My journey from fundamentalism to freedom has been one of community to isolation, no matter what the church signs say.  I’ve gone from being the poster child to a minority.

And it’s hard.  It’s scary and lonely.  Often painful.

6 years of wrestling have mostly been ones of isolation and frustration, because I’m thinking things that aren’t allowed, reading books that are dangerous, written by ‘heretics’.  Elora described how I’ve felt perfectly when she says: I felt as if my voice didn’t count because I fit into a category they saw as an exception, and therefore unimportant. 

But because I’ve also fallen in love with Jesus during these years of wrestling, I’ve discovered a beautiful mystery, an unfathomable paradox, an almost unexplainable way of life.

I’ve learned that a place that doesn’t affirm me is not a safe place.  A community where I’m not given validity is not a healthy place, no matter how individually nice each person is.  But that running away is probably not the answer for me.

This is a systemic problem, and the conditions for abuse woven so tightly into the support beams that I don’t know if it’s possible to separate the two.

But it’s the world I inhabit.  I don’t know if I can stop being evangelical any more than I can stop being white or female.

I don’t know what healing in this context is.  How do you heal when every week the scab is scratched?  How do I heal when I read blogs and news stories condemning people I trust and respect?  When other friends in the culture trenches tell me how they are being persecuted by Christians for not being the right kind?

When churches insist on uniformity, when they repeat over and over that the only way to hear God is through the Bible, and ignore that some of us really struggle with it, that some of us hear God so much louder outside of churchiness; when they ignore books like Inspiration and Incarnation; it’s like being stabbed in the heart with invisible knives.

And I leave the building, bloody and wounded.

How do you heal when this time, I’m really going to leave, and damn it God!  Quit making it blindingly obvious that I can’t leave!

That ultimately, I don’t want to leave, because if all 80% of us strugglers leave, who will speak to the 20?  Who will create the safe spaces in the building for those who are walking wounded?

Is it even possible?

“Churches build atmospheres of trust so thick-walled and sure that those in attendance walk around sedated and hungry – taking in everything that’s said as truth.”~ Elora

I feel as if I’m walking around wide-eyed and starving, never finding what it is I’m hungry for within the walls.

But outside the walls, I’m overflowing with satisfaction, and so I feel as if I’m living 2 different lives.  One, within the institution, going through the motions, but trying not to make waves, trying not to let them hear how loud my stomach is growling.

And then when it’s over, I escape to the ecumenical feast that is lavishly spread throughout books and blogs and social media.

So my question is not how do I heal, it’s how do I cope?  How can I make myself sit through a sermon without crawling out of my skin?  How can we do our best to help our daughter not passively take it all in, and end up in her own 80%?

Because I love the people.  I love the community I sometimes find.

So how can I cope with the system so I can be with the people?  How can I help my kids discover the wildness, the uniqueness, the differences in the Church?  How can I help them fall in love with Jesus without dulling their senses to the mystery, without reducing the incarnation to a formula?

So we created coping mechanisms, band-aids that may not heal, but will hopefully teach us something in the process.

We are going to start discussing the sermon with our daughter, teaching her critical thinking skills and teaching her to question those who seem to be in authority.  Teaching her to test what comes out of their mouth, to test and weigh what she believes.  We will include her in our own process of questioning and wrestling.

Once a month, we’re going to visit a different church, a different denomination, a different tradition.  We’ll spend the week beforehand learning about that particular expression of the Church, and then we will go be a witness, gain some understanding of people who have different, but just as valid expressions of faith.

I have the freedom to say I need a liturgical day and to escape to the Episcopal church behind us.

And, finally, I’m giving in completely and affirming myself in this:  I don’t like Bible studies.  I don’t like sheets of questions.  It’s not how I learn.  When I see them, all I want to do is argue with the premise.

I learn a lot in arguing and examining assumptions.  But when everyone else agrees with the premise, well, then, I’m a minority again.  So I’m done with those.  I just want to listen to people and their stories, and engage with the conversation as it organically happens.

“There’s something very cautionary in handing out explanations of Scripture as if you are the only one in the room privy to such information.” ~Elora

It’s a beautifully diverse world out here, and God is big enough to handle it.  He’s good enough to incarnate it, and there is a table out here, and we are all feasting.  Taste and see, he says.  I’ve had enough sweetness to keep me clinging, keep me believing.

In our collective loneliness, in our individual struggles with the buildings, we are coping together.  And maybe, even healing each other, post by post, morsel by morsel.

This post is linking up with Spiritual Abuse Awareness Week.  Check out the other stories from Day 2!