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Healing from Spiritual Trauma

I’ve been binging the “Ask Science Mike” podcast over the last few months and I’m almost caught up. Recently I listened to episode 79 where someone asked about recovering from spiritual abuse. They explained how they suffer from an anxiety disorder and how things associated with Christianity now trigger panic attacks, including the Bible and corporate worship.

I used to think the terms “Spiritual abuse” and “Spiritual PTSD” were pretty silly, now I see how well they fit what I’ve been though. I’ve been at the point this person was at. There was a point when going into a church caused immediate panic and I still don’t feel comfortable inside a church.

When my faith started to evolve I started to lose my community, I had inklings that things weren’t right. I was uncomfortable in my church.  I learned that the love of these people, who I saw as family, didn’t work the way I thought it did. They professed God’s unconditional love and claimed to love people in a similar way, but they didn’t. Their love was conditional, and my evolving theology moved me to the outside. I was moving away from fundamentalism and so they began to see me as the other and treat me as the other. I remember the times that people in our church were honest about struggles and were punished for it, removed from their teaching positions, removed from the worship team, taken aside and told to watch out, be careful, your on thin ice for saying those things…. I was good at avoiding being one of those people. I was good about being quiet about my disagreements, becuase that church, and the kids in that church were my life. At that time I still very closely believed what they did, but I had changed my views on the end times, I didn’t believe homosexuality was a sin, and I was leaning towards universalism. I had stopped talking about the end times and hell at all in kid’s church. It didn’t fit with the God of Love I knew. At first it was easy to just avoid the topics I didn’t agree on.

Soon though I couldn’t even stomach the model of church we had. We had an increasing number of outside speakers coming in speaking things that I was astonished my pastor allowed. Things from prosperity gospel to banning openly gay people from the church grounds. How was he not stopping this? Not only was he not stopping it, he approved of it. My heart was shattered. It destroyed me, but not all at once.

I found myself invited to a very small conference for “emergent church” leaders. A fellow student at my Pentecostal bible college had invited me. He had noticed who the rabble rousers were who thought boycotting Pepsi becuase they supported gay marriage was insane. He was starting his own church that looked nothing like a church. Where juggalo kids sang secular songs together, and read poetry, and had dances. I thought it was beautiful, while at the same time I was becoming increasingly disgusted with the church I found myself working in. A church I had helped found. A church in which I had built the entire children’s ministry basically by myself from nothing.

This man invited me to this conference, Ace came with me, as well as one of our closest friends (at the time). We saw what others were doing, and heard their ideas of what church could and should be, and that was it. That was the weekend I knew I had to leave. I couldn’t do it anymore. I hadn’t lost my faith, but I knew my faith wasn’t the same as my churches, it was evolving and it would keep evolving, and I knew I didn’t fit.

My two young close friends and I decided to bring all our grievances to our pastor directly, we really wanted to do this the “right” way. I now know there is no right way to tell a spiritual man you think he’s not doing what God wants, but it was the best idea we had. We even wrote out our main points and read it to him. He was clearly upset during that meeting around his kitchen table, but he held it together. That was the moment I lost my spiritual family. He had called me a daughter many times, but on that day it ended. I wasn’t following his leadership anymore, and he didn’t outright freak out or anything, but I still remember the look in his eyes of anger, hurt, betrayal. I was going to be his prodigy, to get ordained and go out and start the next church. I told him that night that I was going to leave his church after Christmas and that the three of us would soon be starting our own church. I was 24. You don’t start a church at 24 in the Assemblies of God. You are rarely a given a senior pastor position at that age. I had yet to even finish Bible college. I graduated from my Pentecostal Bible college 6 months after I left my Church. I just wasn’t Pentecostal anymore.

Despite the clear negative feelings from the pastor, his wife, and the other church leadership, they did their best to act in grace. They said they would support us, they did a big blessing on our last Sunday. They told us we were all on the same team. It was all show. It was all lies. The worst thing was that I believed them.

