I Had to Believe Shalom for Myself, Too | Arsenal Stories (Week 4) | Taryn Tipton

[Applause]

I felt like really composed and ready. Now I'm like teary and shaky.

The shakiness might also have to be due to this coffee, which is my breakfast.

This is it. I was really prepared to make myself a healthy breakfast and get up early and then my kids ate it.

They literally just ate it right out of my bowl.

My name is Taryn. Taryn chipped in. I'm so glad you're here. Every week I sit there as Chad and today Brittany,

they talk about treating people as the thou and not the it.

Chad has made remarks about people with the great hair and like that's not me and the cool young couple and that's not really us anymore.

The mom with two crazy kids running around, I'm like, "Oh my gosh, is that me? I'm the one with the crazy kids."

That's an identity I haven't fully internalized, but my husband, Daniel, and I, we've been coming to the arsenal for a little over two years now.

We've visited before, gone to a couple of other small churches, but before our daughter was born, we knew we really wanted to find a place

where we could call it home and go deep in community and sink our roots. I'm so, so glad we landed here.

There's a picture I wanted to share of the very first time that we visited together.

That's me. I'm so happy, but mostly I think I'm delirious and that's three days before my due date.

We have a really impeccable timing. We really want to get to know people and then we were out for a long time.

Daniel was also losing his mind at this point, waiting for Grace to show up.

She did eventually show up. Grace is too now and then we also have a foster son, Alistair, who you've seen.

He's, he's also too, so we are like in the weeds with our instant twins. It's, it's fun though.

And so really every week, something that I'm struck by is how I'm so glad that, that Grace, especially, she's going to grow up in a church.

We're like, all she's going to know is love and acceptance and we pray every night for our kids that they'll know that that God loves them for exactly who they are

and that they'll be held by a community where they know they belong and this church is a literal answer to that prayer.

I was really excited when Chad invited me to tell my story. Like I've preached before at past churches.

I've done like Worth Repeating, which is a storytelling event, and in 2013 I even had a blog for a little bit.

So, you know, like I've told my story. Like that's such, that's such a 2013 thing to do, have a blog.

It was embarrassing. Please don't go find it. But I've never shared like my whole faith journey and certainly like never my story to this point.

And to be honest, like it's, it's a little vulnerable because it's like it's not polished.

So when, when he texted and asked like if I would share today, there were a couple of things like he kind of gave us to prompt us.

Like we were invited to share our faith journey, like what we had to deconstruct and reconstruct, how we ended up at the arsenal,

or we could talk about a characteristic of God, like in our understanding of that has changed over time.

So as I, as I thought about that invitation, like I realized those things are completely inextricable for me.

Like as my story has unfolded, my understanding of God has changed and like, and that has changed how I understand myself and my place of the world.

So like you're just gonna get all of it today.

So I wanted to tell, tell you a little bit about like how I was raised, like give you the context, the setting for the story.

I was raised in Flatonia. It's a real place. It's a tiny town between here and Houston. Have you driven down I-10?

Yes. Okay. So you saw it, like you saw all of it. There's one exit.

You might have stopped at the McDonald's. That was it.

And growing up there, like we checked every box for like the conservative Christian rural family, like weirdly large number of kids.

Yes. Like I think, let's show the picture of my family. This is me, like look at my butterfly clips.

And I'm, yeah, and I'm just, I'm just holding the baby like a little single 12-year-old mom, you know.

Super parenzified, super parenzified. We were homeschooled, so check, there's another one.

Thankfully you can see at least like we were marked safe from the like weirdly long denim skirts.

Like we weren't that version of Christian homeschooling.

And we also, like we went to the Southern Baptist Church.

And thank you to Nate, like you gave us a little primer on that last week.

And that's my context too. So if you were here last week, like you know a little bit about where this might be going.

So I had been baptized in the Catholic Church when I was a baby.

But I was baptized again when I was eight. So I'm like extra saved just in case.

I was, and I was like deeply embedded in the youth group, like saturated in Christian music and the Bible study and the culture wars.

And I'll tell you like some of the things that we would do throughout the year.

And if you grew up in church, like this might just like trigger a little like trauma brain for you.

Hot hearts, disciple now, youth evangelism conference, world changers, vacation Bible school, Bible drills, lock-in Sunday school, see you at the pole, true love waits.

