Author: Sara

I am a wild woman of God, a wild minister of Jesus' love, and a wild writer. I am also a wife, a mom, a home educator, and published author. I live in North Carolina with my family and three cats.

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Why I’d Choose the Bear, Pt. 2

Content/Trigger Warning: This entry contains mentions of child sexual abuse. Be kind to yourself; it’s okay if you need to skip this.

In the continuing debate of “man versus bear,” there are millions of stories about why women choose the bear they’d meet in the woods. Even men are saying they’d choose the bear. Here’s another one.

It was summer 2016, and I was taking a walk through the neighborhood. It must’ve been a particularly mild day because our summers are usually suffocatingly hot and humid. I had my phone and was listening to music. A text came through from a former neighbor who had moved: “What is going on there???”

I shot back, “What do you mean?”

She sent a link to a news article from one of the local outlets. A neighbor, the man who lived behind us with his wife and their two daughters, had been arrested and charged with eleven counts of variations on sexual assault of a child–his older daughter. The charges ranged from statutory rape to indecent liberties with a minor to child molestation, and later his sexual offender’s profile page would indicate this had been going on the majority of her teen years, from when she was eleven to sixteen.

Of course, the link found its way to the local Facebook page (not by me; someone else in our town). People whose lawns this guy had mown were chiming in with, “He’s such a nice Christian man.”

And that’s the thing. He presented as this “nice Christian man.” He was that one glad-handing people at HOA meetings and around town. He was very vocal about his religiosity. My older daughter mowed lawns around the neighborhood, and she was out mowing ours one day when Bob came by. He offered her his hand to shake, but she got a funky vibe from him and backed away. She wasn’t rude, but she put up a boundary. Both of my girls got this strange vibe from him.

At one point Bob mowed our next door neighbor’s lawn. Bob didn’t know crap about taking care of grass. He couldn’t identify grass types so didn’t know how to adjust his mower accordingly. He also left a mess of clippings. Our neighbor’s lawn had weeds; our lawn has professional weed control. Bob had mown the neighbor’s grass and blown the wet clippings–seed heads included–into our lawn. I thought Bob was going to swing back and take care of the mess. After half an hour of not seeing him, I asked him to take care of the mess he’d left in our yard. He gave me push-back. I told him I’d take pictures of the mess and post them in the neighborhood Facebook group. A little bit more back-and-forth let him know that not tending to his mess would ultimately be bad for his business.

He looked at me aghast and tried to manipulate me. He put his hand on his chest and said, “I thought you were a Christian!” Ugh! The very nerve of this man to question my faithfulness when he was committing atrocities against his own daughter!

He spent a couple of years in jail. In the meantime, his wife sold their house. The older daughter moved out as soon as she could. There were never any charges brought against him. His wife didn’t. In fact, she welcomed him back into her home–an apartment by this point–when he was released. I’m pretty sure at least the older daughter has gone no contact. She’s since gotten married.

The family was a homeschooling family. The older daughter would have people over to study; they always sat outside on the back patio. When Bob was mowing lawns, his wife and both daughters accompanied him. I guess he couldn’t risk leaving them home alone where he couldn’t monitor their activities. Another neighbor told me at the beginning of our homeschooling journey that the girls used to take dance, but their mom eventually said it was “too much.” They were isolated.

Later Bob and his wife–the daughters were both gone by this point–took mowing back up. She had kept the business going while he was locked up. They had some customers in our neighborhood who still stuck with them. My girls didn’t want to go outside at all if he were within sight. They wouldn’t even go out into the yard to play, and if we had to go from house to car or car to house while Bob was around, they ran between the two to minimize their risk.

You know what else bears don’t do? Bears don’t molest their children. Bears don’t pretend to be holy and righteous while committing grievous sins.

I don’t see either Bob or his wife in the neighborhood anymore when I’m taking a walk on a warm spring day. I know which lawns they used to take care of, and I see other people tending to them now. A couple of years ago Bob was involved in a vehicle accident that nearly left him crippled. I’m just gonna keep my thoughts about that to myself.

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Mental Health

Why I Choose the Bear, pt. 1

Content warning: This post makes references to verbal assault and threats of sexual violence.