One of our best friends choose to stay at that church, he had gone to Assembly of God Churches his whole life, he loved playing on the worship team. He was the obvious choice to take over leadership of the worship team when Ace left. Yet, the Church decided to give it to someone who came in right as we left, when our friend was there from the beginning. That broke our hearts too, but what could we do? Soon we heard worse things, they were praying for us “To get back into the will of God.” Ouch. How was that support?

The following February we started our church, Mosaic. We built it around all the ideas we came up with that weekend months earlier at the conference. We had an open house everyday from noon-midnight. We ate dinner at 5, and did discussion and a few songs at 6. Many of our friends who hadn’t gone to a church in years were excited to come. It grew and slowly we found our groove. We had fantastic discussions, people were venerable, people aired their doubts, atheists came in and challenged us, we responded with love, they thanked us. It was beautiful.

When we would run into members of our old church around town, we would be excited to tell them how Mosaic was going, they had no idea what we were talking about.

We found out that after those couple of prayers for us to “Come back into the will of God” we were essentially erased from the church. Our ministries had been drastically changed to look like typical evangelical ministries. They didn’t care about supporting us, they just didn’t care about us. Our names were not spoken anymore. I had lunch with another friend who had left that church when she moved, she was now going to a satellite campus of a mega church. I was excited to reconnect with her. I was excitedly telling her about what we were doing with Mosaic when she snidely remarked, “Well I’m glad your have fun.” Her voice was so thick with attitude and disrespect I still hear it echoing to this day. That remark hurt deeply.

It didn’t stop there, becuase young adults we knew from other local evangelical churches were coming to Mosaic (mostly high school friends of ours) word was getting around what we were doing; we didn’t believe in hell, we didn’t say the sinner’s prayer with people, we let everyone have a voice, we sang “weird” songs. What we were doing wasn’t that weird in mainstream Christianity, and not strange at all in progressive Christianity, but to evangelicals it was clear, we had started a cult. That was what was going around. Which is hilarious becuase Pentecostalism (basically fundamentalism + speaking in tongues) fits the criteria for a cult much more closely than our little ragtag group that had no single consensus on belief. We were young people, most of whom believed in a Christian God, but didn’t really know much beyond that. We were much better at knowing what we weren’t. We had yet to be fully exposed to all the streams of Christianity and Deism and Mysticism that were out there. We were still pretty darn normal from a mainstream Christian perspective. If only they knew what I thought now!

This experience of leaving my church, losing my community, and having my community who I thought loved me turn against me, was the second hardest experience of my life, the only thing that beats it is loosing my father at 4 years old, these things, still hurt to this day. Losing my church, hurt about as much as my father dying, thats how deep it goes. There are days when I feel like I’ve really made peace with that part of my life. I’ve wrote about it on this blog. You can go read it. But there are times when it still hurts, and discovering all these other people like me though Ask Science Mike and The Liturgists podcasts has me re-experiencing and reexamining these wounds.

I was spiritually abused, both within my church and after I left it. And it messed me up. It messed up every area of my life. I’m finding healing though a few things. First, having my son. Having my son has taught me how to love like nothing else ever has. I thought I loved kids, then I had my own baby. I know we are biologically wired to value our children over ourselves. I know that our DNA wants to continue replicating and the best way to do that is to have kids and protect their lives at all costs so they can have kids of their own. Yet there is still something spiritual about raising a baby. He was not an easy baby, I met the edge of sanity many times, but each time I just learned how to love a little better. I’m still healing and learning how to be a better person though my son.

Secondly, I’m healing though telling my story. I didn’t realize it at first, I picked up that realization when I read “Finding God in the Waves” a few months ago. I’ve told my story so many times to so many friends, I even tried to squeeze the whole story in when I met Mike Mchargue here in Portland back in November. I hadn’t planned on doing that, but when it was our turn to meet him, it just all started coming out. Its part of my larger story of my life, an important part, and I’ll keep telling it.

Finally, and possibly most importantly, I’m finding healing though my new Church home. I had given up on finding a church, and I wasn’t sure if I even believed in God anymore (thats for another post), when I saw a weird sign, “Sellwood Faith Community.” It piqued my interest, and I went home and googled it. I found the pastor’s blog and I read almost the whole thing that night. “Ace she’s like us!” I just kept telling him. I couldn’t believe there were weird people out there like us, who were Christian but welcoming of non-christians, who saw value in a nontraditional gatherings. They, like Mosaic, ate dinner together on Sunday nights and had discussion. I have more to say about that in another post as well, but for now I just want to say that finding a church that accepted us right where we were at has helped me heal in ways I didn’t expect.

