“This issue isn’t appropriate to talk about.”
The men sat there, listening as we talked about grievous sin. They told us it needed to be kept quiet and private. Secret. These were issues so shameful and uncomfortable they needed to be silent. I didn’t know silence is what brought healing. I didn’t know that some sin can be so dark and heinous that we have to qualify what issues are allowed to be mentioned among people in a church.
That was the nearly final nail in the coffin in deciding to leave a church we had helped start. Lots of little things, and a few big ones, but this was one of the most painful.
We had friends in immense pain and shame being told not to talk about their issue with friends at church, and we were advocating for them to our elders, to no avail.
Meanwhile, we were 7.5 years into our marriage, and 2.5 years into dealing with the deepest pain we’d ever had, and we now knew definitively we were alone in it. There would be no sharing of victory or of on-going struggles. There had been many long nights crying and talking. Confessions and conversations, progress and set-backs. All of it almost entirely alone.
As we worked through our issues, the two of us became one, because there was no one else. But, in the midst of this, the group of people we imagined we were so close to, turned out to just be imaginings.
Years before, I had heard Gary Haugen say, “I think the hardest thing for people in our world to believe about the Christian faith is the idea that God is good, because they are in so much pain.”
That truth began changing my heart that day, but now, in the midst of my own pain, I wanted to scream at everyone around me: “How can you tell me God loves me when you are making me deal with this alone?” My throat grew accustomed to rawness, and my eyes bloodshot from the expanse of tears. Jesus touched dead people. Why would no one touch me?
I suffered through church services for months, hurt, angry, and so bitter. I was soclose to walking away from it all. Don’t tell me the church is the hands and feet of Jesus if you aren’t willing to do a little touching.
My husband told me a few weeks ago, “I wish I could see things the way you do. You’re so good at seeing how church things appear to outsiders,” and I can’t bring myself to tell him (until now, apparently) that I still feel so close, even now, 3 years later, to being on the edge. I walk the tightrope of balancing church and Jesus. I work so hard to believe they are 2 different ropes, no matter how much they intertwine under my feet. Please tell me they are, because I can’t always handle Sunday morning Jesus.
Ever since I heard that Haugen quote, I had timidly, even secretly, started learning about justice issues, particularly IJM‘s focal point, human trafficking.
But always quietly, in private. I didn’t share what I was learning, because who wants to talk about sex and prostitutes? Especially when everyone knows they are just addicts, working to get money for their next hit (not true, in case the sarcasm didn’t transcend text). Only a creepy person wants to read books like The Natashas and The Johns, right?
“This issue isn’t appropriate to talk about.”
My pain is not just an issue. It’s part of my story. It’s embedded in the story of our marriage. I am not merely a statistic.
As I continued my research into the global sex industry and realized the links between trafficking and pornography, the issue became personal. The issue ceased being an issue. The statistics became people. People with a past, a family, and a culture.
I was holding this tension in my mind, trying to understand it, and how God fit into it. On one hand, we have a very hard time being honest about the darkness in our lives. On the other hand, our sins affect others, here and around the globe, and yet we can’t talk about it.
And God said let there be light…..
“If you want to know God, you must go to dark places.”
“The very nature of the gospel then, is calling us to a kind of brokenness, where it is not foreign for us to be with broken people. If you’re not broken, you will smell in a way in which people who are broken will know you have little to offer but your own self-righteousness.”
“Enter the dark places of your own heart. God only dances with whores and killers.”
“We, as the people of God, are meant to go to brokenness because it is brokenness, in it’s great and sweet and incomprehensible paradox, it is darkness where the light of God is meant to so capture our hearts that we, with other whores and killers, can confess that the delight of God is worth dying and living for.”
I heard this sermon by Dan Allender right in the middle of the ‘this is not appropriate’ conversations we were having. Those words physically lifted a burden off my soul. Yes, this is the way to go. Walk in it. (When I memorized Ps 119:105 as an 8 year old, this is not what I had in mind.)
This began my love affair with other cultures. No longer did I feel I had to be ashamed about trying to understand darkness. Foreign films became a regular occurrence in our queue. I became enthralled with India, especially. At one point I owned more Bollywood movies than I did American chick flicks.
