Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes…
MATTHEW RIDDLE
Fifteen years ago when I first became a believer, I got down on my knees and prayed some words about inviting Jesus into my life because that’s what I was told you had to do. It was the right way to do it and, being the perfectionist and people pleaser, I was obsessed with doing things the “right way” always. Even if it meant I never ended up doing them at all because I couldn’t start right or couldn’t maintain the ridiculous expectations I set on myself.
There weren’t a ton of things I’d done the “right way”. I’d fall short, beat myself up, hate myself and then set out to fail again or freeze into inaction while chasing perfection. Be this keeping and having good relationships, succeeding at work, exercising faith, or simply getting the dishes done as often as I should. Regardless of the size of the task or goal it will never be good enough, I would never get it “right”.
There I was, on my knees praying the words I had been given. I had just realized that the couple of books and a bible I had been given were speaking truth, this was real. I was terrified. I had done so much wrong in life. There was this big list of don’ts and I had steadily checked all of them off during my time. I wasn’t good enough for any of this. I was bad, rotten to the core. I was a hypocrite for even trying to connect with God. I believed but didn’t understand. I prayed, got baptized and then was just expected to become a better person now that I was a Christian and hearing sermons every week.
But at the center of it all I was still me. Sure, I had changed. I had found another way to feel like I wasn’t getting it right. This time with cosmic, eternal consequences. I had replaced an earthly disapproving, vengeful father with a heavenly one. I hadn’t really experienced love in my time and certainly nothing approaching unconditional. I had heard “I love you but,” so many times that I didn’t know the first three words could be said without the last. Grace and forgiveness didn’t make any sense.
Everybody else seemed able to connect with my newfound God. They talked ceaselessly about prayer time, their bible study groups, their retreats. They all had a playbook that I didn’t for this new life and the couple of times I reached out to people, I was told to pray or fast or read this or that book. Just wait, be patient, God will work a change in you. Well, He didn’t. I tried really hard to be what I was supposed to be, to be good enough to fully take my place.
I was able to sustain that momentum for about a year. I could talk the talk and walk the walk but hadn’t really experienced the life-giving transformation everybody else talked about. It was many years before I realized what a disservice I had been done by superficial, fake people that had their own issues but had a polished, impenetrable exterior that always made me feel like less of a person. At the time of the biggest change of my life, I was hamstrung by my own preconceptions, insecurity, and people that didn’t want to dig in the dirt of real human issues.
I slowly but surely slipped back to everything I had been. I was rudderless amidst people who all knew where they were going. They didn’t want to talk about real depression, fear, anxiety, trauma, or anything that resembled my life. It didn’t fit with the Christian life. They’d listen and throw me anecdotes disguised as solutions. I needed to step up and fit their molds and I just couldn’t do it. So after a while, I left that church and went to a really big church where I was just another face in the crowd. Alcohol, an escape for many years, truly took over my life and my alcoholism began to fully manifest. It was easy to slip away, stop going. That was so much easier than being reminded by others of my latest failure by their mere presence.
I went on for a long time just getting by. I drank more and lost jobs, friends. I was drinking daily from waking to sleeping. There wasn’t enough whisky to salve the wounds, lighten the pain of a lifetime but I kept trying. I lost another job and couldn’t find another, doing anything much less my chosen field.
I had been waiting for the alcohol to just kill me for a long time and decided to get serious about it. But finally, I ran out of resources and friends. I just ran out of alcohol and began to detox and went through that misery without realizing it could have killed me. One day in the middle of it I realized I had no desire to drink. I think God just lifted it off of me and has kept it that way since.
I decided to go back to church, sober, and see what I could do with myself. Not much had really changed since I first went to church. I was still trying to find the set of rules that would clearly tell me how to do this God thing. Not trusting my own judgment, I followed whatever the pastors told me without realizing it was a poor and meager way to experience God, full of toxicity, that left a lot of people marginalized and judged.
Over the last couple of years I’ve come to realize that there isn’t really a “right way” that fits everybody in all situations. Things are far less absolute than that. I hadn’t heard God because I haven’t really been listening for Her. I’d been trying to follow rules instead. Being a Pharisee without really realizing it and judging myself harshly for it. I’d been much more concerned with the how than the why. I’d been learning about love, yet not allowing myself to experience it. It took someone showing me what unconditional love truly is before I could begin to understand what that means coming from God.
Fifteen years later I’m still really at the start of my journey, my transition. I still don’t know that I have heard God in those still, small places or in the chaotic, noisy ones but what I have started to learn is that it’s ok. I need to accept what’s been offered to the best of my current ability and go from there. Coming to Imago, meeting Josh, hearing the messages really helped me to see how toxic things were where I’d been both on my part and the church’s. I’d already realized that I could be accepted and loved for what I was, but I didn’t know there was a whole church willing to do it. So, the changes continue. I hope they never stop.
Matt is a security analyst and software developer for OSF Healthcare. He’s a sci fi nut in all its forms movies, tv, books, games. He has a passion for history, the English language, utterly worthless trivia and whatever his ADHD tells him to focus on at the time. He loves to work with his hands especially with wood and cars though he’s far from an expert at either.