Words of Knowledge

In the summer of 2011, Andy and I left Foothills Fellowship, the church I had grown up in and attended for 20 years.

There I had met my lifelong best friends, been baptized by my dad at 9 years old, been a student youth leader, and then an “adult” youth leader throughout college. It was the church in which I got married, and these were the people who brought me food after M was born. My oldest brother was the youth pastor there, and my brother-in-law was also on staff at the time. My dad had been on the elder board for several years, and my mom was looked to as a role model of biblical womanhood and parenting.

Andy and I sat on a couch in the office of Pastor Alan, letting him know that we were planning on moving churches. He was the pastor of the new church we were going to be attending, New Life City. M was about 14 months old, and I was very pregnant with V. M climbed all over me as we talked to Alan about the difficulty of this decision.

I was terrified of being seen as disloyal. The concept of a “church-hopper” had been vilified in my upbringing. The idea of a person or family who is looking to church as a “consumer” — always asking what that particular group of Christians had to offer them. They weren’t looking to serve and grow alongside each other. They cared more about how a church service made them feel than about if it was theologically correct or challenging them to a deeper dedication to Christ. One was supposed to look to the church as a community to join and help build up. We should be looking for a church that will challenge us theologically — preaching the truth and how to live a life that honors God, regardless of your own opinions, questions, histories, or abilities.

The idea that leaving a church you’d been part of for 20 of your 26 years, after agonizing over whether or not it is God’s will, was having a consumerist mindset, is pretty ridiculous. But there you go. I’m a little intense.

Alan laughed as M settled on the little room my belly left on my lap and stuck his little hand down the front of my dress. “Ha! Wow. Don’t you think once they know where to find it and can ask for it, it’s time to stop nursing?”

I didn’t tell him that I had, in fact, stopped breastfeeding M, and it was only when I did, that he began putting his hand down my shirt. He was seeking a connection that he had lost.

Also, what??

But I stayed quiet and smiled. I’d become used to internally rolling my eyes at men’s opinions of how I chose to feed my babies.

Later in our conversation Alan asked me the question that solidified my desire to move to his church. “Do you feel the love of your Father?”

This was an eye-opening question for me. I had always “known” that God loved me. That’s what I’d been told, so I believed it. But did I feel it? I realized that the way I’d been imagining God loving me was with a wince and gritted teeth. He loved me because of who he was. Not because of who I was. This was supposed to be a comfort. I didn’t do anything to earn his love, so I couldn’t do anything to lose it. Unless I accidentally did, of course.

But this idea of a god who loved me “just as I am, but too much to let me stay that way” made me feel like a kid in the home of a volatile and grouchy dad who loved us but was always on the verge of a temper tantrum if I was too loud or dropped a dish. To be clear, this was not my lived experience with my real dad.

Had I felt God looking at me with the love and affection with which I looked at M? When I just couldn’t handle how cute and sweet and delicious he was with his little birdy voice, his marshmallow cheeks, and ample thighs. Could I imagine God gazing at me as I did while I gave M his bottle, and his brown eyes sparkled up at me? That was a stretch. But I wanted to experience it. This is why I was willing to leave the beloved church of my childhood. I wanted to experience the enthusiastic love of my Father.

NLC was a non-denominational charismatic church. Alan would say they were a part of the “Renewal Movement.” They would dance and cry and speak in tongues and fall down in the Spirit. Women were allowed to be ordained and speak and preach to the whole congregation, not just children and other women. Emotions were not only allowed, but welcome. It felt like freedom.

At Foothills, my family was on a pedestal. We were certainly “seen” in our church body. We were a success story — the family with 4 kids who sat quietly and took notes in church, and grew up to be pastors, artists, businesspeople, and nurturing mothers. People at the church had walked with us and witnessed as my dad grew his soup and dip mix business from 2 recipes packaged in the kitchen of our house with no water, to having a large warehouse in town where he was successful enough to send us to far beyond a comfortable living — the ability to send me and my 3 older siblings to private colleges without us ever having to deal with student loans. And my mom had homeschooled us well enough to get into those private colleges. She was a wisewoman in our community, and often looked to for advice on how to live the life of a biblical woman. My 2 younger brothers, who my parents adopted when I was 19. were also kind and talented and successful.

My parents had served God faithfully and had received his faithful favor in return.

At NLC, I was somewhat unknown. Andy’s musical talent did put us more in the public eye at church than we would have been. He played guitar for worship service, and occasionally as part of a band headed by the church’s worship pastor. But nobody here knew the connotations of being born into the Harden family. I got to be seen as my own adult self. Not just the quiet, sweet, innocent youngest biological child of a model Christian family.

And Alan and Gale, the pastors of NLC, really seemed to recognize something in me. “We just love you,” they would say in their Mississippi accents that had become slightly muted after decades in New Mexico.

Before we officially moved churches, Andy and I had gone to England with Alan and Gale, and others from NLC. We’d been married for only 4 months, and Andy had been invited to come as part of the worship band. During the trip, I experienced what I now recognize as probable love-bombing from Alan and Gale. Love-bombing is a tactic used (I think knowingly and unknowingly) by highly controlling groups and people to make someone feel intimately known and connected and valued. Alan told me I was a mystic — someone who thinks deeply about theological and philosophical matters and has a quiet and deep connection with the Holy Spirit. I felt like I was being recognized as a spiritual adult who was capable of important insights.

During our 7 years attending NLC, I had a few glimpses of the enthusiastic and unconditional love Alan had referred to. Of course, this Father I was told I’d get to know here, was actually pretty similar to the God I’d grown up with. There were still standards of pure motivation, unquestioning obedience, and now there was also the expectation of emotional abandon. Now I was feeling the pressure to think correctly, act correctly, and feel correctly.

