I can’t help but hear Vin Scully’s voice in my head when I think about my childhood. That famous voice of baseball brings back memories of summer afternoons spent out in our backyard. My Dad stood at the grill barbecuing his famous ribs while my mom laid on the webbed green and white chaise lounge in her bathing suit listening to the Dodger game on a transistor radio. My little sister and I cooled off in the blow up wading pool to the echo of the dodge ball hitting against the side wall of the house by our older brother. I was still an innocent, naive little girl. I had no reason to distrust adults. This was during the “safe” years…the years before Vodka took over our family of five.
My therapist has explained that the reason I am so drawn to heightened experiences is because I am used to the feeling of adrenaline running through my body as my childhood became more about alcoholic stupors and loud arguments that woke me in the night. Adrenaline flowed during those years, as I tried to keep myself safe. Later, I craved the feelings adrenaline brought about in my body because that was my normal state of being. What’s life without a little fear? I had forgotten.
In my last post, I wrote about my daughter’s best friend, and the sexual and emotional abuse she suffered at the hands church leaders. It caused me to reflect on my own experiences, even though I had shoved it deep down for many years. It also caused me to view it through a very different lens. One in which I stopped blaming myself for not feeling safe.
“Safe!” Keith Allison, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
When I was twenty-nine years old I became a volunteer secretary at a tiny church in our new home state. My then husband and I had moved two states away from our home in California in order for him to take on a new and better job. Our marriage had been damaged during the months when he was away training for this new job while my kids and I lived with his parents until moving day. During that time away, my husband began drinking heavily with his single cousins. Friday nights found them in bars drinking and meeting other women. The paychecks he had been sending home stopped and excuses about where the money had gone came instead (“I cashed my check and then lost my wallet.” I found out about all this right before we moved into the home his parents helped us buy, far from family and friends. But this was to be a fresh start and I was trying to be the good Christian wife. Forgive and forget…
During the several years we lived there, the lying and carousing didn’t end as I had hoped. And our pastor knew about it. He knew I was hurting, and vulnerable.
I remember being jealous of the pastor’s wife. She was married to a responsible man who loved her (I thought). They had a huge extended family and each year they attended family reunions so large they had to have name tags printed. I think about 200 family members would attend. I came from a tiny family that, as far as I knew, contained one cousin ten years older than I and grandfathers I never met. And my own family had completely fallen apart. The alcohol fueled years had eventually culminated in my brother and father taking their own lives. I craved stability and family love.
I was also still suffering from serious mental illness. Although I had gotten somewhat better, I still experienced extreme anxiety and depression. My pastor had counseled me, so he knew this all too well. He knew I did not feel loved by my husband, or my mother, and he knew that my brother and father had died by suicide. He knew I craved love.
One day he came into my office as I was typing out notes for the weekly bulletin. “I need to tell you something,” he began. “I’m falling in love with you.”
Later, he told me that when he said that to me he’d never forget the look of sadness on my face. That should have been his clue to stop right then and there.
Months later I decided that in order to save my marriage I needed to move away, so I talked my husband into moving back to California to work on our marriage. But inside I was a wreck. My anxiety and depression had increased exponentially and I was doubly heartbroken. I was leaving someone who I thought truly loved me for the first time in my life, and I ended up losing my husband as well. He continued his drinking and infidelities and never did try to heal “us.” Some time later, our marriage ended in divorce.
Several years later, at another small church in California, I again volunteered as the church secretary. I loved feeling needed and was very good at clerical skills. One day, the married pastor came into my office, stood behind me, and started massaging my shoulders and neck. Inside I froze, but outside I tried to play it off. He’s just trying to help me with tight muscles, I told myself. He’s sensitive to what can happen if someone sits at a computer too long. But before long, advances were made and it became clear. Another run from another church and another time of confusion, anxiety, and feelings of guilt for having developed feelings for my pastor.
Fast forward, I moved to a new state again. This time, to marry a wonderful man (we’ll celebrate our thirtieth this June). Again, I became a secretary for my new church. As I took over my new role, I noticed the pastor’s wife would leave her job across town and pop in at odd moments during the day to see how I was doing. I thought this a little odd but chalked it up to her standards of excellence for the church bulletins and other printed materials. She must want to make sure I was up to the task, I thought.
One day, as I was sitting at my desk, the pastor came up behind me and began massaging my shoulders and neck. Deja vu! Nothing further happened but I always had a feeling the potential was there (on his end…not mine).
I’m much older now and I no longer worry about someone in authority grooming me. But each time it happened, I lost a little more. A little more innocence, a little more naivety, a little more trust, a little more security in a place that should have represented safety, family, support.
There’s been a lot written about this type of thing over the past several years due to men like Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, and other men who have used positions of power in order to sexually assault women (and in Jeffrey’s case, minor girls). Both the Catholic and Protestant churches have been exposed for suppressing information about cases of sexual abuse of both minors and adults, both men and women (Hillsong, the Southern Baptist Convention (over 700 victims within a twenty-year span there), Willow Creek, and others. Once the #MeToo movement gained momentum, a new hashtag, #WeToo cropped up, and author Mary DeMuth wrote an informative book on this subject. She has a website, www.wetoo.org with many resources to help victims of church abuse.
Here’s the thing. There’s a distinction between having an affair, (infidelity involving two people of equal power) and exploitation of a vulnerable congregant by a person in power (and according to most church teachings, “in authority” over you). Pastors are held to the same ethics standards as psychologists.
On the website http://noedenelsewhere.com/ Anna writes:
“There are currently 15 states that criminalize sexual conduct between clergy & congregant. In my [her] state (Texas) there is a law that protects those who are sexually abused by clergy (regardless of age), and it is the same law that applies to [all of the following positions:] teachers, therapists/psychiatrists/psychologists, doctors, etc. WHY? Because the clergy have POWER over those under their care by the professional nature of their office as well as their training, knowledge & experience. They should be held to the same standard as the other helping professions when they abuse that power.”
A place that should be safe, continues to show that it may be anything but. Obviously this doesn’t represent all churches, but it does represent far too many. It behooves us to talk about it…to expose it. I had never heard of this happening in the days before the Internet. I think awareness is a step toward helping people protect themselves. But the vulnerable may need us, those willing to talk about this…and support instead of victim blaming in order to ever feel safe again.
Another Think Coming is a series of articles about reimagining faith after disappointment and confusion within the evangelical church experience as well as issues about mental illness and healing. Please subscribe for more and let me know in the comments what questions may come up for you and what you would like to know more about. I’d love to have you here.