And this is the sucky post that I didn't want to write because I knew that it would hurt like crazy and that I would cry the entire time as I wrote it. But I feel like I need to write it.
There are many awful, horrible types of abuse. No abuse is good. Sexual, emotional, psychological, physical, financial, verbal, spiritual. Combine them and you multiply the effect. Sexual abuse is particularly nasty and destructive, especially for children. But for me, spiritual abuse has had the most far-reaching effects.
When I left the U.S. last month, I had thought that I was doing well, but once I got out of Dallas and all its connotations and finally breathed the free air of a world far away, I realized that I was far from well. Nightmares -- violent, graphic, and traumatic -- still plague me about once a week. I relive emotional memories as if they're really happening. If I let myself wander far enough back into that reality, I find myself broken and sobbing, completely undone, as if for the first time again. I don't let myself wander back very often. It's much easier to gambol about on sun-kissed piazzas eating gelato pretending I'm a girl without a past. Don't be fooled by cheerful Facebook posts. I'm not well. I'm not well at all. I believe it's called PTSD.
I'm sure some of the PTSD is from my abusive marriage. But most of it isn't. The nightmares didn't start during my marriage, or even right after the separation in July. They started when people started to push me to go back to him, after I'd gone public, in August. The hurtful emails, conversations, meetings, phone calls. People would say to me over and over, "I'm praying for you and [your ex] to get back together," and that night I'd go home, and then in my dreams he would burst through bolted and locked doors, or emerge like a fog, ghostlike, from under the doors, and then violently rape me. In my nightmares I'd scream impotently at him as he continued, unfazed, and I would lose my voice and end up hoarse, with no change in his behavior, no way to stop him. I was terrified. I told one of my friends, who had said to me, "I will never stop hoping and praying for your marriage to get back together," that I did not feel safe with her. She got a little upset with me. "I want you to feel safe with me," she said, as if she could force me to feel safe. But I could not explain to her what her words were doing to me, and why I'd never be safe with her knowing that she was petitioning God to send me back to the reality of that nightmare.
And then there were the accusations. Shifting blame back on me. My leadership accusing me of deceiving them about the abuse while it was happening, and treating me like a guilty party. My own father blaming me for not stopping the abuse and refusing to hear my side of the story. People accusing me of sharing the burden of sin in my destroyed marriage ("it takes two to tango"). Christians asking me why there was no grace of Jesus in my heart, where was the love and forgiveness in Christ that should have made me take my ex back. Friends deciding whether or not to defellowship me for my "sin" of divorce. My ex's counselors calling me and tag-team yelling at me on the phone for three hours about how I would send my ex to hell, trying to bully and guilt me into conciliatory measures, threatening me that I would fall into adulterous sexual sin if I divorced him. Most painful of all was the utter impotence I felt. I was voiceless and powerless to speak out against them. All of them got to walk away feeling self-righteous, but leaving me in shreds of despair.
During that period, it was a good day if nobody attacked me and a very, very bad one when someone did. I had lots of very bad days during that period. During the bad days I would just numbly crawl into bed, not eating, not sleeping, doing nothing but filling endless hours with mindless TV, crying, mindless TV, crying. Eventually I got to the point where it was only hours of mindless TV. I was so catatonic I could not even cry, for a very long time. Instead of escaping my abuser, during that time I felt like he had multiplied into many, many spiritual abusers all over the church. It was hell.
In my mind now, all those experiences and all those people roll up together into a single noisy overwhelming experience, and I find myself crying out in pain, holding my hands over my ears, wanting to pull myself into fetal position to make the words in my brain stop. No longer thought or emotion, it feels primal, animal. Panic. Survival mode. Prefrontal cortex shutting down -- check. Cortisol spiking -- check. Reptilian brain taking over -- check. Fight or flight. For sure, flight.
But the worst part of it all is that the onslaught did what only spiritual abuse can do -- the terrible, cruel, destructive thing that spiritual abuse does. It hijacked my pathways to healing. People used Christiany words, prayer, poorly wielded Scripture, platitudes, Christian cultural norms, as they attacked and accused me. The assaults happened in churches, missionary gatherings, fellowship groups, and in the name of Jesus -- all places I'd once considered home.
