Risking belonging after spiritual trauma

How my 9 year-old is leading the way, even after everything

Tomorrow is the first Sunday of Advent in the church calendar.

Since going through spiritual abuse, church has been “complicated” (mild word for a trembling, terrified, raging, weeping, longing-but-afraid-to-hope-and-giving-up-sometimes thing).

It’s been over 3 years since we were excommunicated from a small church in Kansas City, MO where my husband was Associate Pastor.¹

Over 3 years of shrinking and growing, ebbing and flowing. Closing, and little by little, opening reluctantly. Some people think of hopeful metaphors to describe the healing process: ocean waves, of the cycles of the moon, of pretty things like changing seasons. But for a while I could only compare this process to vomit—the stomach contracting, that unstoppable rush of warmth, the waves of burning acid, a little relief in between. And I still actually compare parts of it to contractions in a birthing woman —seconds of pause as the uterus contracts and maybe your body knows what it’s doing, but your thinking brain says, “F#$%, I’m about to split in two.”

Over 3 years of bumping into church steps, through doors, in pews (when we showed up at all), full of ache and fear. Like walking in with broken limbs, clumsily bandaged, afraid that any tiny jolt or bump will ignite unimaginable pain — pain that had become not only imaginable but familiar. We carried our wounds with us, open, hidden, invisible. Impossible to ignore.

There is no glamor in healing from spiritual trauma.

But for the last 6 weeks we’ve weekly attended a tiny Episcopal church, after over 3 years of attending church very inconsistently, if at all. It all happened accidentally. On a whim we decided to try a church very close to our house, and our 9 year-old decided after one visit that he wanted to be baptized here. We didn’t know anyone in this church. No one knew us. It wasn’t sexy. But we liked that.

If you asked my son, “why did you want to be baptized?” His first answer would be, “Because I didn’t want to feel left out during communion.”

My first instinct is to rush to add, “OK, but that’s not a good enough reason, etc.” and ask him about what he believes, etc. and all the things he should be thinking through, etc. (And in my son’s defense, his faith has been evident for many years. Watching his sincerity and integrity makes mine expand).

But — perhaps wanting to belong is an ok reason. Perhaps it’s even a beautiful reason.

Over 3 years ago, when our church shunned us, my son lost his best friend overnight. He was 5 years old. One day he’s surrounded by friends and church community, and the next, Mom and Dad are barely able to stand from weeping.

He never saw those friends again.

Through the last 3 years he’s asked a lot of questions about what happened at our old church. He’s told his teachers and classmates at his Orlando school about it (“pray for our old church that kicked my mom and dad out,” he says in class when asked for prayer needs). We did our best to be honest with him, to explain what happened in words he could understand, and to assure him that it’s ok to feel whatever he feels about it all; that Mom and Dad are going to keep doing our work to heal and take care of him and his little sister. That they are the most precious people we call “ours.”

Perhaps his seemingly-out-of-nowhere-to-us desire to be baptized—the courage to approach the rector of the church we’d just attended once, and the boldness to stand up in front of the congregation just last Sunday—is nothing less than that brilliant, beautiful, brave, holy desperation that is inside all of us to belong.

Perhaps our 9-year old is braver than us.

In her book, Even After Everything, Stephanie Duncan Smith highlights that the church liturgical calendar “tells a story that mirrors the human experience.”² She writes that the season of Advent tells of the beauty and courage of expanding — first enacted in God’s decision to create (she describes this as God’s risky choice of expansion over happiness), and then echoed in Mary’s consent to “stretch her body as well as her imagination for just what kind of hope this might be, growing now within her.”³

It was risky, Duncan Smith asserts, for Mary to say yes.⁴ She could have avoided many difficulties if she’d just not. “We chance the chaos of our joy every time we dare to reach out against the fear of rejection, vulnerability, or loss.”⁵

I can’t help but wonder with awe at how our son, our beautiful brave 9-year old, is leading us into the risk of expanding—of risking pain, rejection, disappointment, all for a chance to belong in a place that might be full of hope—even if it is an imperfect, tiny, quaking hope. As if God knew that it would take something a bit unexpected and wild to get us to risk sitting down and staying a while in a church.

As a trauma therapist, I want to say: take all the time you need. Healing from trauma, especially spiritual trauma, takes time and so much more. You’re the only one that can know when you’re ready to take the risk of expanding, of belonging, of healing, of hoping.

Imagine that this essay is me tentatively, shakily, with quivering lip, with one arm cradling my wounds, the other arm reaching out to you, trauma survivor, if nothing else, to simply say,

“There can be hope. Even after everything.”

After writing everything above, I just googled to see what the first Sunday in Advent represents.

It’s HOPE.

Well damn. If that doesn’t feel like a wink from God.⁶

(The blurry ornament just behind the mug, to the left, is a photo of my son.)

May you have a gentle Advent season, my friends.

1. Yes, they used the word “excommunicate” and it was a public vote where our friends had to raise their hands to vote to deem us unfit for the Kingdom of God. Our crime was “slander”—what we were actually guilty of was calling out the Lead Pastor’s abusive behavior. Yeah it sucked. Listen to our story here.

2. Page 11.

3. Page 16.

4. I think it’s brilliant, by the way, to see Mary’s response as consent. To interpret that God gave her a choice and she chose yes. I’ve never heard this before, and I think it can make the incarnation feel safer — especially for abuse survivors.

5. Page 29.

6. Perhaps it’s time for new metaphors for my healing, beyond waves of vomit and uterus/body-ripping death pain.