Category: healing | Page 15 | Spiritual Abuse Blogs

Dear Pastor: What a cat taught me about love (that no church did)

He was a stray alley cat, not more than two. I caught him making friends with my house cat… sort of. My cat wasn’t nearly as interested in friendship as the stray, and the stray was probably more interested in food than companionship. I decided to befriend the cat.

Making friends with a stray cat isn’t easy, even with tuna or liver to tempt him. It takes patience to befriend a stray.

The stray wasn’t approachable, but he would sit and watch as I interacted with my cat, and slowly, seeing that I didn’t hurt my own cat, he began to come closer. If I’d tried to catch him or pushed for contact too quickly, he’d never have trusted me. He was where he needed to be at that time, 5-10′ away, distant but interested. We have to accept strays as they are, not as we want them to be.

He came in. I left the door open for him. He had to know I wasn’t there to diminish his freedom, but that he was welcome.

His decision to let me touch him came as a happy surprise. Within months he’d become a normal house cat, with some outdoor tendencies. I always let him come and go. He was still cared for, even if he went out sometimes. He was loved.

One day, he jumped on the counter. I picked him up gently, and he began twisting in panic. He thought he was going to be thrown. Then I understood his deep distrust, and it broke my heart. His fear didn’t make me love him less, but more. He’d overcome so much. I respected his fear and never picked him up off the counter again. We communicated “no” in other ways that worked just as well.

Tommy died about a year later. We had moved, and he never got completely used to his new surroundings. He was terrified of the changes, and I didn’t listen to his fears, thinking he would adjust. The night before he died, he sat on the front step with me, leaping and catching bugs between raised paws in a beautiful, joyful dance. The next morning he was gone. But even in death he taught me… it doesn’t matter how long or short a time someone is in our lives, they are there for a purpose. It’s not our place to require them to stay with us. It’s our job to love them, not keep them or hold them too tightly. A life well loved is a life well lived, no matter how long or short. It’s my purpose to love others well.

I’m not a stray, but I have the same tendencies as Tommy did:
It takes time for me to trust you.
Unconditional love and acceptance will create trust.
I’ll actually stay longer if you leave the door open for me. Don’t pressure me to conform or to stay. Don’t make me feel obligated.
I have fears that should be recognized and respected. Don’t love me less for them, love me more.
If I need to leave, let me go. This is part of loving well.

Tommy is gone. I’ve been the care taker for probably 30 cats since. Some have gone, four have stayed. One of those four is missing part of his tail, has scars down his back from a reckless interaction with probably a raccoon, and has a permanent limp. And he’s one of the most loving, trusting cats I’ve known. So one more:

Don’t judge me by my scars. I’m beautiful in spite of them.

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Dear Christians: things I wish people could understand

Prov 18:14 A man’s spirit can sustain him during his illness, but who can bear a crushed spirit?

In the eight years since leaving the spiritually abusive group I was in, there is one thing I have never been asked by religious people: “What can we do?” Unfortunately, too often what I have seen is Christianity pulling away from those who are hurting, walking by on the other side of the road as they see us wounded in the ditch, so to speak. And as in the parable, it is often those who would be deemed ungodly or unChristian who get us out of the ditch, carry us to shelter, and bandage our wounds.

I’ve come to wonder if this is in part because no one in the church is trained in triage.

Have you ever hurt your foot, gone to the ER, and had the nurse start by taking your pulse and BP? There is a reason. Unless the patient is in immediate danger, it’s better to gently, slowly work toward the injury, rather than jumping right to it, watching for reactions and assessing the patient’s comfort while working. When a person is scared or nervous, it’s best to set the person at ease–jumping right in can make the situation worse, not better.

We’re not trained to do this unless we have some medical background. We may even pride ourselves on being direct. But that’s not always wisest. So what would spiritual triage look like for a wounded spirit? It would be different for each person. But the list might include:

Listen.
Be there.
Invite me to be with you.
Ask if there’s anything you can do.
Look for little ways to help.
Don’t be shocked.
Don’t apologize for what happened and do NOT excuse it.
Don’t offer pat answers… maybe don’t offer any answers.
Ask good questions.
Be sincere.
Accept me.
Care.

What else might fit on a list like this? What do you wish people had done for you or would do, or what are you glad someone did to help you in your woundedness?