And suddenly, once I'd arrived in Italy and was no longer in defense mode, I found I couldn't use those pathways or go to, or even near, those places any more. They were rewired to give death rather than life. They have been booby-trapped, barb-wired, riddled with mines, laced with deadly gases. I was shut out from the easiest, clearest pathways to God. When I tried to approach them again, I'd find myself reliving the trauma -- crying, fetal position, hands over ears -- you know the drill.
I can't read the Bible any more, because it hurts. When I look at it, it's with the desperate eyes of a prisoner on death row looking for the loopholes and all the details, to draw up her defense against the death knell. I believe this document defends and upholds me. But I also know that the current modern court (the church) doesn't read it that way. And so my heart can't help but overfocus, read and reread frenetically, obsess over those legal details, to protect myself. I grieve that this Book that I once considered the greatest love letter I'd ever read, the one I wanted to give the whole world, has now become a scary legal document to me. A brilliant, amazing, righteous legal document. But one I can't read every day any more, at least not without heartrending pain, because it reminds me that I'm still behind bars.
And I can't hear encouraging words any more. When people murmur kind words in sympathy, or give me counsel, or say "God will make it turn out all right in the end," I'm sorry. I can't hear it. I quite honestly can't hear you. I wish I could, but I'm enclosed in a glass tomb, and I can see your lips moving, and nod numbly as if I'm listening, but it doesn't hit home if it recalls any of the same Christiany words my spiritual abusers used. Unfortunately they've used them all, prefaced every accusation with every familiar Christian platitude, tainted every key term and Bible verse. The nicest thing someone said to me recently that I could actually receive was, "Did you ever consider tearing off [my ex's] arms and clubbing him to death with them? I would have." Yeah, not the most Christiany of sentiments. Go ahead and disapprove. But it was something I could actually understand as kindness to me. The rest of it is just gibberish at best, trauma-reinforcing at worst. I hope you understand if I can't respond appropriately, or do anything other than gape and stay silent. Consider me not a hostile prisoner, but a comatose patient, unresponsive out of sheer inability, not resistance.
I know these conventional pathways -- prayer, Scripture, traditional worship, fellowship -- are not the only pathways to God. But they are the easiest, clearest, most direct pathways -- pathways I used to love to skip, jump, dance, along for hours. And it's hard, really hard, when they are blocked. I understand now why prodigals pack their bags and go away, as far as they can, once they've been hurt by the church. I understand now why most of them never come back. Please understand, these aren't mental choices I'm making. I'm not overtly rejecting these forms. The negative associations arise involuntarily the minute I approach them, and then I'm gone, off in that terrible world where the abuse is still happening. Just say the words "quiet time," and my mind has already abandoned ship.
That is why spiritual abuse is the worst.
There are many awful, horrible types of abuse. No abuse is good. Sexual, emotional, psychological, physical, financial, verbal, spiritual. Combine them and you multiply the effect. Sexual abuse is particularly nasty and destructive, especially for children. But for me, spiritual abuse has had the most far-reaching effects.
When I left the U.S. last month, I had thought that I was doing well, but once I got out of Dallas and all its connotations and finally breathed the free air of a world far away, I realized that I was far from well. Nightmares -- violent, graphic, and traumatic -- still plague me about once a week. I relive emotional memories as if they're really happening. If I let myself wander far enough back into that reality, I find myself broken and sobbing, completely undone, as if for the first time again. I don't let myself wander back very often. It's much easier to gambol about on sun-kissed piazzas eating gelato pretending I'm a girl without a past. Don't be fooled by cheerful Facebook posts. I'm not well. I'm not well at all. I believe it's called PTSD.
I'm sure some of the PTSD is from my abusive marriage. But most of it isn't. The nightmares didn't start during my marriage, or even right after the separation in July. They started when people started to push me to go back to him, after I'd gone public, in August. The hurtful emails, conversations, meetings, phone calls. People would say to me over and over, "I'm praying for you and [your ex] to get back together," and that night I'd go home, and then in my dreams he would burst through bolted and locked doors, or emerge like a fog, ghostlike, from under the doors, and then violently rape me. In my nightmares I'd scream impotently at him as he continued, unfazed, and I would lose my voice and end up hoarse, with no change in his behavior, no way to stop him. I was terrified. I told one of my friends, who had said to me, "I will never stop hoping and praying for your marriage to get back together," that I did not feel safe with her. She got a little upset with me. "I want you to feel safe with me," she said, as if she could force me to feel safe. But I could not explain to her what her words were doing to me, and why I'd never be safe with her knowing that she was petitioning God to send me back to the reality of that nightmare.
