Faith Stories Archives - Kirsten Oliphant

Oct 16 2016

My List of #metoo

ME TOO.

Have you seen the words posted on social media this week? Maybe you posted them too. Maybe you didn’t feel comfortable, but you though to yourself, “Me too!”

The words indicate that you have been a victim of sexual harassment or assault. (In case you did not hear or were confused, here is an article that shares the origin.) I wanted to write more than Me Too.

I don’t want attention. I don’t want people to feel sorry for me. I’m not writing this as a weird badge of honor or to get pageviews on my blog.

I’m writing this because still—STILL—this is a pervasive problem. It seems like we should all know. But it’s still happening. Daily. Hourly. All over the world. And some people do not know or understand.

Victims don’t HAVE to share their stories for you to understand, but sometimes that is what it takes and I want to share my stories.

I actually wrote this post (what follows) two years ago. Then I couldn’t hit publish. I wasn’t ready. It sat here in a draft, this list of things that have happened to me.

Most of the things were fairly innocuous. They were what I expect (or came to expect) as being a woman. The price you pay. The reality of womanhood. No matter what you do.

But some are still really hard for me to say out loud or to write. I don’t really want to talk further about them. I’d love to never think of them again. But I NEED to say them. And I think it’s so very important for you to read these words and others like them.

Women: I feel like it’s important to know you are not alone. You are not.

Men: I feel like sometimes you may not realize that what you are doing is harassment or what other men around you are doing is harassment. I’m writing this for YOU. Not the guys who just don’t care. They still won’t care. But for the men who don’t understand, don’t think this is a problem, want to question women’s stories, feel like many times it’s just made up, don’t think they have ever taken part in this– THIS IS FOR YOU.

Please read it. Please let the words sink in.

Not because I am someone’s wife or daughter or mother or because you have a wife or daughter or mother.

Let the words sink in and be a shaking of your preconceived thoughts because WOMEN ARE HUMAN BEINGS.

MY LIST OF ME TOO

As a girl I was molested by an older boy in the neighborhood while other neighborhood boys watched.

In middle school boys who were my “friends” berated me by shouting things about my breasts daily in the cafeteria. They only stopped when I moved seats so that I faced them. Apparently they could only do it behind my back.

I have been called a slut. I have been called a tease. I have been called a dog. I have been called a bitch. Not because of anything I did, but just because. Or because I said no.

I have been sexually assaulted on a date. Later, I told friends that the boy was “aggressive.” I did not have even the words to say what he did and was ashamed that it happened. I felt like it was my fault for getting into a situation where I was alone with him.

I was told once that I needed to put a t-shirt on over my modest one-piece bathing suit because it was “causing men to stumble.”

Upon meeting a guy’s father on our first date, the dad told me that I had nice-ass legs. I was 17.

I have had to say no. And no. And no. And no. And no. And no. With my words and my body again and again and sometimes physically fight my way out of someone’s embrace.

I had to hide in a classroom for an entire school dance because boys were trying to take pictures down the front of my dress.

Once while jogging at night, a carful of teenage boys drove by and shouted out the windows of the car at me. Then, they u-turned and sped back towards me. I spent the next 15 minutes trying to run through gated areas of the neighborhood back to my house, hearing the sound of their music as their car circled and they tried to find me.

As a teacher, I was harassed by a student in a teacher-student conference. Even in a public space and when I told him that I was married and his instructor, he did not care and did not stop.

I have been hit on while skinny. While overweight. WHILE SUPER PREGNANT. While wearing a bathing suit. A winter jacket. And everything in between.

I had a boyfriend who flew into rages and would scream inches from my face if I didn’t call him at the right time.

In eighth grade a boyfriend called me with his friends while they were all on speakerphone. They asked specific and detailed questions about what I would and would not let him do to me.

I have been on a stage and heard someone yell, “Take it off!”

While working out in the gym at college, two guys stood uncomfortably close to me while I was drinking water at the fountain. When I stood up, one of them stepped even closer and leered at me. I will never, ever forget that look. It was desire, but the desire to harm or even to kill me. So palpable that the hair stood up on my arms and neck. I stepped away from him and as soon as I could get to the staircase without having to walk by him, I fled the gym and ran all the way back to my dorm.

After having a baby, people made jokes about whether or not I got the “husband stitch.”

After having a baby, men made comments about the size of my breasts and asked me intensely personal questions about breastfeeding.

I have been whistled and shouted at from moving cars, on the street, even once inside the gates of the Vatican.