Like we were in it, like this was our life.

Like our town and our school, like they were so small that like my church friends were my school friends.

And our parents were youth group leaders and our pastor was the president of the school board.

And like every part of my life was just like connected and colored by church.

And mostly it was good. But here's the thing that like I've had to sit with as an adult.

That the same people like who taught me about Jesus also taught me that a woman has to submit to her husband and can't be on stage preaching.

The same people who introduced me to a loving God also told me that being gay is a sin.

And the same community that taught me to care for the poor and the sick, they excluded people who I love deeply.

So it was all wrapped together, like the beautiful and the harmful and the life giving and the damaging.

But at the time, like this was this was all new and I just I bought in completely.

But deep down underneath all of it, like I was scared all the time.

I was scared that I was doing something wrong. I was scared that I wasn't really saved.

I felt like I had no way of knowing if I had like gotten salvation right.

You know, like if I prayed the magic prayer with every headbab with every eye closed, like how did I know that it actually took?

And then every year, like don't know the power team, the big muscly guys with the yeah, yeah.

It's like every year the power team, they would come to a local church and they would like rip a phone book in half for the Lord.

And then I can only imagine would swell in the background and I would like be there like, oh my gosh, do I need to get baptized again?

Again, again, like just to be safe, just to be safe.

So I want to tell you a story about the thing that like I was really, really like most nervous about.

Like I was scared about the rapture and a very, some of you were too, it sounds like, like in this very specific and visceral way.

Once when I was a freshman in high school, like I came home after softball practice and I fell asleep on the couch.

And when I woke up, the house was silent. Like you saw how many people are in my family, like where were they?

Well, obviously they had been raptured. So I like wandered through the house like, mom, mom, so nervous, dad.

Like nothing, nobody was there. So like my genuine first thought was like, obviously it had happened, like I was left behind.

So like I ran outside in a panic and I was like fully prepared for the tribulation and the horsemen and like the blood.

But my family was on a walk.

But for like five minutes, I was just like sure that I had, like I wasn't Christian enough to make the cut.

And so I didn't realize this was that funny. I'm like, this was serious for me, y'all. I was so scared.

But I was really jealous of like friends or camp speakers, like who had a real conversion story, like this dramatic before and after.

You know, like I was an addict. I was a mess until I met Jesus. Like that was a testimony because I felt like I had nothing.

You know, I said a prayer when I was eight, got dunked in the baptismal. I couldn't really remember any of it.

Like my life was pretty much exactly the same afterward, except now I was scared all the time that I was going to hell.

And I was scared to talk to people about Jesus. But I was also anxious because like, what if they died today and they went to hell because I didn't say anything?

You know, like totally normal things for a kid to worry about. Like totally, totally normal for a 12 year old to just be like, what about that person? What about that one?

And so not only did I did I envy people who really knew like that they were Christians, like I envy people who had like this emotional, passionate reaction to Jesus.

And, you know, like people who had the tears streaming down their eyes at the altar call, like who raised their hands in worship.

And like I would just stand there dry eyed hands at my side, like I was just waiting to feel something.

And so my my nickname was the Ice Queen. So for a teenager at church camp, like that's just a just a real special thing to be called that, like to have that reputation as the Ice Queen.

But listen, like I do. I loved my youth group and my community so much.

And I put one of my favorite pictures of camp at me with my best friends who are still friends with me to this day.

You know, we always have like the messy day on the last day of camp. And like, that's me on the last on the right.

Like I've spam in my neck for the Lord. Like, what does this have to do with like, this is just what my life was like and what I looked forward to every summer being coated in shaving cream and like mustard.

So gross. So like even in the middle of like all of this, it's like joy and the sphere and this mess, part of part of it was complicated for me.

Is I felt like I was relating to all of the wrong people in the Bible.

Like I wasn't Mary. I was Martha, like worried and resentful and feeling like I was doing all the work and like wondering why nobody was helping.

I wasn't the prodigal son. Like I was the older brother. I was responsible and obedient.

I was doubting Thomas. I was the person who had like the heart of stone.

I was the lukewarm church being spewed out of God's mouth. Like cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. That's me.