There is a trend going around on social media: “Women, if you were hiking in the woods alone, would you rather encounter a bear or a man?” Overwhelmingly, women are saying, “Bear.” Even pre-teen and teen girls are saying, “Bear.” (My own fourteen-year-old went for bear when I asked her.) Why a bear? It’s a wild animal that could maul you. This is true. A bear can and will attack if it feels threatened or if you’re in the way of its getting food. However, in the grand scheme of things, bears don’t want to put up with humans. (Same, furry friend. Same.) In fact, if you see a bear and make distinctly human noise, it’s going to run away. The odds of getting attacked by a bear is 1 in 2.1 million. There are only forty bear attacks in the entire world each year, and maybe one of those that occurs in the US is fatal.

By contrast, over half–50%, more than 1 in 2–of women have been sexually assaulted. One out of every six women has been the victim of rape or attempted rape. Is it any wonder that women are choosing to take their chances with the bear? Given the statistical likelihood that men will be victims of violence from other men, even they would be smart to opt for the bear. (And why do some men feel the need to carry a gun everywhere they go, even church? In case they have to protect themselves from… Not a bear.)

As the discussion continues, there’s a catch-phrase that keeps emerging: “A bear would never.” At the same time, there’s a list developing. A bear would never:

  • Rape someone.
  • Attack someone just because they’re vulnerable.
  • Take video of the attack to post to social media.
  • Get other bears in on the attack.
  • Brag about attacking someone.

Let me tell you something else a bear wouldn’t do. A bear would never threaten to cut off a young girl’s breasts to have them for himself.

I was in seventh grade, in junior high school. I rode the school bus to and from school each day. Living in the corner of the county farthest from the school, ours was about the third or fourth stop on the route which means a lot of time on the bus in the mornings and afternoons. Our bus driver assigned us seats. I was assigned to sit with a guy a named Mike who was two years older and considerably bigger than me. And he was an ugly mudda. As the late great Lewis Grizzard would put it, Mike could scare a dog off a meat wagon. And his inside was even less attractive.

I “blossomed” early. That means my genetic makeup ensured that I’d be needing a bra in fourth grade. I hated it! I was the first girl in my class to have breasts. By the time I started junior high school, of course I was no longer the only girl with breasts, but mine had gotten a head start on growing. I was self-conscious of them. We existed together. I neither flaunted nor hid them.

Mike was a breast guy. As we sat on the bus for those long rides to and from school, he made no secret of the fact he ogled my boobs. He didn’t go so far as to touch them, thank God. But what he said was just as bad. You see, he wanted to touch them. He let me know in no uncertain terms that he wanted to cut them off and hang them on his bedroom wall so he could play with them whenever he wanted. He wanted to mutilate me for his own pleasure. And he pretty much always carried a butterfly knife on him that he’d play with on the bus, hidden by the seat back in front of us, safe from the watchful eyes of the driver way at the front. (We were about four rows from the back of the bus.)

This is the first time I’m telling this story. I never told my parents what Mike said. I was scared to. I can, to this day, imagine my mom saying, “Just ignore him and he’ll stop.” I did ignore him, but he didn’t stop. I can imagine my dad finding out where Mike lived and going over and having a talk with him and his parents. They might would have even gone to the principal. But my parents would have still made me ride the bus. (It was the most pragmatic solution given the relative geography of the school versus both their jobs.) They couldn’t have protected me at school. Mike would still carry his knife every day. I didn’t talk because I was scared of the possible repercussions and probably retaliation.

My story is just one of a handful of stories I have personally, and one of but millions held by women all over the world. The endless degradation. Being reduced to our body parts–parts that aren’t sexual but have been sexualized by men through the centuries. Parts whose purposes are to give and sustain life in infants. Treated as objects rather than people.

Then there’s the fear. For me, it was, Is today the day I’ll get cut? The fear of pain. The fear of being killed in retaliation for speaking out. In this instance, I didn’t have the fear of not being believed. Note I said, “in this instance.” There would come other times when that fear governed my inaction.

So why would I choose the bear? Even if the bear were to kill me, it’d only be once. No one would blame me for enticing the bear to attack me, for looking tasty merely by existing.

