Life often gives you the keys to unlock doors that you have yet to arrive at. When you pull them out, at that divinely appointed moment of need, in your heart you know that you certainly have a Father, and He loves you dearly, That’s what this interview with Allie MacPhail was for me, a divine key that unlocked doors that I did not know were around the corner.
Today I sit, quite literally, in the aftermath of hurricane Dorian, on the island of Grand Bahama. We are working, resting, caring, providing, giving and receiving in community with one another. We are a community sharing in both the marrow-deep pain, as well as the day-by-day pleasures of progress.
Allie and I spoke at length about Christian community, specifically female community, and the difficult yet fantastic task of being able to say, “I’m not okay. It’s not okay.” In this moment, so many of us are simply not okay, some of us have not been for quite a while. But community always has, and always will play a vital role in our emotional as well as physical healing and well-being.
Allie is the director of Proximity, an outreach community/ministry of the St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Kirk in Nassau. She is a Canadian transplant who, along with her husband Bryn (Senior Pastor), serve faithfully in the over-the-hill community of old Nassau.
I became aware of Proximity several years ago when I attended the inaugural Proximity conference, and I knew then that Allie was someone I’d want to talk with more deeply one day, and a few months ago that day finally came. Below is an edited transcript of my interview with her. Visit Proximity242 on Facebook.
This will be the final post on Caribbean Women of Faith for the foreseeable future. We have had a wonderful time together writing for everyone that visits this site. Please check out our Contributor Page and visit the personal blogs of our writing team to keep up with and support our writing projects. We love you dearly, and will always be One Body, One Faith, in Christ!
About Proximity
Tasha: I was in love with it the first time I heard it. I said, “Oh my gosh, what a powerful and loaded word for women, like, this is going to be very interesting. The name alone said ‘okay she’s serious’.”
Allie: Yeah, the name for me was really important. I didn’t know what to call it. I noticed that I was yearning, which is weird, ‘cause I was always against women’s ministries. I know that sounds weird, but it always freaked me out how women showed up, and were perky and cute and everything was good… ‘we’re going to pray lightly and go.’ That was never what I wanted. So I always kind of avoided those. Then I found myself here, and after some significant things going on in my life, I’m going, “I’m really lonely.”
This is an issue for me and I mean, I had decent friends, but it wasn’t engaging and that’s where this came out – the proximity. We started a small group, like, a very small group and then what happened was I said let’s start going to women’s conferences in the States for something to do and we would all take a trip and come back. So I’m thinking an praying for this whole thing and as I’m doing it and just the word proximity popped into my head cause I knew I needed that I needed more proximity with God, I needed to share that with other women and in doing that become more approximate with each other, and we encourage them to go toward God and proximity as well, so it was just the perfect name.
About #NODLA? What’s that?
Allie: It’s called NODLA and it stands for ‘No One Does Life Alone.’ NODLA came up because everyone I found a lot of people were doing life alone, including myself. We might have this lovely group, but we still need more. We need to get into each others lives very purposefully. So that’s where that NODLA comes from and it became our battle cry for one another, but also as we go out into our respective communities and be with other women who may or may not know Christ. They are still told and shown through our behaviour and our love to them, and no one is doing life alone. And the greatest NODLA is Christ himself, who came to earth for our sins to make sure we don’t have to do life alone. And we just want that message to become clear for other women and it’s been really powerful very, very powerful.
About Women in Church Community
Tasha: I’ve watched throughout the years so many wonderful beautiful souls, beautiful Christian women, involved in the church – heavily involved, in some cases, and yet very alone and very lonely.
Everyone knows that women are running the churches – like, if there’s a fundraiser or a children’s ministry, we are the legs of the church. So we’re there, we’re there more than our husbands, in many respects, yet we don’t often embrace the community aspect, that really authentic community. Why do you think that’s been?