Spiritual PTSD is not crazy, its real, and I went though it as well. I’ve been though some extremely difficult times, and so many of them were related to the way I was treated by my Spiritual community. No one should have to experience that and I’m glad so many of our friends left the church before getting to that point. I know there are others from our own community that have felt what we have felt, and to them, and everyone else who has experienced this kind of trauma I say; keep going, there is healing, it might not be in a church, or it might be, follow what feels right, talk to other people, and keep moving forward. It will get better. If that means not going in a church right now, or hiding your bible in closet or even throwing it in the garbage, thats what it means. God and the Church and the Bible will still be there if you ever decide you want them. Take time to rest, take time to read, take time to just be. You will be ok someday, and if you look around enough you can find a spiritual home if you need it. Its ok to not be ok. Its ok to not know what you believe. You are enough.

If you are feeling spiritually homeless or confused I’d highly recommend all the resources I mentioned in this post, The Liturgists podcast, Ask Science Mike podcast, and the book, Finding God in the Waves.

Peace.

 

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A typical evening at Mosaic.
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Some things I’m working though…

Recently I was explaining several of my daily struggles to my therapist hoping that she, as she so often does, would have some good strategies I can use to help me with them. Among my complaints was that I struggle to follow conversations, especially when the are long or intense, and most especially when the other person is talking for a long time.  I also told her about how I hate that I unconsciously bite my nails and that I’ve chewed on my nails for as long as I’ve had teeth, how I can not concentrate if there are other people making sounds in the house, whether its read a book, write, or watch a video. Just now I got snappy with Mark becuase he’s running around yelling and my train of thought vanished.

I’ve been seeing her for well over a year now and many of these issues were on the original form I filled out, but I had a far more pressing issue at the time, crippling panic attacks. I can’t remember clearly how many times I thought I was for sure going to be dead in the next five minutes. The last time was just the other night when I was driving in the snow.

The difference now though, is that I recognize it as anxiety, and I have tools to get though it. I slowed my breathing, took deep breaths into my belly, and watched the pain. It took about a year before I had any idea what was meant by “Become an observer.” At one point I was provided with worksheets that showed me how to do it and they helped. Now I really get it and yoga was the biggest help with that. I can remember that my body is a body and it has all sorts of feelings, pain being one of them. I can “step back” and watch it. As soon I realized the pain was not increasing and was not in one place but moving from my chest to my shoulder to my neck and then to my head, I calmed down. “This is not a heart attack, this is a panic attack”, I thought to myself as my podcast yammerd on in the background. I realized I had not heard a word of it in at least 5 minutes and I started to listen again.

Now that I know how to do what I just described, I can finally move on in therapy to other things, my relationships, my weird habits, my day to day struggles that make life difficult; beyond severe panic. Last time I went in I rambled for a while about all these things and I got a response that only partly caught me off guard, “I’m not big on diagnoses, but you might fit an attention deficit disorder.”

There have been times I’ve wondered if that fits me, but not with any real depth. I had teachers insist it fit me when I was in primary school, and my mom fighting saying it didn’t. I think my mother didn’t want me on medication, which is great, becuase I don’t want to be on medication. In fact, I asked my therapist, are there other people I should see and talk to about this? And she said, “You could see a psychiatrist, but they will suggest medication, and I thought you didn’t want to go that route.” She also went on to say something like “I see that you struggle with these things, I’ve noticed them too, but I also see that you work very hard to overcome it.” and she talked about my strengths for a little while.

I didn’t realize that my experinces aren’t “normal” (whatever that really means). The fact that my therapist actually noted that I have some unique strengths and struggles oddly makes me feel a little less crazy, I really am a bit of an outlier.

