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Imagine this scenario…
A friend, your friend, your good friend, a new friend who just recently showed up on the scene, but someone you’ve hit it off with quickly, someone who is at your house almost every weekend, someone who you trust… Imagine that this friend is in a situation where their job is always stressful. Imagine that you feel like you’ve been “called” by God to give this person and their family a place of refuge in your home in the country, away from all the stress. Imagine that you “work” so hard on this friendship that you kinda lose yourself and neglect existing friendships, because, well this is a mission of God. These people need me, and we need these people. So, you open your home almost every weekend, and it’s fun. They drive you to the airport for a trip, you keep their kids while they go away together, you even take a short vacation together with these people. The two families become close, comfortable, great friends that you assume will be around forever. You feel like this is for sure a gift from God.
Now, after a couple of years, things begin to feel uncomfortable between you and this friend because of circumstances beyond your control. You grieve that this is happening, and you want to fix it, you genuinely don’t want to lose this friendship, because now your whole family is invested; your kids are friends with their kids, etc. So, you and your husband start to send texts and emails to the “new” friend that say things like, “We feel like there’s something wrong, and we would like to discuss it with you.” You do this over and over and you get no response. Isn’t this what the Bible says to do when believers have grievances with one another? Finally, you just say, please come over so we can talk this out because honestly you are grieving the loss of the relationship and you want to fix things. And so, they do, and for an extended amount of time you each air your grievances, your worries, your concerns. Communication has never once been a problem between you and them before this. You call out obvious issues and allow them to do the same. Apologies are given, words are exchanged like, “can we just go back to normal; can we just get together Friday night for dinner and games.” Tears fall. This has been a healing experience; things feel normal again and so you ask, “Are we good”? And the answer returned is yes, we are good, things can for sure go back to normal. And they drive away. And you genuinely expect that they will come over for dinner the next weekend.
Now, imagine that this “new” friend calls another friend of yours, a friendship you’ve had and cultivated for 12 years, a friendship that you cherish, and the “new” friend calls them to say that they’ve been to your house and repeatedly apologized and you wouldn’t accept their apology. Imagine that the person they call in turn calls you and accuses you of these things and tells you that by not offering your forgiveness you are punishing your entire family. You are crushed, you are wounded almost beyond repair. You can’t believe you are being accused of such things. How did things go so wrong? Imagine that you never hear from the “new” friend again and the relationship with the old friend is tarnished forever. You are extremely confused, hurt, and broken. How could a meeting that you thought went so well be turned into something else? Certainly, you had accepted their apology, how could it have been perceived any differently?
Now imagine that this “new” friend is your pastor who’s been at the church for two years, the one whose “job” is to help mend relationships, and he’s now the one who has caused you to lose multiple ones.
How would you feel?
For me, this incident was the beginning of the end. What makes this story even harder is that the pastor had also been my boss for two years. I had recently resigned from my position as Children’s Minister and was trying to find a way to return to the church I loved as a “regular member”. We had been members of the church for 12 years and I had only been on staff for 3 of those years. We had 12 years of time invested, years of friendships in the church, years of milestones together with these people, graduations, funerals, and babies, our whole life was intermingled with this church family. We loved them. This was our home, this was our church, these were our people… our family.
Unfortunately, after this incident, my husband and I began to put more pieces of the puzzle together, we began to see that this was in fact not the first time something like this had happened, but it was the first time we saw it clearly; and once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
And you know what… I’m mad. It’s true. I am. I’m one hundred percent red-blooded American mad. I’m mad that a pastor would twist my words. I’m mad that he used what I thought was a healing conversation to cover his own sins. I’m mad that he could walk away from a friendship that I was trying to save. I’m mad that he asked me to “control the narrative” to protect him when he knew it was his actions that caused me to quit, and then when I did what he asked he used it against me. I’m mad that by “controlling the narrative” to make him look good other friends felt like I lied to them, and then he capitalized on it. I’m mad that his lies caused me to lose other close friendships. I’m mad that we had to leave a church that my kids loved because of his selfishness… because how do you go back after something like that? I’m mad that a pastor would use his position in this way. I’m mad that he was more worried about how the church would feel about him if the real story was ever known than he was about his friends. I’m mad that the only option he gave us was that we were either all in or all out. I was nothing but collateral damage. And that makes me angry.
But, if I break down those feelings it’s really more than anger. I once told my counselor that I do mad well, that anger was my thing, it was my safe spot. But after he had me read a book entitled “Overcoming Emotions that Destroy” by Chip Ingram and Dr. Becca Johnson, I realized that anger is just a red flag that something more is wrong. What I really felt was a disappointment, I felt betrayed, I felt hurt. And if I’m honest, that hurt hasn’t gone away even after 2 years of healing.
This is not the first hurt I have encountered in a church, but it is, as of today, one of the last. However, it has set off more waves in its wake.
If I’m honest, church hurt follows me all the way back to my childhood. I hope to go back to those stories eventually through this blog, but the end seemed to be the perfect place to begin.
My hope is that if you are reading this and feel alone like I have through this experience, you will realize that you aren’t. In fact, you will soon realize there is a whole community of people who have lived through this kind of thing. You will also hopefully realize that this isn’t what Jesus meant for the church to look like, as I am slowly learning. The machine that has become the church is not the church Paul teaches about in the scripture, in fact, it’s what he teaches against.
My family and I are slowly finding a new normal, and we’ve found a pastor who is different from any pastor we’ve ever known. He understands the PTSD I deal with when it comes to church. He is giving me time and space to heal. He offered something that no pastor has ever offered, he wants to gain our trust, he wants to prove himself worthy to be trusted and not expect us to trust him only because of his pastoral position. To me, that’s huge and speaks volumes. It gives me hope that I can one day trust a pastor again and that I can joyfully be a part of a church someday.
All I know is this, I can’t be silent any longer… whether this blog is to help me heal or to help someone else, I may never know. But I hope it’s both.
Until next time,
Whitney
