I woke up the morning of October 8, 2020, to a text from Friend #2 that said…
No, Whitney that wasn’t the drop of the gauntlet. That is me taking a stand that I’m not going to be a scapegoat. This discussion is futile and I’m ending my portion of it.
My answer…
I have apologized repeatedly and admitted I was wrong and asked to make it right. I don’t know what else you want me to do. That’s all I’m humanly capable of. I don’t know what else to do.
I decided that because the argument was only between me and Friend #2, I would remove the other two from the burden of the conversation. So, I texted her privately and said…
I decided just to text you privately instead of in the group. ****, I’m sorry. Genuinely sorry for what I said that upset you. I had a moment that I said things I shouldn’t have. I hope our friendship is deeper than a disagreement. I just ask that you let me know if you’re going to speak to me again or not. I’m exhausted from wondering. I meant what I said yesterday. I don’t know what else to do.
She replied almost immediately…
I accept your apology and I did yesterday. I understand about saying things you wish you could take back, I’ve done it too. It is frustrating to have to confirm our friendship. I do care what happens with you and maybe to fault. I’m learning to just step back and let the dust settle. I do not like friction- it happens but that’s not how I want my life to be. The one thing I love about our friendship and with ***** and *** is drama is/was never an issue. We can be cranky, funny, smart mouths with each other and no one is offended because we are secure with each other. I haven’t cut you off, I just needed the time to separate those emotions to think clearly.
I replied…
Thank you for accepting my apology. Do you need more time separated? I don’t want to push if you aren’t ready. I agree. That’s what I love about our friendship too. But none of us are perfect. We are hormonal women so drama was bound to happen at some point. It definitely doesn’t have to revolve around drama, I think we just have to understand that we’re all human and decide if we love each other enough to handle the tough times too. Friendships aren’t always perfect. I’ve walked away from several that I wasn’t willing to fight for, but this one is different for me.
Her answer and the last private text I ever received from this “friend”…
I very much agree and know it was bound to happen and probably again. I’m at peace with this.
There are some things I want to point out…
First of all, I hate myself for being weak. I was trying to salvage something that could not be salvaged. What this friend had admitted the day before was how she really felt. I should’ve realized that quickly and just bowed out.
The words in the following text, printed below, that she sent the day before should’ve been enough to make me walk away and not look back.
Well let me be clear. What you are considering me holding back is like a salt grain. So if that is your worry is coming from to spark this crazy text, I might would check again. Church is no longer a common interest. So, naturally I’m not going to be talking much about it. And it is a sore spot. I don’t internally flaunt stuff like that in people’s faces. The protection isn’t just for you. But I think you are wrong about not finding a church in the middle of a pandemic. God is just a little bit mightier than that. That’s not my choice, it’s yours. Just want to clear that up. There is no shame in being wrong, ya know.
That amount of anger is built up; it didn’t just happen because of a text. She was done with me long before I asked; I just gave her a way out.
To be fair, I was probably done with her before that point as well. I found myself not trusting her long before this day. That distrust was what spurred the first message I sent asking them where I stood with them.
But I hate that I didn’t just call it out for what it was. Instead, I returned to the old habit of apologizing for something that didn’t require an apology.
I also noticed that she didn’t apologize for anything at all. She didn’t take ownership of her part in the argument; she put it all on me. And she even put the little passive aggressive “The one thing I love about our friendship and with ***** and *** is drama is/was never an issue .”
The is/was wording says that things were good, and I ruined it. And maybe I did. Perhaps I did ruin it. Maybe I should’ve kept my mouth shut. Maybe I should’ve just appreciated that they still wanted to be my friends, but also realize it would never be the same since I left Tree Town. Maybe that should’ve been good enough for me.
But it wasn’t…
I couldn’t stand the constant wondering. I felt like I deserved to know.
Should I have done things differently… yes. Should I have been kinder in my approach… yes. Should I be allowed to ask questions and bring to the table any concerns I had… yes.
I will always think that everything I said negatively about the church and the pastor became more than they could handle. During those times when I was hurting the most… after my evaluation, the raise, the new children’s minister, the loss of friends, the loss of friendship with the pastor… they heard it all unfiltered… it was too much. I crossed a line that I didn’t know existed.
After October 7, 2020, things were never the same. I tried to send fun texts to engage them in conversations. I wanted desperately to make it work.
I should’ve just walked away.
And eventually, I did.
