Brothers and sisters in Christ, and a God moment
I went to a church yesterday that I had only gone to once before, Mountain View Baptist. I was hoping that I would know somebody there, that either a former member of Emmanuel, where I am a member now would show up, or one or more people from the City Edge group would be there. But no such luck; the church was full of strangers. I must admit that at one point shortly before the service started, I had a fleeting thought of leaving. But I decided that would be silly, so I stayed.
Close to the beginning of the service, after a “welcome time”, we celebrated the Lord’s supper. As I was sitting there with that little cracker in my hand, and thinking about the Lord, a change came over me, in the way that I viewed being there in that room. I thought about how all over the place people were coming together to worship the Lord, including at Emmanuel, and I was thinking about how we were all brothers and sisters in Christ. I was no longer sitting in a room full of strangers. I was sitting in a room full of my brothers and sisters in Christ, who I just happened not to know yet. I remember feeling that feeling once before in my life. My dad is from a large extended family who all live across the country from us. I spent one summer with my Grandmother, and we had a family reunion while I was there. I didn’t know most of my relatives who were there, but I was part of the family, a Rhodes, and I belonged. At Mountain View I felt that same utmost sense of belonging with people who I didn’t know at all, for I am also part of the family of God, and we were all there to worship.
During that service also came a God moment that was so undeniably a God moment it was a little freaky. As I shared in my last post, I am a survivor of spiritual / sexual abuse. Even in the last few weeks has come incredible healing. I remember some years ago, when I was struggling so hard with this, and there seemed to be no way out of the pain, no way to find who God really is because of all the lies I had been fed, one night I had a dream. In that dream, I was in a church, and we sang a song. The song was “It is you.” And I remember, in my dream, singing this song, I felt so free, so healed. And after I woke up, oh, I wanted to feel what I felt in that dream! And one thing about this song; I had never sang it in church, just heard it on the radio. In the years since, I had never sang it in church, just heard it on the radio – until yesterday. I couldn’t believe it when we started singing that song. It was like God was giving me a message – cementing in the freedom and healing that I had felt even in the past few weeks. It is so cool.
Forgiveness and healing
Part of my background is spiritual / sexual abuse. I will probably end up talking about that abuse a lot in my blog. This post, however, is not of the abuse; it is about forgiveness.
I have forgiven my abuser; lest that sound really spiritual and magnamonious, I will let you know something – the only way I myself could go on with healing is by forgiving him. Allowing hate and bitterness to stay in my life for something that has happened almost twenty years ago – well that would destroy me. So I had to let go for me.
I will not, however, be in contact with him at all. Forgiveness does not necessarily mean a heart to heart talk and a restoration of relationship. It’s good to restore relationship when possible, but it’s not always possible. In this case, my abuser is a scripture twister and a dangerous person emotionally and spiritually. Forgiving people never means putting yourself in danger. It means letting go of the anger and bitterness, coming to terms with what has happened, and hoping that the abuser gets the help he needs and caring about him as a person. I like the way one counselor of mine put it. Suppose someone at church doesn’t like you, and she slaps you in the face when you see her in the lobby of the church. You want to make amends with this person, but every time you see her she slaps you. After a very short time you are going to avoid her, and realize that although you can forgive this person, if you have contact with her it is going to hurt!
And that brings me to my second point, healing. When you forgive someone, you do not usually experience immediate healing. And the healing process is a long one. I do suffer from post traumatic stress disorder, and a lot of “Church things”; certain hymns, bible passages, even certain church names, architecture and certain passages are triggers. Forgiveness and healing are definately two different things.
I am going to use a few examples here to illustrate the difference between forgiveness and healing. One of them, believe it or not, is horse poop. (I was hiking today and saw some horse poop; that gave me the idea.) Say that I’m walking along and step in some horse poop. I like horses and I forgive the horse for pooping on the trail. And I can forgive the horse, maybe even meet up with it, pet it, and make friends with it; but if I don’t stop and do the smelly yucky job of removing the horse poop from my shoe, well, I still have horse poop on my shoe. So I guess you can say the healing process is removing the horse poop. You have to get up close and personal with the poop of the past, even if you’ve forgiven the person who’s pooped on you, and get out all those bad thoughts and teachings.
Or, if you don’t like the silly example of horse poop, consider this. Say I am riding a bicycle and my friend, who’s driving a car, hits me solely because she’s talking on a cell phone, and my leg gets broken. I love my friend and I forgive her for not paying attention and hitting me. My leg, however, is still broken, and it still needs healing. I will still have to see the doctor; I will still have to maybe have surgery; I will still have to have x-rays and a cast. Two weeks from now, four weeks from now, the cast will still be on my leg, and I will still have pain, even though I have forgiven my friend long ago. And same as is healing from trauma. With spiritual abuse, scripture has been twisted like crazy, as has the role of pastor, and the view of God, the church in general, and the denomination. Even the view of self has been twisted like crazy. And when spiritual abuse is sexual, it is that much the more twisted. And since everything a person could go to for comfort – the curch, the Bible, pastors – is in the center of that twisting, everything is that much more the worse. Untwisting all of these twists takes good teaching, lots of counseling, patient leaders, and a lot of time. Lots and lots of time. And while I know I’m not completely healed yet, I know I am on the right path.
