Category: healing | Page 15 | Spiritual Abuse Blogs

Rebuilding beliefs

One thing that’s common in leaving groups like my former one is that, in leaving, people have to rebuild everything they believe. They have to sort through what the group taught, what they agree with and what they don’t, what others teach and what they can accept as safe and true… it’s a lot to process, and many of us want to process it all fairly quickly. It leaves us in a state of not knowing what we believe… We disagree with the unhealthy group on a few points (ie that if we don’t attend their church we’re going to hell) but don’t know what we do believe on other points (certain staunch beliefs on things like baptism, worship styles, and communion were very much ingrained in me at my former church and were difficult to study out and accept others’ beliefs on).

Thankfully, there have been people I could safely pose questions to. “OK, my former church taught _____. Why do you teach _______?” has been a common theme. Another has been, “That word/phrase doesn’t mean to me what it does to you. Please explain what you mean without that term.” When I don’t have answers to these questions, I start getting depressed sometimes. I don’t want to pray and don’t want to go to church. I want to run far away from all of it. When someone takes the time to explain what they mean, and then change their wording slightly, the fear lessens dramatically. When I’m allowed the time to work through things and come to my own conclusions, when those conclusions are accepted, I am relieved. In those times I grow.

I’m guessing sometimes we know what we believe, but we haven’t realized it yet because we still see how much we have to sort out, how far we want to go, rather than how far we’ve come. And sometimes we just need a little definition and space to see things in a different way and to gain a healthier understanding.

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Marriage Trouble Part 5

I forgot to list a couple of verses in my last post that were used in Michael Pearl’s “Moral Earnestness Test:”

And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. – 1 Timothy 2:14 (This is where I got the idea of not trusting my mind.)
Like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her lord. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear. – 1 Peter 3:6 (Not to fear consequences for submitting even while the husband is making foolish decisions.)

Writing these posts have been quite a bit triggering for me personally. Michael and Debi Pearl’s marriage teaching created a sort of abuse and Stockholm Syndrome situation disguised as Christianity. I will even go as far as saying it became tantamount to idolatry. It duped my husband to become entitled, narcissistic, and a tyrant. Needless to say, It didn’t make him a better, more mature spiritual leader. It hurt him. It hurt us. It hurt me. I was living a life of bondage which turned into another gospel, another message, a different spirit. It didn’t make sense with the rest of the Word of God.

A few years ago my husband scolded me for wanting to follow my gut to end a friendship with a woman I met on the internet. I don’t need to go into the story too detailed here but I believe she was a psychopath or at least a malignant narcissist. The way she idealized me, devalued and discarded me, after me giving her moral support for a year… It gave me PTSD.

Then I discovered this verse:

Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm. – Proverbs 13:20 (I can’t be keeping company with anyone who exhibits behavior of a fool as described in the Bible whether a friend or spouse, God warns His children. So boundaries are key!)

Around that time in the same year another blogging friend I knew for two years prior told me her husband was evil and had been abusing her and their many children and that he was leaving them. That gave me empathically induced PTSD too!

I think, at least in part, the PTSD caused me to start distrusting my own husband. I was no longer feeling safe with him as my umbrella of protection. I was sensing that something wasn’t right even more than ever. I was realizing I was in somewhat of an abusive marriage situation, both financially and emotionally. God didn’t seem to be paying too much attention to us either. One thing lead to another and our church paid for us to get counseling using a John Gottman Institute trained counselor. It helped us a lot!

Around that time, I got a big bruise that lasted a month and became a hematoma. This was caused by jumping out of bed and hitting my knee on the bed frame. I got a phone call thinking it was my husband and I wasn’t doing the housework. I had been relaxing instead so when I got the phone call I jumped out of bed and that’s how I hurt myself. I was contemplating about that hematoma on my leg realizing I was afraid because I feared telling my husband I was relaxing. You see, I had a ‘fake-it-’till-you-make-it’ system. A facade of being Super-wife that I was striving to keep up, while also thinking again God is not protecting me like I’m used to. Why? Then, a thought came to my mind:

God is a jealous God and He is jealous for me. Around that time I found this Bible verse:

Fear of man will prove to be a snare but whoever trusts in the Lord is kept safe. – Proverbs 29:25

Oh my gosh! You don’t know how relieved I was! God was revealing stuff I needed to realize! It then occurred to me something I knew and practiced before the Pearl teaching, was that scripture trumps my husband. Awesome! So since then it’s been a few years and I’ve been studying a bit of apologetics and egalitarian hermeneutics. It’s stuff I was interested in, but Debi Pearl made it seem like I wasn’t supposed to be interested in anything other than being an over-accommodating wife and mother. So that was the beginning of the end of my unnecessary marriage troubles. Now my husband says he likes me better with a backbone! 😜

That’s a glimpse of my personal story, but I want to refer everybody to a blog called: createdtobehelpmeet.blogspot.com. It’s an excellently done review of the book. I don’t have the book anymore, so I couldn’t really take it apart and give you a nice detailed review about it. All I did was share how it harmed, more than helped, our marriage and our spiritual well being.

Marriage Trouble Part 1
Marriage Trouble Part 2
Marriage Trouble Part 3
Marriage Trouble Part 4

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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.