An Unsent Letter to Our Church
TW: Eating disorder, patriarchy, oppression of women, religion, church, suicidal ideation, and religious trauma.
Dear Reader,
This is not a post for the easily offended. It is a copy of a therapeutic letter I wrote to try to heal, to grieve loss, to continue on my recovery from an eating disorder, and to practice taking up space. I am taking up space here. First, for myself. I need my experience to be known. Second, for anyone else who may have been hurt by the very place we were told showed God's love. You are not alone. Your' experience matters.
I invite all who are genuinely curious to pour themselves a beverage of their choice (mine would be Earl Gray tea), cozy up with a soft blanket or your dog... or both, and read on. Keep in mind that this is MY experience and there are other things that went on or are going on in which you and I may never know. I invite comments that are helpful, supportive, or your own personal experience. What I will not allow is judgement or dismissal in any form, a "fix" (do this thing and it will get better, you just haven't found the right church, etc.), or any "corrections."
If you happen to find yourself in this story and wish to share your side, this is not the place to do it. It would be best to have in person conversations but as you will see, I'm exhausted from making all the initiation and doing it all for the convenience of others.
May you take up space.
May you experience Love.
May your life be rich and full of goodness.
Love,
Wendy
Dear Church,
I am finally admitting defeat. I have given my time, resources, energy, money, mind, talents, trust, friendships, family, and hope to you and when I needed you the most, you chose to turn away. I’ve spent almost 12 years allowing you to have spiritual authority in my life, without really questioning things. Who am I to question men who went to school to become preachers? I even swallowed your explanation over why women weren’t allowed to lead within the walls of this building, and I made myself small. I limited my thoughts, my ideas, my creativity, my questions, my needs, and my talent. Do you realize that? Can you understand that by taking a few isolated verses that were written by a man who was NOT Jesus, and who never even met human/breathing/alive in the literal sense Jesus, you are oppressing and supporting the oppression of women. Fuck you. Fuck my former self for believing your power hungry lies.
I followed your rules. I played the role. I served. I submitted. I refused to miss a service because deep down I wanted to be safe when I died, I longed for community with other people who were like minded, and I wanted what you promised. Connection.
In May of 2021, I decided to take myself away from everything and everyone I knew and I loved, and intensely work on my eating disorder. I had been working with a therapist and a dietician who specialize in helping humans with eating disorders for a year and I needed to do more. I needed to stop taking care of others and focus on myself. I needed to see what a different normal looked like. I needed more help and support than what I could get in my everyday life. Before I left for a treatment center in Arizona, I gave our church another chance. I went public on Facebook about where I was going. That my husband would need help with our two boys and our boys would need some extra care with their mother being gone for 45 days. I told my husband that even if the church was angry with me for making waves, he had done nothing “wrong” and surely, surely, with me gone now they would step up to help.
There have always been things that didn’t add up. I tried to dismiss those things and admittedly, it is easier to dismiss my intuition when I am told that I am a sinner, I can’t trust myself, and then you gave me these tiny moments when I feel seen, known, appreciated, wanted, and loved. Why did I feel like I was having to work so hard to make friends? Why did the friendships I had feel not quite right? Why are women treated as less than men? It must be me. I must not be quite right. Maybe I expect too much. So, I’ll stay quiet. Make myself and my needs smaller. Contort who I am to fit inside your neatly wrapped little box, where everything is predictable. Slap a beautifully curated bow on top and call it good. Yet, why do I feel so lonely in a sanctuary full of people? Why do I feel righteous anger when I see how you treat women? It must just be me. Stay small. Stay safe.
Covid 19 and the start of the pandemic brought many of the church’s issues to light. If we are not able to gather as a group, how do we stay connected? If we are not constantly making the effort to be seen, how easy it is to be forgotten.
My husband and I were leaders of a community group at the time and we worked hard to make sure our friends knew that we cared about them, were legitimately there if they needed us, and did what we could to stay in touch during lock down. Two of the three families had been our friends before we became their community group leaders and my husband and I both felt like we had finally found our people. There was one time when I baked cookies for each of the families and then made my husband and our two boys dance with me to the song “YMCA” out on the front lawn of each of their homes. We social distanced and created some fun memories.
We practiced “being the church.”
A couple of months into the pandemic, I began getting help for an eating disorder. It’s been a hard war to fight, made even more difficult by the emotions I once numbed with binging, dieting, obsessive exercise, and the belief that in order to be safe, I must become small in every way that I can. Church, I heard your words. I believed them. I saw your actions. I trusted you. I contorted, punished, denied myself, took up “my cross,” made room over and over for “him” to become greater, put others first, and tried harder. Then, one Sunday morning as I got ready for church, I broke. It was all too much for my human, female body to handle and I began to cry. My thoughts began spinning, then spiraling. I became hysterical. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t rein it back in. Have you ever had such terrible thoughts about yourself and been crying so hard, hurting so badly, that you just want to die because it would bring you relief from it all?