Once a man told me that the sport I played would be better if we wore tear-away clothing as uniforms. He said this in front of his 9-year-old daughter, who participated in a similar sport. He laughed as he said it, as though this were akin to him making a lighthearted joke.

I had my drink drugged at a bar. Thankfully I started throwing up before I became completely incapacitated. (It was close.)

In middle school a boy I liked kept trying to get me to come to the apartment where he lived with his mother. I found out later that he locked at least two girls in that apartment at different times and wouldn’t let them leave until they had sex with him.

I HAVE BEEN SO LUCKY.

I emerged mostly unscathed. I was mostly subjected to the “normal” range of things that a woman might expect in the US. In many parts of the world it is far, far worse.

I doubt that the list is terribly unfamiliar to my women readers.

It may surprise men reading.

This list may surprise my friends, because these are mostly stories I do not tell.

Why would I?

I have not racked up therapy bills. I am well-adjusted. I do not have nightmares or trauma from these events. These are simply parts of my story.

They make me uncomfortable, angry, disgusted, and sometimes ashamed. EVEN THOUGH I SHOULD NOT BE ASHAMED BY THE ACTIONS SOMEONE ELSE TOOK AGAINST ME. So then I’m more angry because I shouldn’t feel ashamed.

But still: there is the shame.

The reality that I am (and other women are) unsurprised by these things reveals part of the problem:

Whether we realize it or not, women come to expect violence and harassment. For the most part, we all understand that it’s simply part of our story.

I am lucky that nothing worse happened to me.

I am also lucky that I can write these words without being burned or beaten in the street. I won’t be arrested. I have it relatively good. It’s safe for me to speak up. I might get trolled. (There’s a delete button for that.)

So I am speaking up. And it is a small thing.

Victims shouldn’t HAVE to all share our stories. You should just believe us. Believe the few and brave who do speak up.

Because there are many who may read this and think:

Yeah…but what did you do about it?

Yeah…but what did you do to deserve it?

Yeah…but what were you wearing?

Yeah…but why didn’t you speak up before now?

Yeah…but that was harmless.

BELIEVE US. And know that these things are not harmless.

We don’t all need to categorize why we share “me too,” but I felt called to do so. Again, I’m not trying to garner sympathy or support or pageviews. Personally, I feel that I cannot NOT speak up right now at such a time as this. For whatever small good it might do.

I hope these stories help women to feel solidarity. YOU ARE NOT ALONE. I believe you. Me too.

I hope these stories help men who don’t understand to get some small sense of the reality of being a woman.

(Yes, assault and abuse happen to men as well! Sharing about women doesn’t need to exclude or minimize the terrible things that happen to men as well.)

This is not a problem with “some people.” It is systemic. It is cultural. IT IS WORLDWIDE.

SO WHAT DO WE DO?

If you are a victim and want to speak up, do. YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE TO. But if you feel called to, do.

If you are grieved when you read this or see all of the “me too” posts online, consider how you may take small steps to stop these problems.

If you see any of these behaviors, do not minimize them.

Do not say, “boys will be boys.”

Do not say, “It’s just guy talk.”

Do not say, “It’s harmless.”

Do not say, “These stories are often not true.”

Do not say, “Yeah, but…”

If you catch yourself wondering what she did or could have done or what she was wearing, STOP IT.

Don’t just do this because you have daughters and mothers and sisters. If thinking of them helps you feel something, okay. I get it. Start there. But then move on to realize that you should want to be an agent of change because women are human beings.

If men would treat us as human beings, there would be far less women saying, “Me too.”

For now, though, we say it. I say it.

ME TOO.

Feb 12 2016

Easter Is Dinner by Candlelight

Easter is dinner by candlelight, reclining with friends at the table long after the meal is finished.

Easter is religious arguments. Political ones too.

Easter is sharing the bread and the wine.

Easter is cursing a fig tree.

Easter is boiling all the commandments down to two.

Easter is condemning the hypocritical religious leaders.

Easter is betrayal.

Easter is an unjust trial and an unjust execution.

Easter is a walk to the place called the skull.

Easter is darkness over the land, earthquakes, and graves bursting open.

Easter is an angel saying, “He is risen.”

I don’t think I ever fully appreciated Easter until I wrote an Easter devotional. Two years ago I spent a lot of time reading about the last week of Jesus’ life in the four gospels while writing Consider the Cross. I lived there for some time and I considered: Who WAS this Jesus in the pages? Why was he always surprising me? Why does he look so different than some of the Christians I see today?

Why does he look so different from ME?

What do the things he says mean for my life today? What does it mean that he rose from the dead? DID he rise from the dead?

