This blog entry is contributed by our oldest child — a PK who has been hurt by the ministry.  Many of you will relate.

The Silent Killer

When I was 15 the church that my parents moved to Boise to pastor made a decision to merge congregations with another local body.  It seemed to be mutually beneficial to fuse our congregations together under one roof and my parents were certain that the Lord had placed the idea on their hearts in order to unify our parishioners.  Unfortunately, the merge did not last and so began an extremely painful journey through the land of church politics. Many people left both congregations and deserted the pastors and families they said they loved and supported.  Lies were spread, gossip abounded, friendships were betrayed, even a law suit was filed!  My parent’s reputation was tarnished and my father, many years later, gracefully stepped away from his original credentials even as leadership in the credentialing body continued to be dishonest about how events unfolded.

I was devastated by the spiritual carnage left in the wake of those who abandoned our church.  I had never witnessed people who claimed to be Christians treat others the way my family was treated.  Slowly, over the following years, more people’s feelings were hurt and more left for one reason or another and it all colored my view of the local church.  If there is such a thing as tar-colored glasses as opposed to rose-colored glasses, then I wore them consistently as I transitioned to adulthood.  The culmination of wounds left me a very broken and angry person but because every wound took place over years and for various reasons, I never really tied my anger back to a single starting point.  Instead, I was angry at everyone all the time.  Any time something was misunderstood, a complaint was spread around, or a church member started a fight over something as silly as a pew or a glass vase, I seethed with resentment; bracing myself for the inevitable fallout.

James 1:19-20
My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires…

It wasn’t until I returned home for the holidays last year that I began to piece together the common thread that ran through seemingly random hurts:  I was an unforgiving person.  The culprit was not a person or entity or ideal that I had been hurt by.  No, the scars I proudly displayed were formed out of my own bitterness and hate.  Then I found out in early July that I would be returning home to Boise for my grandfather’s funeral and the funeral was going to be held in the church building that the merge and split occurred in.  Many people directly involved with the split were going to be attending the funeral and I was going to have to face my demons.  Suddenly I had a choice to make.  I could return home with all my walls up taking every look and every word as a reason to feed my anger or I could finally release my resentment and let it be buried too.

I won’t tell you that it was easy.  I am a very nostalgic person and it hurt to walk the hallways of that church building again.  I saw a lot of faces that at one time I never cared to see again.  I had to make a conscious decision to accept people’s words for what they were and not conjure up what they might have meant underneath.  I had to purposefully let things roll off me lest I make a big deal out of something that could be kept simple.  By the time I left town after several days later I felt like a piece of me had been left behind…a piece that I didn’t care to pack around with me anymore despite how familiar it had become.

Proverbs 19:11
A man’s wisdom gives him patience; it is to his glory to overlook an offense…

Now several weeks later I find that I have quietly forgiven many hurts left in the wake of people simply being people.  I have also come to see that while I laid to rest much of my anger in Boise, I am not destined to live out the rest of my life in a void of emotion.  I will always have an opportunity to choose not to take up an offense or choose to love in spite of hurtful words and actions.  People make mistakes, they misunderstand and jump to conclusions.  Sometimes out of their own wounds they maliciously attack if only to make themselves feel better.   Either way, the silent killer of joy is not worth keeping around simply to justify how you’ve been hurt.  At the end of the day, you are the only one who can make yourself feel victimized.  Do not choose this path.  Instead, choose to live out God’s love victoriously.

Ephesians 4:26 (New Living)
And “don’t sin by letting anger control you.” Don’t let the sun go down while you are still angry…

In the same way, if we neglect ourselves spiritually, our hearts become just like my cleared garden plot. A root of bitterness can spring up in the rocky soil of hurt feelings; the weed of discontent will take hold when we don’t spend time in prayer and praise; and the snare of covetousness will rapidly take root in soil not cleansed by repentance. Like the weeds in my flower garden, that seemingly appeared overnight, little sins find fertile ground when our spiritual life has not been cultivated by the Word and prayer.

From the book, “The Power of Prayer,” by R.A. Torrey, some hindrances that keep us from setting aside time each day to pray are:
1. Idols in the heart (Isaiah 14:1-3)
2. An unforgiving spirit (Mark 11:25, Matthew 6:14,15)
3. Doubt (James 1:6,7)
4. Mistreating our spouse (1 Peter 3:1)
5. Unconfessed sin (Isaiah 59:1,2)
6. We don’t ask according to God’s will (James 4:3)
7. Stinginess in giving (Proverbs 21:13)

If you see any of these noxious plants appearing in your spiritual garden, you can find the perfect weed killer in Psalms 51:2 – “Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.” Happy planting!

• Type A is the PW with her own specific call to ministry. I assumed she soared — anyone with their own “God-mantle” surely didn’t battle the same doubts and fears that I did.
• Type B married a man with a specific call to the ministry. In this category are actually two sub-categories: those who are thrilled to share their husband’s call and those who feel that their husband’s call is just that — their husband’s – and spend their life busily drawing the boundaries between his call and their life.
• Type C, however, are pastors’ wives who didn’t marry a pastor at all. They married an electrician or an accountant, maybe a bus driver. However, sometime after the marriage their husband admitted to or received a call to the ministry and their life changed drastically.

I have great empathy for what they must go through. It is one thing to get on the road of life and aim your car for a specific destination. The road may be bumpy, but there’s security in knowing where you’re going. To suddenly be driving to one destination and have the driver wheel onto an exit and head in exactly the opposite direction must be catastrophic to the emotions. Jill Briscoe, in “Renewal on the Run” has encouragement for those who fit Type C. She uses Peter’s wife as the example. This is a woman who married a fisherman. It was a lifestyle she knew, it had a stable income and was socially accepted. However, God had another agenda for Peter’s life and took him down another road.

