The Journey: Spiritual Abuse Awareness Week

This is my second post for Spiritual Abuse Awareness Week. The prompt for Day 2 was:

"How has your experience affected you? What has it done to you emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually, etc.? What has your journey been like? How have you gotten where you are today? Do you feel you’ve healed? What do you still struggle with?"

Good questions. Let's see- how has my experience affected me? It's literally affected every area of my life. Obviously abuse is never a good thing, and there have been many struggles along the road to healing, but I'm proud to say that I've fought like hell and come out so much better and stronger. I'm a fighter, a survivor, and I'm proud of how far I've come.


So- physically. One thing I've learned through all of this is just how interconnected body, soul, and spirit are. When I first started becoming aware of the abuse, my health took an absolute nosedive. I went from being a relatively healthy person with no concerns to someone with serious health issues in a matter of months. My main issues were digestive, and while I'm a little embarrassed to go into all the details, just imagine the worst things you can imagine about IBS, and that's what I was dealing with.  I eventually figured out that I'm allergic to gluten, and my health improved somewhat after eliminating that from my diet, and then improved significantly again after a year on the GAPS diet and a parasite cleanse. The really interesting thing though is that I never had digestive problems before becoming aware of the abuse and before I started the extraordinarily stressful process of working through all of that. I do think that I'm legitimately allergic to gluten, but I also fully believe that my health issues were directly related to the stress of these experiences.


Emotionally. While going through all of it, my emotions were all over the place. Depression, anxiety, panic attacks, suicidal thoughts, the whole 9 yards. As my sister pointed out after reading Monday's post, I also had some reactions that weren't unlike PTSD. I was a mess. I felt like I was going insane. I knew I wasn't crazy, but goodness, it sure felt like it some days. I had such little control over my emotions, and the depression was so constant and so crushing. Again, some of this was definitely exacerbated by the gluten and gut issues, but a lot of it was a legitimate emotional reaction to what I had been through and what I was going through processing it all(and the subsequent effect on my marriage).

But now? It's like night and day. Now I've found healing, now I've learned to set healthy boundaries and learned what it means to love myself. After learning how to love and accept myself, my heart has been opened to love others, to truly love others for the first time in my life. That nagging feeling that I wasn't really living my own life is gone. I feel freedom, hope, and joy. Yes, there are bad days and even rough seasons. But I know now that not only can I get through them, but HOW to get through them.


Mentally. I've learned that I'm strong. That I'm relentless. That I can get through just about anything. I've learned that I'm intelligent, that I'm not cut out to be a full time stay-at-home-mom(and that's okay!), and that I still love learning. I've learned that it's okay to think for myself. I basically had to start completely over, figuring out what *I* actually think and believe, and while that's a strange process to start so late in life, it's also been so much fun.


Spiritually. Like I described earlier this week, at my lowest point I couldn't even open the Bible, dreaded sitting through church services, and could hardly pray. To have so much trust shattered- to find your life in shambles because of what you'd been taught in the name of God- was just totally devastating. I honestly didn't even know where to begin, but for the first time in my life I decided to be honest with myself about how I was feeling. I gave myself permission to not want to open the Bible. I figured God would rather have me not open it out of an honest heart than to keep reading it out of obligation like I'd done for the past 15 years or so. I just didn't want to be fake anymore. I stopped opening the Bible unless I really wanted to. I didn't do anything spiritual unless I actually wanted to. It was so dark.

And yet God can be found in the darkness too, especially when there's an honest heart there. I found Him speaking to me, undeniably speaking to me. Still, even when I couldn't speak to Him, couldn't put any effort into it anymore, even when I was so hurt and so tired and so done, He still pursued me. It's been a long road, and I don't think I could even explain how, but He showed me grace and love. For the first time EVER, which is a complete and utter shame considering I grew up in CHURCH, I started to understand what grace and love look like. It's awakened and affected every part of me, every relationship that I have. I've learned to show grace to my children and my husband. I'm learning how to show grace to myself.

My spiritual walk is deeper and more real than it ever has been.