And that’s what women deal with. We as a historical collective have been told through fucking centuries that we are to blame for men’s actions, that we’re tempting like Eve or we’re Jezebels who lead men astray away from their “godly holiness” when all we are doing is existing. So in this hypothetical situation, were the bear to attack the woman, no one would wonder what she’d been wearing. No one would blame her for the attack. People would be like, “Bears attack. It’s what they do.” Funny how people basically use the same excuse for men, that whole “boys will be boys” bullshit, then turn around and blame the woman, anyway.

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Uncategorized

It’s Just Tea, Right?

After my morning cup of coffee, I generally drink water all the rest of the day. Sometimes, though, it’s just a little bit chilly for water, but I want to keep my water levels up so I brew a cup of herbal tea. If it’s around lunchtime, that tea might be black or green. We’ve kept a stock of tea on hand for ages; I personally have since I was in college. When the girls were younger, we’d take tea in the afternoons. Sometimes Mary, my older, would help me make homemade scones to go with it.

Cup of tea
A cup of black tea steeping. Am I the only one who feels like this takes forever?

Though tea time isn’t really a thing for us anymore, we still all drink tea on occasion, and our pantry is about 1/8 tea. Honestly, the last thing we need is more tea, though we tend to have more black tea than anything because, again, we don’t drink black tea after a certain time of day.

My aunt Susan died last September, leaving Mom in charge of her estate. Mom asked if we wanted the teas that Susan had had, and since she and I apparently had the same taste in tea, I said, “Sure.” The other evening–earlier this week–I dug into one of those boxes of tea. I didn’t think a whole lot about my selection: Green tea with ginger. I brewed it, added a little honey, and as I sat sipping it, it hit me. Ginger. Then I remember the box of peppermint herbal tea I’d also brought back. Ginger. And peppermint. Used to calm upset stomachs. Susan must have drank those to stave off the nausea from the chemo. Then my heart pinched as it thought about her and realized the discomfort and pain she endured for the three years she battled the cancer that would eventually take her life. #cancersucks

One day, it’s going to hit me, and I’ll be able to mourn her death. The last decade or so–maybe a little more–it was like Susan didn’t really want me and the girls as her nieces anymore. It was frankly kind of confusing. We saw her at the family “high holies”–Easter dinner, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. She was always a generous giver, and she remembered our birthdays. She was generally loving and fun when we came together at Mom and Dad’s and when we’d host the girls’ birthdays.

Something was off, though. Susan wasn’t a big fan of other people’s boundaries. When I declined to sit with Grandma while I was working an intense residency program, I got pushback. The job was only part of the reason behind my unwillingness to do it. I adored my grandma, even named my older daughter after her. But when I’d made a special trip a few days each week to stay with Grandma in the month leading up to my wedding, I never got any gratitude back. I didn’t get gas money, either, but that’s a little thing. I could suck up the lack of “Hey, thanks”; it was harder to tolerate all the criticism. Every day Susan would find something else I’d done wrong when I was doing the best I knew how without any guidance.

That’s just one example. There are others that I don’t see a point in going into. Susan used to have a small property in our county over in the spitting-distance-from-the-beach section that she’d come down to a few times during the year. After she sold it, she’d stay at a hotel on the island. When I found out she was coming this way, I’d invite her to drop by. If she didn’t want to do that, I offered that I could bring the girls over to the island. She couldn’t go to that part of the county without coming either three miles or fifteen miles from us, depending if she wanted to take the back roads or the interstate. She never responded to either offer. My mom was confused (she may still be) as to why I didn’t make more of an effort to see Susan when her illness kept her closer to home. Susan’s house is 2 1/2 hours away from us, one way. Maybe I didn’t feel the desire to do that when it seemed clear to me that she didn’t want to see us even when it would’ve required no effort on her part.

Susan had a penchant for drama, though she had zero tolerance for other people’s drama. Scott Lyon talks about holding grudges as a form of drama addiction, and that was definitely a gift Susan had. She once held a grudge for twenty years against a cousin who lived literally all the way on the other side of the country. She held people hostage with the threat of her grudges. Christmas Eve 2002, Grandpa had a heart attack. The hospital he went to had recently come under the auspices of the hospital where I did my internship and contract chaplaincy. I’d grabbed my employee’s badge as I raced out the door that night. We beat the ambulance (but we won’t talk about that). When we got word that the ambulance was a minute out, I clipped my badge on, introduced myself, and asked the charge nurse if I could wait by the ambulance bay. She allowed me to. Susan reported to the family, “Sara went back there and flashed her badge around.” Certainly sounds BiGgEr and more dramatic, doesn’t it? But it far from represents my professional demeanor in reality. (Did you know drama addiction’s a real thing? You can scope out this article on it here, and check out Scott Lyon’s book, as well. For you podcast lovers, Jordan Harbringer had Scott on his podcast.)

