The truth is ugly sometimes

The Truth is Ugly Sometimes


It's been a minute since I blogged and I have changed.  I have changed and yet I am the same.  I see the past differently now.  I was in survival mode.  Here is the Readers Digest version.  In the last seven years, one of my sons was shot, one of my sons overdosed on heroin and my Pastor/ex husband confessed to having at least 6 affairs (in my count there are many more), I lost my son, church family, husband and job all within roughly a year and half.    During the last 5 years I have been a caregiver (short stints) for my stepmother who passed away from cancer three years ago and my Step Dad (alzheimers/Lewy Bodies Dementia).  I hate the word step, sounds so cheap and does not represent the depth of love I had for each of them, they  had each been in my life for close to forty years.  I have been gently pulling away the layers for the last five years.  Pushing through the trauma and trying to recover.  Leaning on my faith and at the same time at war with it.  I have been healing little by little but still have so far to go.  I could just ignore it, stuff it, stay busy and think I have overcome.  I could say all the right spiritual things, all the right counseling things, it comes very naturally to me but that would be inauthentic.  The truth is that I am still really messed up, still angry, still confused and still shocked.  Yes, all this time and I am still shocked.

So that is the short version of my trauma story, but today I want to write about the reality of my life.  The shocking truth I am beginning to see about me, myself and I. 

Let me preface this by saying, I am not a victim.  I don't want pity.  I want awareness and the ability to communicate my struggle in a vulnerable authentic way that can help others navigate through their pain.  I will not let this pain be wasted, I am a student of it and want to be a master of the pain not the other way around.  I just feel that maybe, hopefully my honesty can somehow redeem my pain so that it gives hope to others. 

That pain still cycles around in my head even though I thought I was over it.  Even though I know it was the best thing for me, I am left with questions and doubt.  How could I have not seen what was happening?  When is it right to stop believing the best?  What did I do to my children by living in this house built of lies.  My unforgiveness ravages my heart,  it is rarely directed outward but always inward.  My brain loops through all the signs I missed, all the comments and accusations.  It rest miserably on comments from my oldest boy who literally told me what a horrible person my ex was.  I chose to believe the ex over my child.  My Justin, who told me that my husband, his stepfather was a cheater and a liar.  He told me and I believed he was just a jealous teenager.  It caused a rift, that I never had the opportunity to repair. 
It is the greatest regret of my life. 

So now I am coming a bit out of the trauma fog, feelings and memories are stronger and memories string themselves together and begin to make sense to me.  That is the hard part, the sudden revelations of betrayal.  Betrayal of myself with my ignorant Pollyanna view.  Betrayal of myself when doubt and confusion rang out and I allowed myself to be gas-lighted, convinced that I was the crazy one.  I was the nonspiritual one.  Let that sink in....the wife that was believing the best and living in hope while the ex was leading a church and preying on it's vulnerable women.  That is what happens, he chose me because I was vulnerable and weak.  I idolized him and that fed his ego but I grew stronger as I grew in the Lord.  I learned about idols and traded my worship of him in for worshiping God.  He wanted a partner that would make him look good but not excel past him or call him on his sin.  As time went by I didn't need him enough, I didn't idolize him enough so he had to find other vulnerable women that he could try to rescue and therefore feed his ego.  It is so easy to see now.  The pattern, the pushing away and pulling me back. The years of deception, he claimed he didn't cheat for two years when my children were babies.

I was immersed in a pattern of lies and doubt for twenty three years.  You don't just shake that off.  I was a strong faith driven woman and yet this man had the ability to trap me with his lies and convince me that there was nothing going on.  I loved the Lord, gave of myself to the ministry and yet still was blinded to the truth.  How odd it seems to me that I could have lived in the light of Jesus and still been in the dark of deception.  Where was God my defender?  Is it that somehow all of this is making me a better person?  I wish that I could see behind the curtain, that I could understand why?  I want to scream sometimes just as Jesus did, "My God, why have you forsaken me?"

I know all the right things...There is no scripture to share with me that I haven't thought of.  Yet, the thorn in my flesh bleeds daily.  The pain sits quietly in the background.  The disappointment cloaks my mind in doubt of the creators love.  I do the right things and I say the right things but my heart is armored up and locked down.  I am unsure if I can ever love fully again, ever trust again.  I live in a low level panic of "when is the next shoe going to drop".  When will the rug be pulled out from under me.