I feel like I've healed a lot, although this process of starting to share my story and reevaluate it has shown me that I still have a lot more healing to do. One thing I'm struggling with right now is that after so many years of trauma and going through absolute hell, I still find myself looking around every corner, expecting something horrible to happen. Sometimes, if things have been peaceful for too long, I'll find myself trying to pick a fight with Thad or subconsciously looking for a situation to be angsty about. This is obviously not healthy. I also struggle with knowing that we live in a world where patriarchy is alive and well, where gender hierarchy is the norm both inside and outside the church(but especially inside), and where women are abused every day in the name of God. I'm still trying to figure out what part I can play in helping that stop, and I think for now, sharing my story here is a good place to start.



Today I'm linking up with Joy in This Journey for Day 2 of Spiritual Abuse Awareness Week. Click over to her blog to read other stories or to share your own. 

The Secret Pain of Spiritual Abuse

I found out last week about the spiritual abuse synchroblog, and at first I thought I wouldn't participate. Sure, I have a story, but I'm much too busy to sit down and try to write a portion of it out, right? Then on Sunday, inspiration hit, and I changed my mind. I've been trying all day to get my story out. I've started and stopped. I wrote a whole post and declared it crappy, started completely over and declared that one awful too. I've agonized, grieved, prayed, and been generally grumpy. How do you do this? How do you tell a story that's so deeply painful and personal? I want to get this out, I need to get this out. Where to start? If I start at the beginning, it'd take me forever to tell. Instead, I'll start at my darkest moment.

 

She found me after church. I knew she'd sought me out and wasn't going to leave until after she'd talked to me. I wasn't talking to very many people those days- a depressed introvert will do that. She was one of the few people I trusted that I could share at least part of my heart with. She looked me in the eye, it felt like she looked straight into my soul, and said,

"If it wasn't for your kids, you wouldn't still be here, would you?"

I was too ashamed to even admit it, but she was right. I'd reached that place where ending it all seemed like the easiest answer, where life was so painful I didn't know if I wanted to keep on living. There was so much hurt, so much pain, so much confusion. I was at the end of my rope and barely hanging on. She was right, my kids- the one in my arms and the one in my belly- were the biggest reason I was hanging on.

How did I get to this place? How does the good Christian girl who grew up in the perfect Christian family, had the perfect husband and perfect baby- how does this girl get to the place of despair and wanting to end it all? Two words: spiritual abuse.

You see, that perfect Christian family that I grew up in wasn't so perfect after all. Everyone was jealous of us- of how my mom was always smiling and how my sister and I were always obedient and always got along with each other. But behind that appealing facade was a dark truth- that we were that way because we had to be.

I don't know where or how exactly it started, but somehow my family bought into the same lie that so many other families and churches buy into- the one that says that control is a good thing. Unquestioning obedience was required. It didn't matter how ridiculous or unfair the demands were, as children we were to obey. Lack of obedience to parents meant lack of obedience to the Lord.

 

 

It would be impossible to tell my whole story. And spiritual abuse- what does that even mean? To me it means using the threat of being unpleasing to the Lord to manipulate people into doing things that are unhealthy, or using the Bible to wield control or power over another.

 

 

 

In my family, it looked like things like this:

 

It looked like the time when I was 7 years old, when I stopped reading my King James Bible out loud every morning for devotional time and started reading novels instead becaue they were more interesting, how my dad spanked me 100 times for the 100 days I'd been lying (by omission) to him about it. It looked like how he then pulled out the family photo albums and pointed out to me how "the light" had gone out of my eyes when I stopped reading God's word every day.

It looked like how when I'd forget to do my chore of washing my dad's clothes, it wasn't seen as a mistake or forgetfulness, it was seen as a serious character flaw, lack of respect for my father, and selfishness that needed to be repented of.

When I was 14, spiritual abuse looked like my father, in the name of sex education, forcing me to say words like penis and vagina. When I was too embarrassed to comply, he commanded me to say them, declared that I was not too old to be spanked for disobedience, and yes, spanked me for not saying those words in front of him. At Fourteen. Years. Old.

