beginning, ending

[shadeParticipant]

i don’t know how else to start this.

i’ve been new so many times. i could tell what feels like a hundred stories. they would sum up in a few words like this. i survived. i survived the unacknowledged IFB cult. i didn’t even know it was a cult, a church, an organization until a few months ago. the knowledge ricocheted through my entire world. i survived a home-life that was compounded by their teachings.

how did i get here? this is how it happened, it’s a 2 step story:
1. a year ago exactly, something even worse than all the pain before happened. worse than the nightmares i hid from, worse than having a child who was desperately ill, worse than all of that. the core of who i hoped i was shattered under the scrutiny of unkind eyes, and unkind words. immense power was brought to bear upon our entire family. and the church grew even more silent.
my relationship, our connection to church and any structured faith community had frayed immeasurably already. this happens when you fight to hold your child’s life to earth, instead of trusting in heaven. my faith was already sharp-edged, and i slid between it and doubt so frequently i would swear there was red left from my soul on both sides. the grasp i had on an outside world, an intentional community built up by my writing and sharing with friends and friends of friends was immediately severed. we, have tried to stay afloat with so little left of community. while they remain, invisible and waiting for us to return, i am finding that it won’t be enough and that it wasn’t enough even then. that i want something more than i had before. i want a place to ask questions and find hope in questions, and maybe find a few answers. at the least, a place where i’m not the one doing the connecting, where i can try to connect as well.
2. then sunday  night i sat in church, busied my hands so that i would not listen too deeply, and waited for the text of the message to be brought. it’s been a struggle each week for me to keep sitting, to keep listening, to keep hoping. we’ve been running wild through galatians, and i’m happy or relieved to say that i’ve managed to hear and even tentatively believe the words that tore free of its moorings my hard-held and punitively echoing beliefs from too many preachers in the past.
but they kept surfacing, these tiny new thoughts, new hopes, so i kept returning, even when the bible’s words felt like shards of glass, burning through my soul, i kept coming back. there was just enough of a hint of something kinder, possibly a little bit forgiving, and i wanted to find it. so i sifted until my hands were raw, until the banshee screams rose out of my heart and died unspoken behind my teeth.
awkwardly careful, i tried to ask, only to have the words and language that hurt defended. ‘it’s not really like that’, someone would explain. and they’d go on to use the same words, ‘authority’, ‘power’, ‘bodies’, ‘mocked’, ‘flesh’, ‘fallen’, ‘grace’. the list could go on endlessly, like little knives shredding reason from thought. until it was impossible to know, was it being taught again, or was i reflexively and finally blinking and breaking from pain that happened too many times and too many years ago?
unable to differentiate, i wanted to reject it all. in that moment, while their kind faces tried to shape a faith that diminished and excused pain, while they tried to explain, i wanted to reject. the lexical exercises of ignoring previous definitions and their damage, of just insisting on a new language where the same words mean some new and secret thing i’ve been too stubborn to see became too much. when it comes to faith, i hear the overtones, the poison, the shrieking promise of harm, and i freeze. i find myself unwilling, unwilling to submit, to give my body a sacrifice, unwilling to surrender to an authority that has already done so much harm, unwilling to do more than declare my borders.
 
and i find i’m lost, i don’t know how to return to listen again. it’s not like letting go. i’ve tried so long to make it work, this thing of faith. i’ve shaped and stretched, warped and melted, broken and bled for this faith and i cannot fit. it’s not letting go, it’s an awkward and defiant hacking away of melted pain with faith, promise with lie. it’s leaving my soul in wild fractals, stained glass pieces. still i amputate and hope that maybe there’s something of a G-d left behind for me to reconcile towards, to forgive. and in forgiving find a new faith. i’m still afraid, though, that this was all there was. i’m still afraid that i will find i’ve got to re-cross the divide and reconcile this angry G-d or be a castaway.

[starfielderParticipant]

Wow shadow. This makes me want to give you a hug and invite some TLS’ers over and we could all eat pizza and just hang out. You’re a good writer! You have quite a story! I suspect there is so much more you can and will say. WELCOME. May you find community here and peace.

Thank you for sharing your story. <3

[JeffPrideauxParticipant]

Shadow,

Thank you for your posting about your IFB experiences and I hope to hear more from you.  We are a diverse group here at TLS and our theology can probably best be summarized as being willing to freely talk and listen and not judge each other.  Feel free to talk about wherever your spiritual journey takes you.  There are some here that still resonate very strongly with Jesus, others that maintain a belief in God but have moved beyond Christianity.  Others still that see the world without a God concept.  We all accept and learn from each other and I think TLS is a good model for world at large.

[Anonymous]

Shadow, I don’t think you have to forgive God–I don’t think forgiveness is needed at all. So many of us were brought up without the Christian God that rips you bloody. Perhaps with a kinder Christian God, or maybe with none, or many; there is no one definition of God, no narrow, OT-based sharp-clawed monster. He doesn’t even have to exist for  you. You can step away from the OT entirely, and you can step away from whatever hurts. It may seem herculean, but you can. You can decide who God is; or at least, you can step away from word-based theology and wait to see what God it is that begins to peep out at you from the uncut corners of life. Because they are there, unbloodied, green, even; sunlight-touched and sky-driven, clean; beautiful things, music and clouds and laughing sounds, community, and peace. Please tell us more about yourself. I don’t understand the world you’re trying to get away from, but maybe you can write yourself away from it. And please tell  us about your child–one of my children is disabled, so maybe I already understand that, a little.

[AgnosticBelieverParticipant]

Wow, Shadow-welcome to TLS and it is ok to be lost….it will allow you to find yourself.

I hope to hear more from you on the forum. Take care.

[shadeParticipant]

thank you for the welcome,

do i answer all the questions here, or do i make topics about them? i feel like there’s a few different things to answer now.

[AmyParticipant]

@shadow I think you can do that however you want.

[shadeParticipant]

thanks, guys. i will try to see what all i can get written in the days to come. somehow i keep running out of time. i just read and read and read! and then my words are all used up.

[Bill-StricklandParticipant]

Shadow, I’m so glad you’re here.  Your words are chilling.  You have sobered me again to the depth of pain, the turmoil, the affliction of spiritual abuse.

 

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