Issue link: http://denverseminary.uberflip.com/i/653157
WE'RE IN THE KITCHEN NOT TALKING ABOUT ISIS. INSTEAD, MY MUSLIM DAUGHTER AND I ARE MAKING PIES. PUMPKIN. APPLE. CRUST JUST RIGHT. FILLING ON POINT. This is the Thanksgiving my daughter wanted. No arguing. No debating. No theological fisticuffs. Just cooking, family, and togetherness. "Look, Mom. We're bonding," she says, and we look at each other and laugh. Together. Both of us know we shouldn't be here. Together? I shouldn't even imagine it. But God. I want to say those two words so badly—to start preaching "up in here," as my beautiful urban pastor would say. Instead, I stand in my daughter's Nashville kitchen, measuring out flour; cracking eggs; politely sprinkling nutmeg in the pumpkin pie filling; keeping myself from jabbering about terrorists and mass shootings and my precious daughter's wild, worrisome, and theologically unwieldy journey to Islam. Our Christian daughter is now a Muslim. And I can find grace in that? Grace is the last thing I expected when, in 2001, she walked away from Jesus, leaving the Cross for the Crescent. In our long-standing and immovable Christian family, her announcement kicked me to my knees—the best place for a believer, but still the toughest. As a mother and daughter, our faith battle was royale and we fought it hard and ugly. As poet Adrienne Rich put it: Probably there is nothing in human nature more resonant with charges than the flow of energy between two biologically alike bodies, one of which has lain in amniotic bliss inside the other, one of which has labored to give birth to the other. The materials are here for the deepest mutuality and the most painful estrangement. 1 Indeed, I was furious. I was embarrassed. I didn't see it coming—this global shift in our family faith dynamic. We were, after all, determined Sunday churchgoers, and real satisfied about it. Going to church every Sunday, just as I was raised, my husband, Dan, and I were passionate and oblivious. We loved how that 7:45 a.m. worship service got us in and out of church so fast that we could get on with our day and our lives. So that's what we did. With our youngest daughter in particular, our weeks were filled and busy. She was a busy, pretty teenager: a cheerleader at her high school, a competitive ice skater on a respected Denver precision skating team, a bit rebellious—although she still dislikes when I say that—and with that "separating from your parents" thing in full swing, Sunday church services were her anomaly. It all confused me, for sure. I thought going to church on Sundays—which we all enjoyed—meant being in Christ. Moreover, our African American church experience was high-energy and Christ- centric. The music and preaching, let alone the discussion-rich Bible studies and the after-church suppers, made for a deeply rich amalgamation of faith, fun, and fellowship. But was this about Jesus? I thought so. Without warning, she donned a hijab, said that faith's short shahada, and converted. During her teen years, however, my daughter started saying no. "No, I don't want to go to church this Sunday." "No, I don't understand prayer." "No, God doesn't hear me. So stop talking to me about it all the live long day. Please." So I shut up. I didn't argue for Christ. I didn't invite her to re-meet the Lord. I just assumed she knew Him. Then I sent her off to a prestigious college to face her new life not with Him, but alone. There, in college, she left the family faith for good. Still hungry to know a God, as she tells it today, she gravitated to students from the Middle East who espoused a belief called Islam. Intrigued by her new friends' modest garb, cultural theology, and claims of a God "who doesn't need partners"—that is, Jesus, as she explains it—she left Him for them. Without warning, she donned a hijab, said that faith's short shahada, and converted. I got the phone call not long before 9/11. "Hi Mom. I just called to tell you that I'm a Muslim." "A what?" "A Muslim." And there we were. That long road of walking casually with Christ as a family, of watching a daughter pull away (but not knowing how to address her emotional departure), of seeing she didn't know the Lord for herself (but not making it a priority to learn how to prayer-fight that particular problem), had led us to this moment. ENGAGE 13 1 Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (New York, NY: Norton, 1995).