Here I go again, not fitting inside your neatly wrapped box, where everything is supposed to be predictable, with a beautifully curated bow sitting nicely on top. I am done being small. I am done being quiet. I will no longer contort myself for anyone.
In my journey towards recovery, I began to see how toxic theology weaved its way throughout my eating disorder. Even though we were gathering in person again, it became harder and harder to come to church. Each service would trigger more and more episodes and it often took up to three days to recover from a service. I couldn’t go to church and effectively work on my eating disorder at the same time. I needed to take a break from going to church services. So, I practiced self care and decided to stop going to church for a while. It’s a frightening choice to make when for my entire life I had been fed the lie that church is what makes you right with God and when you’re not right with God, you can look forward to an eternity in hell.
I was struggling and after having multiple in person and email conversations with various pastors, I wrote a 9 page letter that spelled out what I couldn’t handle right now and mailed it to all the leaders of the church and the wives of each of the pastors. 10 months ago I mailed that letter to 14 people and no one has ever had a conversation with me about what I wrote. Right after I sent the letter, I had one wife reach out to me via text, and one pastor asked to meet with me. Before becoming community group leaders, we had been part of this pastor’s community group. My husband and I met with the pastor and his wife, and the pastor told me that we were friends. Outside of the church, we were friends. He asked if he could check in on me to see how I was doing. I guess I was the first person EVER to write a letter and send it to the entire leadership team, so he wasn’t sure how to move forward from this. I appreciated the question and told him that he could check in on me, and that if it began to not feel supportive, I would tell him. He never checked in on me. He never checked in on my husband.
Let me pause here for a moment. Take a look at this from my husband’s perspective. He was raised Catholic. While we were dating and in the first 9 years of our marriage, he fell into step easily with my church, the church my Dad was a pastor at. After my mother died, my Dad remarried and then quickly retired, so my husband and I decided as a couple to break ties with our old church and attend, then join this one. My husband has dealt with depression since he was a child. At the time I sent the 9 page letter, his wife, me, was going through incredibly hard shit. We had two boys that he was trying to help raise. A physically and mentally taxing job to support his family. And it is worth noting again that he struggles with depression.
Where the fuck was his church when he needed help?????? Forget me, and my needs. What about him?
I realize that this follows along with the toxic message to put others' needs before my own (I’m super skilled at this one), but this makes me even angrier than what you did to me. Remember that man that died by suicide a few years back? He and his family were part of our church. I went to his funeral. I had been married to a man who had severe depression and I knew that this could have easily been us. With my limited vocabulary, I expressed my deepest sympathy to his wife. I hugged his young children. I kept thinking. How did we miss this? How did we not see that he needed our help? Isn’t that part of a church’s responsibility? How did I not know?? How did the leaders not know? Why weren’t we supporting them??? Why is this such a surprise to everyone?
My husband could have been the next victim. I could have been the next victim. Except that it wouldn’t come as a shock to everyone. Most people, maybe, but not everyone. I had written emails. I requested meetings. I had conversation after conversation. I was transparent, honest and real with my struggles. I got professional help. My husband got professional help. We used, and continue to use, time and money to not let mental illness control our lives.
Where was our church in all of this? Our church “family?”
Silence.
Crickets chirping.
You can hear a pin drop.
So many people in our church.
So many “friends.”
Silence.
I sent the letter. First one in our church’s history. That’s me. A woman. Not being quiet or submissive. Having thoughts, opinions, and ideas. Sharing these thoughts, opinions, and ideas. Making history. Taking up space. Not being small. It’s part of my recovery. It’s what started happening when I stopped numbing all my “unexceptable” emotions with an eating disorder and started journeying towards experiencing love towards myself.
Our community group left us because of that letter. Even though we had conversations about what I was struggling with. Even though they said that we were friends outside of the church and agreed that no church could tell us that we couldn’t be friends. One friend even called me and told me she had talked to the pastor in charge of community groups and that she was choosing the church over our friendship. It makes me wonder what they had talked about.
I wished that when my former friend had met with this minister, that he had put into practice so many things that he had preached. I wish that he had had the spiritual maturity to tell her that she needed to take care of herself and her family first, but to remember that she and I had been friends before we were part of a community group together. We had been friends before we went to church together. Reminded her that my husband and I had invited them to this very church. I wish he had said that we know her. We know she’s struggling. This is our chance, your chance, to be the hands and feet of Jesus. To be present with her pain. To show love. That people come before an institution.
I was gone for 45 days and only 2 people/families from our church brought them a meal. Again, I feel angry for the church failing to help him. Failing to help our two sons. I have been part of many, many meal trains. Some organized the old fashioned way- word of mouth, others through social media and websites to help organize it all. Death, illness, people down with Covid 19, accidents, difficult pregnancies, births. Something happens and we bring them food. It’s one tangible way that can help and show the person/family that they matter and remind them that they are not alone. We help each other out because as our church says, we were not meant to live this life alone.
