Church hurt and spiritual abuse is a scourge. It’s real, pervasive and deeply painful. – Mary Demuth
Loyalty is my love language. I still have friends from my childhood. I am a repeat customer where they know my name. I will eat the recipe you messed up. I take the route you picked even though I know the other one is shorter.
Why? Because being with you is my measuring stick of whether or not I am good. This is my fear of abandonment showing itself. Breaking relationship equals failure- my failure.
I am also an upfront communicator. Doing an autopsy of past friendships I see a pattern. My overt style was too much. In my head it’s better to say the thing and move on with the person. For some, the thing I said couldn’t be moved on from. I never understood that because I was staying. That was my marker. Staying was my sole standard.
So when someone doesn’t communicate and doesn’t stay it’s a double blow to my heart.
Guess what church people tend to do- not communicate and leave a church when there’s a problem.
My head and heart literally do not know what to do with that. It’s an emotional nuclear bomb. I become disoriented, confused and it hurts. In the moment the only thing I see is the hurt.
Over the years I have a few of these bomb blasts. The last one seems to be the worst. The bomb dropped and bricks just keep falling- weeks later. When I think I can breathe again, another wall crumbles.
I grieve. I lament, for surely God does too. He is relational to the core. His essence is relational. The three in one God is eternally relational, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Eden was created as the sacred space of relationship between God and man. When that was fractured, the Tabernacle and then the temple became the holy ground of relational connection between God and man.
Today, it is us. We are the place God dwells. We are the relational sacred space. So when that is fractured, especially in the body of Christ, it is death. It is something to be mourned.
But it doesn’t have to stay in that place of grief. In this process I am learning something new. Grace.
Why has this never occurred to me before?
Well, honestly, because when hurt became the focus I wanted justice. I wanted to see the wrong made right. I wanted to be heard and understood. I wanted to be avenged.
This time, in the hurt, I started praying the Lord’s prayer daily. Sometimes multiple times a day. By the third or fourth time that I say, “Forgive me as I forgive those who trespass against me,” I start to believe it.
Forgiveness is grace. Forgiveness is life. It is a restorative and regenerating balm. It is healing me within. It is the salve to heal relationship. It is the only hope for mending the body of Christ.
And so today, I pray, Father, forgive me. Forgive those who trespass against me. And please, I beg, deliver us from evil. For yours is the kingdom and the power and glory forever. Amen.
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace… Ephesians 1:7
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