Spiritual abuse looked like my entire courtship with my future husband. It was securely woven in the way that we weren't allowed to make any decisions about our relationship on our own. We couldn't decide when to talk on the phone, when to spend time alone together, when to start using the titles "boyfriend" and "girlfriend", when to hold hands, when to kiss, when to say I love you- all in the name of having a God honoring relationship. Of course, God-honoring meant parent controlled. It was damaging enough for my husband to be subjected to such inane rules, but he'd already had the experience of living an adult life and making choices for himself- something I'd never done. And even then, as I was supposed to be making the incredibly important decision about the person I'd be spending the rest of my life with, the decisions were not my own.

Spiritual abuse looked like being taught that because I was a woman, it would be sinful for me to work outside of the home, or make major decisions for myself, or try to be equal with my husband, or basically think for myself at all.

 

 

Those are glimpses of what spiritual abuse looked like for me. I lived 22 years in that world, in that box, trapped in a place where I couldn't think for myself, where I couldn't be myself, where I didn't even know that there *was* a myself that I was missing. To me, that was the worst part of it- not that I was in the box, but that I didn't know the box existed. At 22 years old, when I saw that first crack start to appear, and I got my first glimpse into the outside world, my life was changed forever.

 

 

But simply knowing and seeing the truth does not instantly make for a beautiful life, not when seeing the truth for the first time means starting over. For me it was quite literally a Matrix-like moment, as if discovering that my entire life had been a lie. And that led me deep into depression.


The Bible that I'd devoted so much time into reading, studying, and following- I couldn't even open it. I literally couldn't read it because every time I tried, reading passages that I'd read before would trigger a horrible memory, would bring back that terrible feeling like my gut had just been punched. I could barely sit through church. "What a bunch of fakes.", I'd think. "Do they realize how many people they're hurting in the name of God? Do they even care?" I couldn't sing, so I'd just stand there. I'd cringe throughout the sermon, hoping it would end soon so I could crawl back home to solitude. I could barely pray. I definitely couldn't do long, drawn out prayers on my face pouring my heart out to the Lord. All I could manage was a sentence or two. "God please help me." "Please help me make it through this." But He still heard.



And I still believed in Him. I couldn't understand how such terrible things could be done in His name, and I still don't fully understand that. But somehow, I knew it wasn't His fault, that it wasn't what he had wanted all along. I couldn't open His precious word, I could barely open my mouth and speak to Him, and yet I clung to him. I clung to hope that I would someday, somehow make it through this.



I don't remember what else that precious woman said to me after church that day, but I do remember that it encouraged me. That encounter became a bit of of a defining moment for me, a lifeline to hang onto, a confirmation that God really was still there and really did still care about me. Little did I know just how carefully He was watching me, holding me, guiding me, leading me to the place I am today.






This post was written for Spiritual Abuse Awareness Week, a synchroblog hosted by several Christian bloggers. I'm linking up with Wine and Marble today, I'll be keeping up with Rachel Held Evans' series on abuse and the church all week, and you can see the rest of the participants in the graphic below. I hope you'll read along, and find hope and healing along with me.

 

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Love God. Love Each Other.

Master, which is the greatest commandment in the law? Jesus said until him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all they heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. 

                                                                                          Matthew 22:36-40


This cornerstone scripture encompasses what I believe to be one of the simplest and strongest arguments in favor of the concept of egalitarian marriage. The message in this passage is clear- the two most important commandments are these: to love God and to love each other. These two commandments are so fundamentally important that all the others can be contained within them. There's not a simpler way to explain God's desires for us other than to say that we are to love Him and to love each other.


It's no coincidence that these two principles are also the foundation of an egalitarian marriage. Love God. Love each other. Yes, of course, things can and do get more complex when we look at any specific couple's marriage, and yes, there are other principles that can be beneficial. But if we reduce the concept of an egalitarian marriage down to the bare bones, down to it's essence, the principles are these: Love God and love each other. There's nothing else that's absolutely necessary. These two principles alone, when applied to marriage, define perfectly the essence of an egalitarian marriage.