What stands out to me most from the study I did in preparing Consider the Cross is the meals. They are so intimate. I love a leisurely dinner by candlelight. We see a few of these in the last week of Jesus’ life. One the night before he enters Jerusalem and the other the night he is betrayed. In both he reclines at the table with the disciples and his closest friends. It says that John even leaned back against him to ask a question.

THAT is the kind of relationship Jesus wants with us. Think about that for a moment: Jesus wants the kind of relationship where we could recline at the table and lean back against him to whisper a question in his ear.

Is that so far from how we hear of Jesus? Is that far from how you think of him?

I sort of think that I know him, most of the time. Then I think about that intimacy and it jolts me into realizing how little I really DO know him. Maybe I don’t even believe that some days. Or I don’t think about it too deeply because I’m busy. Busy with kids and my house and my writing and just all the things.

I hope that you can pause this Easter to CONSIDER. My book is 40 brief devotionals. Each shares a part of a passage (with parallel verses in the other gospels if you want to go deeper), a prayer, a reflection, and a few questions. It isn’t a Bible study in the sense that it teaches you or goes through explaining each passage. The point of the book is to put you in that moment and have you really think about Jesus.

Easter isn’t just about eggs. It’s not just about a bunny and fluffy, happy cartoon animals. It’s not about candy. (Though seriously, those Cadbury mini eggs are the best things in the world.) Easter isn’t just about that Jesus who might have hung on the wall in your Sunday school class, a very white-looking dude in a super clean robe.

If you want to consider Jesus this Easter (or really, any old time), I invite you to the table. Light a candle and turn the lights down. Think of Jesus, sitting at that table with you. Sharing the cup, the bread, the conversation.

This, my friends, is what we are invited to. THAT kind of intimacy. Easter makes it possible. Easter is the time when Jesus stood in the gap between us and God. He took away anything bad in us. He replaced it with his perfectness. He brought near a people who were far. He found the lost sheep, the lost sons.

He did this for YOU.

If you want to avoid theology and big words and instead sit down at the table, find Consider the Cross on Amazon or listen through the new audio version, which is 3-5 minute devotions each day.

Dec 25 2015

Bloody Christmas

Christmas Day is full of celebration. And in our house a LOT of eating. But this week as I read through the Christmas story in Matthew and Luke, I also stopped to consider the the melancholy and the bloody parts of the Christmas story. I hope this post will not dim the celebrations, but serve as a reminder of their magnitude and their cost.

Why we should think about the melancholy parts of Christmas to fully realize the joyful ones.

O come, O come, Emmanuel

When we read the Christmas story it is usually in one of two ways: in a children’s book narrating the story (and cleaning up the confusing bits: like where do babies come from?) or from the Bible itself. Either way we read, we often miss the real details of what the story means. It feels distant. Shiny. We color it with our Christmas memories and have a warm fuzzy feeling like apple cider or hot cocoa. We hear it with “Joy to the World” playing on repeat in our heads.

But there is a much more solemn and bloody side to Christmas. There is a reason “O Come Emmanuel” is so very somber. It is my favorite carol, even though it stands apart from the others. There is no sweetness there. It sings like a lament and really, it is. It is a cry for help, for redemption. It is a cry from an enslaved people, asking for their freedom, from relief.

O come, O come, Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here

The Bible was not written like a novel, with the details and tone that bring readers into a story. Not only because the intention was not entertainment, but because of the writing styles from the times it was written. This means that much of the time when we read the stories, we pass right on by verses like Matthew 2:16- “Then Herod…killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under…”

Today I sat and I thought about this tiny, horrible verse in the middle of the Christmas story.

I thought of the first-time mothers, celebrating an infant’s first cries. I imagined her breasts full with milk and aching after her child was killed. I imagined the mothers who had been waiting for a son, such a prize in that culture. I imagined the mothers who had struggled to get pregnant and endured the years of watching other women, her friends and her family, give birth. I thought of the mothers whose children were walking and talking, past that most dangerous time of the first year when sickness and weakness are more of a fear. They had perhaps stopped counting every breath.

I imagined brothers and sisters, watching. The feeling of loss and how it fills a household with its yawning emptiness.

From depths of Hell Thy people save
And give them victory o’er the grave

I imagined the blood.

I imagined the men who were appointed this task. Did they weep after? Or did they see these children of a subservient people as less than human, a few steps above slaves or animals? Did they go home to their own children that night, feeling the darkness of shame and guilt open like a wound in their gut?

I thought of the weeping and wailing that must have risen from the town. I thought of the practical implications: did each child have his own burial? Or did the Romans take the bodies and dispose of them in a mass grave?