I don’t know what happened. Again, possibly it’s boundaries. The thing that will hit me one day is the realization that the cool aunt I had growing up is gone. I mean, she’s been gone for longer than she’s been dead, but there was always the hope, ya know? Susan and I had the best times when I was a kid. We went to the zoo with Grandma; my younger cousin was there once or twice, too. We went to the place at the beach. I could talk to her about things that I couldn’t talk to anyone else about. It was with Susan that I had pizza for breakfast the first time.

She showed up for me. She came to my dance recitals and graduations. She never married and never had any kids of her own. For seventeen years, I was it. Then my little (haha! He’s over six feet tall!) cousin was born. Susan doted on us and adored us. My cousin lives several hundred miles away so she didn’t get to see him but maybe once a year or so. She showed up for him, too.

One day, it’s going to hit me. I’ll be drinking a cup of tea or walking along a beach, and bam! The tears will pour out unchecked, and my heart will break. I’ll grieve losing the aunt I once had, and I’ll also grieve the loss of any opportunity for us to be family again, anything close to what we once were.

Just writing these words is a wakeup call to me. I have an honorary “auntie” who I text with routinely and meet up with for coffee every so often. But I still also have two blood aunts, one I haven’t really spoken to beyond Christmas cards since Mary ran away. I need to make sure I don’t again encounter “too late.”

 

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Mental Health Ministry

Church Trauma, pt. 3

You can read part 1 of this three-part series here and part 2 here.

We left that church because we moved out of the area. We were disappointed that all the moderate Baptist churches were at least a half-hour away with none in our county at all. I went online when we were ready to visit churches and found two I wanted to visit. One’s website was down so I didn’t know what their worship times were, but the other church’s wasn’t. We decided to go to that church. We’d later join it. In one respect, we should’ve left long before we did. However, had we done so, we’d have missed out on getting to know some truly wonderful people.

The first preacher was toxic af. He was insecure for one, self-centered for another. I heard through people in our small group that his idea of “sermon preparation” was going into a small room near the worship stage (yes, it’s a stage) for the contemporary service and praying. No exposition, no diving into languages or contexts. As a result, his sermons usually had the following structure:

  • Read the scripture.
  • Spend fifteen to twenty minutes talking about himself and/or his family.

He and I had had a closed-door session with another minister present. At this time I’d been leading a Sunday school class of older women. Eric asked me what I did to prepare. I told him the study I put in then how I let the Spirit lead from there. He straight-up told me not to follow the Spirit when I teach the Bible. Do fuckin’ what???

I told him what had happened at the former church. Well, a few months later, Hubby and I had had it with the misogyny in our small group. Unbeknownst to me, he’d gotten up at five in the morning and shot out an email to that group addressing it. I didn’t know what in the world was going on until a friend of mine called me moments after my alarm went off to tell me how awesome it was. When we got to our class that morning, everyone was there, including the preacher. It was ugly and made uglier by the fact the preacher disclosed what I’d confided to him as a “gotcha” move.” My friend’s husband eloquently put him in his place. We left the class soon after (really should’ve left the church then), and there is only one couple from that class left at the church. It pretty much blew up.

We did eventually leave the church for a season, determining we’d return when he was gone. We had some good preachers. One we call “The Paul.” He’s still a friend of mine even though we’re both at different churches now. After he left this interim came on. After he’d been there a month of so, I was giving him the benefit of the doubt: He’s new. He’s getting used to us and we’re getting used to him. He’ll get better.” A year later, he wasn’t new anymore, and he wasn’t getting better. Truly a compassionate, kind man, but as a preacher he was either naturally ungifted and lousy or simply lazy.