Not so with complementarianism. Of course, complementarians would say that loving God and loving each other are essential to their beliefs about marriage. But just by stating those two things, you do not have a picture of a complementarian marriage. You don't start to see a picture of a complementarian marriage unless you add things like, "the man must humbly lead and the woman must graciously submit", or "the husband is the head and the wife is the follower", or "here are certain things that the woman must do and must not do". That sounds incredibly like legalism to me- to add strict rules to the beautiful simplicity of God's concept.


Love God. Love each other. It really doesn't have to get more complex than that. Jesus condensed the entire law and prophets down into these two basic commands, and they just happen to also perfectly describe the essence of egalitarianism. I think that's incredibly significant.



There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. 
                                                                                         Galatians 3:23 



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I'm an Egalitarian- and That Doesn't Make Me Less of a Christ-Follower.

Just a note: Today's post (and probably several to follow in the next weeks and months) takes on a completely different issue than the parenting related posts that I usually write. I apologize to my readers that have no interest in this topic, but as I have explained before, this blog is mostly an outlet for me, and because of that I'll naturally be focusing on what interests me, not necissarily on creating a cohesive blog with one type of content. Sorry! But who knows- maybe you'll find a new topic of interest that you hadn't discovered before!



I am an egalitarian. I haven't always believed this way, but my history as a complementarian is a big part of the reson I'm an egalitarian today. My personal history as a complementarian is also central to one of my biggest issues with complementarians.


You see, I don't like not being taken seriously. I don't like being told that my experiences don't matter, that I must not have been "doing it right", and that I couldn't have possibly experienced what I experienced. And unless we're talking about things that are so incredibly essential to Christianity(things like the deity of Christ, His resurrection, etc) I really don't like being told that someone's doctrine or belief is the One Right Way, The Only Way to be a true believer. I don't like when people take non-essential doctrines and treat them as essentials, and judge people as if they were essentials.

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(That's what complementarians have done with the gender/marriage issue. Egalitarians say, "This is a non-essential! Can't we agree to disagree, and walk in unity in the areas that we do agree?" And complementarians respond by saying, "Nope, sorry, because this actually is an essential doctrine to us. You see, if you misrepresent the marital relationship, you misrepresent the gospel." I believe this is a cop out- an easy way to try to avoid really engaging with the issue. I could say that about almost any non essential, but important doctrine. Do you believe in Calvinism? You've misrepresented the nature of God. Do you believe in Armenianism? You've misrepresented the nature of God. You believe in a post-trib rapture? How could the God of the Bible allow his children to experience His wrath by going through the tribulation? I could go on. The point is that gender roles are not an essential doctrine, and to elevate them to an essential doctrine requires the same kind of "theological gymnastics" that complementarians accuse egalitarians of.)


Elevating the non-essential to the essential- that's what complementarians do, you know. Not all of them, but a lot of them, especially the outspoken leaders of the movement. They make statements like this one from Nancy Leigh DeMoss:

"Before you go any further, I feel I should warn you that what you are about to read is not politically correct. It flies in the face of what we have been taught as 21 st-century, “liberated” women. It is contrary to our natural instincts. It will never be the majority position and is likely to make some women uncomfortable.

But I can assure you that it is the only path to true joy, peace, and fulfillment as a woman. You see, God made us, He loves us, and we can only be whole when we function according to His design for our lives." (emphasis mine)

 Did you catch what she said there? Not, "in my opinion, this is the only way." Not, "as far as I know", or "what I've concluded". Nope, just "this is the only way". Do you know what that infuriates me so much? Because not only is the bolded statement completely false, but it totally invalidates my experiences. It tells me that what I've experienced is somehow wrong, that I'm somehow out of God's will and not fulfilling my full potential as a Christian woman.

(I'm not even going to go into DeMoss' "True Woman Campaign" today. The title alone is exclusive and elitist- as if anyone who doesn't believe that way is not a true woman- whatever that even means.)

