An Abused Soul

Another thoughtful post from Adventures in Mercy called Letters To An Abused Soul: When Love is “No”:

And when, because of your own warped view of what it means to be loving and gracious—perhaps even a view that would be perfectly healthy if you were dealing with a healthy spouse or a healthy church or a healthy friend—you knew that something was wrong, something didn’t feel right, yet, because you thought that love never stopped giving, you let it happen again, and then again, and then again, until it became so normal that you forgot it wasn’t.

I think you get away from that spouse or that church or that friend.

For some strange, self-serving purpose, church leaders think they have permission to make all the rules. When I was doing some of my hardest church detox work I came to realize that my pastor would lose his temper and then say I didn’t need to be hung up on the issue anymore. It was over. Easy for him to say. It was okay for him to get crazy-angry but it wasn’t okay for me to question it. Such is the insanity of all kinds of abuse.

I found resolution in leaving that situation, in making my own choices, and in remembering that pastors are people too… even when they’re coercive.