Reflections
On taking a hard look at myself, and why I’ve been quiet for a while.
Writing is like looking into a mirror. When you write from your heart, you see yourself.
Like most people, I use a mirror when I am getting ready to go out in the world. I also use a second mirror to look into the first mirror, allowing me to make sure the hair on the back of my head is behaving.
The Bible is also a mirror (James 1:22-25). Looking at my writing through the mirror of scripture also lets me see the back of my head. It shows me my blind spots. Sometimes, it shows me places that need more healing.
I do a lot of writing I don’t post here. Unhealed anger has kept my writing going in circles. That anger represents unmet needs like those that haunted me in childhood. The need to be understood. The need for harm to be acknowledged. The need for repair. The need for care. The need for safe community. The harm of these needs not being met in either my childhood family or the church that called itself my family.
I write as though I’m trying to prove the harm happened. But I don’t need to prove it. The people who know, know. The people who don’t, may never understand. Those who know, understand because they lived it, too. We spent our childhoods in perpetual survival mode - fight or flight - and it was prolonged by participation in a religious system that benefited from keeping us in that dysregulated state. Jumping through hoops, performing to stay out of trouble. Just like childhood.
As a child, I fantasized that somehow, my mother and stepfather would understand the error of their ways, that things would miraculously change in our family dynamic, our home would be safe, and all would be well. Of course, it never happened. But even if it had, it wouldn’t have erased the need to heal the damage that had already occurred.
As an adult, I have still sensed that inner child’s anguish about those needs never being met within my family, and the healing process has also unearthed anger about how those unmet needs were compounded in adulthood by three decades in a church that demonized, belittled, and dismissed them. As a young adult in the church, I struggled a lot, usually due to repressed emotions that came spilling out uncontrollably, and those emotions were shut down by others with harsh rebukes or other shame-evoking reactions. High-control religious environments are notorious for considering emotions unspiritual, unless you’re happy, or you’re crying about being so evil Jesus had to die for you. For the first decade or so that I was in the church, therapy was frowned upon, so I had two choices: repress those unresolved emotions even deeper, or leave the church. But they preached that the church was the one and only Kingdom of God and that leaving would bring eternal damnation. Having very little religious background or knowledge in the beginning, I couldn’t disprove that, so I hung around, abandoning my unprocessed emotions, and myself, in the process.
After an open letter was written to the worldwide movement in 2003, detailing systemic abuses and calling for change, things became less legalistic and controlling in our congregation, and throughout the denomination to varying degrees. By that time, I had been in the church for over a decade, and I had many relationships in the church. I was taking copious amounts of antidepressants that kept my emotions at bay and my trauma buried. I had started therapy in 1999, despite the opinions of our church leader at the time (he once exclaimed from the pulpit, “there are too many people in this church going to therapy!”), but I had stopped going (various reasons, but I probably shouldn’t have done that - I eventually started again). I had also gotten married, and our kids had relationships in the church as well. So there were many reasons I hung around. I was also physically ill most of the time, and wondered why. I would later understand how my physical health was negatively impacted by that emotional repression. I eventually shoved my emotions down so far that I was out of touch with myself. The top wouldn’t blow off for another 17 years, in another congregation in a different city, but the same family of churches. When it did, I was met with more rejection than support or understanding.
Now, as I approach turning 60, I realize that most of my life has been spent avoiding myself in order to survive in systems that should have been safe communities, but weren’t. My anger stands guard to protect the raw emotions of that vulnerable, naïve inner child who still wants to believe that if only the church could understand, I would be safe with them, and all would be well. But that isn’t true. Even if they did understand and acknowledge the harm, it wouldn’t be erased.
That innocent childhood fantasy places all of my power for change in the hands of people who caused the harm. “If only they would understand/care/change, all would be well.” Although, at one time, that fantasy may have offered me some sort of hope in a tormenting reality I was powerless to overcome or escape, I’m not that powerless child anymore. The power to heal resides with me, not anyone else. Clinging to that outdated fantasy is no longer a recipe for hope. It’s a recipe for ongoing anger and perpetual victimhood.
