Leaving one's family, community, and faith can provoke all kinds of ambivalent feelings, but there are moments of pure clarity also -- especially when well-meaning people make uninformed assumptions, and you have to school them or blow a gasket.
Even if the schooling takes place as an interior dialogue.
When I saw this Facebook post, I asked if I could share it here. The writer agreed and said shared that she is in a better place now. The frustration you'll read about below "has been diminishing every time I speak up."
--Free
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GUEST POST
by Anonymous
Many people say to me, “it must be hard for your family because they can’t see/talk to you.” They say “Oh, it must be hard not to have relationships with your family.”
This is one of the hardest things I deal with now. Some people, when they say this, they are empathizing. Some are vilifying me. I am a monster because I left, I’ve been gone for a good half decade. Who in their right mind could do that sort of thing? Or I must be a ruined pile of a person because I don’t have relationships with my family. Guess what. I’m not a monster. I’m not a ruined pile.
Ending relationships with family doesn’t happen from a place of function. It comes from a very dysfunctional place. If you have a loving, caring family, you may not understand or even comprehend the logistics of unhealthy relationships. But at the same time, repeating over and over that family is the most important piece of one’s life is damaging, especially if family means dysfunction. So tweak your rule a little bit. Family is the most important part of your life, if your family is healthy.
In not being able to recognize this, you are at the same time denying my experience, my pain. You are triggering me yet again to feel shame and betrayal that I felt when I left. Calling it shame and betrayal is undermining what actually happened. I experienced repeated psychological abuse. My dad spoke a sermon about me. Well, it wasn’t actually me. It was his perception of me. With a warning that the devil was going to get my pinkie, my arm, my whole body because I had a taste of sin. Which was alcohol and a man and breaking into my grandma's house to hang out with said man and liquor. Oh, and french bread and heirloom tomatoes. Devil’s got my pinkie, oh delicious, juicy tomatoes. And I actually didn’t drink the alcohol. I’d never had any before and I didn’t start then. Oh, no. It was later on, and it was Mike’s hard lemonade. I was so terrified that I probably drank half of it in the span of two hours.
My question is? How much would you put up with? With a stranger it’s easy to say no. Family, though. That’s a different field, isn’t it. Family can do anything to you. It’s okay. They’re family.
Would you put up with a sermon from your dad about how the devil is getting in your soul? Would you put up with calling your grandma to ask for money only having her ask you to call back when grandpa is home, so you can talk to him. You do that and when you talk to him on the phone, grandma is in the background telling him what to say. That no, you can’t have money to pay your balance at the university. Why, you ask? Your grandma tells your grandpa to say it’s because you’re living in sin. You’re living with a man, who you’re not married to.
Can you guess why we didn’t get married right away? Because my family was treating me like shit and I was hoping it would get better but it never did.
Would you put up with a Thanksgiving where your sister-in-law and your mom snarkily talk about how an engagement ring isn’t a ring if it doesn’t have a giant rock? And you’re standing right there, listening to them, and your engagement ring is giant rock-free?
Would you put up with people stopping saying “God’s Peace” to you, which is code for “we are in the same church and everyone else is going to hell.” Like bro code. You could stand in a line with forty other people and a person walks down the line, shaking everyone’s hand and saying God’s Peace. When the person gets to you, they skip you like you didn’t exist and move on. God’s Peace. God’s Peace. God’s Peace. Oh you’re going to hell. Next person.
Would you put up with letters written to you about how sinful you are? Would you put up with your sister-in-law writing messages to your fiance on Facebook about she hates his posts and why does he even say anything?
Would you put up with a friend who once said you were like a sister, walk hurriedly by you within five feet, angrily, and at the same time pretending she didn’t see you? Would you call her later as a lifeline because you’re so alone, and she says let's meet up, but not in my home. Because I might, like, bring drugs or something because I’m going to hell. Anything sinful is up for grabs.
Would you put up with your sister telling you that you need to save your siblings from the church? That by maintaining abusive relationships you can help pull them out too?
What would you do? What would you do when your whole community, your family, your world is torn down from the inside? When all the loving, trusting relationships you ever knew instantly turned to pain?
Would you run or stay?
Many of you might say that you would run. But let me tell you something. Out of all the people that I know left my church, many of them still have these relationships with their family. And they are dysfunctional. My cousin’s dad punched her sister in the back and said that she and her sister were making their mom cry all the time because they didn’t attend church. When we were kids he broke a neighbor kid’s arm. He broke a child’s arm. Never went to jail. My cousin that left the church still maintains her relationship with her dad.
There are stories and stories of sexual abuse too. Molestation. Rampant in families, rampant in the church. If you don’t believe me just ask. If emotional and psychological abuse aren’t enough for you.
This is the tip of the iceberg of my story. But I ask you. Respect me. And don’t say shit like “Oh it must be hard to not have relationships with your family.” You know what’s way, way, way, way harder? Spending 20 or so years being abused.
And letting it happen even longer. Because family.
Saying “it must be hard….” silences me. I cannot find myself when yet again, I am seen in a weird light. I had a fucking hard time, yes. Try to think of these painful moments and realize that they happened to me every day. Every day. A hiss of “I’ll pray for you” in your ear by your great aunt and you’re supposed to act like your day is perfectly fine. Your attempt to empathize isn’t going to fix years of abuse.
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A Christian advice columnist, John Shore, in his most recent column, said, "Honoring your parents doesn’t mean allowing them treat you terribly. It doesn’t mean you have to hang out with them, either. Sometimes honoring your parents means protecting the best of what you got from them by protecting yourself from them."
