Telling My Story

Seven years ago, on March 9th 2017, our little Christian bubble world finally splintered into pieces. But we were forced to pretend everything was fine for two more months.

This is the first time I’ve purposefully and clearly written about this part of my story. I’ve hinted at it, skittered around it, and gave vague suggestions, but today I’m telling the truth. It’s a weird combination of re-traumatizing and validating.

I’ve had seven years to process, seven years to learn I’m not alone, and seven years to try and pick up the pieces so that I can heal. It’s not just my story though, it’s also my husband’s story and he has dealt with it differently.

So today this is for all of you who have faced spiritual abuse and religious trauma and been able to heal and grow, but it’s also for those of you who haven’t. It’s for those who’s faith has been shattered, who’s trust has been destroyed, and who struggle to step foot into a church. I want you to know that I see you and feel immense compassion for your pain. We all experience trauma differently and there is no “right way” to move forward (despite what the Christianese phrases tell you).

I met my husband at a Christian summer camp. We worked together at camp for a couple of years, so going into Christian ministry of some sort seemed like the thing to do. We were young, idealistic, and passionate about serving God. Four weeks after getting married, we loaded up a moving truck and our junky, little Honda Accord and took off for the state of Wyoming.

The town of LaGrange doubled in size for nine months of the year while the students were in town. In the summer it went back to the original 322 residents plus a few married couples like us. We spent three years in the Wyoming prairie surrounded by more cattle than people while studying at Frontier School of the Bible.

Having met at camp, we originally had dreams of doing camp ministry. Then my husband landed a part-time youth pastor job at a “local” church forty-five minutes away. We did everything as a team back then so youth pastoring a bunch of junior high kids was fun too, especially since the church ran a rustic camp for three weeks each summer.

After graduation, we came back to Michigan and started an internship at the camp where we first met hoping to eventually come on as full-time staff. Three summers and two babies later, we realized—much to our disappointment—that there was no potential for a job there. However, the church we’d been attending for the last couple of years needed a youth pastor. It seemed like the perfect open door, so we walked through.

Full-Time Ministry

Within the first few months there were red flags. But we were young, idealistic, and filled with the belief that this was God’s plan. It didn’t hurt that we’d just been used and abused at the camp where we interned, so the church felt healthier to us. It was easy to make excuses. Maybe we were just misinterpreting things. The senior pastor was probably just trying to make jokes and didn’t mean the hurtful things he said about my husband from the pulpit.

Sometime within our first year at the church, the senior pastor took a much anticipated three month sabbatical. I think he expected the church to fall apart without him around. Instead it thrived. My husband was relational, organized, and passionate. He never meant to try and usurp anything, but there was tension when the senior pastor came back that simmered under the surface for the next four years.

We saw flaws pretty quickly at the church, but we hoped that God would use us to help heal them. We knew that no place was perfect and we were willing to ignore or make excuses to keep the peace. Sadly, I’m much more realistic and skeptical these days.

There was tension between my husband and our senior pastor within the first year of working together. My husband believes that everything should be done with excellence. He is not afraid to push back when he feels things are unethical or wrong which earned him the nickname of “Pastor Picky.” The senior pastor had been in charge for enough time to want to keep power in his own fist. He didn’t appreciate criticism of any kind and had surrounded himself with elders who were either “yes-men” or solidly on his side. I didn’t know it at the time, but this is a pattern for abuse within the church.

It was never a healthy situation. My husband always struggled. But we loved the people at the church. The youth group was growing. It looked successful on the outside. I think we also like the title of being in ministry. It was part of our identity.

It All Started at Camp

I decided to back to camp for a couple of summers as a health officer. I should never have gone back. I knew how we’d been treated during our internship. I swore when we left that I was done. But I loved camp.

I’d found freedom in Jesus there. I’d met my husband there, my babies had been born there, and my dad was currently working on staff as the maintenance manager.

So I loaded up my two small children and we spent two summers riding around on a golf cart, doing clean cabin checks, handing out meds and Band-Aids, and comforting homesick campers. My husband worked at church during the day and then came and spent the evenings with us. Parts of those summers were amazingly fun! I’d always dreamed of being the health officer. I had a golf cart. My children thrived. I loved supporting the young adults on staff. But there were dark clouds too, especially the second summer.

I should have handled everything differently. But I was not the same person back then. I was still stuffing my leadership gift and passionately avoiding conflict. I was still trying to be sweet and not strong.

I should have confronted the abuse I witnessed. I should have boldly stood up for the broken people. I should have challenged the unethical behavior and the potential affair. But I didn’t. Instead I talked to other people who also noticed. We tried to figure out what to do together. And because we noticed a problem, we became the problem. I was labeled a gossip while the true problems were ignored.

I should have quit half-way through the summer. But I didn’t.

People who were involved in the mess at camp were also from our church, so the summer trouble followed us back. Big time.

And Followed Us Back to Church

I was distraught about what I’d witnessed at camp and also about the abuse my dad had experienced. (Little did I know that the exact same things would happen to us.) Seeing that I was a wreck, our senior pastor offered to counsel me. I use that word in the loosest possible way. For six weeks I sat in his office and spilled everything to him. He took what I said, tried to gaslight me, and then instead of protecting me, told everything to the other person who was at camp with me. I’ve never had an enemy before, but I did after that summer.