What this boils down to is it does not matter if you have a personal call, you’re sharing a call or whether you were drafted mid-season, for in whatever situation you find yourself you can rest in the knowledge that God foresaw it, even foreordained it, and with His help you can succeed.

We became friends when I, the mother of two toddlers, discovered I was once again pregnant.  Sharon provided support for my bouts of morning sickness.  She became “auntie” to my kids – sitting with them during church services while I played the piano, babysitting while I ran errands and encouraging me in my mothering trials.

When Jenny, the new baby, was only four days old, we bundled her in a blanket and made the 60-mile trip to Denver to be with Sharon while she had an MRI.  The unexplained numbness spreading down the right side of her body was discovered to be a form of spina bifida — undetected since birth.  With the passing years it had degenerated her spine to the point that she needed surgery or would die. The surgeon assured us it was a routine operation.  She could expect to be home a week after surgery.

However, it didn’t go as planned.  In disentangling ganglia from her brainstem, the surgeon had to cut more deeply than he intended thus erasing her motor skills.  In the waiting room we listened to his report. “Will she recover?” Doug inquired steadily.  Not easily upset, he just wanted to know what to expect.  “Of course,” the surgeon assured us, “it just means she will need intensive therapy before she can go home.”

All through the long summer, Sharon stayed at Rose Medical Center, attending therapy sessions several times a day.  Each visit would bring an improvement.  She first learned to control her flailing limbs, then to feed herself, followed by sitting, crawling – the red high-tops laced snugly around wobbly joints.   She’d laugh and say, “Jenny and I are twins, we learned to crawl at the same time.”

Four months after the surgery, she was allowed to go home on the condition that she would return for therapy three days a week.   Doug, a school administrator, had already taken many hours off in order to be with his wife.  With school starting there was much he needed to accomplish to get ready for the upcoming year.  Once September came he couldn’t leave his job three days a week to transport her to the doctor.  There had to be a solution.

I sat in our women’s Bible study the week Sharon went home and laid out their dilemma:  There wasn’t insurance coverage to keep her in the hospital; it had to be outpatient  therapy.  Doug couldn’t transport her three times a week; what could we do?  The Bible is practical, it says, “Whatsoever your hand finds to do, do it mightily unto the Lord.”  So we did.  We formed a carpool.

If you drew lines between our church, Sharon’s house, and Rose Medical Center, it would create a near perfect equilateral triangle, each side approximately 45 miles long.  On Monday mornings, at 7:30 a.m., with Jenny strapped  into her car seat and three-year-old David in his (leaving behind five-year-old Jana to wait for the bus with Dad), I would head out Highway 105 to Sharon’s house.  Upon arriving, I’d help her into the wheelchair, pulling it awkwardly out the door, over the rocks and tufts that pass for grass in high-altitude Colorado, maneuver her into the front seat, fold up the steel and leather contraption, wrestle it into the trunk, and set out for Denver, another 45 miles away.

Once at the medical center, the kids and I would wait in the waiting room.  If the weather was nice, we’d go to the park or do a little shopping.  At the end of her session, we’d repeat the trip in reverse, arriving back at our house about 2 p.m.  An entire day that exhausted the kids, Sharon, and me, but necessary to her recovery.

John and Mary, a retired couple in the church, made Wednesday their day.  The most faithful of friends, they never missed one week of taking Sharon to therapy.  Upbeat and optimistic, they provided a lot of encouragement when progress seemed slow.  On Friday, Karen, a home-schooling mom, and her three children did the trip.  The kids practiced times tables or spelling in the car and continued lessons in the waiting room during Sharon’s sessions.

Whenever regulars had other commitments there was an assortment of friends to step in.  Sherrie or Donna was happy to pinch hit.  A second Karen took over halfway through the year when home-schooling Karen needed a break.   By hook or crook, we saw that Sharon got her therapy.

We shared in all her firsts:  First time standing alone, first steps, first time fixing dinner for her family.  The first Sunday she returned to church was a milestone for our congregation.  Doug wheeled her up the stairs and down the main aisle, the high-tops peeking demurely from under the edge of the lap quilt.  We stood and cheered; exuberantly congratulating ourselves for the part we had played in her recovery thus far.  As the months progressed and she got stronger, the sessions were reduced to two days a week, then one day.

One long hard year later, she was finished.  Every time I see Sharon walk, I am reminded of loyal friends who stood staunchly beside her, putting aside their own pursuits for a year to help her regain her life.  I see in living color, love in action: the growth of a church body that learned when a member is hurting, we all hurt, and in order to be whole, we all must engage in the healing process.

[Reprinted by permission from The Pastor's Wife newsletter]

That’s the great blessing of Hope. God gave us many great gifts, but to me, Hope is the brightest ornament on the tree, the red on the candy cane, the frosting on the cookie – the extra touch that makes it most special. Hope transcends time, bringing reality to the present while existing in the future.

For each of you, in whatever situation you find yourself, I pray that

•   The dream you’ve been dreaming will be fulfilled this year.

•   The dream you’ve been afraid to dream will gain substance and form in your spirit.

•   The dream you’ve abandoned will be reclaimed

May God bless you in 2009

Janice

The LORD bless thee, and keep thee:

The LORD make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee:

The LORD lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.

And they shall put my name upon the children of Israel, and I will bless

them.

Numbers 6: 24-27

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