And yes, like I recognize now that I was taking all of the scriptures completely out of context and applying them literally to my little life.

I know that now that nobody was telling me that then.

And on top of like all of that, the things that I was being taught, like it felt so intangible. You know, just give it to God. Ask Jesus into your heart.

Listen for the Holy Spirit. Like what? Like I can give you my coffee, but I can't like give this problem. It just didn't make sense to me.

Like I didn't know how to do those things. But you know what wasn't intangible?

Following the rules, you know, I might not have been able to feel what I wanted to feel, but I knew like I could do the right thing.

So I clung to that instead. If you're familiar with the Enneagram, I was like little Enneagram one in the making.

So there's no partying, no dating, make good grades, volunteer, go to church, go to college, find a nice Christian guy, marry up.

Like I knew exactly who was in and who was out. And I knew what I had to do and what I had to say to stay in.

And I was safe. I was safe inside like this little bubble of legalism and this wholesome image that I had.

But at night, like those fears and the questions and the doubts, like they were always there and praying felt kind of empty.

And it's like I was it's like I was wearing a t-shirt with an itchy tag.

Like even when I was thinking about something else, like this ill-fitting faith was like always there, like just scratching at the back of my mind, like reminding me that I wasn't enough.

And so that's that's how I grew up. But then after college, I got married and I moved to Shreveport, Louisiana, which I was not excited about.

Like no one graduates from college and is like Shreveport. That's that's where I'm headed.

But I followed my husband there for medical school and, you know, like found solace in the fact that it was only going to be four years.

But what I didn't plan for was like actually really liking the city. And more than that, falling in love with the church that we found there.

So it was different than what I had grown up with. Like the community just felt really fun and authentic.

And I understood like this is truly a church family. And my questions and doubts were welcome instead of being swept under the rug.

And it was like, you know what churchy people say? Like, these are my people. Like we do life together. Like, oh, it was actually true. I was really grateful for that.

And I started to find a version of faith that actually fit that made sense to me.

I wasn't like I wasn't quite sure what I had been looking for, but I found it and it was a faith that was bigger than being right.

It was faith that was bigger than a personal salvation just for me and like some nebulous afterlife.

Faith that was bigger than just keeping myself out of hell. And for the first time, I was introduced to this idea of shalom.

Like the world as God intended it made right, made whole. Like the idea that I could actually be part of that healing.

And that was a version of faith that felt actually compelling. Like bringing God's kingdom come and making things on earth as they are in heaven.

So I started like reading and listening and having conversations that actually like made me excited to be a Christian again for the first time.

And eventually, like I stopped feeling like scared and anxious all the time about faith.

And I was encouraged to step into leadership roles. And I did eagerly. The first woman I ever heard preach was me in that community when I was in my 20s.

And deconstruction, I think it's been a trendy word for the last decade or so. And I know for for so many people in this room, like that was a wrecking ball for you.

It's something that upended everything at once. But for me, it was gentle and it was gradual and it happened within the safety of a community that helped me.

And it was more like like this replacing, you know, like picking things up and deciding, do I keep it or do I let it go? And here's what I decided to keep.

God is good and faith communities are critical to creating more just and beautiful world. And that love is always the point I could hold on to that.

And around that time, I got a tiny little like white girl tattoo, a mustard seed.

I think so. I know it's a dot. It's a dot. The tattoo artist was like, are you kidding me? I'll do it for free.

And Matthew, like it comes from a verse, Matthew 1720. Jesus says, truly, I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, move from here to there and it will move.

Nothing will be impossible for you. And my whole life, like I felt like I didn't have enough faith.

But maybe like I could I could have a tiny little mustard seed amount. Like maybe that was enough.

And for a while, like that was it. That was the story like could have been a nice ending right there.

You know, like small town girl finds her way, opens her heart, gets a tattoo scene.

But, you know, like life doesn't really work like that. And I know like a lot of the girls here, they've they've heard this part of my story.

But my husband and I, we moved to San Antonio for his medical residency. And then I was invited to become the first female minister at that church.

I left back in Shreveport. And at that time, like this was my dream job. How could I say no?

And so I quit my stable job in San Antonio. I moved back and I started my new job as a minister.

And in that role, like I got to be the kind of woman that I needed to see growing up like a woman with work that mattered and something to say about faith and hope and community.

