trigger warning: sexual abuse
I’ve come out of the operating room. The blood loss has stopped. At this stage of healing it’s more like I am in remission and doing everything I can to be healthier. I am intentionally creating healthier habits to maintain healthier relationships.
Part of that healthier living is dealing with my fear of abandonment. It’s a doozy.
This fear is deep. I have come to realize that I interpreted every relationship through this lens. It’s what intensified the trauma in my spiritual trauma. It’s what caused my extreme response in every conflict I have had with friends, my children and in my marriage.
I’ve learned this fear of abandonment often stems from childhood trauma. Specifically, experiences like childhood neglect, abuse, or the loss of a parent, in my case divorce, can lead to a deep-seated fear of being rejected or left alone.
I remember being a four or five years old and crying because my mom was leaving me to go to work. I knew bad things happened at my grandmother’s house. When my mom walked out the door I wasn’t safe anymore.
I also remember making a calculated decision, to go my abuser’s room because it was better than being alone. I feared being alone so much that I chose sexual abuse over the alternative.
These early experiences shaped my attachment style and made me prone to developing insecure attachments which then led to, at times, a paralyzing fear of being rejected, alone and abandoned.
What’s funny about this fear is it isn’t all together irrational. The truth is people leave. People betray us. People hurt us.
The irrational part is that my brain says this is going to be catastrophic. The panic alarm sounds and survival mode kicks in.
…
My teen years were riddled with unstable relationships, some volatile. I made unhealthy attachments that I found hard to break even when they were destructive. I was misguided, wandering and in every sense lost.
It was in that season I made one of my longest standing unhealthy attachments.
The church.
At least what I thought was the church.
My conversion experience was real. Jesus came for me in a real way. The Holy Spirit began a real work in me. That is the best part of my story.
The part I got wrong, I believed that this church, these people, were now my everything. I gave them unfettered access to my heart. They were Jesus’ people right? What could be wrong with that?
What could be wrong is that the attachment was unhealthy. I put the church in the role of meeting my emotional need for security.
I couldn’t miss a service because that would show a faint-hearted dedication.
I worked hard in the group to demonstrate my worth.
I was consumed with learning the scriptures.
I valued myself based on my perceived worth to the group.
I even married a preacher.
He is a good part of my story. Although ministry is a complicated part of my story. I believe I am the most authentic version of myself when I am serving the church but being employed by the church made me vulnerable to over-reaching, abusive leadership.
When the spiritual abuse started early on I knew it was wrong. I even pushed back. But my need to be accepted by the group caused me to acquiesce.
We experienced years of gnat-straining judgement, control, shaming and shunning. We lost income, were lied to and called names. All the while, I defined myself by my value in the community. A community that permitted maltreatment of its members and often shamed anyone for exposing it.
Simultaneously, I worked to bring new members into the community because I believed we had something they needed.
Another complication, the community was innately flawed, which made my entanglement even messier and caused me to internalize some very harmful messages.
- You must be in the right church to be saved. (ie loved by God).
- We are the one, true church.
- Women serve not speak.
- Females are responsible for male lust.
- Obedience matters more than love.
- Doctrinal differences permit division.
- Secret sin stays secret.
- Divorce and remarriage is an unforgiveable sin.
Even when I consciously dissented, the messages became part of the fabric of my spiritual life and my psyche.
I was a wounded adult with attachment issues in a religious community that required doctrinal conformity while neglecting the weightier matters of love, justice and mercy.
But remember, these are my people. This is my tribe. This is my identity.
I needed acceptance even when I saw red flag warning signs. It’s sort of like spiritual Battered Wives Syndrome. I recognized some of the problems. I didn’t get the gravity of the damage being done. So I stayed.
I kept giving my all. When someone would leave I returned to that place of feeling unworthy, unloved and unprotected. Instinctively I shielded myself by shutting down and shutting people out.
If I faced what I believed was reality, I would crumble. I was rejected. I was abandoned. I wasn’t worth staying for. Emotionally, I was that little girl again. The panic alarm sounded. Survival mode kicked in.
This cycle repeated itself for fifteen years.
…
Two weeks after starting spiritual trauma therapy I wrote, “Of all the trauma in church, the loss of Martha and James* was the greatest. I truly believed they were my forever friends, believed they were closer than family, more reliable than anyone and true friends… until they weren’t…
I so desperately wanted to run away. I wanted to just go somewhere, anywhere with new people, new opportunities and new hope. I was suffocating. I was obsessed and controlled by the rejection.”
And then I just stuffed it down.
Four years later it happened again, only bigger. There was no room left to stuff.
The A-bomb went off. All of the things I stuffed, things I thought I dealt with, they all erupted.
So here I am, sitting in the post traumatic debris, cleaning up the rubble and dealing with my fear of abandonment and rejection, so when conflict arises I don’t go nuclear again.
I am called to live in community with other believers. I am called to love and serve others outside the body of Christ. How do I do that? What if it hurts again?
Lean into the immutable truth of who God is.
God said, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” What God declares is truth. It’s fact. As certain as the law of gravity, He will not leave me. He will not turn his back on me. Ever.
Even when my loneliness felt like a black hole, He was there. He sat with me in darkness. He wept with me in agony. He picked me up and carried me to open places.
Lean into the people who are faithful.
In the aftermath there were some real heroes who showed up. People who stood with me. People who offered compassion, strength and solidarity.
My husband was one of those people. He gets being faithful.
My parents and my children circled their wagons around me, protected me and loved me.
When I felt like I lost everything, I really didn’t.
Stay away from broken systems.
“Soft on people. Hard on systems.” When I heard that something inside me healed a little more. It allows room for grace for individuals while holding the mechanism responsible for the harm it has done.
I have been a victim of and a contributor to a very broken system.
Authoritarian control, exclusivity and isolationism all worked together to create a very unhealthy power structure ripe for abuse.
The system I was a part of permitted people, particularly men in leadership, to go places they shouldn’t go, ask questions that were none of their business and make judgements that are only God’s to make.
“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits.” Matthew 7:15-16
Build a safer community.
I would like to say I am returning to the fundamentals but I’m afraid the fundamentals of Christianity were just out of my reach for the first 30 years of my journey.
These days I am using the Beatitudes as my guide. I want to actually make the greatest commands the greatest commands. And I need people around me who get that.
Let God Define Me.
I spent most of my life striving for a validation that wouldn’t come from anyone but the Lord.
Jesus defines me- not the church, not flawed, equally unhealed people, just Jesus. Being created in His image is the basis of my worth. I don’t have to work harder, serve more or even be right about religion. And as vessel of honor, created in His image, I never have to accept abusive treatment again.
Lord, tonight I pray for the hurting. I pray for your children who have been driven from the church. Please strengthen those who will no longer will be complicit to the harm it’s caused. I pray for those who were wounded by the church to be healed. I pray for the callous and cold to repent. I pray for prideful leadership to be humbled. I pray for those leaders who live in spiritual poverty blinded to their need, may their eyes be opened to the truth of your essence- You are love and mercy flows from you like mighty rivers. I pray for those who refuse to acknowledge their sin or be accountable for the sins of the church, may their stain be removed.
And Lord, please forgive me of sins, those I have committed voluntarily and involuntarily. Cover me and fill me with your Holy Spirit so I may radiate your light in a dark world.
May the believers of the world be united under the cross of Christ and may the church be the open door to the kingdom that will never end.
I love you with my whole heart. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, amen.
“He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.” Psalm 92:1
*Not their real names.