ReplyDelete--Punahilkka
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ReplyDeleteFree posted, "Would you put up with people stopping saying “God’s Peace” to you, which is code for “we are in the same church and everyone else is going to hell.” Like bro code. You could stand in a line with forty other people and a person walks down the line, shaking everyone’s hand and saying God’s Peace. When the person gets to you, they skip you like you didn’t exist and move on. God’s Peace. God’s Peace. God’s Peace. Oh you’re going to hell. Next person." Each family reacts differently to family members who leave the 'only true church'. Some families are indeed very hypocritical. I saw over and over how families would strain at gnat when it came to another church member's issue but swallow a camel with their own family member's behavior. The church as a whole is sort of like that too as they love to condemn outsiders for working on Sundays for example but then they go out to eat at a restaurant, travel or purchase gas on Sundays themselves. What they fail to see is that maintaining any legalistic code becomes virtually impossible and riddled with exceptions as they ignore the Apostle Paul's words that all things are legal for him but not all things edify. In fact Luke wrote in Acts 15:20 that Gentiles were only prohibited from being polluted by idols, from partaking of sexual immorality, from eating strangled food and from drinking animal blood. I recall a number of times where older Laestadians would say how legalism had to preached, "otherwise the people would just go out and do whatever they wanted." A true Christian has the Holy Spirit who acts as a guide to a person. When Laestadians or any other church demand conforming to a legalistic code/set of rules, it makes me wonder if they have ever been born again in Christ. Old AP
ReplyDeleteOld Ap, great post! I've also seen families who will swallow a camel or otherwise mind their own business about a church member's issue but strain at a gnat if it is a member of their own family. I've also seen it among gendered lines, too. There were always certain young men who spent a lot of time in bars during the week, and also partook in some drug use, but never missed church, and so they were left pretty much alone as well. "At least they never miss church." It seemed so much of that aggression was in the form of female relational aggression in which the non-conforming females were targeted by mean-spirited gossip and exclusion. But not everyone was like that.
ReplyDeleteYoung people growing up are stymied over any attempt to develop their own personal talents, interests and skills. Instead they are basically forced to conform to a rigid lifestyle within the narrow norms of Laestadianism. Most of the 'rules' are really based off of the remnants of their original meanings and intents thus most people have exceptions that they make for themselves or their friends. The sop or consolation thrown at members is that at least they know they belong to a tight knit social group within the only true church and this gives them a strong sense of belonging. So if one wants to 'belong' one must also eat the same fodder even if it means having to remain silent after having endured physical and sexual abuse. I suppose it is one way for a person to go through life but once I left I figured out that the whole thing was really sort of like a con game. In other words I had wasted a precious portion of my life listening to a bunch of blowhards along with a cacophony of background noise coming from the congregation. I concluded that there was more for me in life somewhere else and I found it. Old AP
ReplyDeleteI just read how the Evangelist Billy Graham had died. The Reuters news release stated how he had personally preached to 215 million people in 185 countries plus he had reached a billion or more through television and radio message. It always struck me as odd how Laestadians would say how he was a 'false prophet' and practically a necromancer for preaching the gospel. Meanwhile the same people would state that Laestadius was the last of the New Testament prophets and that the movement was only for Finnish people and other Scandinavians. As I got older I finally realized who the real 'false prophets' were and that the 'essence of the Gospel' was not having my sins pronounced forgiven after having had listened to a sermon of guilt preached to me. Instead I realized the real essence of the Gospel was the faith in Jesus that Billy Graham and other evangelical ministers preached. Old AP
ReplyDeleteThere are exceptions of course to the norms and the rigid conformity. Recently I was talking to a member of the Old Apostolic Lutheran Church in Hancock, Michigan. I was telling him why I dropped out of my group citing their various absurdities such as laughing being a sin. He acknowledged some of what I had said but the gist of his reply was that he was able to, "think for himself" and ignore the more extraneous beliefs. I got to thinking about his comment and I realized that the real problem is that too many members have been conditioned to not think for themselves. In other words you can still remain a member just use common sense and take anything they say with a grain of salt. Old AP
ReplyDeleteFeelings carry so much more weight than just facts. I probably will not remember exactly what you said to me 20 years ago but I will still remember how you made me felt. Years back I realized that there were some intense common core feelings that ex-Laestadians held that can be memorized with a simple mnemonic I call FARUGG. F-Fear (of hell, sin, others), A-Anger (anger at abuse, the situation etc...), R-Rage (a much more intense feeling of anger), U-Unfairness (the unfairness and helplessness of one's situation), G-Guilt (false guilt over sin, lifestyle or occupation, Grief-(Internalized sorrow over events in one's life or those around us). One path to healing is acknowledging the repressed emotions and past events within oneself and seeking out safe ways of releasing the trapped FARUGG feelings inside. For those who were severely abused when they were young, the original emotional feelings must be revisited and the repressed FARUGG type feelings must be released in a safe manner....sometimes that involves cursing, screaming and crying in a safe manner as the young victim was unable to process the intense emotional pain that was felt when the events happened. Those repressed emotions are often the root source of depression and emotional dysfunction. Sometimes the perpetrator can be confronted and sometimes that is either not possible, not wise or not safe. But my research shows that until the deep core FARUGG emotions are dealt with the scars and haunting of the past will continue. Old AP
ReplyDelete