On January 19, 2021, I typed out this text message I never sent. This one I ran by my husband, and he told me it was good, I could send it if I wanted to, but hadn’t her silence told me enough… did I really want to poke the holy bear?
Here it is…
I know the last time we spoke, your last words were that you were “at peace with this.” I think I might have misunderstood what that meant. Since then, I have noticed that our group interaction is extremely less and that your interaction within that group is almost nonexistent.
Is there something we need to address? I learned long ago that bridges were things I didn’t like to burn but instead tried to repair.
I, too am at peace with things. Either way. Whether God has said that this friendship was only for a season and that time has passed or if it is something we should try to mend. What I’m not at peace with is constantly wondering. I’m not at peace with the anxiety I’m filled with when wondering if someone I spoke with many times a day will even acknowledge when I send them a message. I’m in need of closure one way or the other. So, I’m asking for that. I’m asking you to please let me know where we stand, if you need anything from me as far as apologies or explanation or if there’s nothing that I can say or do.
I wanted to send this because I realized one day that every time I sent a message to the group, I had extreme anxiety over whether they would answer. It was real. I would send a message and then hold my phone waiting to see if anyone answered. I hate even admitting that. It makes me look weak and desperate.
But my husband was correct, I had that answer. The fact that I had anxiety over whether they would answer me was all the evidence I needed. So, I never sent the message. Instead, I quit trying. I didn’t send them any more text messages, and they never reached out to me. It was over… and to use ****’* words… I was at peace with it.
I found it easier to just be done rather than live in a constant world of worry and anxiety. I wasn’t going to beg people to be my friend.
I couldn’t figure out what I had done that warranted this kind of punishment. We had been friends for years. I went back and read the text messages repeatedly and tried to figure out what I had done that was so wrong they couldn’t even speak to me anymore. It didn’t make sense to me. What was so unforgivable? Had I not sufficiently apologized?
Months passed without a word from any of them, and then one Sunday in April of 2021, I received a text from Friend #1.
I’m not going to print it here. It was heartfelt and genuine. It took a lot of courage, and it should be kept private. It meant a lot to me.
I’ll just quickly summarize it…
She told me she was sorry for not being a friend when I needed one most. That the three of them all felt differently about what had transpired between us. She said she didn’t know if I would be willing to forgive her, that I had been a true friend to her, and she was sorry she hadn’t been one to me. She said she had been afraid to reach out. She ended by telling me again that she was sorry and that she loved me.
I was standing in church when the message came through. I almost hit the floor. It had been 6 months since things went down between us. I was shocked. I never expected to hear from any of them again.
I will share my reply.
I took a few hours to think about what I wanted to say…
Hey! I’m very surprised to hear from you. It has been a long 6 months. It has taken me a long time to heal. I know my words that day weren’t kind. I didn’t stop to consider the weight of them and acted out of my hurt. I never dreamed that the friendship between the 4 of us was that shallow. I mistakenly thought I could air my feelings in a safe space. I wish I had handled myself differently and have wondered many times if things would have been different if I had. I am not blameless in this. I was in a very dark place. And you’re right, it’s when I needed my friends the most. I still can’t wrap my head around it all. I tried all I knew how to do to fix what happened and saw very quickly that there was nothing I could do. When I would send a message to the group, I would wait with anxiety to see if anyone answered. I finally realized I was just causing myself more hurt, so I decided to quit trying for my own good.
I do forgive you. I have said many times that I could halfway understand the other two, but losing you was a real punch in the gut and something I could not understand.
I’m extremely thankful for your text today and your apology. It feels like the beginning of a wound healing. I hope you can forgive me for my part in this as well. I love you dearly. We have been through a lot together. I’m not in a place in my life where I’m willing to lose any more people. As far as I’m concerned that’s the past and if you’re willing, I’m willing to move forward and forgive and forget.
She replied enthusiastically, “Absolutely,” and marveled at how God worked things out. She said she was willing to move forward.
We had a few months of almost normal. We texted back and forth somewhat regularly. Then it kind of fizzled out.
I will always appreciate that she reached out to me as she did. It took a lot of courage. I really do love her. I wished her husband a happy birthday not long ago through text, and he called me. I told him I would love to visit with her but wasn’t sure if she would be comfortable with that. He said he would ask her… I haven’t heard anything, and that was a couple of months ago.
A few things that I find ironic.
She said in her text that one of the things that spurred her to reach out to me was a sermon the pastor preached on forgiveness… the same pastor who hurt me and knew it… guess who didn’t reach out to me… yep, the pastor.