I had a long talk with my son recently. This isn’t unusual; we do that a lot. He’s a deep thinker and a deep feeler, like me. We don’t always agree on everything, but we talk deep. I’m proud of him. His story is not mine to tell, but he has overcome a lot in his 24 years. In this particular conversation, he said something that stuck with me. To paraphrase, “I realized that seeing myself as a victim just made me miserable. I believe hanging onto a victim mindset ultimately leads to death, emotionally or spiritually, and sometimes it even leads people to physical death. I refuse to be a victim. I’m done with that.”
I don’t think I’m wrong for being angry that oppressive religion forestalled my recovery from an oppressive childhood environment. I think there would be something wrong with me if I wasn’t. I believe that there is such a thing as healthy anger, and identifying the source of pain is part of the process of healing. But to stay stuck in anger is to remain the victim of people who hurt me. Like my son, I want to be done with that.
I still believe the church is severely lacking in their understanding of the devastating effects of trauma, and that their shortsightedness in this area has placed unnecessary burdens on people. I regret all the years I invested in a system that took advantage of my trauma and compounded it. I regret trusting and pouring my heart out to people who could not hold it, scattering my pearls in the wrong place. But I’m not going to change the past by staying angry about it. Nor is venting my anger and frustration going to create positive change for the future.
So lately, I’ve been a little quieter here as I take some time to better understand and process my anger. Anger always has a message to relay, and it’s always in our best interest to listen to what lies beneath it. In this case, there are unmet needs to address, and I am learning to allow God to meet them. I’m spending more time exploring my heart with God. Tuning in to my body has always been a challenge, but I am focusing more intentionally on that again. Rather than worrying about dysfunctional systems I can’t fix, I’m focusing inward at what is within my control. I believe I can know and connect with God only as deeply as I am willing to know and connect with myself, so I’m looking intently at my reflection in the mirror, while He holds up that second mirror for the back of my head.
Be angry, and do not sin; ponder in your own hearts on your beds, and be silent. - Psalms 4:4
I can really, really relate to this Lori. My dad died in January. He was NOT a good person. His abuse of my sisters and I was indescribable. Had it happened in modern day and not in the 70's, he would have went to prison. My mother was a narcissistic enabler. I had learned over the years to compartmentalize much of my trauma, but found later on how that was not serving me well. I too was a very latently angry person. When my anger spilled out, it was frightening to most people. It drove me to towards my addiction later on in life.
I am still trying to close out my dad's estate (idiot lawyer). Then 11 days ago, my sister died. Literally of a broken heart. I am once again dealing with so much anger. We weren't even close anymore, but just the thought of children having their childhood's ripped from them and having to go a lifetime with that trauma leaves me with such profound sadness and yet, this rage that can't really be placed anywhere.
Then the church comes to mind. It becomes so raw, such a festering wound. My youngest son tells me of things people said to him. I have to be somewhat silent. For what may come out would not be who I am (and yet it is who I am) but it would be an explosion of my pain. And it may land on someone with all its fury. This would serve no purpose, and that someone would surely learn nothing.
So like you, I am writing in other venues. I am sharing with other broken people. I am helping them to unlock their trauma now before they become a 60 yr old that tried to bury it for decades only for it to come breaking through, and then you have to deal with all the damage that was caused from keeping it locked up for so long. AND I am speaking up to all the conflict avoiders that keep enabling the abuse. It is YOU that shares great responsibility; you are not innocent.
This thought really resonates with me. I have journaled to try to process my time in, as I call it, “old church”. You’re right. We don’t have to prove it. Something that has helped me in my healing is music. There’s a song called Made For More, and one of the lines says, “why would I make a bed in my shame when a fountain of grace is running my way? I know I’m yours, and I was made for more.”
This has helped me get a proper, correct view of how God feels about me.
Thank you for sharing so openly. Every time I read your writings, I can echo so much of what you’re saying. It kind of proves what you said, that you don’t need to write to try to prove what happened, because others who experienced it know. I know, and I hear you, and I’m with you.