Two meals. Forty-five days. That was it. All the friends and families that we had hung out with at church? Nothing.
While in rehab, I received a letter from the wife of our former community group. I wrote her back and she replied. I also received a note of encouragement from the wife of one of the elders. Letting me know I was loved and being prayed for. I listened as the other women talked about how their church was helping them. I watched them open letters and packages. An outpouring of love and support to remind them that they are worth it and don’t have to do it all alone.
It’s confusing to be told that we are a family, to try to engage with others like we are a family, and then to experience something quite the opposite.
I wish I could simply turn off my caring about all the people. Turn off the hope that I had, that I still have, that the church can be a great support for people who are struggling with real life problems. I wish my church friends wouldn’t take up space in my dreams. I wish we hadn’t moved to this small town to be closer to the church. I wish there weren’t reminders of the church everywhere I turn. I wish that I didn’t randomly start crying because the grief and loss, the hurt and pain, the rejection didn’t suddenly overwhelm me. I wish I could have come back from rehab, hardened my heart, and just walked away.
Instead, I pressed back in. I had conversations in offices that have grown familiar. I pointed out the pain that I have experienced by the hands of our church. I was empathetic towards the struggles and humanity of it all as I practiced taking up space. I heard the familiar reminder that the church isn’t perfect. While this is true, this has to stop being used to dismiss my experience. If it is being used to dismiss me, it can be used to dismiss others. The church has to begin taking responsibility for their choices and move towards healing instead of continuing to harm.
I wanted to try again. I wanted to be part of the change, part of what needs to be the direction the church goes but when I was hurt once again, I decided that this was the last time. You see, one thing that can reconcile and bring peace to my struggles is music. It is the bridge that crosses the divide. Even in the depths of my illness, the songs we sang in church were part of me. I was angry and hurting AND I was still able to sing worship songs and play the guitar for a friend who was in rehab with me. Someone who was isolated in a room due to Covid 19 and she needed connection and comfort. I set my own pain aside and gave her what I had to give.
Music was one sure way I knew how to try again.
I sought out the worship leader. I was brutally honest with him about where I was and what I needed. He told me that it would be a blessing to the congregation to have me be part of the worship team again. He said he would email me that week to update my schedule and get me plugged back in. That was two months ago. Did he forget about me? Does that mean I’m forgettable? Did he feel like I was too much of a risk to be part of the team again? Does this mean I’m not worth being honest with?
The pain I am feeling cuts so deep. The grief and sadness take my breath away. It doesn’t feel safe to share what I’ve written for with these words, I will forever cut off the community I care about and worked so hard to be part of. Still, part of my healing process is taking up space. Speaking truth even at the risk of ending relationships.
Our church abandoned me and my husband in our greatest time of need. Church leaders, you must learn from this mistake. Do better. Don’t turn your back on people who don’t fit within your normal script. Ask questions. Keep asking. Keep trying. Set aside your “mission” of having every church seat filled, step outside of the man made building and take care of the people. Bring them meals. Send them cards. Ask how you and the church body can show them they are loved. Send them a random text or email of encouragement. Respect their boundaries. Ask the hard questions. Give them time to answer. Have conversations that leave space for more questions than what you started with. Follow up. In the name of all that is holy and good, follow the fuck up with them. I left one pastor’s office close to tears and he never checked up to see if I had made it home okay. He never checked in with me at all. If you don’t have time to follow up with the people, you need a smaller church or a new job.
I was not quiet about my struggles with mental health, but most people are and after this experience I can see why. Mental illness has been misunderstood by the church and the results continue to cause needless suffering and pain. This life is hard enough as it is, how about the church not add to it? Living with mental illness is exhausting and it’s a disease that isolates, distorts, and kills approximately 8 million people per year. Get your head out of the sand and look around at all the hurting people. See your part in it. Sit with that shame, the weight, the responsibility that goes back to long before you were even born. Then pick yourself back up and do something different.
Go to therapy. Heal your own shit so it doesn’t get projected on the people you are called to minister to. Just praying about it isn’t going to cut it, you’ve got to move. God won’t help you move mountains if your hands are always folded in prayer. Pick up a shovel and start moving the very earth you thought was immovable. Once you’ve started the work, wrestled with your own demons and begun to come out on the other side, you’re going to see God and love in a brand new light. You’ll have first hand experience on how the Love in people helps others to heal. It’s your personal choice. Put in the effort, or stay lukewarm. With effort and love, you have the amazing opportunity to begin the process of stopping generational curses and to be part of doing what Jesus said- that we will also do the works as he did, and greater.
It’s beautiful.
This letter is not to point fingers at one specific person. Our church, as a whole, failed us, and it’s the leaders who I hold responsible. The leadership sets the tone and as you continue to accept the position to lead, do a better job.
I demand better.
Love demands better.
We’re all counting on you.
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