Being a great speaker is a wonderful thing to have in a pastor. As I’ve mentioned before, he was a dynamic speaker. He was good at it, and he knew it. No one liked to hear him preach more than he did. But, if a pastor is just a good speaker and doesn’t live out what he preaches, then that’s all he is… he’s just a motivational speaker.
The other thing I think about is that she said they let me down when I needed friends the most. She’s right.
As I go back and read through things, it’s easy for me to see that I was in a terrible place. Throughout the years of our friendship, this had never happened. I had never shown any insecurity. I had never texted anything quite so desperate. Couldn’t they sense something different?
Instead of being angry with me, why weren’t they all like Friend #3 and worried about me? What if I had been severely depressed? What if I had been suicidal?
Friend #3 said she was worried that there was something more wrong… and although I said there wasn’t anything else wrong… there was… I felt like I had lost everything in my life. We were in the middle of Covid, and I was lonely; I was scared and felt like my friends were treating me differently… and they were. If you go back and read the texts I sent after the initial one on October 7, 2020, you can hear it. I was struggling. And instead of support, they handed me the opposite.
When all of that went down through those text messages in October 2020, it had been exactly one year since I walked through those dark days at Tree Town Baptist. Those were some of the most challenging days I ever experienced. This was when I struggled with whether to keep my job as a children’s minister or quit. I’ve read before that your body remembers what your mind doesn’t. I wasn’t even thinking about that when I sent the first text to these friends. I was just struggling. But when I started to try to mend what I had obviously broken, I started thinking about what might have triggered such a strong response. If you go back, you will see that I acknowledged that very thing in a later text to the group. I said, it has been a year since dealing with Tree Town stuff, and I’m struggling.
My body and spirit knew what I couldn’t voice. I was in a bad place. The trauma and grief were resurfacing, and I did indeed need friends.
In May of 2021, I was scrolling through Facebook one day and realized that I hadn’t seen anything from Friend #2 in a very long time. So I looked up her name and realized we were no longer Facebook friends. I was a little shocked. What had I done that was so bad that she couldn’t be my friend on Facebook?
But it gets better… she unfriended not only me but also my Mom and my son. Then, on Instagram, she unfriended me, my husband, my daughter, my son, and my Mom…
My son was like, what the hell, and he sent her a friend request… she accepted and then unfriended him again.
This woman was so holy, so set apart that she couldn’t even be my friend or any of my family’s friends now on social media. Look back, reread them all… what am I missing in those text messages… what did I say that was so unforgivable? If you see it, please message me and let me know. Comment on this blog post if you want to. I would love to understand.
I own the fact that my text to them that day wasn’t my finest moment, but was it enough to be shunned for the rest of my life?
She even unfriended my Mom!! That will always make me shake my head in confusion and chuckle a little bit at the same time.
Well, it must be said that Friend #2’s daughter dates the pastor’s son. Maybe she did it to show her loyalty to the pastor… I will probably never know.
Interestingly, the unfriending came not long after Friend #1 apologized to me…
What’s also interesting is that Friend #2 still uses her Facebook platform to post passive-aggressive things pointed toward me. People share them with me because they know immediately who she is talking about.
Here she is to this day continuing the same pattern that she so vehemently denied.
Things rocked on through the rest of 2021.
I never heard from Friend #2 or Friend #3 again.
I started the blog in February of 2022. I thought no one was reading it.
In one of my posts, I mentioned that the hiring of the interim youth pastor was suspicious. I talked about how he didn’t tell the same story about why he left his previous church, as his wife told me.
When my husband interviewed him as part of the Personnel Committee, when they point blank asked him why he left his previous church, he told a story about a discipline issue with some male students that parents in the church had a problem with. My husband knew the real reason he left because I had told him, but because that information came from a friend, he didn’t push the issue.
You see, his wife is Friend #3. On some of our late-night talks, she told me the real reason he left, and there was no part in her story about a discipline issue. The real reason he left was much more concerning, and it was something the Personnel Committee needed to know. Frankly, it’s something the church still needs to know.
She never said much more about it, but the whole story never sat right with me. And her story didn’t include one iota of a discipline issue with boys in the youth group.
When my husband came home with that story, I knew something wasn’t right. If he hadn’t been guilty of the real reason he left, and it wasn’t a big deal, why didn’t he just tell the truth?
It was a huge red flag to me. Not only because this man didn’t tell the entire story but because of the lax judgment of Tree Town Baptist in their hiring. Why weren’t there calls made to his former employer? Why didn’t they seek out more answers? Why weren’t there safety measures put in place in the hiring process? There were by-laws and instructions for every little thing… why was this overlooked. Is this common in all churches?