O come, O COME, Emmanuel.

The story of Christmas, like the whole story of redemption, is marked with blood. On doorposts in Egypt and on the altar in the temple. Abel’s blood in the dirt crying out. Blood of so many lambs.

Blood of the one true lamb, on his scalp and face from the thorns. On his back from the beatings. On his hands or wrists from where spikes crushed through blood and bone.

We sing our carols and celebrate, as we should. But if we do not pause to consider the solemn, to consider the weight of sin and the bloody, graphic price of our freedom from it, we miss the glory of Christmas.

Disperse the gloomy clouds of night
And death’s dark shadows put to flight.

Rejoice, rejoice! Emmanuel has ransomed captured Israel.

And oh, what a ransom price he paid!

Merry Christmas.

Nov 29 2015

Why Ordinary Is Sometimes Extraordinary

Life as a mother feels oddly significant and insignificant at the same time. The lives of those little people are in your hands. The weight and gravity of it sometimes overwhelms me. I am also overwhelmed by how many times I must scrub the chairs at my kitchen table. I am overwhelmed also by how THEY ARE NEVER CLEAN.

My life and my days are bound up in what looks (and often feels) ordinary.

But what I’ve found is that being ordinary doesn’t exclude being extraordinary. When you see me at the grocery store with four kids, you won’t see the whole story. You might think: That woman looks slightly frazzled. (I might be.) Perhaps she has too many kids. (Highly possible.)

What you would not expect: sometimes, before going to the grocery store, I call women sold on the internet for sex. I sit in a room with other women who probably also need to the grocery store later. We call women and we offer them a phone number. Which also seems like a really ordinary thing to do, giving a phone number.

The last woman who answered the phone sighed as she found a pen. She sounded so very tired. Perhaps she was having a very ordinary morning. I wondered about this: about her morning and her daily routine. I wonder how you come to be someone standing in a hotel room for photographs that will be placed in an ad online. I wonder about her story.

I gave her a phone number and she said that she wrote it down. She said I could pray for her and I did.

That moment might have been just a blip in all the other moments of her life. But it might have been a extraordinary moment in the middle of an ordinary day. Maybe she will keep a scrap of paper with a number on it in her purse. Maybe hope will bloom bright and hard right in the center of her chest—not like a flower, but like a fire. That hope will be the start of something new. Maybe she will not remember our phone call. Or maybe this five-minute exchange will be a grand moment in her life story.

Meanwhile I just keep having to do dishes. And helping people blow noses. Tonight I cut my son’s fingernails and reattached the head of a pink toy pony. If anything is ordinary, THAT IS IT. It feels normal. Boring, even.

But as time passes I have realized the significance of small things. Of kissing freckles on a cheek. Of saying a prayer together in the car on the way to school. Of asking for forgiveness when I lost my patience (again). Of making a phone call to a very tired woman and offering her a phone number.

I have come to know a group of women in my ordinary suburb. Once a month we show up in a living room and we mingle and drink coffee and eat brownies. We sit in a living room and listen to an ordinary woman share the story of how Jesus interrupted her life. (Because Jesus almost always interrupts. He’s anti-manners like that.) We sing songs and pretend like it isn’t just a little bit awkward to sing songs as adult women in a living room in the suburbs on a weeknight.

None of our stories are the same—the stories we hear from the woman sharing each month or the quiet stories that remain unsaid. We come together a little awkwardly with all our differences and similarities.

We may be ordinary, but we are significant. Meeting together reminds me of that. I am not significant because of the work I do, whether raising children or fighting human trafficking. My life is significant and extraordinary because Jesus has interrupted it. He brings significance to all the small parts and sometimes interrupts the normal to remind me that he is anything BUT.

Jesus colors the tiny moments of my life and weaves them into a larger story.

Pruning Hooks is a very weird ministry. It’s not in a church or a building. It’s not very dogmatic. It’s not showy or very loud (except during fundraisers at a brewery with an 80s cover band). It is a ministry of stories and ordinary women whose lives are interrupted to serve local needs.

We serve the children who need school lunches.

We serve day laborers who need quarters for laundry.

We serve teens who need prom dresses.

We serve meals to people coming from all over the country with life-threatening cancer.

We serve teen moms who need diapers.

We serve women who are sold in ads online.

I find Pruning Hooks hard to describe, which is why, after I talked with its founder Jackie Hooks about writing this post, I spent way too many hours trying to hammer words into an accurate portrayal. Pruning Hooks is a ministry of ordinary women who KNOW they are not ordinary. We may sometimes feel the rub of so many diapers changed or so many days of cubicle work or trying to make ends meet or so many different things. We may feel normal sometimes. We feel busy. We feel small.

