Love's Labors Lamented and Reclaimed

Twenty years ago, I was preparing for a visit from my quite critical mother-in-law (MIL). I was nearing the end of my tour in my Shepherding Discipleship Church, and my head was really full of ridiculous expectations – at least six impossible ones before breakfast every day. Before I started on cleaning the kitchen, I went out to tend my tomato garden.

I was on my hands and knees in the dirt, praying as I panicked in the mud. I thought of the Biblical characters of Ruth and Naomi – the greatest ideal of mother and daughter-in-law. Ruth was a convert to Judaism, but after her husband dies, Ruth pledges to continue to follow God and to stay with her MIL, Naomi, as they both struggle to survive. I started weeping as I worked in the garden. My brain washed over with the many memories of the many cruelties inflicted by my own MIL in the five or so years that we'd been married.

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Are You a Mom Who is Triggered by Cynthia Jeub's Blog? Finding Healing Part I

(TRIGGER ALERT!)

At the age of forty eight, I find myself in an interesting place concerning the discussion of the Evangelical Christian homeschooling movement. While I'm roughly the same age of the first generation parents in the movement's spotlight, I identify most strongly with the Second Generation Adults (SGAs) – the adults who grew up in the quiverfull homeschooling world. Through my childbearing years, I found my social niche with moms who were a decade older than me, and their babies that I once carried around on my hip are now adults. Because I never managed to carry a pregnancy very far before miscarrying, most moms in the movement who were my age held me at arms length, and I was treated as a pariah. Though my experiences classify me as an SGA, because I was neither homeschooled nor had the experience of parenting, I often stand on the outside looking into both groups. My perspective has advantages and disadvantages, but I've been determined to make the best out of both.

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Understanding Those Trapped in Trauma

Spiritual Sounding Board (SSB) just posted the first of four installments explaining why people get caught up and stuck in high demand systems — but with a notable focus on manipulated young women.  I’d already been working on material describing the “Second Generation Adult” (a person who grows up in a high demand/spiritually abusive/cultic group), and I also wanted to revisit the concept of “bounded choice.”  Sadly, the events surrounding the close of Vision Forum became a perfect framework against which to explore these pressures and how they intensify for young people.  I’m honored that SSB saw the value in posting the information there.

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Exploring Forgiveness And Reconciliation: An Index of Posts

Several weeks ago, I sat down to write two or three blog posts on forgiveness and reconciliation as an aspect of how spiritual abusers use shame and condemnation to control followers. They were intended to finish up some loose strings and unfinished items as a part of this series of posts exploring how to best confront a spiritual abuser. Many churches use Matthew 18 as a way of berating people to subtly force them into complying with extra-Biblical requirements, a primary passage concerning forgiveness. I realized that I couldn't rightfully explore reconciliation without also including forgiveness. My effort to write just a few posts turned into something of an adventure exploring forgiveness as well as how abusers of all varieties exploit trust.

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Good Books and Resources that Explore Forgiveness

This list is by no means exhaustive but includes some of the best titles that I've encountered on the subject of forgiveness. Most of the books listed here address matters from a Christian perspective with primary authors on the subject listed first (but not in any particular order). Take note of the book lists that already appear here at UnderMuchGrace.com, listed near the bottom of the page, as well as titles concerning manipulative relationships. Enjoy!

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Sage Wisdom about Forgiveness from Corrie ten Boom

At the age of eight, I vividly remember standing in line for hours at the Eric Theater in my home town, waiting to be seated at the premiere of the film adaptation of Corrie ten Boom's, The Hiding Place. A few years ago, I met someone who was my age who had never heard of Corrie or the film, otherwise I would feel no need to introduce her. But it's been a few years – almost forty – since that film opened, and I fear that a generation of people may not know anything about her. I consider her influence through her books, film, sermons, and testimonies to be among the greatest in my early life.

Corrie was the daughter of a watchmaker in Holland in the 1940s, and she and her siblings worked for and lived with their father there. As the Nazis began to round up the Jews to first ship them out to the ghettos and then to the prison camps, Corrie's father protests. At one notable point in the book (and the film), he puts a Star of David on his sleeve along with the Jews. But his family soon decides to take a more concrete role in standing by the Jews when a family comes to her door, and they construct a secret room in Corrie's bedroom to hide them. (“God's people are always welcome in this home,” says Papa, the devout Christian.) Before an informant turns the family in, Corrie becomes quite the bold activist, helping Jews to get rations cards in addition to helping the family hidden in her home.