Allie: …as you gave me this question I’m like, “oooh I want to do some research on this.” But I’m like, how many generations or centuries have we believed that we have to ‘be okay’ in church? Where’d that start coming from? That we’re messy if we have just not a whole lot of not good stuff going on, and for some reason there’s been a culture, not just Bahamian or Canadian churches, just churches, saying that you have to hide that. Where did we learn that? When we hide stuff we isolate ourselves so our real selves aren’t allowed to come out, and so we feel like they’re only going to accept me if I’m smiling or if I’m ‘okay’ and then we just have to put that forward and the relationships become so superficial.
You look like you have a lot of friends, and you look like you’re having fun at the church event and even leading ministry, but inside you’re dying for a connection. I don’t know where that started…I mean research would be really cool.
Tasha: There’s a lot of pressure to be a good Christian – (we) have these ideas about of what it means to be a “good Christian” and I think we’re afraid of being judged – that someone is going to assess my Christianity against so and so’s Christianity and I’m going to be found lacking. So, let me keep this really good face on – that I’ve got it together because my having it together is somehow a reflection of how good I am at this faith. If you’re ‘doing it right’ life should be ahhhhh you know…
Allie: I know!
Tasha: And if you’re not doing it well, that’s why your life is having all of these problems.
Allie: It is so horrible that that is promoted through behaviour. I mean it’s not preached for the most – some prosperity gospels might preach that, and that’s not okay – but, I think it’s more than what’s preached, honestly I think it’s the culture that’s been created. You have a faith, then you better be okay! Part of that is true you know, Jesus you can get through anything ‘cause He’s got you. But that doesn’t mean it’s okay – the circumstance, the messiness, the ‘I don’t knows’, still are there. He just promises to be there with you. If you look at scripture nowhere does it say you’re going to have an easy life, in fact it promises that you’re going to probably have some problems.
Tasha: Lots of problems
Allie: Yeah, so where did we get it from? I don’t know, but we need to stop perpetuating it because it is deadly for our spiritual life.
Tasha: Groups like Proximity are giving back permission to be human… Now that you get into people’s lives and you’re getting in close proximity with these beautiful women just like yourself, what are some of the emotional needs that tend to emerge once we get together and the walls start to come down a bit? What are the most common emotional needs that you’re seeing among Christian women?
Allie: Well the common response once they realize that they’re in a group that’s accepting and that they’re no judging – there’s zero cliques. I’ve never seen a women’s group with zero cliques, but we have like eighteen churches represented and when you come in you don’t sit in the same spot every week. You just go wherever you’re going, and people just talk to you. It’s amazing I did not coordinate that. It’s happening because these women want to be real. It’s pretty awesome. But what I love is that there’s almost like an internal gasp – like, “I’m not alone. This life is hard.” I don’t know what emotion that would be – it could be isolation, loneliness, there’s a lot of desperation. We have a lot of poverty in our group. We have a lot of wealthy people in our group, like a huge demographic mix, but a lot of family stress. We look at other people where we would have assumed they’re okay and they share and they go “You too? Wow.” It may not be about money, it may be “I just don’t know what I’m doing? I feel lost. I feel like I don’t have direction. Me either!” Oh my gosh, it’s just coming together. And we don’t leave with a ton of answers, it’s not like a group of “Hey, I got the answer! I’m going to fix this week.” We walk together in it. So that common emotional need is, I guess, that need to be free from having it all together. That’s what I see coming out of the sessions out of our meetings. And that’s including me too, it’s not just I’m leading it.
Tasha: Here’s the thing: a lot of women watching this are probably saying, “I don’t have those feelings in my church. I don’t have that community. I don’t have that connection. I’m here, but that doesn’t exist for me.” What have we been doing in church when we’re not doing this (intimacy)? I guess the reason I’m asking is because I like to name things. I feel like when we can give it a name then we can accept it as a reality, and then that’s the first step in being able to change it.