But like Jesus, Pruning Hooks is a ministry of interruption and a reminder of the extraordinary that happens right in the middle of our normal.

I am reminded to celebrate the way my ordinary becomes extraordinary when Jesus interrupts. I am reminded that I am not alone in a sea of suburbia. I remember significance in relationships and in digging under the couch to find a size 5 child’s shoe. I am reminded of the marrying of ordinary to extraordinary when a baby who was also the God of the universe entered the world in a stable.

If you are local to Katy (or Houston), I would invite you to connect with Pruning Hooks and with Jackie. If you are not, I would invite you to let Jesus interrupt your life and to breathe extraordinary into it.

Nov 16 2015

Mourning in the Age of Social Media

With this week’s terrible events in Paris, we as a worldwide community are forced into the weird space of reacting together via social media. It is good and it is bad. People are accused of writing insensitive Tweets. Fights break out in comments sections about blame and politics. Profile pictures change to show solidarity. Memes and images are created within hours to show support. New memes reminding everyone that this one event is one of MANY tragedies that happened worldwide this week alone. People try to capitalize on events to grow their followings.

We are all up in each other’s business in our social media world. When events like the Paris attacks happen, the connectedness can be both good and bad. We come together as a worldwide community. Then we argue about whose fault it is and how to solve the problem and why we should care just as much about the bombing that took place this week in Beirut (which did not get news coverage except now that people are noting that it did not get new coverage).

We are not particularly good at mourning in a community.

We tend to mourn a little, then get a little mouthy.

We get preachy.

We get judge-y.

We get self-righteous.

We get easily offended.

We get finger-pointy.

We have a lot in common with Job’s friends in the Bible. They did a pretty good job mourning with him for all his losses, and then they opened their mouths. Below are some thoughts I wrote on my first blog in the wake of the Connecticut school shootings a few years ago that I think stand true today as well.

As we stumble through community mourning, let us remember that sometimes sitting in silence is the best option. I’m not going to say what you should or shouldn’t tweet or blog or post on Facebook. But I do think that we can learn thing or two from Job’s friends.

*******

Yesterday morning I was at the gym when the events in Connecticut were playing out on the television. First, they thought good news because they weren’t bringing out injured parties to the triage area. Thank you, Jesus, I thought. Then, later, bad news. Just how bad, they weren’t sure, but they sent a warning: Be prepared for the worst.

How do you prepare for something like this? And more–how do you respond?

Being an active blogger and member of Twitter and Facebook, I have seen a lot of responses. I’ve trolled news sites as I’m sure many people have, searching for answers, searching for meaning. Searching for comfort.

A lot of people have a lot of things to say. I’ve read some lovely things offering comfort and support and community during this time. As much as it’s possible to give or have any of those things during this time, anyway. And then there are many who seek to solve the problem, giving causes to such a tragedy and solutions. If only we did this. If only we changed this.

I think of Job’s friends. Job, having lost everything but his life, sat in sackcloth and ashes, mourning. His three friends came to offer comfort. When they saw him from a distance, they realized the depth of his despair. They, too, began to weep and they tore their robes and put dust on their heads and they came to him.

Then this gem of a verse: “Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, for they saw how great his suffering was.”

After those seven days, of course, they begin to speak and offer solutions and reasons why. All of which were wrong, by the way. Their words and solutions and reasons gave nothing to him. The very best and only thing they did right was coming to be with their friend, getting down into the despair right with him, and saying nothing. They mourned with those who mourned.

I’m used to saying something about everything. Not that I think I have all the answers–far from it! I love to talk and to write. I blog and tweet about the little things like what I burned for dinner yesterday.

But this? THIS?

The best thing I can say is nothing. I will offer no political solutions. I will analyze nothing, give no reasons in the grand scheme of things for these events. I will not yet give my own words or verses that might feel like platitudes to someone that is suffering such deep, deep despair.

There will be a time for words. There will be a time for analyzing, for solutions. There will be a time for comfort and for Scripture and for encouragement.

For now, I think of Job’s friends and what they did right: shutting up. And I think also of Jesus’ promise in John 16:33, one that holds so true and is the only real comfort for me in this.

In this world, he says, you will have much trouble.

Yes—oh, yes, we have much trouble.

But take heart, says Jesus, speaking only hours before he himself was nailed to a wooden cross, take heart for I have overcome the world.

[You may also like: Should Christians Mourn?]