Tag: leaving | Spiritual Abuse Blogs

The UnBoxing Project: Being an angel with a shotgun

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on March 4, 2015 as part of a series.

Get out your guns, battle’s begun,
are you a saint, or a sinner?
If love’s a fight, then I shall die,
with my heart on a trigger. – The Cab, Angel with a Shotgun (Nightcore remix)

These are the stories they told me.

“Eleanor, my best friend’s parents told her she can’t drive the car unless she loses weight consistently every week.

I’m really worried about her. Yeah, she could lose some weight, but it’s not that bad, and I don’t think that’s healthy. What do you think I should do?”

My insides went cold, feeling the familiar rigidity and control descend, but this time for someone else.

They say before you start a war,
you better know what you’re fighting for…
if love is what you need, a soldier I will be.

“Eleanor, I’m 26 years old and my mom wants me to get married. She says she’ll send out the word among the [Indian] community to find a man for me. But I don’t want an arranged marriage.”

My friend already had a bachelor’s degree from an ivy league college, wasn’t enjoying her post-baccalaureate pre-med classes, and knew her parents wouldn’t understand her adoption of American culture.

She asked for help in moving her things out of her parents’ house. I rounded up a few friends and she got out.

I’m an angel with a shotgun,
fighting ’til the war’s won,
I don’t care if heaven won’t take me back.
I’ll throw away my faith … just to keep you safe…
and I wanna live not just survive tonight.

“Did you know Mike died?”

“No, I just talked to him last week. He was trying to start a chapter of the F.A.S.T. club at his graduate school.”

The coroner ruled Mike’s death a suicide. Mike grew up in the Colorado Springs homeschool community, although I didn’t meet him until college.

Questions about his death still linger with me and my friends.

Sometimes to win, you’ve got to sin,
don’t mean I’m not a believer...
Yeah, they still say I’m a dreamer.

Text messages from Cynthia Jeub, September 2, 2013:

“I need help. My dad is angry because he’s not making enough money. Can you help Lydia and me get out and find a place to sleep until our apartment paperwork goes through?”

“Dad was yelling at me when you tried to call. I never thought this would happen. We have a friend who will help, we might need help from you when we get back.”

“Dad says he might turn off my phone and Internet. Tell [a friend] to come if you don’t hear back again.”

I was five hours away up in the mountains and couldn’t come get her on the day that they were kicked out.

They say before you start a war,
you better know what you’re fighting for…
if love is what you need, a soldier I will be.

Google chat conversation, June 2013:

“I just want to go Home and be with Him. It’d be so easy… one bullet, one noose, two cuts, but I can’t bear to think of facing Him when I got there… For being a coward. For not trusting him enough… I really just want to escape. Wouldn’t you eventually get over it [grieving for me]. Death is a natural part of this life.”

A younger friend was suicidal again. She’d done this off and on since she was 13, and a couple of friends and I had talked her out of it, over and over.

“As long as I’m in class, getting A’s and studying all the time without a boyfriend or any other distractions, no one really pays me much mind. A fight’s brewing. So I’ll let you know after it happens if it does happen.”

Once again, her parents crushed her with unrealistic expectations.

I’m an angel with a shotgun,
fighting ’til the war’s won,
I don’t care if heaven won’t take me back
...and I wanna live not just survive tonight.

I didn’t become an activist because it was another hobby. Friends came to me with their wounds, their struggles. And I couldn’t just let them keep bleeding.

This is a series on helping isolated homeschoolers and religiously oppressed young adults escape cults and abusive households.

These are the ones I fight for.

…and I’m gonna hide, hide, hide my wings tonight.

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Concerned About Fellowshipping ‘Backsliders’

When people leave an unhealthy church, they are often concerned about fellowshipping ‘backsliders.’ They’ve been told we are bitter and want to strike out or pull them out. That may be true of a few, but many of us went to great lengths not to strike out. What we have said has not been said in anger, but to reach out to others who were hurt.

I was United Pentecostal for 19 years. I was thrown out of a church in 2000 on false accusations based on only the pastor’s word or decision. I moved to another state to join a different UPC to avoid saying anything to anyone about what had happened, under the pretense of going back to college. Only the new pastor and his wife were aware that anything had happened, and I refused to blame the former pastor. The new one knew I’d been thrown out, and knew the accusation. I wouldn’t defend myself. I thought that somehow he must have discerned sin in my heart that I wasn’t aware of.

At the new church, people questioned my move and didn’t accept me. I ‘held on.’ In 2003 my new pastor died. The man who took his place eventually started doing things that concerned me. In 2009, I left there after being named in a lawsuit by someone who had told me personally that the basis of their lawsuit was false, most probably as a supporting witness. I left rather than perjure myself or be thrown out for not backing the suit. I tried to find a different UPC. One pastor wanted to ‘swap stories’ about what this church had done to us. I refused. Several others wouldn’t take me without a full explanation of why I was leaving. And so I left UPC.

All that to say this: My story isn’t so different than others’ here. Many of us swore we’d never leave. We left behind friends and sometimes family. We loved God and church and the people there. We stayed as long as we could. But at some point something happened and we were forced to make a choice we didn’t want to make and didn’t plan to make. Most of us experience anger and confusion, but also a deep sense of loss. These boards can be a sounding board for those who are angry or confused, or disoriented by the culture shock of leaving, but more than that they are a place to sort through things, to discover, to learn, to grow… And when needed, to mourn together a loss that most of Christianity can’t comprehend, though the loss originates from some form of religion.

Blessings and peace to you all in the new year.

Unhealthy Groups

I have been part of an “unhealthy group”. There’s really no need to name one… there are healthy and unhealthy churches under most-if not all-denominational banners.

What makes a church group-or any other group for that matter-unhealthy? There are lists published by people more qualified than I about exactly what constitutes an unhealthy group. My unprofessional synopsis is that if the group is consistently demanding or demeaning or a person finds himself doing things for them or with them in fear, the group is probably unhealthy for that person. Someone else may find the group to be healthy, but for the one living in fear, condemnation, shame, or other negativities, it’s unhealthy. And for anyone involved in creating those feelings, putting others down, acting disdainfully toward others, condemning and shaming others, the group is also unhealthy, though they might not realize or want to admit it. Bullies are victims as much as are the bullied.

What should a person in an unhealthy environment do? Some choose to stay there, hoping things will improve. Some try to change the group from the inside. Some ignore the problem or become part of it. And some leave.

I left. It wasn’t an easy decision, nor have things been easy since. Yet for me, it was the very best choice I could have made.

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