Allie: We’re just, we’re not being present we’re more concerned about what other people are thinking of us. What we’re thinking of them? We’re very judgemental. Let’s be honest; we all do it. So, we’re in our own head. We’re not being in the moment, noticing where God is at work in us and in other people, and when we do that we see God’s righteousness coming out. We notice! It is unbelievable when we see God at work. We get so caught up with details that really don’t matter at all.
(At my church) there’s the “hat lady”, and she’s always sitting straight and perfect and I used to be kind of afraid of her, but then I’m like nope I’m just gonna be real. I (was) having this internal battle, but I said, “I’m going to sit with you.” I sat with her…and at the end of the couple weeks she leaned over to me and she goes, “I really like your hair,” and it was in pigtails. I was like, “You do?” I said secretly, “I didn’t even wash it today. I just went for a run, and I’m here, we’re here.” I talk and then I’m like – why am I saying that? Because I didn’t need to expose that part of me, but I did! And she leans over, and she tips up her hat and she goes, “I’m not even got hair! I didn’t even put my wig on!” and it was in that moment we connected, not like we’re best friends, but we’re in church worshiping, trying to find our way back to God in moments, and we didn’t have to get caught up about hair. It was so beautiful, but I also think you go to church, so therefore you must have behave, and you must have all these rules…that’s become the outside look to what church is supposed to look like and (we’re) still fighting against that.
Tasha: Our very last question talks about busyness because you and I both knew how long it took for this interview to happen.
Allie: Yes, I can’t even remember how long it’s been. It’s been months.
Tasha: …busyness often masks isolation and that loneliness that we talked about. I know I’ve used it, and I have to be mindful and aware of my emotions when I feel a compulsion to do more. I ask myself, “What is this about? What are you trying to prove right now? And why do you feel this way?” I know some wonderful, wonderful women who are wildly successful in their career and in their church ministry, and accomplishments for them are a way of dealing with that need to feel in control and need to feel valuable and worthy when there’s no one around them to affirm them and give them that sense of love. What is our message of hope – to women who really want to stop, but in stopping they really have to be alone.
Allie: Yes, and then what do I do what do I hang on to?
Tasha: What do I hang on to?
Allie: Proud of this paycheck, or proud of this thing that I’m doing and I can tell people about it but, I don’t have anything to tell people about on Thursday night. I just sat home; that makes me nothing?
So learn your identity in Christ, number one. You sit with God, and you say, “God you need to tell me who I am.” Our verse in Proximity is Isaiah 43:1 and I can’t quote it very well ‘cause I get dyslexia, but it says fear not… – ugh I’m gonna try that again – fear not, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name (name is my favourite part) and you are mine,” and if you can sit and learn that, that can tackle kind of any quest to be busy in order to fulfil something. The other thing is you want to challenge people. You want to (ask), “So how’s that working for you? So you’ve got all these things going on; are you really content? Is this working the way you think it’s gonna be working for you?”
But I think some of the challenge is that we really are time poor… we don’t have a lot of spare time so we legitimately are busy and trying to cut some of that out might be impossible. So, what do we do with that? …I don’t want to be busy, but I don’t have a choice…And there’s that desperation I look at a couple women we minister with, who minister to me too, like have five kids going to school still working dads not doing anything and the woman is absolutely under time crunch and doesn’t want to be there, but she has to be because her kids need to eat so what do we do with that? … I think one of the answers – not that I do this very well, but I want to work on it – is learn to be present, so even when we’re not busy and we’re not doing stuff can we be in that moment? …So if we’re not present then we’re always thinking and worrying or thinking in the past that didn’t work or we’re not enjoying what God’s giving us then. And I think God’s given us a life, busy or not, to enjoy through His Spirit, through His fellowship. We don’t look for that.
Just remember no one does life alone our NODLA thing is true we don’t just get into people’s lives we also have to let people into ours too. I’m going to get into people’s lives no problem, but letting them in hmmmm. You know I’m freaky right? What’s going to actually happen when you see that but, it’s really scary work but God wants us to do it and He’s with us the whole way in that.
Tasha: Thank you so much Allie.