I initially wanted to learn about India to understand why there was so much slavery, why women were so undervalued. I began reading out of anger and disgust, concerned with seeing the facts of an issue. But as the issues transformed into people, with history and complexity, and beautiful colors, food, and music, I fell in love.
We have to enter the brokenness of the world, not to condemn it, but to discover the people who are broken.
We enter, not to tell them their pain is inappropriate, but to sit and cry with them.
We raise our fists together at the inequalities that keep them crushed, and together we seek a better way.
During those years of pain, everything was thrown into the air, chaotic and uncertain, our beliefs about God and what it meant to follow Jesus, chief among them. We were forced to seek out those things worth hanging onto and cling to them as if our lives depended on them.
Out of those years of darkness emerged the light of truth. God loves the people of the globe, not in spite of our brokenness, but in it. He is the image we hold, and more than forgiveness, he brings restoration.
Statistics have become people, and the weirdly foreign has become the beautifully different. Five years and five months ago an incident occurred that I thought would destroy me, but instead it has defined me.
*****
This post is part of a group blogging project celebrating the release of Inciting Incidents (Moody Press), a book featuring the stories of six creatives who share honestly about surviving life’s difficulties while attempting to do great things. You can visit the “Share Your Story” section of IncitingIncidents.Org to check out posts from other synchroblog contributors, or visit the sites of the authors: Sarah Cunningham, Jeff Goins, Dave Hickman, Blaine Hogan, Tracee Persiko, Stephanie Smith, Mandy Thompson and David Wenzel. In addition, you can hear more about the project in this NPR-style interview series by Moody Radio.
Also, if you pick up the book in the first two weeks, Moody will give you a bundle of free resources, including two full-length e-books. The book is available immediately at Amazon, Barnes and Noble or Christian Book.
What is something in your life that pushed your story forward?
Stalin reportedly said that “One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic.” I think you would have to hold onto that over-simplification in order to be responsible for as much suffering as he was — millions and millions during his dictatorship. But in some way, I agree with him. People cannot fathom in large numbers the sufferings of people they don’t know and therefore can’t empathize with. And yet, even hearing the sufferings of people right beside them, people turn away and sanitize it and minimize it to ensure their selfish self-preservation of what the world looks like. Praying for healing for you today.
It is easier to avoid the ugly, dirty and broken than to enter into it. I’ve encountered lots of brokenness in my life, but even as I’m being broken down I still fight the inclination to try to flee from it all and create a sanitized bubble to live in where everything is Disneyland perfect. Unfortunately that’s often what we do in church as well because we’re uncomfortable with our own brokenness. Good for you to embrace it and live into it, though I’m sorry that it took such hurt and rejection from the church to bring you to this point.
what a powerful post! thank you so much for sharing the hard things.
I’ve been thinking about that last part for a few days. It’s easy to say, why is it so hard for people to look and listen, but I know I still do the same thing, just with different situations. Discomfort is just so hard. I’m training myself to tell people, “I don’t know what to say, but it just sucks” to try and avoid the situation just because I don’t know the right way to respond.
It’s funny too, because writing this all out was actually really cathartic. I cried through the first draft, and then after reading and editing it for a couple of hours, now I’m like, meh, it happened and it’s a post.
Letting it out of me somehow released some of the pain, and it was helpful to finally admit that I’m still just uncomfortable with church. Admitting that Sundays can be difficult has made me feel suddenly less obligated to try and enjoy them or expect more out of them than I’m going to get. Writing is so very freeing.
Right? Clean things are just so much easier and less stressful. I’m starting to realize how much work it is to keep myself in a state of discomfort, and it’s so tiring. I tend to cycle through it, with periods of discomfort and stress, and then periods of numbness b/c it’s just too much. I’m making it a priority this year to really open my kids eyes up to the world and I’m hoping we can balance that heartbreaking awareness with the possibilities of being able to help.
thanks for reading 🙂
“But, in the midst of this, the group of people we imagined we were so close to, turned out to just
be imaginings. . . . in the midst of my own
pain, I wanted to scream at everyone around me: “How can
you tell me God loves me when you are making me deal with this alone?” My throat grew accustomed to rawness, and my eyes
bloodshot from the expanse of tears. Jesus touched dead people. Why would no one touch me? Don’t
tell me the church is the hands and feet of Jesus if you aren’t willing to do a
little touching.”