And so for a couple of months, like I wore out the highways between Shreveport and San Antonio, navigating my new role as a minister, but still trying to be like a really present partner.

But I was living like a double life full of connection and purpose when I was in Louisiana at the church. But when I was here, like I was just a wife and an increasingly unhappy marriage.

Our apartment felt really lonely. And the few moments that my partner and I had between like his really long shifts at the hospital, like they were they were fraught with tension.

And he told me like I was being selfish and choosing that job over us. And finally, he reached a breaking point, like he said, like he couldn't do the back and forth anymore.

And he gave me an ultimatum, like leave the church or we were done. And like the good Christian girl I had always been, I quit.

And so for for a summer that was like in May, maybe for for a summer, like it felt like my life was out of standstill.

I was in a holding pattern, like praying for a miracle and fighting for my marriage, like waiting for him to decide like if he was going to fight too.

And he did decide and he decided like that he was done. Like he wanted a divorce and I had to move out.

Like so think about the context in which I was raised and like how this sat with me and the shame that I felt like how this was like never OK.

It was never supposed to be part of my story.

So I had to I had to move out. Like I put my job. I was unemployed.

So I found myself churchless and jobless and spouseless and homeless, which is a sentence like I never imagined myself staying into a microphone or really like anywhere.

It's just it was terrible. And it didn't stop there.

So in that same season, my parents divorced and my mom moved away and my dad, who'd been like a well-respected elected official in our small town,

he had a really public scandal and spent time in prison and everything that like my tiny little life had been built on just shattered all at once.

And I felt like I had nothing left. And I was going through some old journals as I was thinking about my story.

And from that time, I had a journal entry. That's just one line. And it says God is invisible and doesn't feel real.

And so what like what do I do with that?

Well, what I did with it was I booked a one way flight to Spain.

There are healthier ways probably to navigate that.

But I was like, I've got to get out of here. So I told my family, like, maybe I would be gone for three weeks or for three months.

Like, I wasn't really sure. And I didn't I didn't have a plan.

But I was just like, if I was going to be sad and apply for jobs, like I could do that while I drink sangria, like in a really pretty place.

Yeah. Well, and like I'm not on a serious note, like I just I desperately needed it's like something to shake me out of this.

This grief and the shame spiral and remind me like there is still beauty in the world.

And after I'd been there for, I don't know, maybe a week or so, like something started to shift and it felt like I could finally take a breath.

And I was sunburned and like my feet hurt from like walking miles and miles like on cobblestone streets.

Like I wasn't I had no plans. I wasn't doing anything just like walking around in the sun and like feeling a little sad.

But like, oh, that's pretty. But like my mind was starting to feel clear.

And there was one weekend that that I took a bus to the coast and like without even stopping to to check into my household.

Like I went straight to the beach and just dropped my suitcase on on the sand.

And there like I was by myself. I was swimming in the Mediterranean, like looking up at the sky.

I was very, like very pre love. I admit that I made myself like I just made myself be still,

like feel all my feelings and see, like, what did I what did I feel about God?

This new version of my faith that I had embraced, like, could it hold this?

Like, could it carry me through this shattering? And I found that it could.

Like, I believed that God could heal and redeem and he was still in the business of fixing broken things.

And if I believed in Shalom for the world, I had to believe it for myself, too.

About a year later, I came back to San Antonio. Obviously, I'm not in Spain like I came back.

I started putting things back together. I wish I was in Spain. No offense.

Yeah. A year later, I took another trip.

This one was to the Grand Canyon. And this is what I wrote in my journal then.

It said a lot can change in a year. And it feels fitting that exactly one year later, I'm on another solo trip.

This, however, is not a trip of desperation, but of celebration.

I'm celebrating the rich community I have finally found in San Antonio, a job I love and evolving faith and the possibility of restoration.

And I did. I found so much healing and restoration and joy on the other side of that pain.

But here's the irony. Like, I have to stand up here and admit, like, that expressive faith in this big interior experience of the divine,

that's still out of reach for me, just like it always has been.

I'm not crying at the altar. Like, I still feel like I can't hear God so clearly, but I'm not worried about it anymore.