You don’t have to look: Revisiting how we tell the Easter story

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on April 17, 2015.

I have problems with Easter.

My church attendance has been irregular since I left fundamentalism, which I’ve been told is normal for people who have suffered spiritual abuse.

This year, I tried to go to church on Easter Sunday. I drove to the parking lot. Panic rose in my stomach until I thought I might vomit. I left for Starbucks.

This is the beginning of realizing that my spiritual life never has to be an obligation, nor should it. I don’t have to try to show Jesus I love him through ritual, because now I believe Jesus would want us to love others and even Him by our own choice.

I’ve had a love / hate relationship with Easter since I was a small child, because of the intense guilt I had about the story.

Since leaving fundamentalism, I’ve wrestled with doubts and whether or not I’ll feel home inside a church again.

Last year, Cynthia Jeub wrote a blog post about why Christians should stop wearing crosses, and she wrote this about me:

One of my friends was obsessed with revisiting the death of Jesus. She watched films and plays depicting his torture and death over and over, and I asked her why the resurrection got so little time in such plays. The resurrection was short and the crucifixion was long in every story. She admitted to the problem, but didn’t have a solution for it.

I thought the only way to honor Jesus for his sacrifice, to love him, was to be a witness to his suffering.

After moving out, I watched movies like the Passion of the Christ and the Stoning of Soraya M., because the torture of my fellow humans troubled me and I didn’t know how else to show that I cared but to watch.

That’s how I demonstrate that my love and compassion is real, right?

I made a new friend this last fall. She’s had her own church trauma–she was at New Life Church when Ted Haggard left in 2006 and during the shooting in 2007 and later another pastor who turned out to be a con man.

We were discussing violence in media and how we deal with it one day. She said that she looks away during the scourging and crucifixion scenes in movies and reenactments.

I had an epiphany. I’ve never been able to look away, to choose not to watch.

I remembered what a high school pen pal once told me: “I think there’s a reason we weren’t there when Jesus died.”

At the time, I vehemently disagreed with her, believing extreme forms of remembrance to be a religious duty, something any lover of Jesus would desire. I understood, even identified with the flagellants of the medieval period.

I was in the Thorn cast again like last year, but that was my only church-related Easter activity. I’d thought, It’s Lent season, do you want to watch the Passion? No, not really. It hurts too much. And maybe it should. After all, I can feel my emotions now.

So I rested over spring break, hung out with friends.

I stopped reopening my old scars.

On Good Friday, a fellow blogger in the Homeschoolers Anonymous community, posted on Facebook:

And my heart said, Amen.

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Sidenote: I did love one of John Pavlovitz’s posts during Lent season, Waiting for Easter: A Eulogy for Jesus.

What passes as Christianity here in America often bears no resemblance to the humble, gentle Nazarene rabbi…. When I look around at the faith so often proposing to be Christianity these days, that Jesus seems gone.

Jesus isn’t just dead, but he’s had his identity stolen posthumously, too…. So yes, for far too many of his people, this is a eulogy for Jesus within Christianity.

Yes, we grieve a religion that often seems dead, and yet still cling to the slimmest of hopes, that an Easter Sunday is still within reach.

Being church

I came to visit, fairly shaken by the things I’ve seen, heard, and experienced that call themselves Christian in America today. I was spiritually, emotionally tired of all of it, and just about ready to walk away in disgust, not from God, but definitely from everything that called itself ‘of God’ in my society. And then I walked through your doors and into your life.

You know that story about the new pastor who dressed as a beggar, walked in, and was shunned? Yeah, I know the feeling. I saw eyes avert and people walk away. I notice when no one says good morning. You say every Christian should go to church, but I haven’t found much Christianity within churches. Do you realize it would be easier to come if someone acted like they cared that I was there? Someone besides the one asking for or receiving (or being paid by the funds of) the offering? Do you know that I have a pretty good memory… and when you tell me that you treat visitors and attenders pretty much the same but then ignore my questions, or tell me that you address a certain question I ask in your small groups (which emailed you asking to join and never heard back from you on)… or worse, let me know that you really focus on members, not the rest of us, when I do ask questions… that I remember your first response and count that as a sign of untrustworthiness?

