I trusted you
Mark Driscoll.
Bruxy Cavey.
John MacArthur.
My former church and its leadership.
What in this world could they possibly have in common? Three of those names are rather famous in Christian circles. Mark Driscoll is well known for the fall of Mars Hill and his anger and spiritual abuse. Bruxy was just recently found guilty of clergy sexual abuse and his credentials as pastor have been removed from The Meeting House.
John MacArthur, well, we could say a lot about him. But the most recent thing is that he and his church leadership tried to force a woman to reconcile with her husband who was physically and sexually abusive...to her kids. I emphasize “to her kids” because it’s very common for people to encourage a wife to stay with an abuser who is, ya know, only abusing HER. There used to be some consensus that if the line crossed with the children, then she could leave him. Not here, however. This man is currently in prison for 21 years for his crimes. People are still defending John MacArthur’s handling of it even today.
What, you ask again, do those three and the leadership of my former church (now moved and re-named) have in common?
More than I ever would have imagined.
So much that I’ve had physical reactions of nausea and panic realizing I supported them. I encouraged them. I defended them.
I’m sorry. I didn’t know.
CPTSD is broad in how it happens and how it manifests in a person.
For me, there are physical manifestations of a racing heart, tension, and freezing. Hypervigilance and random pain. Trouble sleeping. Trouble staying awake. Dreams. Flashbacks. Reliving moments to try to rewrite what happened. To try to say things I didn’t say and couldn’t say in the moment.
I’ll be driving and find myself in a scenario where my former pastor wants to meet, and somehow we agree. What would I say?
Or they walk in somewhere. Maybe as a group with some of the others complicit in it all. What would I do?
Honestly, it’s usually freeze. I’d freeze.
Like when my husband told me that the man who sent those vile texts to us on October 7th, 2021 was leading worship again at his church. I froze. I cried. What is there to say? What would make them see?
I think for hours of what I should have said and could have said and wish I could say now. I believe on some level that there was something I could have done that would have changed this whole thing. Something that would have opened their eyes.
I dream about it.
I sit with it.
I try to move on.
When news of Bruxy came out, I felt undone. He was one of the good ones. This isn’t supposed to happen there. With people like him. As I read the reports and listened to people sharing on it I was taken back to times in my life when power dynamics were at play. I didn’t know that then. I didn’t know what to do.
As I told my therapist, I’ve shared the stories so many times with me as the villain I had forgotten the truth. It was all coming back reading this story. Reading about the cover-up and abuse of a wife trying to protect herself and her children.
Dots connected. Past to present. Direct lines from experiences then to my reactions now. My reactions last year. On my couch. When a father figure called me immodest. When he talked about my tight pants. When I realized all my father figures had talked about my body…with each other…privately.
Suddenly I *was* the woman in the Bruxy story. I *was* the woman seeking help from her pastor and church family. I was someone asking someone to believe me. Someone to help me. Someone to listen to me.
Someone frozen in the moment.
Someone who never told anyone.
Someone who told and was blamed. shamed. not believed. ignored.
People, the proverbial *they,* rank trauma. They look for the positive, for the “at least it wasn’t,” and the “someone always has it worse.”
They never think someone could have the same feelings, reactions, and painful memories associated with being a war veteran from something like, say, spiritual abuse.
Or that spiritual abuse is the same as being abused by an actual parent.
One, just one of the many, parts of abuse of any kind is the betrayal. The trust broken. The belief of safety shattered. Even if what happened was a stranger there was still a trust that you were safe. You no longer trust safety. You no longer trust people. People you know or people you don’t.
When it was someone you know, and that trust is broken, you’re left wondering who is safe. If anyone is safe. How you’ll ever really know anyone is safe ever again.
I was thinking about what I would say. What would I say in this unrealistic, never going to happen scenario where my former pastor and his wife ask us to sit with them, and we agree? What would I say that would be the perfect argument and hit all the points, and make such sense there could be no rebuttal, and it would open their eyes and…
Realistically, I know there is nothing. If my heart, and tears, and pleas last year meant nothing, there’s nothing I can do now.
So, what would I say? If I could. If they were here, right now, before me, unable to respond and had to listen. Or at least hear. What would I say that helps me heal and breathe, and move on?
What could we all say? All of us bodies behind the religious bus. All the victims in all the ways of all the people meant to love and protect us?
And I heard myself say it. I saw myself speak it out, and walk away. Letting it hang, and fall, and sit in whatever conscience they have left that hasn’t been seared away in their denial.
I trusted you.
Britny Harmer is a student and educator. She attended CFC from 2013 to 2021.
