself that it would end with me. That my future husband, and kids, and friends, and students, would all feel that they were meeting a whole person, and in such an encounter, would feel free to be wholly themselves. But as I've gone back in to the Christian Church, things are coming up that I had long forgotten, or had become blind to.

I think it's because these people are different. I don't necessarily mean to say that they're better than others. My non-Christian friends are an amazing bunch of people--wonderful, and kind, and talented, each in his or her own way. But I don't know if any of them, faced with the incredulity and sometimes harshness that I've shown, would give the Grace I've been given. Certainly not all Christians do this. I know that. Just as some non-Christians do show such Grace.

I was talking to a friend of mine today about my experiences in the Pentecostal church, and she didn't realize quite where I was going with all of it. And she said "Yeah, as you meet more of them it just keeps getting worse." I had to smile. And I said, "No, actually. That's the thing. It just keeps getting better and better." I don't doubt that she had a bad experience. I'm not blind to the fact that Chrisians can be awful, and made even more so by their sense of divine destiny. But such conversations make me feel so grateful for what I have found at James River.

They remind me that He can change lives. That He can bring someone like me to Springfield, MO, full of venom for the Christian community, and determined to make my own God. And show me Love. Teach me humility. Give me a reason to believe that my mind is not infallible, but that His will is. Father.