Do you realize that those rare times when you take the time to hear me, when you answer a question or even just say hello because you mean it, I see that too? Do you know that if you’d love me you might find a great deal to love about me, that if you’d put into me some of what you expect out of me–if you’d give me some of your time, some care and compassion and understanding, you might get the same?

You might. I could be mistaken, but I believe you are supposed to reach out to the world, not expect the world to come knocking at your door. I believe the intent is that you love one another and all the rest of us too.

It’s a little strange. The things that have impacted me most over the years have been a simple chaplain’s prayer, a pastor who was willing to change a tire, and a friend’s happiness that I came. Nothing major, and no program. Those things cost nothing, but they meant everything. I was in an office, in a parking lot, at a restaurant, in a home. There were no steeples, no mics, no bulletins, no bibles. And yet at those times I experienced true church.

Exclusivity or Inclusion?

Seven years ago, I left a spiritually abusive “church.” By the time I left, the group had undermined my self-confidence and my desire for a close relationship with Jesus. I saw God as angry, punishing, and legalistic. In order to survive, there were things I radically changed my views on that others consider orthodox… and began experiencing a whole new side of exclusivity and elitism forged under the banner of Christianity. They weren’t Christian, but it was hard not to begin thinking of church in terms of those things, since they seemed reflected in the eyes of so many who called themselves by that term and who attended and even led those gatherings.

When I moved the first time, I hoped to find a church. Instead I found coworkers who told me that because I didn’t share their (locally predominant) views of Christianity, I wouldn’t be able to do my job well enough and excluded me from conversations, then came back later to explain what they disliked about others in their larger group. Local church members seemed unwelcoming and unfriendly, leaving me feeling excluded and unworthy. And then I moved again.

I thought that in moving back to the area I was raised in, I would find a good church. That didn’t happen. One Sunday School class drastically decreased in size after I asked a question regarding a member’s repeated condemning statements about their child. Several were ‘fluffy’–there was very little discussion about the Bible or God, and a whole lot of talk about pop culture or politics or how bad the world was getting.

Some organized mainly to fulfill outreach programs (while failing to reach out to each other), and others were simply social clubs. Another preached several sermons on Katelyn Jenner and began inserting media clips of his favorite shows and commercials into sermons rather than Bible, leaving me completely lost –I am virtually clueless about pop culture and didn’t go to discuss any current high profile figure’s statements, operations, or daily lifestyles. I went to discuss and share Jesus, but those conversations were missing.

And then came the elections. By the time a pastor’s wife friend of mine posted to Facebook “I don’t even know how someone can call themselves a Christian and vote for someone who [supports certain political stances]” and Christianity began being used (again) as a political platform–“vote for me! God bless America!” (which translates “See, I’m a Christian! I used the word God in a sentence, so I should get your vote!”) I’d had it. How can I call myself a Christian and take a different political or social stance? Perhaps because I hold a different perspective on what holding that stance actually means. But my gut reaction was “Then don’t. Don’t call me a Christian. I don’t want any part of this.”

I’ve spent several years now feeling like a religious outcast, perhaps a leper. “Unclean! Unclean! I voted this way!” “Unclean! Unclean!!! I don’t think people are condemned to hell if they drink a glass of wine or live in a monogamous relationship without a marriage license or don’t make it to church every Sunday or don’t give 10% of their gross income to the church… hey, I don’t necessarily even believe in your version of hell to begin with! Unclean!”

Being outcast by the group that is supposed to be known for and represent love takes it’s toll, perhaps especially when you have done everything that should make you part of the group… except to remain silent and refuse to talk about things that matter or to consider other viewpoints to the issues being discussed.

I’m tired of religion. American churchianity has exhausted me and left me with less understanding of God than I started with. And I was done with it. Until… until I visited one last church last weekend. And met a group of people who agree to disagree, who don’t say only one mode of baptism is right and don’t fight over grape juice or wine. They compromise nicely, it seems so far, on many points that people may view differently, even when using the same scriptures. And though compromise is a bad word in many religious circles, they explain it and view it as loving. It isn’t that they don’t have opinions on some of these issues. They do. But instead of force-feeding those opinions to others and then making a list of everyone who disagrees and shoving them into their personal version of hell, they offer open discussion and acceptance.

There is immense healing in that -the kind of healing that borders on miraculous.