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More Quotes About Forgiveness

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Forgiveness Changes Things

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Spurgeon on the Sweetness of Forgiveness

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Forgiveness Sets All of the Prisoners Free

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A Contrary Truth Concerning Forgiveness

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Forgiveness Scriptures (a few of them, anyway)

And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. … For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses (Matthew 6:12-15). 

Then Peter came and said to him, "Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?" Jesus said to him, "Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times. … Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?' And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart" (Matthew 18:21-35).

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Forgiving Ourselves

In Forgiving the Unforgivable, David Stoop tackles the issue of self-forgiveness, noting that the process can be the most difficult type. Rather than pride or a self-centered nature, he identifies a “sensitive spirit” as the characteristic that causes people struggle with accepting what God provides for us when we repent.

Do you know what hurts so very much? It's love. Love is the strongest force in the world, and when it is blocked that means pain. There are two things we can do when this happens. We can kill that love so that it stops hurting. But then of course part of us dies, too. Or we can ask God to open up another route for that love to travel. 

― Corrie Ten Boom, TheHiding Place

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Forgiving God and Making Peace with Faith After Spiritual Abuse

Spiritual abuse can become such a terrible betrayal, depending upon the type of disappointment or harm that a person endures or witnesses. Once we are able to confront our experiences, grieve, and learn how to move on safely from what has happened, for many of us, someone else needs to be forgiven.

 When we can find no resolution to our situation and suffer deeply, many of us wrestle with God about why we ended up suffering betrayal in the Church at the hands “His representatives.” When we come to terms with the fact that these representatives are fallible men just like we are, we are left with the fact that God permitted the whole experience. We lived to tell the tale, but we are worse the wear for it. Some people end up walking away from Christianity itself, unable to transcend the experience and get on with a meaningful life any other way.

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You Know You've Embarked Upon the Path of Healing in Forgiveness When....

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My Own Process of Forgiving the Church After Spiritual Abuse

I suffered so much disappointment and distress during the last two years at my spiritually abusive church, and the year after I left was just as difficult. I hate to say it, but I also struggled with aspects of the betrayal bond I'd formed with it. While coping with the post-cult syndrome variety of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, I could not find any former members who were all that interested in talking about their own experiences. I approached several people that I trusted via phone calls, and no one would call me back. One woman who suffered with bipolar disorder called me soon after it was obvious that we'd left the church, and she agreed with me about the stress as well as the swing toward open authoritarianism (which we'd not noticed when we both joined the church, round about the same time).  We both agreed that we'd joined the church during a calm/honeymoon phase in the cycle of abuse.  We never contacted one another after that, and I felt awkward talking about the matter  -- my first experience telling anyone at the church what had happened to me and why I left.

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Hesitant to Reconcile? Steve Cornell on Forgiveness and Reconciliation

From Pastor Cornell's Moving from Forgiveness to Reconciliation

In this last post of this series exploring the differences between forgiveness and reconciliation and the pitfalls of treating them as the same thing, I would be remiss in not encouraging you to read Steve Cornell's post on the topic.

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How Betrayal Bonds Exploit Trust and Power: Merging Forgiveness and Reconciliation

One of the great mistakes that we can make, especially as Christians, involves the merging of forgiveness and reconciliation, something that puts individuals at risk in both one on one relationships and within spiritually abusive systems. Research indicates that many religious systems and clergymen tend to view the acts and processes as one and the same, whereas counselors generally view them as separate. Counselors tend to pay more attention to the pitfalls of forcing reconciliation because of the problems suffered by the offended as they deal directly with the fallout.

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The Problems of Merging Forgiveness and Reconciliation: Be Wary of Exploitation by Christian Mediation via Spiritual Abuse

Before jumping into the topic, let's review some of the ideas already established in this series of posts before moving on to the abuse of trust and power by Christian mediation services.

In Review

     Forgiveness and reconciliation differ from one another, a topic addressed in this previous post. Both forgiveness and repentance involve grieving, and both take time. Fast forgiveness can actually work against healing and restoration through denial, just as much as bitterness can.

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(Lousy) Alternatives to Forgiveness

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