Awakening Day

Yes, it's an anniversary today. My body has been reminding me all week. Today, my mind is resolute.

Photo by v2osk on Unsplash

March 1 is a day I celebrate.

I call it Awakening Day. Six years ago, for everyone else, it was just another Sunday. For me, it was the day my illusions were shattered. But today, I celebrate that it as the day God began waking me up to the toxic environment in which I had been immersed for nearly three decades.

The initial impact came on the way home that evening. The repeated patterns. The decades of self-betrayal. Heavy realizations for which therapy had not yet given me language. Just the blunt devastation that hits when you begin to realize you’ve been deceived for a very long time.

I hadn’t wanted to meet with all those people. That was not what I had requested. But when a church leader says, “I think (other specific people) should be there, too,” and you’ve been conditioned by toxic religion to automatically override your body’s distress signals, you say, “ok,” even as your anxiety mounts. My mind tried to gaslight me into trusting it would be ok. But my body knew. I just didn’t know how to listen to it yet.

Everyone in that meeting (two other couples besides my husband and myself) knew that our family was in crisis, we were in fear for the life of our youngest child, and that I was suffering from some serious physical health issues and the emotional torment of my previously repressed childhood trauma uncontrollably resurfacing in the midst of all that. But the focus of that meeting quickly turned to how poorly I was handling all of it, and how that made them all feel. I don’t deny that I handled it poorly, and it is also true that I needed support, not more shame. It was the final push that sent me over the edge, and also the beginning of the long and painful journey of awakening. That awakening has come in stages.

After that day, I had a full collapse. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t work. I had to pick up the pieces and reassemble. My most immediate need was to address my childhood trauma. But as I progressed through the work of healing from being abused in a dysfunctional childhood home, I began to recognize similar dysfunction and power dynamics in the church that had forged my spiritual development. In particular, I began to see many ways that high-control environment of the 90’s and early 2000’s had seriously compounded my trauma.

Next, I noticed the deception in the claim of so many dyed-in-the-wool ICOC folks, “but we’ve changed since then!” Marginally, yes. But I began to witness the lingering echoes of those “old days” that people want to pretend aren’t still being lived out in their nervous systems and passed on to new converts. The way some people still feel the need to control others, and how it is still allowed and even condoned. The way codependent behavior is regarded and held up as an example of sacrificial servanthood, rather than an indicator that someone may have unhealed trauma they’ve never honestly addressed and processed. The sermons that nearly always have an underlying jab of “you’re not doing enough,” or an implied, “you are a disappointment to God.” The people (not just me!) who still report visceral reactions during “discipling” interchanges, such as simultaneous chills and sweating, tremors, rapid heartbeat, elevated blood pressure, and other bodily signals of fight-or-flight (a trauma response). Then there is the glaring fact that inclusion (and supposedly, salvation) still hinge on going through a prescribed set of Bible studies, during which a person’s eligibility (for both) is gauged by other humans, and is based, in large part, on the level to which the person will bare their soul and their most vulnerable emotions to people who are in no way trained to appropriately counsel them or provide support through whatever might surface.

There’s more, but you get the idea. Naturally, juxtaposed against the general understanding that a church should be a safe place to heal rather than a place that creates further harm, all of this was quite unsettling. When voiced, my concerns were met with gaslighting, excuse making, and downplaying. My observations and suggestions about resources to help the whole congregation practice a more emotionally healthy spirituality were met with condescension and an ineffectual token effort response, geared toward the women only. Meanwhile, the men engaged in something more “manly.” Don’t even get me started.

Healing requires a supportive community, and not really having that, I experienced setbacks. People who once claimed to love me began avoiding me. And every time I heard someone talk about how we are one body with many parts, how we are to rejoice and mourn with one another, or how the church is a family, I wanted to scream. I’ve written before about the final straw that finally convinced me of the futility of hanging around, so I won’t rehash that here. It became imperative for me to leave and spend sufficient time away from all organized religion while I deconstructed and reconstructed my faith and separated my concept of God from the whole idea of “church.”

Since then, things have come full circle in many ways. Here it is, another Sunday, and I am preparing to go to church. As recently as a year ago, I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to attend a church again. But a couple of months ago, my family and I began attending one that preaches the true gospel and doesn’t send me into survival mode. Six years ago, as I melted into a puddle of tears on my bathroom floor, pleading with God to “just take me home now,” I could not have imagined many of the better things He had in store. Now, as I cautiously test the waters of church involvement again, I do so with guarded optimism and an unflinching resolve to walk away from anyone who confuses love with control, and any institution that applies man-made rules and works on top of the gospel of grace. I am taking my time to discern if this is the right church for me, rather than viewing it as a test to see if I am an acceptable candidate for them. If that dynamic flips, I walk. Being acceptable to God is enough, and thanks only to the blood of Jesus, I am. Call it “church shopping” if you want. I remember how the ICOC used to employ that phrase to ridicule and discourage the process of making a wise and informed choice. Good times.

In short, thanks to Awakening Day, I’m making progress on the slow work of healing from a lifetime of narcissistic abuse and high-control, works-based religion (the similarities between the two really are striking). God is good. He used this day in 2020 to wake me up.

Today, I wish I could thank everyone who contributed to that initial awakening by dismissing, insulting, and judging me when I was at my absolute lowest. I also owe my thanks to everyone who has gaslit, shunned, ghosted, and lied to my family members and me since then. They’ve done me a great service by reinforcing the truth. I hope they all get the privilege of having a similar awakening, not because I want them to hurt, but because the eventual clarity on the other side is amazing.

I have recently been sharing posts on social media about religious trauma and healthy spirituality, not for my own benefit, but for theirs. I want to spread awareness that might help them see ways they’ve also been hurt by the works-oriented brand of faith that naturally results from high-control religion. Or maybe understand the need to become trauma-informed, for the sake of people who walk through their doors in the future.

But if I were a gambler, I’d stake all my earthly possessions on the probability that the people who need awareness the most are not even paying attention. And if they are, those posts probably cause most of them to feel smug and self-righteous, maybe even annoyed or offended, rather than evoke any internal reflection. I say this because I’ve observed patterns for many years. Why change when you can blame a scapegoat? This is the blueprint response for dysfunctional families and communities. Boy, she sure needs to heal. Newsflash: she is healing. It just doesn’t look like they think it should. Probably because they’ve never healed from toxic religion.

The truth is, my ability to speak about it is a sign of the healing work I’ve done, not a lack of it. And if someone is less bothered by the trauma their movement has created for countless people, than they are disturbed by my speaking out about it, that says volumes right there. But not about me. Some of these folks are vocal about social justice, which I also support, yet they refuse to see the parallels right under their noses. It is not just me, even though they really want to believe that.

Fortunately, I have nothing to prove to them or anyone else, and I don’t need to meet anyone else’s definition of “healed,” especially if that definition means “silent.” I trust that there are a handful of people who care about and appreciate the information I share, and since it keeps showing up in my newsfeeds, I keep passing it along. As for the other folks, I’ll probably purge my friends list soon and remove the people I have no desire or reason to be connected to anymore anyway, so they will be relieved soon enough. You can show someone the truth, but you can’t make them look at it, and you can’t make them care. New wine will burst old crusty wineskins every time. Likewise, the mere thought of holding meaningful space for mental and emotional health and trauma recovery makes their heads explode. As a group, they will never “get it.” Sadly, I think it’s a lesson each person must learn the hard way, just as I did, and then remove themselves for their own good. I really wish them all the best. I hope they have an Awakening Day, too.