A while ago I mentioned that I grew up as a fundamentalist evangelical. I did, in fact, but I want to say first that the pastor of my church was a man of great integrity, humility, intelligence and faith. He’s even come forward and admitted his previously held views about women in the church were wrong. It takes a lot of courage to admit something like that and move in a different direction. While there are beliefs that I’ve since questioned, revised or discarded, he has remained a true friend and someone for whom I have great respect and affection.  I want to make that clear.

When I look back on what was truly damaging to me during that time, for the most part it had nothing to do with the actual teachings in my church. There was a strong emphasis on grace and unconditional love. There are a lot of people who came out of that environment as strong, confident individuals who could think for themselves. I think what made the atmosphere so toxic for me was that what I heard and how I saw those teachings lived out at home were completely different, even though the language was the same.  Both the church and my family talked about grace and unconditional love, but at the same time my parents and I were living in constant judgment and what I’d call Christian perfectionism. When I made mistakes, affection was revoked. God began to appear to be an irritable, insatiable scientist attempting to perfect his creations. He put us through tests and torment to make us better people. He dealt with us as though we were rats in a maze. Later, when I was grown and married and going to a different church, I wasn’t emotionally capable of having children.  The looks and comments people threw my way gave the distinct impression that I was not just a rat, but a diseased one.  I was an outsider rat who made all the others feel weird about themselves, or me, or both. In retrospect I’m sure there were people who didn’t look at me that way, but they weren’t in my immediate Christian circles.

Now, just for clarity, I do not actually view Christians as rodents. I suppose at the time I generally viewed all humanity as trapped in a sort of puzzle box, looking for a way out so we could prove we were smart enough to do it. I didn’t think we actually were smart enough to succeed, so the whole thing seemed pointless. Let’s just say it was a melancholy time for me.

I also don’t know why I never dumped the idea of God altogether. I’ve certainly considered it. Who wants to worship a mad scientist?  Well, okay, Neil Patrick Harris as Dr. Horrible does deserve a second look, but even he (as the title would suggest) turns quasi-bad in the end. My only solid explanation for why my faith hasn’t died has to do with the people who’ve been in my life, mostly since 2001.  In August of 2001, my husband and I moved away from the mid-south, home to some of the most radically conservative groups in the country, to Seattle, Washington. Seattle is home to the opposite. I have to admit, I felt I’d come home for the first time. When people asked if I had kids and I said “no,” and they followed by asking if we were planning on kids only to receive an “I don’t think so,” they didn’t look at me like I’d grown an extra head. They generally said something like, “Cool,” and looked nonchalant. Simply not having to face that constant judgment was an incredible gift.  Beauty is also something that helps my heart connect with divinity in a non-judgmental way, so it didn’t hurt matters that Seattle is absolutely stunning. The city has mountains on both sides and water everywhere, enormous trees, and wild ferns in the abundant forests. The fact that the average temperature in the summer is 75 was pretty great too, especially after all those miserable summers of lawn-mowing in my youth. Seattle was my Mecca.

It wasn’t without its challenges, though. My husband and I both had hard times with work. I landed a position in a hospitality firm where the work was fun, but the atmosphere was brutal. Take a whip to me and I do not get stronger, I get lacerated. I was working in this kind of environment when I developed generalized anxiety disorder, acid reflux, and IBS. I’ve since gotten professional help and done my own research, and there is a complex form of PTSD that appears to apply to people like me. Children who grow up in unpredictable environments of emotional abuse*, grow up with a lot of the same symptoms as those who grow up in war zones. The world is perceived as a profoundly dangerous place and there’s no escaping the sense of imminent doom. Perhaps (as in my case) the person learns how to keep up a facade of professionalism in certain, known environments, but can’t contain all the physical symptoms such as shaking hands or the need to keep a giant bottle of antacid at the front of the desk drawer. Then there’s the oppressive fear of having one’s brokenness discovered. Something can sometimes act as a trigger to a full panic attack and knowing that this can happen leads to increased anxiety.  Eventually a person can wind up at a faculty dinner staring at an otherwise harmless bowl of tomato soup knowing it’s physically impossible to get the soup successfully transferred from the bowl to the mouth without looking like an alcoholic coming down from a three month binge.

I believe the seeds for all of these issues were planted a long time before we moved to Seattle. It’s just that moving to Seattle and working for a brutal employer brought a dormant condition into a full-blown crisis. I developed insomnia due to the anxiety. My heart raced as though I were being chased by wild dogs, every single, absolutely otherwise normal day.

Nights were the worst.
“What do you want from me?!” I’d yell into the dark, pounding my fists against a pillow. “I’m sorry!  I repent!  Whatever I’m doing wrong just tell me and I’ll stop doing it!!!”  I knew I “should” have peace. The Bible promises the peace that passes all understanding, and if I didn’t have it, it was obviously my fault. I didn’t get help or go to the doctor for five years. I lived with it, if you could call that living, because if a person had Jesus s/he wasn’t supposed to need therapy.

This is the point at which some amazing people came into my life and loved me. I can’t explain why that happened then and not before, but it did. And these people happened to believe in a God who seemed better and kinder than the one I’d experienced. This is what kept me then, and what has continued to keep me from abandoning my faith altogether. Being surrounded by truly loving people who weren’t freaked out when I felt (and actually was) absolutely mental, was a miracle. It doesn’t happen for everyone. People slip through the cracks all the time. I don’t know why I was the recipient of such kindness, but I’m everlastingly grateful. On more occasions than one, kindness has saved my life.

This has deeply affected who I want to be for other people.  If I err in life, I want it to be on the side of compassion.  My grandfather would’ve curled his lip and called me a bleeding-heart liberal, but all politics aside, I really don’t have a problem with having a bleeding heart as long as I’m not bleeding out.  I want to be emotionally and mentally healthy so I have resources from which I can give.  I never want to be the person who excludes someone else because s/he’s different, or lives in different ways, or loves in different ways.  I know I’ll fail sometimes, but so help me God, I never want to look at another person as though s/he’s grown another head just because something about him or her is beyond my understanding.  I don’t want to look that way if I do understand and just don’t agree.  I don’t think agreement is a pre-requisite to kindness and love, and I don’t think it’s my job to go around correcting people.  For one thing, I can hardly navigate my own life without adding ill-advised attempts to figure out other people’s lives or even my own bookkeeping.  If God is any good at his job at all, he can take care of directing other people while he’s out there finding me a good accountant. There are plenty of people trying to impose their beliefs on other people, with extraordinarily damaging and sometimes horrific consequences.  What I don’t see enough of is the kind of love that can see beyond the surface to the value of another person’s heart.  We’re all in this together.  I want to act like it.

*Too often we view abusers as evil beasts who intend to harm others in horrible, violent ways.  My own experience is different from this.  My parents meant well.  Their parents meant well.  If you follow my lineage back you can find generation upon generation of abusive behavior, on both sides of the family.  We’re taught how to behave as children, and if we don’t have the courage or resources to confront our past, learn, grow, break down, and heal, we just keep the cycle of abuse flowing.  The catch is that just because someone doesn’t intend to abuse you, doesn’t mean they don’t do it.