The bride and the bridegroom

A friend of mine read a recent post about not being in touch lately, and we were chatting about it. Through the conversation, I realized that my feelings of not wanting to talk about a difficult point in my marriage were very similar to not wanting to talk about this difficult point with the church.

Another beautiful, kind friend from college taught me that when someone is having a hard time with a partner/breaking up/etc, one of the the worst things to do is speak derisively about the partner. No one wants to have to defend someone they love when they're also feeling hurt by that someone. I love the church. At it's best, it's generous and kind and healing, encouraging, powerful and liberating. At it's worst, it's extremely human.

My relationship with the church feels very private (tricky, when I want a job that makes it very public), and when we hit rough patches, I don't want to feel awkward about bringing it to cocktail parties with my friends. I'd rather not have my girlfriends exchanging glances about my foolish loyalty to it, or pushing me to consider seeing someone else. "You'd be so much happier with one who wasn't so controlling." "It doesn't seem to have much of a sense of humor." "You know you can't change it, right?"

I'm not sure what to do with this idea, really. Seems like a good start just to recognize it.