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How do I know that DeMoss' statement is false? I know because I've lived it. I grew up in a complementarian home. I can't even count the number of times my mother would exclaim how great it was that she was supposed to let my dad make all the big decisions, because then she didn't have to take any of the responsibility for them. It was the whole complementarian package- men were the leaders and women were the followers. Men were to make the big decisions and women were to submit. Women shouldn't be leaders in religion or politics(their pesky menstrual cycles rendered them too unstable for such things, obviously), and in most cases, women shouldn't work outside of the home- don't you know that the reason so many working mothers are unhappy is because they're not following God's prescription for their lives? My mom dropped out of college to marry my dad when she was just a couple credit hours short of her associates degree, and never went back.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that complementarianism played a huge role in literally destroying my family of origin. I'm not going to tell the whole story today(though more of that is coming soon), so for now you'll just have to take my word for it.  By the time I reached adolescence, the marriage and family that looked so perfect on the outside was literally falling apart. My parents were on the brink of divorce, and I was confused and depressed. Even when my parents reconciled, their relationship still wasnt anywhere near healthy, and my mom wasn't happy or fulfilled(and neither was I). My dad passed away shortly after that.


Less than a year after my dad passed away, my mom remarried the most controlling, abusive man she could find, less than 6 weeks after meeting him. I belive with all my heart that this decision was a direct result of the fact that complementarianism had not allowed her to create her own identity outside of my father's. She didn't know who she was or how to function without a man to "lead" her. Her decision to marry this man has alienated her from the rest of her family, as he is so incredibly toxic it would be dangerous for any of us to be exposed to him.


I married shortly before my mother remarried, and complementarianism didn't do any favors to my marriage either. I was unhappy, unfulfilled, and oh-so confused- not because of my wonderful husband, but because of my perceived role as a Christian Wife, and because no matter how hard I tried(and I honestly believed at that point that it was the Right and Godly way for me to function as a woman) I just couldn't make it work for me. Thankfully, I was able to discover that there was a different way, my husband and I learned how to communicate and relate in a healthy way, and we now have a (mostly-we're not perfect)healthy and happy marriage. Not because of complementarianism. Oh no. Because I rejected complementarianism and found a healthy freedom in Christ, and in egalitarianism.


I have never felt more alive. I have never felt more peace, more contentment, more fulfillment. I have never felt closer to my husband, in every way. I have never felt closer to God or more dedicated to serving him with my life. I have never felt like I truly understood the heart of God in the way I'm beginning to now. It's been such a life altering, complete transformation that it's hard to describe in words- and it all started when I started questioning complementarianism. So how in the world could complementarianism be the key to a Christian woman's life?


This is why it makes me so angry when complementarians and much of the evangelical church at large shouts from the mountaintops that this is The Only Way. It's impossible for me to believe that way anymore. I simply can't believe that complementarianism is the only way, not when it destroyed my family, continues to rob my children of a grandmother, and nearly destroyed my own marriage. Don't tell me that's the only way when the only true fulfillment and purpose that I've been able to find has come after I rejected the teachings of complementarianism.


If it's working for you, I'm happy for you, really. I'm not going to tell you that you're misrepresenting the gospel, that you're a Jezebel, that you're corrupting the church, or that God is displeased with you(all things that egalitarians hear from complementarians on a daily basis). Don't I deserve the same respect? It's a different viewpoint, not the end of the world or the gospel, I promise. If complementarianism is working for your marriage, I'm so glad. But please, don't get angry when I point out the inconsistencies and warn you that it caused and continues to cause heartache for me. Don't tell me that I did it wrong, that I probably misunderstood something, and that I should probably just repent and try again. Please don't completely dismiss my experiences as irrelevant, because they're not.


Complementarianism is NOT the only way to live a fulfilled, Godly life as a Christian woman, and I stand every day, with so many others, as living proof of that.



 This post is just the first of many to come on this topic. I hope that no matter which side of the issue you fall on, or if this post was your first exposure to the debate, that you'll continue to read as I share more of my story and my thoughts on this issue. There's so much more to my story than just what I shared in this post, and while I'll be sharing more of that in the future, for now I'll just hope you can do exactly what I argued for in this post- take me seriously, even without knowing all the details.

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