One thing NLC prided itself on was openness to God’s voice. There was an assumption that God was eager to communicate with and work through us. You didn’t have to have an official church position to hear from him and be able to share what you hear with others. You didn’t even have to be a man! The Holy Spirit in you is the same as the one in church staff.

So people would often have “words of knowledge” to share with one another.

I received my first word of knowledge on our trip to England. I was sitting in a folding chair in a small school gymnasium, as Andy played atmospheric music in the background, and a man from the English church paced in front of the band and held a microphone. His eyes landed on me, sitting with my arms folded over my black t-shirt, with my newly cropped pixie cut. “You,” he said pointing to me, “are a cracker!” The cultural divide produced some confusion with me and my American companions. We were used to cracker being used as a term for a racist white person. He explained that in England, it means someone who is fun and spunky and attractive. “You think you’re just here to support him.” He gestured behind himself toward Andy. “But you have something to offer, yourself. You’re not a sidekick to him; you have great things to offer on your own.”

It felt pretty good. I wonder now if Alan put him up to it. A nice cherry on top of the love bomb. But it was probably just a good old cold read. It wouldn’t have been very hard: young couple, husband is very talented, wife is pretty and reserved and finding her safety in helping him feel more comfortable in this stressful situation.

The next one I can remember was after M was born. We were actually just visiting NLC so Andy could play guitar for worship. He would often be invited, especially if there was a guest preacher. I sat in the sanctuary, alone in a row with infant M sleeping in his car seat next to my chair. He wore giant headphones that squished his cheeks out because I was so anxious about the loud music hurting his ears. Again, Andy’s guitar swelled emotionally in the background as the guest preacher got up and began asking God for words for people in the congregation. His eyes landed on me, and he pointed me out just like the other man had done. “You,” he said. “Have the kind of love that will save lives.”

Years later, in some of the darkest times of navigating Andy’s depression and anxiety, our friend who had brought us to NLC, called me on the phone to tell me about a dream he had had. In the dream, he was sitting in our living room with Andy and me. As we were talking, he noticed a giant centipede crawling on my neck. He was trying to interject and tell me about it, when Andy reached over and grabbed the centipede and threw it. Our friend wasn’t sure what it meant, but assumed it was probably about Andy being able to one day rescue me as I was trying so hard to do for him.

At Auline’s funeral in 2017, a dear friend approached me. I had known her since I was little, and we had witnessed her faithfulness throughout many trials as she and her husband led their family. I had been talking to her about our family struggles, foremost on my mind at the time was the fact that Andy had fully left the faith. My friend took my hands in hers and looked at me with intense, loving, and uncomfortable eye contact. “Andy is a tree firmly planted by the river. Right now, there is a storm, and he’s bent over by the wind. But God is building strong roots under him, and these storms will only make him stronger.”

And more recently, after I’d stopped going to church altogether, a friend sent me a message telling me about an image she had seen as she was praying for me. “I saw a garden,” she said. “There were some raised beds painted white with plants in it and a wicker bench. The plants were tropical plants and were growing wild. They were super tall, green, lush and were overflowing from the bed. Someone had tried to contain them with a string at some point, but it didn’t work. They were bursting out of it.”

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At the times I was given these “words,” I held onto them tightly. Keeping them in my pocket like a rubbing stone to soothe me when I was sure all hope was lost.

Since then, I’ve been doing my own deconstruction of my faith. Having grown up in the church and believed so completely, this was a very painful process. Often those of us who have deconstructed or left the faith are written off as people who never truly believed in the first place. Let me tell you that in my experience, the more thoroughly you believed, the more extensive the demolition.

I’ve been thinking back to those words lately. It would be a lot tidier to just throw them out along with Jonah and the Whale and a literal Six Day Creation. But the trouble is that they seem to be true.

The more I step out of other people’s shadows and realize that I’m capable of more than I thought, the more I’m able to do what I and my family need.

In the past almost 14 years since I was told my love would save lives, I believe it has. I loved my husband and my children and my clients and my friends through scary and dark nights that could have swallowed them whole. And I’ve found that loving myself is the only way to truly live this life.

Every time I’ve collapsed under the weight of this life-saving love, Andy has been there to dig me out. He’s taken the centipede off my neck when I was frozen with fear.

And no, Andy hasn’t found faith in Christ again. But the winds and storms did make him stronger. Andy’s roots are growing deep, and he is standing strong for us. After years of feeling unable to measure up to his prescribed role as “spiritual leader,” his courage has been the catalyst to lead us away from harm.

I’d tried so hard to contain the beautiful and unusual plants that are my little family. I built the raised beds and painted them an appropriate color. But my family is too vibrant for white wooden borders.

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Somehow, these apparent fulfilments of prophetic words haven’t thrown me back into belief. Maybe partly because I have had, and continue to have, “words of knowledge” for people. There are times with my children, friends, and clients when I’m able to see a need and a truth so clearly that I’m able to find the words they need to gather strength in one way or another.

And it feels spiritual. It is spiritual. It’s my holy spirit and their holy spirits getting a quick glimpse of each other’s steadfastness and glory.

Some of the words given to me were cold reads and maybe unconsciously manipulative. But others were given by people who know and love me. People who could see past the layers of anxiety and striving to the deep, gooey me. People who had seen the ways that Love has saved their own lives and could recognize that same power within me. People who had been living in that Love long enough to see saplings grow into shade trees.