We were so excited when our pastor search committee found a new preacher for us! That excitement was short-lived. I wonder what the committee members think of their choice now? He doesn’t vibe bad, but his words throw pink and red flags all over the place. He hadn’t been there two months when I felt the Spirit telling me to take my family to a new church. It was kinda a “Say what, sis?” moment. This new church isn’t Baptist. I’d been there once to walk its labyrinth, but that’s it, yet, God was leading. I was a little skeptical but excited, too. What sealed the deal was the preacher not-saying-but-saying something that made me picture myself standing between my older daughter and stones being thrown from the pulpit while others looked on. Except, my daughter was pictured as a rainbow sheep, and the stone-thrower and those giving tacit approval were white sheep. If you’re familiar with the works of David Hayward (@nakedpastor), you’ll know what I’m talking about. (Check him out on Threads, Facebook, and Instagram.)

That church is making a drastic shift to the right and is bleeding members like crazy. I learned today that the youth group that was sixty kids-strong when my older was in it is down to three.

So here we are. We’re at a new church. My younger daughter and I are ready to join. I think Hubby is a bit more reticent because he doesn’t adapt quite as quickly as we do. We all love our new church home, though, and Hubby said he wished our older daughter had had a place like this when she was younger. It’s very close to the church we wanted and had hoped our last church would become. The rector seems marvelously free of ego, and it has a beautiful, diverse body of believers. We’re becoming involved for the first time in twenty years. It’s taken us that long, that many years from the “if you build it, they will come” church to not fear being taken advantage of by volunteering to do things.

Have you ever been taken advantage of by a church? How did you handle that? Reply in the comments.

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Mental Health Ministry

Church Trauma, pt. 2

You can read part 1 of this three-part series here.

After Peter and I were married, our church was no longer “geographically desirable.” More like, the church was fine, but our apartment wasn’t; we’d had to move, though, for his job. The drive became untenable after a while and we looked for a new church. We happened upon a small country church. I’d grown up in one of those so this was good to me. I also wanted a smaller church so I could get to know people better. The primary dysfunction in this church was the pastor and his wife. The pastor did no spiritual self-care, and it’s customary for pastors to participate in small support groups with other local pastors. He didn’t even do that. He proclaimed, “My wife is my pastoral support person.” She’s a hospital chaplain to this day, and I’m quite sure after working forty hours a week doing spiritual care, the last thing she wanted to do was come home and do more.

There was so much funky about this situation. The preacher’s wife was pretty controlling. She took her role in the church way too seriously. (In Baptist churches, unless the husband and wife are called to co-pastor, the preacher’s wife just does whatever aligns with her gifts.) She was straight-up bossy and demanding. She tried to tell me what to do on numerous occasions, and I noped her.

At least a couple of times a month, there would be an announcement from the pulpit that someone in the community needed some work done on their home and asking for a crew to gather and go do the work that Sunday afternoon. I was working an unpaid internship forty hours a week (not including when I was on-call) plus a part-time job. Sunday was the one day I was guaranteed off, more likely than not. And here’s my newlywed husband happy to meet a need. That’s his thing, and I love him for it, but our marriage was starting to suffer for it. I told him, “The family was the first institution created by God, not the church.” He stopped volunteering as much.

The preacher felt like our church needed a family life center. It was supposed to attract students from the nearby university and families from the brand-new apartment complex across the street. My question of whether this facility would include showers so we could host unhoused people as part of that area’s Interfaith Hospitality Network was met with an emphatic “no.” After all, what could they contribute (financially) to the church? was the vibe I got. There was a suggestion of building a picnic shelter so we could host fundraising dinners to go towards building that family life center. To this day, that’s as far as they’ve gotten.

There were other indicators that we needed to move on. It just so happened that the conflict resolution person for our local Baptist association went to that church. Since she had knowledge of the local Baptist churches, she was able to recommend one to us. It was a good fit.

But there was toxicity here, too. I’m a cradle Baptist, and I grew up going to Sunday school. I was that one who read their lesson, took their Bible to church so she could follow along, and was thoughtful about my study. By the time we got to this church, I was in seminary. If I haven’t enjoyed Sunday school, it’s not because I didn’t want to, and I’m comfortable with participating in discussions. We weren’t there too long when the preacher told me that “some people” in our class complained to him that I talked too much. I guess the two men who alternated leading the class didn’t like an intelligent woman making them look inept, though that certainly wasn’t my intention at all. It speaks more to their insecurity than my knowledge.

anti-plagiarism picture
A male steals a female’s idea to claim as his own. Sadly, way too common.

