Looking Back to Move Forward
Continuing the journey in moving towards healing.
Last week I had a few vivid dreams that included a few folks from back in Seattle. I am not one to dream regularly so they always catch me off guard. July 11th was the two year anniversary of writing an email at midnight to the elders at the time about how I had no direction in returning from a two week leave of absence. It had been pretty radio silent although I had been in rooms with the pastor. I worked at the coffee shop that the church owned.
I remember the tension of that next day as I tried to work on digital ministry strategy while knowing my lead pastor didn’t believe in it and it didn’t fit the church’s (and his) bottom line. Though our church 1-3 and 5 year strategy included it. I’m pretty sure I resigned before the leave was over. Letting the church know I would be leaving in about two months time to help transition my position. I intended to leave well. That was always on my heart to leave well. That isn’t how it happened.
Two days later we’d have an awkward staff lunch. No words exchanged between myself and the pastor, but carrying on conversations between folks. Thirty minutes after he left we had an email about the agenda for the staff meeting that next hour. I almost didn’t see it, except one of my fellow staff members came up to me to ask about it. Apparently I’d be explaining my reasoning for leaving and they’d be praying for my wife Angelique and I.
I called Angelique and drove home. I walked in shaking. Spiraling. I called a pastor friend of mine who knew what was going on and we prayed together. I emailed the staff that I’d be bringing Angelique with me as she was in the know with everything. The truth is I didn’t trust myself to not break down. I had already been suffering from panic attacks almost nightly at this point.
Instead we had a tense conversation with the lead once we arrived where she was told that the conversation was between the staff. The staff had history together that she didn’t or something along those lines. I walked her upstairs to the sanctuary. We cried then agreed I’d update my resignation immediately after the staff meeting. We were out. I was livid. Some time later is the moment I blew up. After some heavy handed prayers and a comment or more that felt even more heavy out of anger and rage I clapped to cut off my pastor.
I did so to stop a manipulative lie about us being spiritual brothers and I in ways a spiritual son - something he’d actually spoken against being sons but brothers just a few weeks before in private conversations. My body needed to survive the horror it was feeling and the only thing I knew was to try and stop time.
“You don’t treat me like one. We are not family”
“I don’t know how to recover from that and continue this meeting.”
My body remembers that rage. The need to get out of the corner. The need to continue to speak and be believed. I’ve worked through it enough that it doesn't course through me at the slightest inconvenience or discomfort.
I just wanted someone to believe me. Us.
Two years later I don’t know who does. Most folks didn’t acknowledge what happened. Just tried to pass it over - that’s what we usually did when folks left. Passed the blame to them. In that vein, some may see me as a quitter. The guy who left when things got too hard. As a deserter.
I am no deserter. That is just not the truth.
Today, I look at bridges burned and wonder which ones are worth rebuilding - which ones folks will walk over and which ones will stay abandoned or lonely. Some bridges have to acknowledge the destruction that happened before rebuilding. The rubble has to be cleared.
I say all this in the midst of some incredible healing this last year. I’ve shared before that we found a church body to be a part of, and one whose leadership is not afraid of our journey. I now have a small group of folks learning together how to improve the online experience of our small church - things I had thought about before are not seen as unimportant or aimless or a waste of time.
And yet…some days I feel intensely the stress and agony of church hurt almost as viscerally as if it happened just last month. I share these things in a moment of need to process a bit. I find myself in the midst of feeling everything while job hunting and hoping for God's provision in a lot of areas of my life.
Ultimately, my goal is to give someone hope that whatever storm you’re in doesn’t have to be the end of the story. There is still hope for us. Jesus isn’t blind to the injustices and failures - intended or not. The Spirit God gave you can overcome this… in due time. There is no “right” way for this to happen. Just the way that is taking it one moment at a time. Acknowledging the pain and trauma of it all.
So I’ll continue in the way towards healing. I hope you’ll have as much patience with me as I’m learning to have for myself. I hope we’ll encounter the Spirit bringing true healing, repentance, and reconciliation.
As a side note, I’d like to acknowledge the few who did believe us. Who saw for themselves or through secondhand witnesses the harm and the hurt and the chaos. I am thankful for you and the bridges that are longer, but not broken.
For those who have since been harmed, I am sorry - that no one believed you, and/or that belief came by immense and unnecessary pain. Feel free to reach out and we can chat about church harm and some roads that have helped me heal - and know that while this journey is not easy, it doesn't have to be alone.