The Church and Consent

PART 1

small town church and adult survivors of abuse

#metoo

#metoo

#metoo

I’d stepped into the twilight zone. Dizzy, I stood up from the meeting, forced a cool grin, and shook hands with the white lead male pastor in front of me.

“Continue to heal….”

“You don’t want to bring more stress to yourselves….”

“You really want to move on…..”

“Leave it in the past…..”

The messages felt soothing. If I had made up a journey for myself, it would be to live and forget. The PTSD flu was brutal. It captured my nights with terrors, sweats, dreams, and silence. I remember pausing long enough to grasp my bearings, frozen by the thought anything in my dreams could be 1% true. If it was, who would I tell? No one.

“Keep healing…” I whispered to my mind, “You are truly going to be okay.”

My husband and I did all of the good things. We continued to volunteer, pretend God was providing for our financials, while we struggled to catch our breath under the mounting weight of medical bills from our son’s unexpected and early birth. Churchy conversations would end with, “He’s (my son) healthy! That’s the most important thing.” I believed that, too.

It is good for him to be alive, not just good, but miraculous, wonderful, hard, and I have no regrets.

Late at night, I would pull out my computer or phone, check our bank account, and the calendar. Carefully calculating the last possible date for some bills, and begin to negotiate with other creditors. Negotiating our apartment rent was a full time job. I did it because it worked. If people could hear my voice — my story, I knew some would give me grace. Just some grace. That’s all we needed.

Our small apartment of 3 bedrooms accommodated the six of us, but I felt thinner and thinner without a yard, the dark days of one car tiresome, scrounging for income while caring full time for the kids wasn’t easy. Some lucky days I would leave the house at 9 p.m. with a friend, and clean offices at night. She’d hand me cash. Luis and I would count it.

“Leave it for food.” I’d say. He agreed.

The nights didn’t change, though. The dreams were increasing. It was too much. It is too much.

When I finally had enough, broken, battered from months of little to no sleep, I gave into drinking and swallowing some relief. Turn on the megaphone.

Blast it in the church papers.

“She is a drunk.”

“She has small children.”

“She is depressed.”

“She is too skinny.”

“She never stops.”

“I don’t believe her.”

“She is overreacting.”

I believed everyone of these lies.

In the age of consent and the church, I walked through the door of lying to myself, so I could tell the truth about Jesus and love. The truth about my past wasn’t the truth about Jesus. They did not mix.

The only way was “tough love.” Love that brutally abandons you when you tell the truth. Love that hits you with shards of scripture to cut you deep. Love that lies about memory, body, story. Love that ties Jesus to abandonment.

This was the love I forced down my throat, through my body, and infused my faith. And, I didn’t survive it.

This was consent.