Another time, the preacher and I were talking about our seminary experiences. He’d gone to a Southern Baptist seminary (pretty much the only pure Baptist seminary in our state at that time), and it just so happened that his preaching professor would later show up at my divinity school and become my preaching professor. Preaching isn’t my ministerial gift, nor is it at the heart of my ministry, but I enjoy doing it and can do it well. I just wouldn’t want to on a weekly basis. I was feeling a little proud of myself because I’d managed to squeak an A- out of my second preaching course. Our pastor told me he’d never gotten an A from that professor. I asked him if I could share the manuscript of my sermon with him. He said, “Yes.” Now, imagine my surprise a few Sundays later when I heard my sermon from the pulpit, almost word-for-word save a few illustrations, and with no credit given to the writer. Yep, our preacher plagiarized my sermon. I guess he liked it, huh?

If you’re a woman in business or ministry, when was a particularly painful time that a man stole your ideas or words and claimed them as his own? Post your response in the comments. (Note I’m not saying “if it happened,” because we know it does.)

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Devotional Thoughts Mental Health Ministry

Church Trauma Through the Generations, pt. 1

Among Christian, deconstruction, reconstruction, and progressive faith circles lately is this idea of church trauma. We often think of church trauma as being something big. Many people, for example, have experienced physical or sexual abuse at the hands of religious leaders, either ordained or lay leaders. A lot of women report being told not to talk about the abuse to “save the reputation of the man” who abused them. There are also numerous instances of people being emotionally and spiritually abused by the church and her representatives.

All this talk of church trauma has made me reflect back on my life and the mess I thought, believed, and experienced.

I was never physically or sexually abused at church at any time in my faith journey. But there was some trauma.

Broken churches, broken hearts, broken lives

My first church wasn’t horrible. The people were incredibly loving. It was a small, country Southern Baptist church. Let’s face it, though. In the 80s, pretty much all White Baptist churches in the South were Southern Baptist or Freewill Baptist and those that weren’t, we didn’t talk about.

Know what else we had in the 80s? Premillennial pretribulation dispensationalism cozied up with the RAPTURE. We had Jack Van Impe and his Barbie-doll wife (only Barbie looks more real, bless her heart) talking about the headlines and how they are fulfilling prophecy right in front of us!  We had David Jeremiah warning us about all the earthly things being satanic and leading people away from Jesus. We had songs like “I Wish We’d All Been Ready” that talked about how horrible things were since the antichrist ushered in the tribulation and how we needed to get ourselves ready and make sure everyone else was ready, too. Edgar Whisenant calculated that Jesus would return between September 11th and 13th in 1988–the fortieth anniversary of Israel becoming an independent nation–and when we were still here on the 14th, we got anxious (until it was publicized that Whisenant may have made a mistake in his calculations). Yet, we still read the passages where Jesus says no one knows the time and date, not even him, but only God. No one else (besides me, of course) questioned how this guy could be so sure of the date range for the Rapture when not even the Son of God himself had those deets. But we were taught not to question our leaders. Asking questions was an indication of not having enough faith. (Whisenant would go on to predict the return of Christ to happen in 1989, 1993, and 1994. Smart-ass me surmised one of those times that even if Jesus were planning on coming back one of those predicted dates, he’d intentionally stall just to prove this guy wrong.)

We were good, though. We’d said the magic words and been baptized and God was cool with us. I even participated in a play that one of our youth leaders wrote that, um, impressed upon people the importance of getting right with God. More like, it scared them into believing with the threat of hell. That play was popular; we went around to several area churches and performed it. (I was one of the girls who got sent to “everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.”)

Yet, over against all this “You’re a child of God” and “You have eternal life” were the very real messages of “You’re a sinner” and “If you stray off the path then maybe you don’t really have God in your heart (and hence, won’t get into Heaven).”

It’d only be a few years later that a new preacher would come in to the church and almost split it. This preacher made things uncomfortable for our family, especially my dad. (Guess he figured that Mom and I, being women, were not significant enough to mess with.) I was in college, anyway, so it was as good a time as any to separate myself from that church. After all, this new preacher was backed by the old diaconate who had known and presumably loved my dad and us for years.

I visited churches, some once, some for months, and everywhere in between. When I was in graduate school and was living full-time in my own apartment in the university town where I was studying, I became active about looking for and finding a new church home. It was a good one. My husband would later be baptized there, and we got married there. We’ve visited it a few times through the years.

