Trauma anniversaries & healing

Four years ago today my evangelical church ex-communicated me and my husband.

Father’s Day 2021.

Our “crime” was slander of the lead pastor. Leadership told the church members not to contact us or reach out to us (hear more of my story here).

The real thing we were guilty of was telling church leadership we had concerns about the lead pastor’s harshness. What we were guilty of was being whistleblowers in our church body—abuse of power by a man whose fragility, when we attempted to bring some accountability, compelled him to attack, slander, malign and lie about us to hundreds of people, including our own family members.

My husband (who worked for him) and I were his victims, but so were many others who’d left the church before us, and many who left after us—bravely choosing to no longer be under his tyranny (and that of the system he’d built around himself).

So while the charge was slander, our real crime was refusing to be harmed any longer in the name of God.

Believing in the dignity of all humans to be treated with kindness and respect - our dignity, but also the dignity of so many others who had been mistreated.

Truth-telling in a system built on control, shame, and harshness.

Standing up to a fragile, power-hungry, self-absorbed, controlling system built around one deeply wounded man.

If these are crimes, we plead guilty, trusting that the God who led us out of that terrible place is one who also condemns that system and systems like it. That the God who led us out also grieves the harm done in God’s name (including the harm currently being done in this nation by the administration).

It’s crucial to acknowledge: in the fight against spiritual injustice and abuse, we stand on the shoulders of many who have gone before us and been doing this brave work for centuries. Marginalized and abused communities/populations have modeled this integrity and courage long before Colby and I took a stand. To you and your ancestors, I am deeply grateful, as well as deeply sorry that so many (myself included) haven’t always heard, believed you, and taken action as we should.

Healing is exhausting. It’s hard work. It’s full of stumbling and running and walking and flat-out collapsing. For us it has looked like rage. It has looked like giving up. It has looked like waffling, doubting, crashing. Mistakes. Failure.

It has also looked like hope. Like faith. Like integrity. Like shouts for justice, and whispers of prayer for faith, hope and love. For goodness, truth, and beauty. It’s looked like working, fighting, resting, zoning out, punching walls, sob-yelling prayers, eating too much, eating too little, working too much, isolating, connecting, celebrating, mourning, playing, arguing, weeping, lake-walking, book-reading, insomnia, jaw-clenching teeth-grinding exercising napping.

It has looked like courage to connect with neighbors, friends, colleagues, God, self. It has looked like the uncertain letting-go of certainty—the hand-trembling theory that certainty is actually a stumbling block to faith.

This week we are in Auckland, New Zealand with some of our best friends. It’s a trip we’ve been dreaming about for over 5 years. Last time we saw these friends, it was March 2020. The global COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns hadn’t happened. Our church abuse had started, but we hadn’t seen it accurately yet. We hadn’t spoken up yet. Blown our lives up for what-we-knew-was-right yet. Been excommunicated yet. Questioned everything yet.

To be here today, enjoying so much beauty with good friends, after all that has happened to us, is also to notice how much we’ve healed. The trauma anniversary is passing today, for the first time in 4 years, without much event. I had to remind myself that this was a momentous day in my history. We woke up and went about our day.

As I sit down now, reflecting on the trauma anniversary (“trauma-versary,” as I like to call it) of being excommunicated, I am full of so many emotions.

This day has bent and groaned under the weight of many things over the last few years. It has carried the body-memory of being shunned by our community, abandoned by network leadership, slandered by those we thought were friends. Of losing almost everything. In past years, this time of the calendar year has brought physical symptoms, including dreams/nightmares, anxiety, grief, and terror.

It will probably continue to do so in the future. I know enough about trauma, as a trauma therapist, to not be surprised when seemingly new spirals of symptoms show themselves as time passes—our brilliant bodies’ wise way of saying, “Hey, now that you’ve healed those other things, here are some more old wounds that need your attention.”

But for today, I notice that my body seems to be saying, through the good normal-ness of the rainy-foggy Auckland day, “You’ve done good, hard work. This body has had to carry so much. That bad thing really did happen. It was just as terrible as it seemed. Tomorrow or next month there may be more layers of old or new pains. But for today, we get to just ‘be.’”

This is a beautiful thing to notice—that we are no longer bleeding out in our trauma. That this date on the calendar isn’t full of PTSD symptoms this year. It is also filled with grief—especially the grief of the many survivors who have not reached or cannot reach a milestone like this. For those who are still actively under the tyranny of abuse and trauma, especially in spiritual settings. For those survivors who haven’t survived (particularly thinking of Jennifer Lyell, an SBC abuse victim who recently died, as I write this).

To look at, name, feel, and tend to the wounds of spiritual trauma is a deeply vulnerable process. It requires a peeling back and exposing of the most deep wounded parts of us. Also, it cannot be done alone.

When I started writing about today, I didn’t know where my thoughts and words would take me. I follow the ways my body remembers, attaching words to my experience of being-here-now, and it has been a meandering path that brings me to this: a tribute to the courageous ones who have gone before me, who go alongside me, who will go after me.

So:

To the many people who have walked with us in small and large ways these last 4 years: thank you. I would not be here without your love, support, generosity, sass, and patience.

To all the selves I’ve ever been: you are a fierce survivor. You are full of goodness and have always been deserving of love. Tending to the wounded parts of myself (and allowing others, including Jesus, into this sacred process) has continued to be the bravest work of my life.

To Colby, who risked everything for what is right: you are the best of us. I’m sorry they crushed you because of your goodness, gentleness, and sensitivity. I’m sorry they attacked the best things about you. You are an incredible father and partner. I trust you even more after what you had to endure and the suffering you have walked through.

To other abuse survivors: you are the prophets the truth-tellers, the revolution, the hands and feet of Jesus among us. Walking with some of you in your healing (whether therapy clients or friends or the many lovely humans we’ve met online in the spiritual abuse survivor community) has been the deepest of honors. Thank you for trusting me in some small or large part with your story. To do so has required no small risk and huge courage.

To those who online and offline continue to stand up against the tragedy of abuse in all its forms—you grow my faith and renew my energy to keep going. I wish I could have joined the many millions of you this weekend in the US for the “NO KINGS” protests.

To Jesus, who, in spite of all the evil done in your name, I hold onto as gentle and lowly: protector of the oppressed, defender of the defenseless, advocate of the abused, the one who leaves the 99 to go after the 1. You have held me through the darkest of valleys.

Beauty from this week in New Zealand

As I scroll through the photos from our last 4 years, something that I notice is the theme of beauty as healing. Wade Mullen writes in “Something’s Not Right” about how abuse is an assault on beauty. Beauty has been a theme of my healing journey. So, in the spirit of this, here are some beautiful things from our first week in New Zealand (mostly around the Auckland area):

My bff Georgie, a kiwi (we met in grad school for counseling)

KiteKite Falls (pronounced “kitty-kitty falls”)