When Church Hurts... Part 1
I distinctly remember googling “church hurt” about a month ago, as I sat quietly in tears, trying to understand how a place that is supposed to bring love, acceptance and community could cause such hurt, pain and devastation. I knew I wasn’t alone in experiencing hurt from within a church; but what I could not believe was the amount of hits on Google I found on the subject. Blogs, articles, even books written on the subject.
Religion and church has always felt like a bit of a mystery to me. I never fully understood how something so influential in one’s life is something you are “birthed” into based on your own families views. I took a World Religion 101 class my freshman year of college and I always wondered why that wasn’t something taught to children interested in exploring a higher power, to make a choice on their own of their beliefs.
Let me start by saying that I was raised in the church. Like most youth in the church, I was involved in the entire gamut of church activities. I attended Sunday School, Vacation Bible School and youth group, until I aged out. At that point, I began teaching Sunday School and Vacation BIble School, was in choir, learned to play the bells and piano for services, and even did some of the readings. My entire upbringing occured in the church, with one integral part of that upbringing missing… my parents. We were that family. The family that the kids were dropped off every Sunday, but the parent’s never attended Sunday Service. I don’t regret my upbringing in the church; but it often felt weird that it was something so important for my sisters and I to participate in, but not my parents.
I was really close to our church congregation, including the Pastor. Remember, I, and not my parents, grew up there. I made some of my closest friends in my youth at church. My Pastor, and the leaders, contributed to shaping me into the person I am today. Our Pastor even made several trips an hour away from his home to visit me in the hospital during several of my surgeries.
Like any Pastor, and any church, change happened. The Pastor that I grew up with retired, and someone new came in. Around this same time, my parents separated and officially began the divorce process. Additionally, my mother started attending church. Somehow, a place that was once my safe haven, became the place that I was ostracized from. The people, and congregation that I once served with, outcasted me, and “sided” with my mother (who disowned me).
I’ve managed to block out most of my childhood. But, I have two distinct memories during this transitional period. When my parents separated, my dad thought it would be a good idea for me to get counseling, and during that time, one turned to the church for such things. I remember my dad dropping me off at the church to have a counseling session with the Pastor. A Pastor who didn’t know me or my family from the next person. I remember sitting there, getting ostracized and put down. I remember the Pastor very obviously siding with my mother on some “tough” topics of the divorce, even justifying the very actions of hers that hurt me beyond words. Worse yet, I remember him putting my mom on a pedestal and putting my dad down. I left in tears, feeling hurt, confused, unheard, and like a stranger in my own home. How could this person even take sides, not knowing any of us. Where was the pastoral care that pastors are supposed to provide? What happened to this counseling session being about me, my hurt, and my road to recovery during my parent’s divorce?
The second distinct memory was when I got a call from one of my sisters when I was in college, that she was being kicked out of the house. I was just over 18 at the time, and she had newly entered high school. I remember driving home from college to help my sister, as I had just gone through a similar experience of being kicked out the year before. My mother was saying horrible things about my sister, telling her she want’ welcome to live there anymore, and there for her support was the Pastor. I will never understand how in such a moment of distress for a child, once again, this man stood there taking my mother’s side and there to “protect her”.
These experiences ended any relationship I had with the church, or worshipping in a community. I wouldn’t say that I stopped believing in God during this time, but I began to experience many questions about “the church”. This place of community, of safety, of guidance had been ripped away from me; replaced with experiences of cynicism, impostering, and hypocritical people who didn’t hesitate to turn a blind eye. The very person that is supposed to be walking the walk of Jesus turned out to be anything but that. How does one recover from such mistrust, such let down, such pain?