I want to be careful… I’m not saying this man is guilty of anything… But, he left out details that should’ve been mentioned; it was a big deal. And it shows a real issue with the hiring process at Tree Town Baptist.
I mentioned all of that in a previous post. I had no idea that anyone in Tree Town was reading the blog because the blog was never intended for them to read. I was just pointing out issues about the church I worked for. That part of the story pointed out small, hidden red flags within the church system. Red flags that people may see and not realize. When something doesn’t feel right, maybe it’s not.
But unbeknownst to me, they were reading the blog. And evidently, this man’s wife was reading it too because she blocked me on Facebook almost immediately after I published it. Friend #2 took her unfriending to the next level and blocked me as well. I wouldn’t have even thought to look if someone hadn’t clued me in.
I realized pretty quickly what was up. Because I never intended to hurt them, I decided to remove that blog section until I had time to think it through a little more. I didn’t take it out because I thought it was wrong but because I didn’t know anyone from Tree Town was reading it at the time.
When I wrote it last time, I didn’t think twice about it because I was only speaking to an audience of people who had been hurt by churches. It was to prove the point that churches are careless in their hiring process. If this person was hired without question, who else and what else has slipped through the cracks at Tree Town and at other churches? I removed it for a little while to consider their feelings. I didn’t intend to paint this man in a bad light, but my first posting wasn’t as careful, maybe as it should have been.
As I’m coming to the end of my story at Tree Town, I’ve added it back. My intended audience has always been people who have experienced church hurt, so I will continue to speak to them. That audience needs to hear that churches as a whole have failed us in their hiring systems.
Here’s the thing… if I were these people, I would’ve blocked me too. I totally get it.
Here’s what I wouldn’t do…
I saw that couple not long ago at Lowe’s. I knew it would eventually happen, and that day as I walked around my car, there they were. I had nowhere to go.
I paused for a moment. I didn’t want them to feel uncomfortable. I could understand their anger with me. So I gave them space, smiled, nodded, and said hey. They had their children with them, and I wasn’t about to have a confrontation in front of the kids. But they approached me. Then they hugged me and wanted to make small talk.
I’ve spent the last two years or so going back over all the wrongs I’ve committed against people. I’ve called them or met with them in person and offered apologies. I wanted those apologies to be genuine and honest. Apologizing isn’t an easy thing to do. To be honest with you, it’s not my favorite. I get very nervous beforehand. But it has been so healing in so many ways. It has brought people back into my life that I hurt with my words and actions. It has cleansed my soul in ways I can’t describe. All of that to say, I’ve learned what an apology looks like and what the whole asking someone for forgiveness process looks and feels like. Some of my last words to this lady had been an apology.
This lady had been one of my best friends. She was Friend #3 in that text message thread. And her last message to me that day was kind. But then, for unknown reasons, she simply disappeared from my life. That’s not ok, and it makes me not want to talk to her. There are things that needed to happen before we just jumped in like everything was fine.
Then, I printed something about her husband that made her mad enough to block me on social media… understandable.
But now you want to make small talk and hug me?
Nope, some things need to happen first… Apologies, and forgiveness, to name a couple. And I in no way think that God can’t orchestrate all of that. He can!
But this is not a situation where you pretend that everything is ok. It just doesn’t work like that. Not in my world, anyway.
Many will say, good for them. That’s the Christian thing to do… turn the other cheek, be the bigger person… I could go on and on with all the “Christian” reasons that what they did was what should be done.
I say… Bull Shit… the Bible says to let your yay be yay and your nay be nay. It teaches us to be honest and to be genuine. That was all fake and uncomfortable. So just nod, say hey and keep going. Don’t do the whole everything is great between us thing. We both know the truth.
I would’ve handled myself entirely differently if the kids weren’t there. I would probably have said something like if you blocked me on social media, I’m not sure why you are talking to me now. I might have raised my hand up and said I’m not playing this game. I might have lost my cool, or I might have broken down in tears. There were many ways I could see it going…
But I didn’t want to make a scene… so I was polite but guarded.
When I got in my car, I shook it off. These incidents are going to happen. We all know that I live only 27 minutes away from Tree Town…. not nearly far enough. These people are going to cross my path at some time.