I've decided that I'm not going to waste one more second of my life worrying about whether I'm performing my faith correctly,

or whether hell is real, or whether the rapture is literal and imminent, or whether I'm really saved. I'm done.

I let go of the idea that faith has to feel a certain way, or look a certain way, or be performed at, like, the certain emotional pitch to be real.

And when I stopped waiting for God to show up in, like, these big dramatic ways, I started seeing God everywhere in, like, these little moments,

and how friends carried me through that season of brokenness. I saw God in, like, late-night conversations on the couch.

I saw God in nature, like, that day on the beach in Spain, and on hikes to waterfalls that took my breath away.

I saw God in holy places that were outside of my own faith tradition, like a smoky temple in Bali, and in a Catholic mass.

And I've seen God in the heaviest moments, in the NICU after my daughter was born, and crying with my foster son's mom.

I still have questions and doubts that my experience of faith now feels more like peace, and freedom, and gratitude for all of those moments when the presence of God feels close.

And I spent so many years thinking, like, I was doing faith wrong because I identified with the anxious, and the doubting, and the rule-following,

and the emotionally unavailable characters of the Bible, like, all of the Bible villains that felt like, "Why am I like this?"

But as I was going back, like, it turned out Jesus had a lot of things to say to those people.

To Martha, anxious and overwhelmed, who says her name twice, like, "Martha, Martha, not a rebuke, like, it's tenderness."

And to the prodigal son who did everything right, and, like, he felt unseen, the father said to him, like, "You're always mine, and everything I have is yours."

And to Thomas, who needed proof before he could believe, Jesus meets him with an invitation to touch his hands, not shame.

And to the heart of stone, he says, "I will give you a new heart."

To the lukewarm church, he says, "Here I am. I'm standing at the door knocking. If anyone opens it, I'll come in."

The message is always the same, like, "I see you, and I love you, and I'm not done with you."

And I want to be clear. Like, this isn't the end of my story. He's not done with me either.

And everything isn't perfect. Like, all the loosens aren't tied up neatly.

There's still a lot of things that are painful and messy, and I know my faith is going to keep shifting.

Good, like, good, because that means it's alive and it's growing. I'll keep picking things up and putting things down.

And I still don't have, like, this sweeping before and after testimony I wanted when I was in youth group.

Like, I don't want that anymore. That sounds exhausting. But what I do have

is a story about how God is faithful and loving, and he shows up in the mundane.

And for me, that's enough. And this is what spiritual practice and growing more Christ-like has looked like for me these days.

Now, how can I be faithful and loving and show up in the mundane?

I have loved this part of a verse, Ephesians 4.1, my whole life. It says, "Live a life worthy of the calling you have received."

For graduation, like, a friend painted it in a very Hobby Lobby style, like, sign that I hung over my bed for years.

"Live a life worthy of the calling you have received."

And when I was younger, like, I thought that that meant ambition, lofty goals.

Like, changing the world in these, like, big, unmistakable, like, visible ways. Like, I was gonna be a senator or a missionary or a CEO, you know, something like that.

But what if the calling that we have received is simply this, like, to experience God's love and to love others well in return.

Like, to faithfully show up in these unglamorous and un-Instagrammable ways. We just love the real-life people in front of us.

And I think that living, like, that kind of calling, that's the kind of tangible expression my little mustard seed faith was looking for all along.

Like, maybe this is how I bring Shalom into the world.

And as I was thinking about what I wanted to share today, I kept coming back to the question of, like, why do we tell stories at all?

You know, we tell them for entertainment, to learn something about the world and the human experience.

And as believers, our stories tell us something about the character of God. And, like, Brittany, you said this so beautifully, but each of our stories reveals, like, the unique expression of God in that person.

And we tell stories for ourselves, too. Like, there's something healing about sharing the hard parts out loud, instead of keeping them hidden and telling our stories that helps us to make sense of what's happened to us.

And I recognize that mine is not the only story set in this place. Each of us has one, and all around us, like, our neighbors are living a narrative that is as rich and as complex as ours is.

And all of our stories are tied together. So, I wish all of you were able to tell your story as part of the series, because each of you is a unique image bearer of God.

And the more we listen to each other, the more we can understand who God is. So, even if it's not on stage, I'd love to hear your story one day, and I hope I get to.

So, thank you. I love you guys so much.

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