Liminal Spaces

Blessing the Threshold

Photo by Ronald Cuyan on Unsplash

I turn 48 on Black Friday. And I never thought I’d be in a liminal space at this stage of my life, with so much uncertainty about belonging in a faith community.

Married fresh out of college, opening a rad coffee café, having all three of my kids before hitting 30, and publishing my first book at 37, I thought my building years were behind me. As far as church was concerned, I thought we climbed the theological ladder, giving our family the best shot at knowing God truly and communing with likeminded people. Secure.

Thankfully, we weren’t insular in our relationships. We knew more than our Reformed church world. That was so helpful to keep me sane when spiritual harm came my way by so many leaders in my denomination. When the gatekeepers come after you, you so badly want to prove your orthodoxy, your goodness, your worthiness. It’s easy to get caught up in the injustice of it all, in defending your reputation, and in proving that you belong, that you don’t realize how with each step they are pushing you closer and closer to the door.

For a while I thought maybe it’s good to hang out by the door, to try and be a voice of reform, but also open it to the many other spaces and voices. I didn’t want to be a leaver. But then I realized it was more of an escape. So much damage was done to me and my family before I was able to realize the scope of it. And the scope of my own disillusionment.

I began this Substack with a pivot in my writing. Sharing the rawness of the threshold of transition. While looking for the poem in the church. It’s there, I know it. Not all in the same place. I’m a hunter and a gatherer of artists. Makers. Imaginers of the real. Many of you resonate. We have a number of friends who also didn’t expect to be in liminal spaces with their faith and belonging at this stage of life. It’s scary and uncomfortable. So often, when you ask God to give you what’s real, you have a hard time seeing it because you still have a lot of work to do in shedding all your faux securities and certainties. There’s so much unreality and pretense within our own selves. Turns out our cisterns are full of fears, misplaced desires, and self-betrayal.

Liminal space feels scary and uncomfortable because we are in-between. Not walking through a door of belonging. Not knowing where that door is. And yet there are so many gifts, so many keys dropping all around. Opportunities to receive and give love. Receive and give Christ. To notice miracles again. When you hang out near the tombs, you see little resurrections happening everywhere.

I am accepting that I don’t need all the answers right now.

There are better things to value.

I will bless this time.

Blessed are the liminal spaces

That we didn’t ask to be in

That force us to look again for a door

Look again

At our striving

Our fears

All that we thought we built to be secure

Blessed are these transitions

Even when we don’t know what is ahead

Even when we don’t feel secure

When we are forced to ask what it is we really want

And afraid to hear our own answers

Blessed is the waiting

The developing

The groaning and grieving of all that we’ve gotten wrong

The 70 times 7 chances

To participate in goodness

Blessed is the discovery

Of the raw beauty in the little things

The freedom to recapture wonder

To see the glimmer of holiness in a pause

In an unrehearsed smile

In a tear not held back

Blessed are the liminal spaces

That hold us when we cannot find the door of belonging

And the new world that opens up

As we find liminal inhabitants

And Christ who meets us there

In their faces