Don't get me wrong, I love big when I feel safe.  I have made new friends, new relationships and I love them.  However, feeling safe is not easy anymore.  Feeling safe is work, it is tedious and exhausting because the reality is that we are never safe.  All I can do is trust God and that does not come that easily, when it comes to my heart.  I know perfect love cast out fear But I can't seem to figure out how to cast it out.  I want the Lord to cast it out, I want the Lord to untangle the web of memories, emotions, soul damage and unhealthy thought patterns.   I really do,  but the grip I have is so tight I don't seem to be capable of letting go. I am trapped in this dark, angry place and it is ugly, my anger is ugly and I am scared.

I wrote the above part almost three months ago.  I had to quit because it lead me into a deep dark place.  A desert place in my faith where I wandered for far too long.  That desert place that I honestly had never felt before.  I felt disconnected from my God, I felt that he had left me.  My faith was challenged and my heart was hard.  The darkness fell as hopelessness over my mind.  The battle in my mind raged and my identity was challenged.  I was deeply depressed, overcome with fear and doubt about everything in my life, including God.  It was perhaps one of the toughest mind places I have ever been, I was tormenting myself with circular thinking and fearful thoughts.  Punishing myself for being depressed, which is not at all helpful.  As always the darkness eventually gave way to light.

Who am I now? That is the question to ask when you find your way out of the desert place.  For so long I knew exactly who I was, but that had all been stripped away.  The tattered pieces of that life were no longer surrounding me and I found myself at a loss.  A great grieving came over me for the life that I had lost.  Why did it come so long after I left, I am not sure.  Maybe it was because so much was suddenly changing around me.  I suppose that could have been the trigger.  It also could have been the fact that Covid 19 halted my busy life and all I had for a while were my thoughts.  My mind fed on memories and the defeat of it all.  The darkness clouded out the love of God, the feelings of injustice raged in my heart and I forgot who I was.  I was not a Pastor's wife, that had never been who I was.  That had been my job, and I loved it.  Being a Pastor and a Pastor's wife was a honor for me but it was not who I was. 

I was a woman who loved God and loved others, I am a woman who loves God and others.  This darkness, this desert place did not kill me or convince me to give up on God instead what the enemy meant for my destruction became a springboard for me to level up in my relationship with God.  To once again feel the gratitude that God loves me no matter my attitude or awful anger towards Him.  My identity is solid, unchanging, beautiful and glorious for it is not me but Christ who lives in me. 


Whatever the cause, it has passed.  I did what I have always told others to do.  I reached out to others for help, I got counseling and I prayed.  I prayed authentic awful truth to my God who gently applied the balm of Gilead to my wounds.  I fell once again in love with Jesus as I realized He had not deserted me to the darkness, He had been teaching me in that darkness that being away from Him was intolerable.  He was showing me my own darkness and allowing me to feel how wretched my heart had gotten.  Yet, he was also revealing to me that even the ugliest thoughts,feelings, emotions and actions I had where not enough to drive Him away. 
I sit here weeping as I write, remembering how I first fell in love with Jesus and realizing I am once again in that place of awe and revelation. 
Nothing I can do will change who I am in Christ, my religion and judgement didn't help the cause of Christ it restrained it.  This new place is a continuing place on my journey to total freedom.  Not token freedom but true freedom.

This is a new place for me, that is true but I know exactly who I am.  I am excited about this new season, filled with hope for what's to come.  I have been through hell and I have come out different but I believe with all my heart I have come out more like Jesus,  though to the outer world it may not look like their definition or expectation.  In my heart I know it is true,  I can see Him laughing at me and calling me into deeper waters to ride waves of joy and laughter and in my heart I run to swim with him because once again I trust Him.  My judgement of myself is over, grace is my choice.  The old ways of rules and earning  love, they have passed away and I am once again a new creation.  I pray I can stay in this sweet spot, this love fest with the Lord for a long time.  However, I also know hard things come but I have learned how to walk through the desert I will not set up camp there again.  I pray to continue living and moving from glory to glory with less and less entanglement of this world.  Love myself and love others, that is my goal and in Christ I can do that.  Honestly that is enough.  I hope this fills your heart and can help guide you through a desert time to a higher level of grace and freedom.  For there is not freedom without grace.  