And then there were the accusations. Shifting blame back on me. My leadership accusing me of deceiving them about the abuse while it was happening, and treating me like a guilty party. My own father blaming me for not stopping the abuse and refusing to hear my side of the story. People accusing me of sharing the burden of sin in my destroyed marriage ("it takes two to tango"). Christians asking me why there was no grace of Jesus in my heart, where was the love and forgiveness in Christ that should have made me take my ex back. Friends deciding whether or not to defellowship me for my "sin" of divorce. My ex's counselors calling me and tag-team yelling at me on the phone for three hours about how I would send my ex to hell, trying to bully and guilt me into conciliatory measures, threatening me that I would fall into adulterous sexual sin if I divorced him. Most painful of all was the utter impotence I felt. I was voiceless and powerless to speak out against them. All of them got to walk away feeling self-righteous, but leaving me in shreds of despair.
During that period, it was a good day if nobody attacked me and a very, very bad one when someone did. I had lots of very bad days during that period. During the bad days I would just numbly crawl into bed, not eating, not sleeping, doing nothing but filling endless hours with mindless TV, crying, mindless TV, crying. Eventually I got to the point where it was only hours of mindless TV. I was so catatonic I could not even cry, for a very long time. Instead of escaping my abuser, during that time I felt like he had multiplied into many, many spiritual abusers all over the church. It was hell.
In my mind now, all those experiences and all those people roll up together into a single noisy overwhelming experience, and I find myself crying out in pain, holding my hands over my ears, wanting to pull myself into fetal position to make the words in my brain stop. No longer thought or emotion, it feels primal, animal. Panic. Survival mode. Prefrontal cortex shutting down -- check. Cortisol spiking -- check. Reptilian brain taking over -- check. Fight or flight. For sure, flight.
But the worst part of it all is that the onslaught did what only spiritual abuse can do -- the terrible, cruel, destructive thing that spiritual abuse does. It hijacked my pathways to healing. People used Christiany words, prayer, poorly wielded Scripture, platitudes, Christian cultural norms, as they attacked and accused me. The assaults happened in churches, missionary gatherings, fellowship groups, and in the name of Jesus -- all places I'd once considered home.
And suddenly, once I'd arrived in Italy and was no longer in defense mode, I found I couldn't use those pathways or go to, or even near, those places any more. They were rewired to give death rather than life. They have been booby-trapped, barb-wired, riddled with mines, laced with deadly gases. I was shut out from the easiest, clearest pathways to God. When I tried to approach them again, I'd find myself reliving the trauma -- crying, fetal position, hands over ears -- you know the drill.
I can't read the Bible any more, because it hurts. When I look at it, it's with the desperate eyes of a prisoner on death row looking for the loopholes and all the details, to draw up her defense against the death knell. I believe this document defends and upholds me. But I also know that the current modern court (the church) doesn't read it that way. And so my heart can't help but overfocus, read and reread frenetically, obsess over those legal details, to protect myself. I grieve that this Book that I once considered the greatest love letter I'd ever read, the one I wanted to give the whole world, has now become a scary legal document to me. A brilliant, amazing, righteous legal document. But one I can't read every day any more, at least not without heartrending pain, because it reminds me that I'm still behind bars.
And I don't pray any more. I talk to God sometimes, casually and infrequently, in the privacy of my heart, usually when I'm out walking. But I can't do the deep, passionate hours of work down on my knees in prayer that I used to love to do, because the minute I try, it revives the old associations, and I shut down.
I can't think about missions at all any more. When I think about missions, about the countries I once loved, I can't help but think of all the people who call themselves missionaries yet betrayed me so badly. And then my heart and brain go on strike, and I find myself in a dark place of despair. I can't explain it or think through it. I just can't bring myself to care any more. It's like emotional amnesia -- a big blank in my memory that I know used to house the most important passion of my life, but is now just a big black hole too dense to perceive. Black holes aren't empty, you know. They're just seething, gravitationally collapsed balls of density, too pressurized, too intense, too consuming, to navigate -- or survive.
