Aftershocks - Part III

I had to add another post here simply because I'm not sure that I adequately explained how our lives changed.

You have to understand that before coming to Milestone, we were intensely seeking deeply connected spiritual family. I came alive there. I discovered that I am a people connector. As one friend says, that's my "Olympic event." I was in the midst of bliss in that environment as far as friendships go. Being surrounded by lots of people who wanted to live their lives with us was like a dream. That was my home school group, my mom's group, everything.

My husband's dream had always been to run an athletics ministry. He was feeling like his calling was being fulfilled.

Our children had been there almost since they could remember. All of their friends were there.

Everything in our lives revolved around our church family. I had a framed pictured of our pastor's family sitting in my living room for heaven's sake!

So the loss was just tremendous. I couldn't stop crying for days. Frank would go out of town and I would sit in our bedroom at night and cry and pray and beg God to please make all of this right. I was VERY upset/angry with the leadership but asked God to give me His heart for them.

As I mentioned, both of us had nightmares for months where we would wake up either frightened or rageful at what had happened. I had obsessive thoughts for a long time so that I couldn't even go to sleep at night until I was exhausted. I would just keep running it over and over in my head. The things that were said to us, that cold, careless look on Derrick's face. My friends' faces would come to mind. A shower gel that someone had given me last Christmas would make me cry. Seeing gifts that friends had given our children. More tears. Looking at my infant son's baby clothes and knowing from whom each and every article was from. Tears. I couldn't bear the thought that people would think that we had just decided one day to leave. Without even telling anyone or saying "goodbye."

I didn't really reach out to my family at all because I didn't want to make my sister feel awkward. I didn't want the family dynamics to be taking sides. So we basically just leaned on our counselor and our new friends at CR. We had very few good friends that we talked to about it all. I think that made it a bit harder to process.

When our children would ask why they haven't seen their friends, or when they can, I didn't know what to say. When they would talk about their pastors or songs they sang at church, we just sort of nodded and changed the subject.

Our marriage, which had been doing so phenomenally well, took a steep turn for the worse for about six months. We weren't really angry at one another. I think we just felt beaten down by all of it. There wasn't a lot of closeness, even though we talked constantly about how we were feeling. I think a lot of it was my deep depression over the entire thing. I finally did get on some anti-depressants which have helped me with the repetitive thoughts and anxiety and sadness.

I will say that I had three or four friends from Milestone who gathered around me and just were so incredibly sweet. Each one of these women knew exactly what I was talking about on the topics of women and brokenness. They could see it too so that allowed them to love me freely and enter into my pain with me. They were really a blessing because for a long time I felt like maybe I was just crazy. I kept thinking, "If nobody else seems to be bothered by all of this, maybe I'm nuts." If the people who knew that there were lies being used to oust us...if they didn't seem to care, was I missing something?*

At any rate, we are still working through it but it's getting easier with time. Last month, one precious friend sat in Cheesecake Factory with me and held my hand while I cried. She never let go. :o) (Thank you, sweet friend). A few nights ago, she sat with me again as we prayed for the whole situation. I thank God for those sweet and blessed women who have stood with me during this.

*Our counselor, who used to be a pastor of a large church, assured us that this sort of thing is quite common. It was hard to wrap our minds around that. Since leaving the traditional church, we have heard hundreds of similar horror stories. Many of them FAR worse than ours. One former pastor friend showed up to work at his church on Sunday morning and was handed a microphone and told to go tell the congregation that he would be leaving. Only this was the first he'd heard of it!!