I just feel like honesty is the best way to approach things like this. I think people should be free to express themselves how they see fit. Should they speak? Should they hash it out? Should they ignore each other? Should they just say hey and keep going? I don’t know what is right or what is wrong in that situation, I’m fine with any of those options, but I know deep in my core that acting like everything is ok is not the right way to handle things because, well things are not ok… things are broken and in need of repair. There’s hurt and pain, there’s misunderstanding and broken trust. There’s a past filled with wonderful memories shattered by a moment of humanity.
God can redeem all of this if He sees fit. He can do anything. But that will not happen by ignoring what has gone on or neglecting to admit that these hurts are real for all those involved.
I wish Christian people would learn that being nice isn’t always the answer. Jesus wasn’t always nice.
We have become so disillusioned with what Christianity is. It isn’t all puppy dogs and rainbows. It isn’t always a smile and a pat on the back… sometimes it’s tigers and storm clouds, tears, and a slap across the face.
This whole thing was the end of the end for me at Tree Town Baptist. The people I trusted the most had betrayed me. The circle I was so comfortable in had become the most painful place for me. God had clearly shown me that I couldn’t go back. It was over. A closed chapter.
God really does use people to show us things.
I think what I’m most thankful for is that I didn’t give any more years of my life to a friendship that was that shallow. I invested time and energy into that friendship… time and energy that I can’t get back. And if you asked them I’m not sure how they could say that I wasn’t a good friend to them, because I was.
My circle of friends now is small, and I’m ok with that. I’ve learned many lessons; lessons that now I’m thankful to have learned… but the pain hasn’t gone away, and I will always wonder what I did wrong.
I have written at least 3 endings to this post and all of them are now in a document that I keep called “The Cutting Room Floor.”
All of the previous endings have been snarky and cutting, because if I’m completely honest, in my flesh I wouldn’t mind seeing these ladies hurt a little bit after all they did to me. But that’s not the way to handle things. It’s so much easier to hide my hurt behind sarcasm and cynicism. I’ve said before that I do angry well. I’ve talked about this before in earlier posts. It’s much harder to say that I’m devastated… that I’m disappointed… I’m hurt… I feel betrayed… those things make me feel weak and anger makes me feel strong. I don’t like to admit that I’ve let people get to me.
But if I peel back all the layers that I’ve built up to survive, underneath all that strength, sarcasm, cynicism and anger… I have to admit that all that’s really left is a deep hurt. Pain that I can’t even describe.
All I know is that the past couple of weeks when I’ve read over these text messages to finish this post, all the reliving things, all the writing and thinking… I would love to say that I’m just fine, it doesn’t bother me anymore… and that would just be a complete lie.
I have had to walk away from writing this several times to just cry; to allow myself to grieve all that I lost. To mourn what I thought would always be a part of my life.
I feel discarded… like trash that has just been thrown away and forgotten.
I lost my sense of belonging. I lost a lot. And it hurts… even today… it hurts.
Not just these three ladies but also the friend that said I was punishing my family, all the people who I thought cared, all the parents I worked so closely with, all of the people in the senior adult class that helped with all the events and taught me so many things, all the people who sang in the choir, the Sunday School teachers, all the ladies I had lunch with at WMU, the people I would see in the halls on the way to my office, the former secretary, I could go on and on … there is a huge part of me that still misses all of that; the people, not the church. I guess there will always be a void. And I hate myself for it. I hate that it still makes me cry. I hate that I still have any emotion left for people that have hurt me so badly.
Do churches realize how badly they hurt people? Do they care? Are they so busy protecting the organization of the church that they so easily discard people. Because that’s how we feel… we feel discarded. And that’s not a good feeling.
I never intended to end this in a vulnerable way. I wanted to end it with control and my more comfortable emotion of anger.
But today, as I sat in a funeral home to attend the funeral of a dear friend’s sister, I just found myself crying. And I wasn’t just thinking about this lady who had passed away, I was aslo thinking about this post. I was thinking about this lady’s friends and family who were grieving, and I began to think about many of the people who I once considered my friend. Would they cry for me, would I cry for them if this service was one of ours?
I was thinking that if I ended this blog post in anger, I wouldn’t be ending it honestly.
Pain, hurt, disappointment, grief, heartbreak…that’s what I feel, still to this day. Not as strong as before, but if I am totally honest with myself, it’s all there.
Maybe someday I will overcome all of those painful emotions.
I can say without a doubt that I’ve come a long way, that things are most assuredly better. But I’m not sure I will ever completely get over everything.
I don’t think that’s humanly possible.
Moving On,
Whitney