After graduation and marriage, my husband’s job necessitated that we move away from that area. We made the drive for a couple of months or so. I’d been in the choir and had really enjoyed that, but with the commute, showing up for choir practice wasn’t practical. Eventually we realized we were too far away from church truly to be a part of the parish so we started looking for a new church.

Let’s converse! Do you remember or have you dealt with end times-related church trauma? What are you doing or have you done to heal from that trauma? Respond in the comments.

 

Categories
Mental Health Ministry

Getting in Touch With the Richness of my Emotional Life

Years ago I was training to be a chaplain. That’s a pastor who serves in secular settings, especially hospitals, the military, prisons, and hospice agencies. It’s a special kind of ministry, working with people in the midst of some life crisis, and the focus is less on a ministry of word (like you see with pulpit pastors) and more on a ministry of presence. We’re there. We’re present. Most of the time we listen. Sometimes we talk. Sometimes we offer a shoulder. Sometimes we share Coke and pork rinds. It’s a more fluid ministry, one that allows chaplains to live into their own creativity and outside-the-boxness.

I was a resident, and my supervisor and I got along grudgingly. I’d like to say he was invested in my improvement, but it so often felt like all he was invested in was breaking me as a chaplain, finding fault in everything I did so I’d quit and give up the calling. I’m made of sterner stuff than that, though. One of his constant gripes about me was that I “wasn’t in touch with the richness of my emotional life.”

I was telling my therapist about this, the therapist who’s seen me crying and yelling, cussing and laughing. I told Jen about that supervisor telling me I wasn’t in touch with the richness of my emotional life, and she said, “What the hell does that even mean?”

It comes down to trust. Neither that supervisor nor that group felt like a safe place to share my emotions. It’s not that I didn’t have them. I also expressed them openly and passionately–just not there. I let my feelings loose at home with my husband.

There were also other trust issues. I had been taught from an early age that expressing my emotions publicly was “making a scene,” and this was vehemently discouraged. Even when my grandma died, I was shushed in the hospital corridor so as not to disturb other patients or make a scene. So expressing raw, naked emotions in front of people I didn’t really know or trust was simply not going to happen.

I’m happy to say to that former supervisor, “Up yours!” as I live fully into the richness of my emotional life. I’ve poured emotion out in my counseling journey. I used my feelings about having anxiety and how I’m managing it as the basis for my first book. And now, the emotion is coming out, sometimes in trickles, sometimes in floods, as I write about what it was like raising my firstborn and the pain she caused us.

So what does “living into the richness of my emotional life” look like? It looks like having the bandwidth to deal with emotions. It looks like daring to say the hard parts out loud. It feels good and liberating and relieving.

Categories
Books Mental Health Writing

My book is here!!!

Today is 22 February 2024. On 24 February 2020, I finished the first draft of Finding Peace: Devotionals for Christians With Anxiety. What followed was a maelstrom of “Oh, hell, where is my therapist when I need him?” and editing this book to within an inch of its life–and that was before sending it off to a professional editor. Then it loitered in my computer for a few years, trapped by its creator’s fear that it’d be rejected. Until a certain daughter of mine broadcast to friends and family alike that I’d written a book.

Today my print copy came, and I’m so excited! I finally get to say, “Buy my book.” My hope is to make enough money off this book to launch the next one, and then eventually to be able to help other writers publish their books. The goal is not only my own success as a writer, but that of others, as well.

Click the link to get your copy. And thank you.

FINDING PEACE: Devotionals for Christians With Anxiety
Nesbitt, Sara D and Aykut, Anday
Categories
Books Writing

Clicking “Submit”

I am usually the last person you’ll hear talk about “submitting” to anything or anyone, but sometimes “submit” brings with it the greatest feeling of freedom. In the words of Luvvie Ajiyi Jones, it’s like going from swimming to floating.

As I type this, I’m floating. I’m in warm Caribbean waters, floating on my back, letting the gentle waves bouy me. Water laps into my ears, drowning out all sounds. The sun is warm on my face and chest, and every part of me is relaxing on the water, trusting it to hold me up. In my fantasies, of course. In reality, I’m sitting in the living room on a grey, chilly winter day.