Oh, you have PERFECTLY captured how I have felt these past few months as both friends and family members have shut me out and pretended I didn’t exist, not because of MY sin, but because of the sin of someone else. I am so there with you, and am also tired of people who talk a good talk, but won’t get their hands dirty, be inconvenienced, or get uncomfortable. If God hadn’t been working on me so much lately, I’d be tempted to print this out and mail it to my soon-to-be-former in-laws. So incredibly grateful for a church family that supports me and will willingly walk through painful circumstances, as well as offer hope and healing through classes, support groups, and counseling personnel.
Writing about the self-preservation piece this week, actually. Post coming tomorrow that might ruffle some feathers.
I loved reading more of your heart here … Several years ago, God broke my heart for suffering women–in the many different forms of suffering, including prostituted women & human trafficking. My heart is hurting that you had to go through this hell of loneliness and isolation in order to come out to see God’s heart for justice and mercy … But then also I think about Donald Miller’s story timeline and how, sometimes, our places of deepest pain, become the most powerful turning points (inciting incidents) in our story. You are turning your story into bread for miracles from that dry place.
oh Nancy that sounds awful. 🙁 I’m sorry you’re going through all of that. That’s fantastic to have such a good support system.
I actually wrote a timeline awhile ago, charting the highs and lows of my life and for every single deep low, I learned and grew just as much. It was both inspiring and depressing to see it right there in black and white. I’m really looking forward to his Storyline curriculum coming out. I also read Allender’s To Be Told last year and that helped clarify why I’m so drawn to issues of trafficking in particular, going back to growing up with an incredibly controlling parent, so that was really neat to see more goodness coming out of pain.
Thank you for sharing your story. I’m sorry that the church wasn’t there for you, to hold you and your family, to help pick up the pieces and bring restoration. Perhaps by sharing your story the church will be able to learn how to truly be the hands and feet of Jesus.
I, too, love India. Her people, culture, food, color… everything. My heart breaks when I remember the orphans and women I met during the times I spent there. The darkness is so overwhelming, yet there is hope.
I loved this. It takes courage to admit to brokenness – and yet it’s so crazy, because brokenness is our qualification for being a Christian. I’m glad you left that church – I’m glad that it meant that you’re still hanging on as a Christian, even though sometimes it feels like it’s just by a thread. I love your writing voice and your heart – be my friend? 🙂
Thanks for retweeting me and giving me the opportunity to discover your blog. God has taught me that brokenness is the basis for my call as a pastor. I went through severe depression and a suicide attempt in order that I would be able to say now that whatever I am God has rebuilt me from scratch. I have many broken things about me still. I long to be delivered from them but it does no good to project a facade of certitude and cleanliness. I have been listening to the podcast of Jonathan Martin, the pastor of Renovatus Church in Charlotte, NC. I think you would really dig his sermons. In his most recent one, he talked about the Emmaus road and said that Jesus walks alongside us when we are sharing our brokenness with each other. God bless you in your journey. The Spirit is sowing the same seeds in many places.
I do have one really good friend in our new church who has specifically checked in when we were going through a different rough time earlier this year and said ‘you aren’t alone’, which was awesome. As an India lover, I would love to visit, but as an introvert the thought kind of freaks me out, haha.
of course! 🙂 thanks 😀
funny you would say that. I was just thinking yesterday that I should try listening to him and adding him to my podcast roster of pastors to listen to. I love it when pastors, especially, are so open about their own brokenness. It makes what they say so much more authentic.
Glad you have a good friend who checks in & lets you know you’re not alone. Friends like that are few and far between in this world.
I’m totally an introvert & never thought I’d fall in love with India the way I did, much less travel there on several different occasions. If you ever get the chance to go – GO! Introvert or not, India is an amazing place with beautiful people.
Very, very good. I sat on teh edge of my seat, waiting for “the thing” to be revealed. It’s good that it wasn’t- that’s not what matters.
PS- Definitely two ropes. Sunday morning Jesus isn’t real.
ha, yeah, that was a tricky line to balance; sharing pain but not just throwing everything open for the world.