... And I listened

      I've got a fire in my belly.  It's the kind that rises from deep within, when an ember of passion has been fanned. It had been squelched for quite some time, but it never went out.  It was dormant, tucked away for safe keeping, until a safe time to re-emerge.

     When I was in middle and high school, I wanted to be a social worker when I grew up.  I wanted to help people, like I had been helped.  However, somewhere along the way I was talked out of it.  I was told there was no money in it, getting a job would be hard, it would be too much emotionally.

     And I listened.

     I went to a year of college, taking gen-eds, before dropping out to go to Youth With A Mission (YWAM).  My time in YWAM stoked my fire.  During my time there, I was really able to work on myself.  I know that may sound like a cliche, but there was work to be done.  As I worked to reconcile my past experiences and who God was, I seemed to develop a magnetic field around me.  I was a magnet that attracted other abused women and children{it's so strange how we can sniff it out in others!}.  I had many ministry opportunities that allowed me to interact with other broken and abused women and children.  Their stories just poured out of them. 

     And I listened.

     As I have listened to so many stories of hurt, trauma, and victimization one thing has become clear.  We as a church do a really bad job of  helping these women, often to the point of revictimizing them.  We say "everyone welcome", which is true as long as you have it all together and look like us.  We say we want to help but they remain marginalized.  They sit in a corner alone.  You know why?   Because the modern church doesn't handle "messy" well, and messy is where these ladies and children reside.  Working through their "stuff" is a process.  A grimy, smelly, dirty process. 

     I've had periods in my life when I had more interactions with these women and children.  It was some of the most fulfilling times.  I felt a sense of purpose.  The fire burned bright. But then I went through some awful things.  I was revictimized by the church, by a pastor who knew my past and used it against me.  I was shaken to the core.  I began to question my calling, my ability to help, if I was even able to make a difference. 

     I shut down.

     For the past several years I have been in a "ministry desert".  I just didn't feel like I had anything extra to give.  But my magnet continued to pull injured women to me.  I gave what I had, though it didn't seem like enough.

     I listened.

    Over the last month, I have felt that ember fanned to flame.  I feel a passion burning deep in my belly.  I have a stirring that is pushing me forward.  I have to do something.  I just don't know what that looks like yet.  I just know that I, that we the church, need to do better.  It's time to reach out.  It's time our arms pull in rather than push away.    It's time I step out of my comfort zone and back into ministry.  I don't know what that looks like yet.

     But I'm listening.

He Didn't Destroy Me

     I grew up in the church.  It wasn't part of my life with my biological family, but I loved it from the time I moved in with my foster/adoptive family.  I didn't understand it then, but I felt safe at church.  I just knew there was something different there.

     My parents were committed leaders. My dad was the worship leader and served on the church board for most of my formative years.  My mom was a Sunday school teacher.  She served in the nursery, taught some of the girl's groups and also cleaned the church.  We hosted weekly Bible study groups at our house.  Basically, if the church doors were open, we were there.  If there was a reason to meet up with others from the church, we were in.
     Those we some of the happiest times of my life.  Sure, there were some sad times.  When a beloved youth pastor and his wife moved away, I was devastated.  When the church split and we didn't go there anymore, I lost contact with friends.  But I formed new friendships at the next church, which lessened the blow.
     Church represented continuity for me.  The location, congregation might be different but my feeling of safety remained.  My soul was soothed.  It truly was a refuge for me.  None of my abuse, damage, brokenness mattered there.

     I hit a rough spot with church when I was in high school that lasted through the summer after graduation.  I was still in a relationship with Jesus.  We still talked-- all the time.  But I no longer felt like the church "fit", if you will.
     Fortunately a group from Youth With A Mission (YWAM) visited our church for a weekend.  I'll go into all the details about that in another post.  But I will say that that weekend was life-altering for me.  I finished out my first year of college, then went into full-time ministry with YWAM for the next 3 years.
     During those years I grew to understand why church had been so comforting for me-- I had experienced God.  I totally immersed myself in getting to know God, to really hear him and recognize his voice.  I begin to deal with my pain from the abuse and trauma in my early childhood.  Bit by bit, I was becoming healthy.  Whole.