I decided to write this all becuase I saw this silly buzzfeed list, and read it and thought again, “Wow, this really does fit me.” Maybe this fits everyone, maybe not, I’m really not educated enough to know. I’ve only lived this one life with this one brain, and I’ve never fit in or understood other people. I’ve always been a weird one. Having this information doesn’t change too much for me, except now I can try to discover more specific strategies to make my own day to day life easier and more productive.

I’ll end with said buzzfeed article.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/carolinekee/adhd-is-a-disorder-not-a-choice?utm_term=.jkKN4rwlL#.yk3mP0y4E

 

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I am Sad

That’s a hard thing to accept, being sad. I’ve been taught my whole life that its no tOK to be sad. It’s weakness. It’s an inconvenience. You just don’t be sad. You be strong. Somehow these things can’t coexist. There is sadness and there is strength.

The problem is when you don’t allow sadness it becomes illness. I’ve done this my whole life without realizing it. I don’t allow myself to experience sadness in any healthy way. I let it build and build. And sometimes I will finally cry and cry and cry and sob. But more often I will withdraw. I will hide within myself until I feel nothing. And then I slip into depression and become of a shell of my true self.

This week has been that. At the same time I recognize that there are other factors at play. My hormones are making this week extra hard. I have really rough symptoms of PMS and PMDD sometimes, this month is one of them. I’ve had some insane dreams this week. In some of them I’ve been dying and those dreams are somehow comforting. Thats a weird thing to wake up feeling. Its hard to grapple with.

Right now I’m missing all the dates I had hoped for for Stronger Skatepark. Its not happening on schedule. At the same time I’m constantly refining the business plan as I learn more information and I’m watching the costs grow and realizing to do it well I’m going to need more financing. This is a hard thing to accept. Either, I’m going to get lucky and find a building that will have low costs from whatever jurisdiction I open up in and will need only a minimal build out, or I’m going to need to find a co-owner or another investor. This is hard to swallow.

I know its an absolutely insane comparison, but the one thing that brings me hope is looking at Elon Musk and his endeavors. He dreams big, real big, and nothing ever happens on schedule or on budget, but it happens. I see a Model S drive by me and I see so much more than a technological marvel thats going to change the world, I see his vision realized. Someday thats going to happen for me. Its not going to happen on time or on budget, but it will happen. Someday I will be putting our logo up on a building and bringing together my whole team of designers, builders, investors, friends, and supporters to build the park. And wherever it ends up its is going to change lives. It might not save the the world from carbon emissions or put us on Mars, but it may give a young person a second chance at life. It may convince a parent to let their child do what they love. It may provide someone who has never had community with a community where they can be accepted for who they are.

It is not happening on time and that makes me deeply sad.

I’m here dedicated to this to the point where I’m pushing myself to the edge financially and emotionally over it and its not happening like I’d hoped and planned. I am sad, and I’m letting myself feel it. I need to so I can move though the feelings and keep working toward the dream. I am sad and I am strong.

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Light House Church was a Great Experience

A lot of what I’m working on in therapy and on my own, is reframing the story of my life. In reexamining these events and phases of my life I find myself grieving things I’ve needed to grieve, celebrating things I never celebrated, and finding healing and peace for old wounds.

In the process of starting a business I find myself relying most heavily on my experience at Light House Church as the Children’s Program Director. I’m reading an excellent book right now entitled, “Do Cool Sh*t” by Miki Agrawal. I’m not finished with it, but I love it so far. In it she discusses three routes to bringing your idea to reality; the intrepreneurial approach (working from within an existing organization), the entrepreneurial approach (starting your own organization) and the philanthropic approach. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was essentially doing the philanthropic approach with Light House Church. The philanthropic approach says to find an organization that you support and lend them your skills, which helps you to develop your skills. Its a mutually beneficial arraignment.

I spent five years working on Light House Church aside several other people. I wasn’t a key decision maker as to the direction of the organization, but I was in charge of an entire department. When we were first starting out that simply looked like a list of things you need for childcare so we could have a very basic nursery. All I had to do was get the items and schedule volunteers. As time went on my job grew, soon we had a children’s church program. I designed the curriculum and taught it. I did everything at first, and still had the nursery to staff and maintain.

