Why does it take so long?

People may wonder–*I* wonder–why it’s taken me so long to get over some things. Part of it is that I was abused in more than one church, and had been taught to doubt myself and be dependent even before that, so there’s been a lot to dig through. Part of it is that… well, think of people who were hit with a hurricane or tornado. Some sustain more damage than others.

I visualize a person who had their roof blown off looking at me, sorting through the rubble where there was once a house, now completely unrecognizable, and asking why I don’t just get a new roof. I look at them and think, ‘after this happened, I didn’t even have walls anymore. Everything was gone. YOU had a roof missing. I have a house missing. Please don’t act life my life should be just fine because yours is.’ So part of it is the amount of damage that was done.

That’s not to say that the damage is too great. People rebuild, but they will also remember. All is not lost. As many have said who’ve weathered huge storms, we survived, and we still have each other (or we still have our lives). In other words, as long as we’re still breathing, there’s hope, there’s opportunity to start over, to rebuild, to restore. Sometimes we have to start by sifting through the rubble, then slowly rebuilding from the ground up. Other times we just need to throw a roof back on, or replace a few windows.

Either way, if we’ve lived through the storm we will not be the same. Storms, beautiful, powerful, frightening, and uncontrollable, come to all of us. Some may get a couple shingles knocked off. A few branches may fall from their trees. Others… others come out of their shelters after the storm and discover that they don’t even recognize the landscape anymore. But they rebuild. They continue. They don’t move on–years later they calculate time based on the year of the storm, but they do move forward. Sometimes slowly, sometimes more quickly, all depending on how close they were to it’s center.

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Author: Through Grace

I was raised in a somewhat unhealthy church group within the Nondenominational Christian Church. After graduating high school, I began attending a United Pentecostal Church (UPC). I've been a member of four UPC churches and visited many others. Of the four of which I was a member, I was "encouraged" not to leave the first and then later sent to the second; attended the second where an usher repeatedly attempted to touch me and the pastor told me I should not care about the standards of the organization and was wrong to do so; ran to a third at that point, which threw me out after a couple years; and walked out of a fourth. For these transfers and because I refused to gossip about my former churches, some called me a "wandering star, a cloud without water" (Jude 1:12). I love the fact that when the blind man was healed, questioned by the Pharisees and temple rulers, and expelled from the temple, Jesus went and sought him out. He very rarely did this once someone was healed, but for this man, he did. I believe God has a special place in his heart for those who are abused, wrongfully accused, or condemned by religious leadership. I believe He loves those who are wronged by churchianity--yes, churchianity, not Christianity, because those who do these wrongs follow a church, not Christ. 1 John 4:7-8 7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. 8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. 9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. 10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.

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