“Some people have called me a rebel-rouser..” I explained to a colleague recently.
She couldn’t contain her laughter at this statement.
I may come across with comfortable with this identification, but you have to understand, I came from a background of striving furtively and desperately to obtain the label of “good Christian girl.” My conservative background asked me to be someone who I was not and taught me to deny parts of who I was. And I chose to follow.
There is no doubt within me that I, like many millennials raised at the height of the evangelical movement and the purity culture, experienced spiritual abuse. While I am sure this is true, I shy away from identifying myself as one who experienced spiritual abuse and instead take up my sword and shield in attempts to protect others from practices that lead to spiritual abuse…or in other terms rebel rousing.
And in the moments when I shy away again from myself and my story wanting and wishing away my experiences, I understand that this is just another way of masking my true self striving furtively and desperately to obtain the label of “thoughtful progressive Christian.” It’s hard to admit that I would shed one false pursuit just to take on another one repackaged and renamed.
Instead of creating yet another presented identity, this Lenten season, I am giving up all those masks and instead am striving furtively and desperately for wholeness and healing.
I know there are others of you out there, trying to process through what you’ve experienced. Trying to reflect and analyze the triggers you experience that send you into the spiral of uncertainty and doubt, those spirals so familiar and so frustrating because you thought you had overcome. I know it feels like a riptide that pulls you out to the deep water of fear and shame and humiliation. I know at times you are too tired, too overwhelmed, and too lonely to fight anymore. Me too.
I know that when you do share your story, more often than not you experience another helping of shame and guilt on top of what you have always experienced. I know people come to you and tell you to stop telling your story because you are making churches or pastors or families look bad. I know there are times when you feel so lonely and out of place, the same sort of lonely and out of place you felt in your community of faith knowing instinctively all the way to your core, that there was something just not right about what you were being told about God, about scripture, and about faith. Me too.
I know you get accused of making a big deal out of nothing or trying to make a name for yourself of causing a fuss, of asking too many questions, of hoping for too much. But I also know that even now in communities of faith across America in places of worships, in homes where small groups gather, and in coffee shops were people are being mentored, spiritual abuse is still happening.
Spiritual abuse is happening in conservative communities of faith. Spiritual abuse is happening in moderate communities of faith. Spiritual abuse is happening in progressive communities of faith. Spiritual abuse is happening.
For those of us who have wrestled through the understanding and realization that we experienced spiritual abuse, now more than ever we need to tell our stories. We need to question. We need to challenge. We need to struggle with our own stories and experiences. We need to rebel rouse, not so that we can try to obtain another false identity, but so that we can heal and become whole.
And so that others like us can do the same.