With much hope and love,

Debbie

Crushing the Christian life(confessions of a recovering ex-pastor's wife)

Rest and Relaxation with No Expectations

I was really doing great, crushing the so-called Christian life.  
Working it from every angle as if it was some beauty contest to win.  I didn't know it.  I couldn't see how deeply the river of earning approval ran in my heart.  I thought I was living in grace, I taught all about grace but I was living in an never ending race of good works.  Doing everything I could to prove that I was worthy.  Teaching and preaching was something I loved but it was tainted with this need to prove myself.

The gifts were real, I am gifted to teach, it is my sweet spot but slowly it became my grace killer.  
This is how it goes...the slippery slope from gifting and grace to religion and rules.
I had to win the approval of others, my preaching had to be the best.  If I am being honest it was not just so that the message would be powerful but rather so that I could prove I was worthy.  Grace was edged out by my old approval junkie heart.  It was disguised well, in  a very spiritual covering but below the surface my issues where lurking.  Ministry can do that, cover your issues in spiritual clothes.  It is a major pitfall for people in ministry, a hiding place for approval junkies, a sweet spot for narcissists, an all consuming job, a rule based prison, a pharisee creating whirlwind, not for everyone but it was for me.  I had won the prize.  This approval junkie had married a narcissist, become a work-a-holic, living in a rule based prison and looking quite a bit like a Pharisee.

It was like stepping from one unhealthy version of myself  into a duplicate unhealthy Christian version of myself.  There was no intent for this to happen obviously.  Rather a slow steady shift away from the goodness of God to the goodness of works.  Again, let me say not everyone in ministry struggles this way.   Many people in ministry started out healthy and whole and are careful to stay that way.  I thought I was, but looking back I see that I still had so far to go.  Pride is like that.  Convinces you that you are all better because you are doing good things, then slips deception on you and off you go.  Same issues, different circumstances.  I deceived myself into believing I could finally know love by working as hard as possible at it.   Turns out that is  not love at all, it is deception. 

So crushing the Christian life turned out to be crushing to my soul.  
I am not trying to be dramatic but imagine a new believer with approval issues groomed by her new husband who is also her pastor to believe that she should follow all the rules, raise her family as the Bible teaches, help build the kingdom, honor her husband, ignore her intuition, be at everything, preach, teach, be beautiful, dress correctly, behave correctly, make everyone like you, etc. etc.  In theory that doesn't sound that terrible but for me it was like drinking poison.   The more I drank, the sicker I got.  My whirlwind pace was masked as spirituality, when truly I just had no boundaries.  The behind the scenes secrets of ministry, the need for approval and the gnawing intuition of knowing things just weren't right drove me at times to madness and other times it drove me to the feet of the creator.  Unfortunately my skewed version of Christianity made it only possible for me to see the feet of Jesus.  It was there that I would experience His love but rarely could I climb into His lap, I could only bring myself to grovel at His feet.  My doubts and failures made it impossible to believe in His unfailing love.  I knew the theology of grace with certainty in my brain, preached it with conviction but I couldn't seem live in it for very long.  If that makes any sense?

I was ruthless with myself and my Christianity.  
I had a broken belief system that God was a hard task master and if I did everything right He would love me and my life would be great.  Therefore, I hated myself when I failed to meet these standards.  Treating myself as a failure and repeating horrid sound tracks over and over in my head.  Brutally crucifying myself for my short comings, wildly defensive about my weaknesses and struggling and striving all the while to be a good Christian.  Strict standards can make us unbearable towards others sins.  If I have to work this hard, you have to work this hard too.  The road to being religious is paved with good intentions and bad belief systems.

Please hear me, there were great highs, wonderful moments, God inspired experiences, exceptional people but I was still the little girl trying to please everyone and make everyone happy.  The fact that it was tainted with my sinful heart issues doesn't mean that it doesn't count.  I grew, I learned and I loved.  It just wasn't healthy for me.  I was in an endless cycle of trying desperately to hold onto everything, to be the best, all the while believing I was trusting and letting go.  While my then-husband was spinning plates as fast as he could trying to keep appearances up, I was working myself to the bone.  I was caught in a cycle of self hatred, doubt, fear, earning, striving and still failing.  Then the house of cards finally came crashing down, it was far worse than I had imagined.  I was never going to win, it had only been a matter of time before it unraveled.   It was exhausting and unnecessary.  Not to mention that winning isn't what God is after at all.