We tried—my husband and I. I knew that I hadn’t handled everything perfectly. I’d made mistakes, and I tried to reconcile. But it went from bad to worse. I was still reeling from the spiritual and emotional abuse I’d experienced at camp, still broken by what had happened to my dad and other summer staff members. Still upset that what looked like an affair was being ignored. Our pastor was the only one I could share with because he wouldn’t let me tell anyone else. And even though he was also abusing me, at least I had someone to talk to. Then he went on a mini-sabbatical for a month because they were adopting a child from overseas.

I honestly thought he told me that I could tell our new associate pastor and his wife if I needed to talk to someone while he was gone. And I didn’t tell her about the affair, just about the abuse I’d witnessed. She was a licensed counselor and I thought she might be able to help. Like any sane person would be, she was horrified at what I shared. So she told her husband. Who told the senior pastor when he got back. And I got in trouble.

I was called a gossip again. I was kicked out of women’s ministry with no hope of going back. I was no longer allowed to sing with the worship team. Every Monday, no matter what I did or didn’t do, the senior pastor would yell at my husband about how terrible I was and how I wouldn’t change.

Because he couldn’t break me. I refused to take all the blame. I knew that what happened at camp was wrong. And that what was currently happening was wrong. I refused to stop noticing the problem.

These were the hardest months of my life. They nearly destroyed me. I felt like the woman caught in adultery just waiting to be stoned.

We Should Have Quit

We prayed about quitting. We should have. But we loved the people. We loved the teenagers we worked with. We believed that God could work a miracle in the heart of the senior pastor. So we stayed. Until we couldn’t stay any more.

Eventually my husband was called into a meeting and told that we didn’t have chemistry with the senior pastor and therefore we were being forced to resign. It was March 9th. He was informed that the elders wouldn’t be telling the church until May and that if we said anything before that, or told the truth about what had been happening, we would be kicked out immediately with no severance package.

We should have quit right then and there. But we didn’t because we were poor, emotionally ragged, and had two small children to feed.

For two months we carried this horrible secret. And every Monday my husband was told how awful I was being even though I was just literally hiding in the church basement making coffee every Sunday. It was the only ministry I was allowed to do. My husband endured verbal, emotional, and spiritual abuse during this year from hell. But we didn’t have the words to describe it as abuse back then.

During these two months, our pastor decided that I was such a mess that I needed professional help, so he sent me to Miriam. At the beginning of the first session I had three questions for her. I wanted to know if she was familiar with Bill Gothard’s teachings, if she thought they were wrong, and if she would promise to keep everything I said confidential from my pastor. When she confirmed those things, I poured out my heart for forty-five minutes. At the end Miriam looked at me and said four beautiful words, “Christy, you’ve been hurt.”

It was the first time someone validated me instead of blaming me. The church paid for eight beautiful sessions with her. I finally realized I was being abused and not going crazy. Sure enough, our pastor called after the first session, but Miriam had heard enough and refused to talk to him.

The End

Eventually they told the church. The senior pastor called a church wide meeting to announce “God was calling us elsewhere.” People were upset and confused. But we didn’t tell them the truth. We stayed quiet. The church originally asked us to stay through July, then it changed to the beginning of June. Shortly after our resignation was announced, we were told to stop coming to church at all because we were too sad and it was making everyone else sad. So it all just ended.

We got our severance, they got our silence, and we lost our community, our friends, our children’s godparents, and our identity.

Why Tell This Story?

There are plenty of people who question the validity of telling these kinds of stories. They push back by asking about motives, suggesting exaggeration, or claiming that we need to stay quiet “to protect God’s name.”

But the sheer amount of these stories says otherwise.

I’ve realized over the past seven years that for every story that goes public, there are probably hundreds that never get shared. For every one pastor who is exposed for being abusive and controlling, many others will go on abusing without being caught or stopped. This kind of thing is an epidemic in the church right now. I’ve read some wonderful and validating books. My favorites are in the picture below.

Not only do we need to tell these stories for accountability, but we also need to tell the stories so that those who have experienced this type of abuse can recognize that they are not alone. Reading Beth Allison Barr’s story of her husband’s forced resignation in The Making of Biblical Womanhood was eerily familiar—to the point where I wondered if they pass around a script. Hearing the stories on The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill validated my own.

It is helpful to know that we are in good company even if we are all a bit mangled.

Stronger than Ever Before

Personally, I’ve risen from these ashes with new strength. I see through lies faster, approach Christianese with more cynicism, and am quicker to call out abuse. But I’m also gentler and have less answers for those who have been through hell and come back. I have more compassion and empathy. I will sit and cry with you and say nothing.

My own faith in Jesus is more solid than ever. But I will also stand up and quit next time so that I can tell the truth. This abusive control we are experiencing is not Jesus and it needs to stop now.

If you have been spiritually abused, I just want you to know that you are not alone and it’s not your fault. You have been hurt.

Looking for God’s Grace

I’m going to close with Miriam’s ask for me after that first counseling session. She wanted me to look for God’s grace each day. It might be in a sunrise, or a baby’s smile, or a small green leaf poking out of the dirt.

That was something I could do.

Can you find it too?