You see, today was a “submit” day. Today was the day I chose to do our taxes for the year. My goal used to be to have them done before the beginning of soccer season just because taxes take a number of hours to do, and I didn’t want to start late or have to take a break from them once I got started. It quickly gets addicting having the relief of taxes done and the refund sitting in the account before the end of February. I was going to work on them last weekend but got invited out for coffee, and that was a more important thing in my world.

Today I clicked “submit” or, rather, “file federal return.” Our taxes are done. The IRS has accepted them, and I don’t have to worry about them now. Having that burden off my shoulders was tremendous! And even though I only usually promote my personal stuff, let me just say that Tax Act made filing so ridiculously easy!

On Tuesday I clicked “submit” on another big project–my book. It’s gone through a bajillion tweaks, especially the cover. The last copy was the best, and I ordered a print copy to see how the beautiful eproof will translate to paper binding. Hopefully, that’ll arrive late next week. That was something else that I’m happily getting off my shoulders so I can turn my focus to my next book.

Ahhh, yes. The next book. A work of heart, soul, and psyche. This one is brutal to write. It started with a really good therapy session, a session that left me feeling like my psyche had gone ten rounds with Mohammed Ali and also that it’d taken 240 volts. It felt bruised, battered, worn out, and energized all at once. That’s a damn good session, right there! I texted that to my male bestie. I didn’t want to blow up his phone with texts about it so I just texted that I’d fill him in tomorrow. (It was evening when we were having this convo.) I was going to email it, but then I thought, I want to be able to build on this as necessary without fear of accidentally clicking “send” prematurely. So I put everything into a .doc. By the time I was done, it was 3 1/2 pages, single-spaced. (To give you an idea, a solid 20-minute sermon is four pages.) I emailed it to him. The following morning I started editing. Not long after that, I put it into my bookwriting app. I’ll share more details about this book in a future post.

In beginning this book, I submitted to something bigger and more powerful than I alone–the power of story and its ability to connect us to others who share our pain.

Categories
Ministry

When “Mission” isn’t what we’re expecting

It was 2007 or 2008, and I was sitting across the desk from one of the OB/GYNs in the practice I was going to. I’d just had my annual pelvic exam, but really good gynos check out everything, probably knowing that women aren’t great about scheduling annual physicals. All was well “down there,” but the weight was another matter. The doctor said, “Your BMI is way too high [probably around 33 or 34 at the time]. You need to get down to 135 pounds.”

I looked at him and said, “That seems unhealthily skinny to me. I’d feel more comfortable at 150.”

Fast forward eight years to when I started trying to lose weight by tracking my food intake and walking–a lot. One of my goals at the time was to be able–physically fit enough–to be able to do mission work if called. I wanted my body in good enough shape to handle the possible rigors of being the hands and feet of Jesus. Then fast-forward to now. Today I hit 150 pounds, and I feel like I’ve got another ten to go.

I haven’t been called to the foreign mission field. I haven’t gone to Costa Rica or Haiti to help build homes from earthquake rubble or repair a church. I haven’t even been called to do local mission work through a non-profit or with one of a church’s ministry partners. But I have been called to serve.

About two months ago, my maternal aunt died, and my mom is the executor of the estate. She’s under a tight deadline to get everything done, and it’s a lot for her to handle, even with Dad’s help. Last week I told her I’d come up to help. I sat on the floor for about half an hour inventorying my aunt’s extensive CD collection. I climbed up and down off a step-stool cleaning out her kitchen cabinets. I hauled boxes out. I used that same step-stool to bring items in my aunt’s closet down to lower shelves to make it easier for my parents to get to them when they were ready. It was three solid hours of a great deal of movement. Thing is, I wouldn’t have been able to do these things nearly so easily had I not dropped so much extra weight.

And it’s not just a matter of dropping weight. I’ve been practicing yoga since spring 2018 which has given me the flexibility and balance to sit on the floor (and get up) and climb on step-stool. My weekly weight training–much as I hate doing it–enabled me to have the upper body strength to haul boxes loaded with canned goods. The mission work that I envisioned being in foreign and exotic places took place two hours away in a lovely house in autumn. And it was good.

Sometimes we miss seeing where God is putting us because it’s not where we were expecting to go. Mission work, though, is simply being the hands and feet of Jesus, or sometimes the ears and shoulders of Jesus as we move about in our day-to-day.

 

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