After leaving, there may be a time period of trying to find some balance, a time when a person might go to opposite extremes with a sort of pendulum effect. Different people seek different kinds of balance. Some may go to extremes with their looks or actions. For me, I think the majority of my pendulum time has been spent learning to set boundaries and say no.
I learned a lot during this time from just being free to do these things. I was amazed when I discovered I wasn’t shunned for saying no, setting boundaries, or even leaving situations that made me uncomfortable, even if my friends stayed in those situations. I was even more amazed that these people remained friends. Yes, a few people ended their friendships with me, but many others were true friends and encouraged me and were there for me through this time. Just being able to set my own boundaries and make my own decisions was helpful and healing, but knowing that I was accepted as I did these, even when I was more extreme, was even more so.
I’ve known people who didn’t seem to understand why I might need to do this. Maybe they didn’t share my experience of feeling I had to stay in an unhealthy church, had to support them or do things for them, keep participating in their activities, or had to remain silent and accept what I saw as harmful or frightening. It’s taken nearly eight years to regain some of the balance of being able to say “no,” to set boundaries, and even to leave a situation when I want… and it still takes a whole lot of self-talk sometimes to do them, especially without feeling guilty or embarrassed. But I’m learning.
********
Shop at our Amazon store! As an Amazon Influencer, this website earns from qualifying purchases.
Please follow and like us:
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.
View all posts by Through Grace
It’s taken me quite a long time to say no and have boundaries. One thing I’m completely glad about at my current church is I’m free to be involved as much or as little and not made to feel guilty.