This is my confession. I hate church.
I don't hate community, I don't hate fellowship, I don't hate the Word, and I certainly don't hate God.
Scott and I have always been church goers our entire lives. Even my rebellious stage in high school translated as me attending a different church than my parents. Ha! Up until a few years ago that is. We were active in and adored the church we were a part of. But as Scott grew closer to the staff and pastors things started to change for us.
Perhaps we had them on pedestals, or we expected them to NOT be broken. Our mistake.
And there's one thing about Scott that I learned early on. He does not stay quiet. Don't get me wrong, I'm the feisty one for sure, but if he feels something is wrong, he will ask questions, he will challenge, he will try to hold people accountable.
This ended up being a bad combination of personalities at our previous church and it only took about a year of Scott being on the staff for things to explode. Now certainly there were things Scott and I could have handled differently. And I will spare you the details, but it was messy!!! It was a church and community that I had been a part of for 8 years. And in the end never have I felt soooo unloved, so mistreated, and so hurt and beat down.
And I don't think Scott and I are an exception here... I think most people experience similar messy and hurtful situations with churches at some time in their life. So how do you bounce back?
I thought for a while that I was over it. That I was moving on. That I was healing.
It was a subject that had not been brought up for a while. It is a subject that most of our friends would prefer us to not talk about so when I was out at lunch one day with a good friend, the subject was brought up. As I spoke about it, tears immediately started to fall from my face.
And that's how I knew it wasn't over and this is just going to take more time than I thought to heal from.
When it finally dawned on me that I still struggled with this sooo deeply, I decided to put the Bible next to my bed. So there it was next to Harry Potter and for a few days, sad to say, Harry won over the Word.
I decided that I would start slowly by reading a few Psalms before I drifted off to sleep.
And last night I came upon this verse I had read several times before that had touched me.
Psalm 18:24 "God rewrote the text of my life when I opened the book of my heart to His eyes."
I'm praying for a rewrite.
Sigh.
ReplyDeleteIt's been about two years since we've been at church too. We've been at other churches, but not one that feels so much like home like the old one. :(
The one we are at now is more like it than not. But it's going to take years to get to the place we were at there. I feel like crying, too. Still. A lot.
I don't know when it will be better...I just hope that it's better sometime. It's comforting to know I am not the only one.
Thanks for being honest...I will be talking to God about healing us both tonight.
Love, Kelly
Blossom. This topic is close to my heart. Thanks for writing about it. I also have an extremely adverse relationship with church. Like you put it... I pretty much hate it. Funny because I haven't been in like... hmmm... 3 yrs. And you know it's been fine. I guess that should make me sad. But it doesn't. But we are going to try. For the sake of the children. seriously.
ReplyDeleteBut the truth about me is that I have always hated church. From my first memories of it at 3 yrs old. I didn't want to be in some random room with other random kids that were dropped off. I wanted to be outside running, playing, laughing. I still want those things. So every sunday I feel a bit guilty over it. I need to blog about it too because it is a constant, and I mean constant battle that I feel within. The should police say I should go. But I just don't wanna.
Sorry for the comment delay. Nothing like a long summer vacation to leave you out of touch.
ellen b.