It’s time. People’s lives, families, and well-being are on the line. It’s time to get real. It’s time to get serious. I’ve gotten too many emails relaying a lifetime of damage from one specific mistake. A mistake so many of us make but that no one, not even The Church at times, ever seems to point out. Can you spot it in Grayson’s story?

Who am I?  Who am I supposed to be? Where do I turn for answers as my life implodes? All questions Grayson asks himself.

PTSD, anxiety, depression, mental health issues.  There are times he looks back on his life, his decisions, experiences at work, screaming at his wife once with a rage from depths he didn’t know he had.  Sometimes he just shakes his head and asks himself, what was I thinking?  

All while being part of The Church.

He can’t sleep, literally.  Half the time he tries his dreams grip him in a way that some call terror. Night sweats, visions, so real they blur the line between sleep and wake.  

Newly married, just a few years in, there was a void.  He felt it.  She knew it. It was off in a way something had to change. He just wasn’t sure what.

She was never raised with faith.  He was raised in church.  She started going with him when they got together.  These days he sees her relationship with Christ deepening.  

Yet, something was still there.  Between them.  Invisible, but yet fully noticeable. Is it him? Her?

One day he’s sure he’ll understand.  They’re making strides. Slowly, it’s a process. But it’s getting better. The void is closing, something is changing, and all he can do is point to Christ and be thankful.

What is The Church?  

His entire life, born and raised in Sunday service.  

What is a church?  Is it a place?  God’s house?  Does He live there somewhere?  

Is it a body?  A group of people, leaders, guides?  A place for healing, connection, exploration?  

Or a place of fake, surface, plastic, shallow?  

Christ talked about “His Church.”  Was He talking about my church?  Her church?  Their church? The Catholic Church, Reformed Church, Lutheran, Baptist, Pentecostal, Methodist, African, Presbyterian, United, Orthodox, Progressive, Evangelical, Seven-day, Church of God, Armenian, Apostolic, or so many others?  

Or did He mean the entire Church?  

Who’s part of that church?  What makes it up?  Is it universal? Is it a number of believers that’s heard a message, lived it, been filled by His Spirit?  No matter the label they’re under?

Or maybe we just go to church?  Is it a building?  A place where people gather under one roof to sing songs and listen to someone share some helpful tips and advice for their lives?  

What’s your definition of church?  What’s it mean to you?  

For Grayson, church was life.  It is life.  He knows the lingo and the practices.  He’s aware of the structure and the rhythms.  He knows scripture, substance, and is part of the many groups it offers.    

He’s ingrained in and weaved into the fabric of The Church.  And also his church.  A community not plastic, surface, or fake.  But messy, honest, and deep. As any kind of true community really is.

It saved his life.  

His church, The Church, it’s given him a place to frequent, focus, and connect as life happens, good and bad, all around him, constantly.  And it’s directed him one way. To Christ.  

He’s made mistakes.  So many mistakes.  Through life, in growing, in living.  Wrong moves,  insecurities, he holds them.  They claw at him.  During times when he’d rather not see them and when he doesn’t want to deal with them. Sometimes he wonders if they’ll ever go away.  

Insecurities about life.  About marriage. Parenthood. Decision making.  Depression.  

Anger, he holds it sometimes to a point that when it comes out, it’s like a volcano erupting from somewhere deep in his soul.  Issues that have been building for so long as he holds them in and pushes them down until finally, something sets it off, and he becomes shocked at what it reveals about who and where he is.  In life, in his heart and mind.  

How do you balance it?  How do you work, raise a family, and spend the right amount of time and attention with them, with yourself, with God?  

How do you vanquish your past?  How do you get away from bad decisions and demons hiding around corners waiting to creep up at the worst time and place?  

He’s not sure yet.  

He’s still working on it.  Christ is working on him.  Slowly. 

This isn’t one of those stories that ends with some calming quote and life lesson that brings it all together.  

Because some, many, or most people’s lives aren’t there yet.  We don’t have the answers, the closure, the ability to look back at the story we created to see how God used it in weaving a healing and a purpose that’s changed us into who we are now.   

Some people, like Grayson, still sit battling anxiety at inopportune times, struggling with PTSD, seeing their mental health as a stumbling block to being the best father, husband, and follower of Christ they can be, while still running from ghosts.  

What is The Church?  