Soon I started having ideas of my own for more programs and events, so I made them happen, often on a shoestring budget. I’d organize almost everything for these events including, marketing, equipment, set up, volunteers, food, and clean up. The events varied pretty drastically in size and scope, some with 5 kids attending, some with nearly 100 kids. As the years went on this became a very time consuming job. They even started giving me a very small amount of money for all the work I was doing. All this while going to school and working at a doggy day care. I was busy, but I was rocking it.

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Eating ice cream with the kids on a Wednesday night in the summer. 

This experience of running the children’s programs at Light House Church was absolutely invaluable to who I am. I learned that I could do it. I could dream up a program or event and I could make it happen. I could do it even better when I had a good team on my side. I learned that I could learn a lot of skills all on my own. I managed a database, I made videos, I made power points, I crafted lessons, I crafted crafts, I created something from basically nothing. And now I’m going to do it again and I have my experience from Light House Church to lean on when I think I can’t do it.

When I watch videos of contests at WARP and think “There is no way I can do that. Its just too much, its too big, too many people, too many details,” I remember how “too big” didn’t stop me when I organized a community easter egg hunt for underserved kids or when I decided to do an even bigger christmas event or when I took on running Wednesday night programing on-top of Sunday morning programing. I’ve looked at “too big” and I’ve done it.

This next endeavor might be big, but I’m going to build a good team, and I’m going to do it. We’re going to change the Portland skate scene forever and I never could do it if it wasn’t for Light House Church.

This realization of how valuable Light House Church was for me is another reframing. There was so much hurt clouding my vision when I looked back on that experience. Choosing to leave my community was one of the hardest choices I have ever had to make, and the pain that followed that has been close to my heart for a long time.

I’ve come a long way since then and I can now see that experience for the valuable part of my life that it was. We did a lot cool stuff, heck, I did a lot of cool stuff and I’m really glad that I did.

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Being Present

Its so strange to me that being present in the moment is such a struggle. Its so blissful when you can be fully present in a good moment. Its incredibly deep when you can be fully present in a hard moment.

I struggle with being present. In my head I’m usually living in the future, worrying about what is to come. Sometimes I live in the past dwelling on what has already happened.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe planning for the future is essential, and that processing the past is valuable. But I have a tendency to put so much thought and effort into the future and the past that I struggle hard to be fully in the now. Or to be in the now at all.

Being mindful and being present are things I’m working on in my life. Taking out just 2-3 minutes to sit quietly and focus on nothing but my breath has been a challenge. I’ve been trying to do it for months now and I’m just starting to get the hang of it. My hope is to eventually work up to ten minutes of meditation everyday. It helps to clear out the plethora of worry that is constantly swirling around in my head and bring me back into the present moment. From there I can get a better sense of how I should go about my day.

Writing is another tool I use for mindfulness. Its hard to think of anything else when you are in the flow of writing. When I come this blog, I usually have a good idea of what I want to write. But even when I don’t have a good idea of what I want to write, I still write. I fill up my journal with all sorts of random writings.

When I write in my journal or in a notebook, I try to just go. I just write and let words flow. It doesn’t matter what they say really, once you get in a groove good things start to hit the page. It is a way to focus in on this moment. And in this moment of writing I can often also manage to process recent events or even plan for the future. When I do it though writing its a focused thing. Its not the same tangle of worries that clouds my mind and makes me anxious. Writing helps me to work though those things in an orderly way and come to a place of being present.

In addition to daily meditation I want to be writing daily or near daily. I hope to post on this site at least once a week. The topics will vary drastically, but they will all be things I’m thinking about. Alongside writing I’m working on not giving so many fucks about what other people think. I’ve been giving way too many fucks for way too long. I worry about what people will think of my parenting, or my clothes, or my home, or my writing. I shouldn’t let so much of my energy go to worrying about what others think. That effort is going to show here. Like it just did, when I used the word fuck. Its a good word, its a strong word. And sometimes you just need a really fucking strong word. I’m not going to censor myself to make other people comfortable. I’m not forcing anyone to read this.

So here I am, in my effort to be less anxious and more present, writing on this blog. You are welcome to take it or leave it. You are also welcome to take what you like and leave the rest behind. All I ask is that if you comment you remember that a real human being is on the other side reading it.