Life lived in the fish bowl is difficult for the healthy but for the broken it can be excruciating.
I will never know what the future would have been if I would have left the ministry and my then husband sooner.  I did the best I could with who I was at the time.  I know I cannot be the only pastor's wife that felt such pain, emptiness, fear and frustration.  The inability to please everyone,  to make a church successful, to be good enough in the endless spiritual comparathon is a trick to keep us from the fullness of life.  In the midst of the fishbowl you are trying so hard to find freedom, to be yourself but let's face it, you are still stuck in a fishbowl how much freedom can you really have?

When I walked away I took a few friendships, knowledge, experience and good memories but along the way I lost myself, a son and my family. 
This isn't what the Lord had asked of me.   I know there is fruit for all of us, I know my children reaped fruit and love from our experience but they also reaped pain.  Mind numbing betrayals that are hard to recover from.  It is the reality of living in a f*cked up world and trust me when I say, the church is just as f*cked up as the world.  It is a house for the broken that can often get so turned upside down that it becomes a weapon instead of an instrument of love.  We were just broken, every last one of us, just in different ways.   I have heard it said that you attract what you are.  Eventually there was no denying the unhealthiness of it all.  Thank God, it brought a necessary ending that hopefully freed us all to experience God in a different way, in deeper truth.  There is nothing I can do about the past but embrace it as part of the journey to bring me here, to this place of grace.  My heart has expanded during this season of revelation, of seeing things with new eyes. Perhaps every last ounce of pain is necessary for people like me to really change.

God didn't create me to strive and earn other people's approval or even His. 
 I was created to be true to how he designed me, not anyone Else's expectations.  He loves me, right now and right here in this very messy place of grace and relationship.  Not that I am done.  It is difficult of course even now not to want to be liked...who doesn't want to be liked?  I recognize it when it crosses over into determination, an unhealthy demanding desire within my soul.  "I will make you love me", was a mantra I have heard in my head over and over throughout my life time.  No longer.  I will make no one like or love me, they either do or they don't.  Period.  I will continue to grow and change but the essence of who I am will remain.

I am experiencing grace in new ways, authentic ways. 
Recognizing my worthiness based not on any of my works but on who He is.  I am a degenerate sinner.  My life is wildly imperfect and I am okay with that.  I am not crushing the Christian life, as a matter of fact I have kind of opted out of that life and now just live a spiritual life.   I have lost my drive to do anything other than love.  I am kind to myself, I work at loving and accepting my imperfect self, I have low expectations on myself and others, I sit in the place of grace and I rest. Did you know the only place the bible talks about striving is to rest?   I cannot earn anything because it is a free gift.  I suppose I could end up in the lesser positions of heaven if you subscribe to that theology, I don't.  My theology is so simple now, isn't that what Jesus exampled to us.  A very simple message of love.

Today I prefer to sit with the broken, speak of love and find rest in the gracious act of unraveling my messy heart.  
I used to think loving yourself was a sin, I now understand loving yourself is a spiritual act of redemption.  It is what empowers you to love others.  When you are kind to yourself you will be kind to others, when you don't judge yourself harshly, you won't judge others harshly.   I share my heart, love others and am constantly finding new paths into relationship with my creator.  In this place there are no rules only relationship.  Yes, I believe in the Bible but I also believe in the power of love to lead you.  It is a gentle unfolding, centering experience and I love it.  Sometimes I over think it, I begin to strive and then I am reminded that I get to choose and I choose rest, peace, love and acceptance.  I am not perfect, I mess up.  I see new things within me that are holding  me back and I keep striving for growth, for deeper spiritual understanding of my own heart. Everything else will fall in place, transition or stay the same.  Anyway it goes, I will be okay.
Set yourself free from striving. 
I hope you can hear my heart and understand that I write this because I want other people to find freedom from the constraints of what so easily entangles us.  Those things that can seem righteous and good on the surface but in reality are just spiritual window dressing allowing us to stay somewhat stuck in old patterns.    Let's learn to love ourselves, leave judgment behind, grow with open minds rather than stifling rules, live in relationship with our creator in whatever way is healthy and balanced for us.  Let's stop the spiritual comparathon, that is just pharisee behavior.  We can find our freedom, learn from our past while leaning towards the future with hope.  It is brighter than we can imagine when we step out from under the "heavy taskmaster" theology.  Thanks for reading sweet friends, may we all find our way daily towards more and more freedom and light.
We live in hope,
Debbie