These days, The Church is where Grayson finds rest.  The Church is where Grayson finds accountability, direction, and brotherhood.   The Church is where he can lose himself and turn to, when the volcano erupts and words have been said, mistakes have been made, and the Spirit of God convicts in a way that our only option is to go.  To turn and follow.   

To press into Christ, into His Church. The Church.

There’s no fake, plastic, or surface here.   

This is where Grayson finds life.  

Where his soul is refreshed and his direction led.  Where he finds leadership in abundance pointing to the ultimate Leader that has always come before.  

So he presses in.  

To The Church. To God.  To prayer.  To CONNECTION.  

There’s so much Grayson needs to say, reveal, and make known, hoping as God points out his issues here, there, and there, He’ll bring the lurkers out into the light and take away their ability to haunt.  

But they seem to always come back. Some, more than others.  He isn’t sure why.  

Why go to church?  

Why be part of The Church?  

For him, the answer is easy.  Leadership and connection.  Leadership that helps him to CONNECT to the One who brings peace, direction, LIFE, and a new family that surrounds him. 

And it all starts with one Pastor’s honest admission here.

That’s the type of leadership and family that he can fall into, be desperate for, when all that’s happened, all that clouds his mind takes over, and he can’t see the forest from the trees.  

CONNECTION, to others, other sons and daughters struggling, dealing with life’s ills together, recognizing that this process isn’t easy or peaceful.  CONNECTION to people who are honest about the pitfalls, dark hallways, and those cobwebs that always continue to be built in the corners no matter how many times we sweep them away.  

For Grayson, The Church is home. The Church is community.  The Church is the firefighter reaching out on the side of a nine-story building when it’s on fire and he has no other option but to jump.  He can’t see God through the smoke, he can’t find his way through the flames.  And there’s no other way down.

Reality.

“I don’t have all the answers, maybe not most of them, but I do know that I need to keep my eyes fixed on Christ as I become a deeper disciple of His.”

He knows he’s on a journey that will last a lifetime.   He knows that who he was without Christ is very different from who he is now as Grayson tries his best to follow and understand.  

He knows that his life, his mistakes, missteps, history, and all the things that make up who he is and what he struggles with make up everything that Christ can and is in the process of healing.  

He knows that no matter what happens in the future, as long as he puts first things first, and makes sure He has God Leading out in front, life will go as it should.  As He wills.

Grayson has found glimpses of rest and life, peace and direction, through The Church, through The Spirit, and it calls him consistently.  

“Come back.  Stay with Me.  CONNECT.  Get your LIFE Back.”

The new direction has even helped him start his own non-profit organization for police officers with similar issues.

How do YOU explain The Church? 

Is it a place, a community, a building, a feeling, a future?  Grayson knows, whatever it is, he’s a part of it.  Christ is leading it.  And he couldn’t be more thankful for anything in his life.  

Besides, maybe, his beautiful wife and daughter.  

They, Christ, and The Church, are his world.  

And the Spirit of God is making him a better man, albeit slowly, for them, and for Him.  

Appreciation.

To Grayson, for a vision of the church that I’ve not seen in many I talk to.

What’s church, The Church, your church mean to you?

Is it a safety net? Is it a prison? Is it a feeling? A building, a group, a movement, or maybe a dying portion of history past?

Is it worthless, worthwhile? Or could it be something else entirely?

Honestly, this is something I’ve been trying to answer myself. I feel like a breakthrough is right around the corner.

Looks like the corner has some cobwebs though. I feel like I’ve cleared those out before… Time to get a broom I suppose.

Next week, it’s time to start cleaning.

Cheers

C

Did you spot it? Our greatest issue? The one thing that both grips and leads us all down wayward paths as we blow up our lives while we fill with regret. Grayson just shared it. And for a few of us, myself included, it’s time to get to work. It’s time for a new year and a new you. Next week we’ll jump in. Have a great week.

Get ahold of me here, or at Chad.campese@gmail.com

Written by: Chad Campese

Chad Campese is a father, husband, police officer, blogger, and author of the book Confession of a Christian Fraud.  He holds a BA in Christian Counseling and psychology, is heavily involved in peer support and recovery when it comes to first responders, and is an expert in living his life and faith as a fraud. These days he simply relies on the leading of the Spirit as he tries to slowly and purposefully take life one day at a time.