the break up II aka - don't know what I'm doing here

I am going to break-up with my significant other. It is scary. How do women “go it alone”? I have been in this relationship for 30 years. When I made my commitment to be true, I was told that the key to making it work is to learn to listen, compromise and to love, even when you don’t feel like it.

I am married by the way. And, I am not cheating on my husband. The relationship I am ending is the one with the Church – in particular the Southern Baptist Church(es). I joined the church when I was ten. I have my life to Christ, in service to the Church. It took years to realize that I was being molded into the model of a good Southern Baptist woman. Ok. I had to give up the idea of being a pastor or deacon. It was hard but I could still be on the finance committee or teach Sunday school (with the exception of a men’s class).

After a while, that just didn’t work for me anymore. I still didn’t want to be a pastor (I’m not that stupid), but maybe someday, I might want to be a deacon. So began my relationship with Broadway Baptist Church, in Fort Worth, Texas. It was everything I could have imagined in terms of a relationship with a church. Then, the inevitable happened. As with every church I have ever been a member of, after three years of attending, Broadway had an “issue”. It was not a typical issue most Baptist churches deal with. This issue happened to be about accepting homosexuals as members openly. Most Baptist churches have the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Broadway was more open. We walked out our faith out together, regardless of where we stood in terms of our beliefs.

Before Broadway, I was in another Southern Baptist church for eight years. It was long enough to go through two splits; one over firing the music minister and the other over the infidelity of the senior pastor. A patterned developed.

So, I am breaking up with my significant other, the church. In the movie “Sex and the City” Smith asks Samantha what she will do as a 50 year old woman when she is on her own without a partner. Her answer is something like mine:

I don’t know but I will am willing to find out. Then I smile and walk away in a great dress and killer high heels.

the break up