I can't worship or sing any more. I tell God sometimes, briefly, that I love Him. I enjoy Him, indirectly, in my daily walks and in the air and the sky and the song of the birds and the food that I eat. But I mostly can't sing any more those churchy words, those familiar tunes. I can't lift my hands and close my eyes and feel Him there like I used to. Sometimes I strum my guitar alone in my room, or listen to a recording, and I can get back to a safe place, if just for a moment. But it's hard, it's rare. And then the darkness closes in too suddenly. Usually it's just too much of a risk to try, and so I just numbly sing the words like they're just words. I can just barely endure church in Italian because it's a new language, and, like swear words in a different language, it just doesn't have the same emotional impact as your own language.I can't think about missions at all any more. When I think about missions, about the countries I once loved, I can't help but think of all the people who call themselves missionaries yet betrayed me so badly. And then my heart and brain go on strike, and I find myself in a dark place of despair. I can't explain it or think through it. I just can't bring myself to care any more. It's like emotional amnesia -- a big blank in my memory that I know used to house the most important passion of my life, but is now just a big black hole too dense to perceive. Black holes aren't empty, you know. They're just seething, gravitationally collapsed balls of density, too pressurized, too intense, too consuming, to navigate -- or survive.
And I can't hear encouraging words any more. When people murmur kind words in sympathy, or give me counsel, or say "God will make it turn out all right in the end," I'm sorry. I can't hear it. I quite honestly can't hear you. I wish I could, but I'm enclosed in a glass tomb, and I can see your lips moving, and nod numbly as if I'm listening, but it doesn't hit home if it recalls any of the same Christiany words my spiritual abusers used. Unfortunately they've used them all, prefaced every accusation with every familiar Christian platitude, tainted every key term and Bible verse. The nicest thing someone said to me recently that I could actually receive was, "Did you ever consider tearing off [my ex's] arms and clubbing him to death with them? I would have." Yeah, not the most Christiany of sentiments. Go ahead and disapprove. But it was something I could actually understand as kindness to me. The rest of it is just gibberish at best, trauma-reinforcing at worst. I hope you understand if I can't respond appropriately, or do anything other than gape and stay silent. Consider me not a hostile prisoner, but a comatose patient, unresponsive out of sheer inability, not resistance.
I stand here today not knowing if I even want to call myself a Christian any more -- the word itself has been tainted with fear and pain. Sometimes days go by when I hardly think of God at all, and I don't feel guilty. Morality seems suddenly so unimportant, all the good-girl rules I'd followed all my life. And then I wonder if I'm a pagan now. But then I'll be walking a cobblestone alley, or considering the play of shadow and light on a street, and a pang will involuntarily cross my heart, and I'll think about Jesus, like a much-adored lover who is so very far away for so very long. He's still very much a part of my inscape, my internal reality. I'm still, deep down, desperately infatuated with Him. I still miss Him, terribly, and long for His return. But I eschew the earthly forms now. They speak to me of brutality, pain, judgment, self-righteous condemnation. I feel like my eyes see Jesus through a viciously barbed picture frame, His sad, loving face framed by the barbs. I want so badly to reach through and get to Him, but it's dangerous and scary, and my whole body is already badly scarred and shredded. And so I hang back and peer at Him from a distance, until I can figure out another way to get at Him.
That is why spiritual abuse is the worst.
When I can muster up the strength, this is the song I'm praying these days (to jump to the singing, start at around 2:05).
The dirt in this place has filled my eyes
And I can't see, no I can't see a thing
Perhaps this next step will take me home
Or for all I know, lead me to certain death
Pretty Sunday, wooden pews
Word of God, healing for my soul
Friday night, rusty park bench
Laughter and addictions for my pain
Cause I don't know who's winning this tug of war
But it better be You, it better be You
For heaven's sake, my heart's about to rip in two
So it better be You, it better be You
Sometimes I don't know why You would fight
Take battle scars and waste Your angels on me
Cause when you ask me if I love You
In all I do, at best I say "I don't know"*
Tonight I pray, tonight I cry
For kindred souls, souls that have starved like mine
And so I sing, and so I shout
So we might give and sing our hearts out to You!
Cause I don't know who's winning this tug of war
So let it be You, let it be You
For heaven's sake, my heart's about to rip in two
So let it be You, let it be You
Wow...to tread the sacred halls of your soul, to see shadows of your torment and to hear echos of the abuse you've been going through...that's really humbling! My heart aches all over again for you---like when I first saw the pain in your eyes when you talked about your years of hidden abuse. I'm angry at your ex...angry at your horrible, vicious, misguided counselors...angry at the church and those platitudes dripping with self-righteous condemnation...confused. Why does life have to hurt so much? Why does it include such pain? Why is the world so messed up?
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