     When I married my husband, we quickly rooted our little family in the local church.  And, like our parents, jumped in with both feet.  We taught boy's and girl's groups.  We attended Bible studies at other's homes, and hosted our own.
     My husband's job changed often during our early years of marriage, but we always found a church quickly.  It provided comfort and community, as well as allow us to continue to grow in our relationship with God.
     Naturally, when we had kids we wanted them to have the same church experience we did as children.  As toddlers they loved it.

     My husband's job took us out of state for a bit.  When we moved back here to Pennsylvania, finding a church was suddenly difficult.  We had never experienced that before!   He'd like one, I'd like another.  We visited a church where not one person spoke to us, and another on the same day the pastor resigned.  When we finally visited the church that would be our home for the next 10 years, we were ripe for the picking.  However, our experiences on that first visit were vastly different.  He felt like he was finally home.  I felt like my spidey sense had been activated.  I watched from the sidelines, for a year, as my husband became involved and our children made friends.  I watched until they wore me down.  I overrode my gut instincts and jumped right in.

     During the first 7 years, we were honeymooners.  Our lives revolved around the church, to the point that we sacrificed relationships with our own families.  We were given subtle suggestions that all our friends should be from our church.
     We joined teams.  We led groups.  We hosted Bible studies in our home.  I became the pastor's administrative assistant.  We enjoyed a favor that stirred jealousy in people who were working so hard for it.  We became part of the pastor's family.  They helped us through some really tough times in our life, and we opened up to them.  Me, especially.  I told them all about my trauma and abuse.  I showed them the broken pieces of me that I was trying so desperately to hold together.

     All the while, we were being manipulated.  Coaxed to behave a certain way.  Groomed.  They knew all my secrets, so they knew just what buttons to push.

     The pastor was a narcissistic control freak.  He would joke that he could "punish people without them even knowing it".  At some point that became directed at us, especially me.  But in my blind trust, I didn't see it until it was far too late.  Even when he made inappropriate sexual advances towards me, TWICE, I dismissed it as being in my head.  When my daughter was being punished as a way to control me, I dismissed it as she was being overly sensitive.  When my husband started to feel like something was incredibly wrong going on, I still refused to see it.  I had overridden my gut instinct years before; now I didn't trust it anymore.  They had broken me.

     But it would become much worse.

     One of the greatest offenses one could do at that church was to ask "why" about anything.  Blind obedience was demanded.  Anyone who questioned was quickly discounted and driven out.  His tag line was "if this isn't the church for you, we're happy for you to find another one".
     Well, I committed that greatest sin.  I dared to question.  I dared to compare one of my character issues with his.  They decided I needed to go.  They launched an all-out character assassination of me.  They froze us out.  Shunned, if you will.  We lost friends, but it was so much worse for our kids.  They didn't know why any of it was happening, and I didn't know how to explain.
     By the time we left there, I was broken.  I spent the next year in mourning.  I cried every single day.  My body just shut down.  I developed complex PTSD.  I watched my children fall away from the church because of what we'd all been through.

     I clung to God for my very existence.  We found another church, a place that gave us the space to begin to heal.  You see, a man hurt us, not the church.  A man attacked us, not God.  If there is one thing I know about God, it's that He has to be better than any man.

     It's been almost 10 years since we escaped what I now have come to understand was a cult.  It's been a rough road dealing with all that damage.  Unpacking those boxes, all the little compartments I had to stuff those memories into just to survive, is both freeing and terrifying.  I'm definitely not the person I was then, but my relationship with the church has not changed.  Mainly because it's not based on man.
   
     God has not changed. That gives me hope.  That gives me strength.