I am in full body sob mode - for you, for your former congregation, for Cory's sleepless nights, for the only church your children have ever known, for the garden and the ashes and your worn out nervous system. I love you beyond measure.
I am sorry for all you and Emily have been through. Our family is going through something similar.
And I really love Emily and her books!
But I would have appreciated your story even more if it was not an advertisement for Emily's book. That's my personal opinion as a reader. It seems difficult these days to just read someone experience without being sold something else.
This is one of the resources (and one of the people) who helped me through a personal hellscape. And SO many others are going through similar things, as even you noted - I'm sorry you're going through it. Some writing projects make all the sense in the world - this was one of them. A clear connection and an opportunity to point hurting people in a hopeful direction.
(Also, I write weekly here and I also write on IG every week. 90%+ of that content is just my life, my thoughts, intentional work about the things I care about. 🩷)
I am the director of a center that works with child abuse victims and the compulsion to protect predators is astonishingly common. I am so sorry for your experience and the loss of your church family. You have been brilliantly brave on behalf of voiceless victims. Thank you. May grace abound in your life in the most unexpected ways.
I work for an organization focused on protecting children. Not within the organization, but I too have found that families & various institutions will often work to protect the predators rather than believe the children. It's heartbreaking on the very best of days.
Here to agree that the way your church went about things with this man was unacceptable. There is a right way to allow a person with a criminal past, even one in which it was a child victim to worship with you. In our church we have a couple that comes to celebrate recovery and our church. They approached our leadership before they ever began attending and explained that the husband had done prison time for soliciting a child. They answered all questions, told leadership what was being done to prevent further aberrant behavior (many many things) and they agreed to all limitations put on them. Which included not being in the building where we have Sunday school, only being there to worship with wife, etc. He has also been open about his story in the celebrate recovery ministry where many church members attend.
Just wanted to give you confirmation that there is a way to do this with grace and love toward the former offender while still loving and protecting the church body appropriately.
100% The UMC actually has a rigorous Safe Sanctuaries policy that sounds quite similar. But a policy that no one intends to follow is nothing more than performance. There IS a way, as you've said. It requires a lot of work and even more trust. When that is bypassed by any party, it seems almost impossible to move forward in health. Thank you so much for sharing. ❤️🩹
Thank you for this and for you. We have some unresolved things hooked in our very middles that happened (and required the Unspoken Rule of Silence - protect the brand like good little soldiers, ya know 😜) nearly *thirty* years ago. Just two days ago, someone from our life back then resurfaced and asked what happened, and I realized I have an opportunity to simply tell. the. truth. My knee jerk is still to "be gracious," (i. e. - don't tell the truth and instead say the nice and gracious things 🤮) HOWEVER, I'm done participating in coverup culture and it starts, for me, with getting okay with simply stating facts. It happened, it was so incredibly wrong and harmful. That's not gossip or "raising my hand against God's anointed" (🙄), it's truth-telling, and freedom and truth are directly linked. Thanks for blazing a trail, and sharing about it, because - as in so many other kinds of instances - you make me brave. 💗
YES!! Stating the facts is honorable and right. And (even when warranted) does not = judgment. We are conditioned to believe telling the truth is judging. What an absolute crock!
Thank you for drawing a line and standing up for the vulnerable. As tough as it must be, you’ve sent a profound message to your children and the church members who understand the truth. Praying for God to heal your wounds and for your story to encourage others.
I walked this as I exposed my (now ex-)husband to church leadership at our seemingly progressive and feminist mainline church. It still makes me sick. It’s like taking something beautiful and dredging it in slop and muck. Thank you for sharing and for doing the right thing.
I am so very sorry this has happened in your beloved church. Why does the church always choose to protect the reputation of a man over the safety of women and children? We were where you are about 10 years ago. An older, married man became obsessed with our family and particularly our 19 year old daughter. He started stalking our family, parking in front of our house and just sitting in his truck while my husband was at work, and saying inappropriate things to other men about our daughter. I went to our pastor and told him what was happening. I said, “I don’t know what to do.” He told me, you don’t need to do anything else, you’ve told me and that’s all you need to do.” We stopped going to church and didn’t hear from the pastor or anyone in leadership again. NO ONE reached out to us. We heard through a friend who had also contacted the pastor about the situation that he didn’t want this spreading around the church. About two weeks later, as this guy sat in front of our house at 9pm, our 21 year old son went out and confronted him. A terrible fight ensued. I called the wife and told her what was happening and that I was going to the police. She told me “this isn’t about your daughter”, and “I don’t want his reputation destroyed over this.” We went to the police the next day to file a report and heard through the grapevine that the guy was committed to a hospital for 6 weeks. As far as we know, the church never dealt with this. The pastor reached out to us a few years ago and we didn’t respond. The real irony is the wife is a marriage/ women’s counselor with a practice in the church and teaches the women’s Sunday School class. We haven’t been in a church since.
I am so sorry this happened to your family, and especially to your daughter. As an adult, I learned that the man my parents let me work for as a teen was a convicted sex offender for assaulting his own teen daughter. His wife was also a school counselor, taught women’s Bible classes at our church, and taught a lesson to the girls in our youth group about sexuality where she told us boys will be fine if they have sex but girls will carry it with them. My dad is the minister and this is one of many reasons we have a very distant relationship.
Unwritten codes are red flags. If you don’t want to be up front about it - don’t protest when someone questions your motives. Healing is coming for you and yours. There are more people than you can ever imagine going through this same situation. Your story needs telling!
It has continued because people have been bullied into keeping quiet- I’m SO encouraged by you (and many others) being unwilling to look the other way. Jesus will have no time for those who were appointed as shepherds and welcomed Satan himself into the church.
Shannan, I’m so sorry. My heart is heavy for you and with you. I’ll continue to pray for you and your family. He is holding you still.🩷
(“Wintering” by Katherine May is a lovely book you might enjoy in this season. I recently finished it and it was comforting to have someone put new words to difficult seasons.)
I had that thought when I opened it, so I guess I’m weird too, but trust me, the months don’t really have anything to do with when you read it. It will minister to the “season” of your soul.
I’m currently in the middle of Wintering, after just having walked out of a church that refuses to deal with its crisis. It’s a gift to be reading it with a group of others who have also left. Such a great recommendation.
OOOOoooo, I'm so sorry to hear this, Shannan. And it is so relatable-- I'm usually one to reluctantly pick the last (green) tomatoes in November and still set them on the windowsill to ripen. It's so hard to let go of a good thing, even when the good thing is over. We left our church recently too, not over the same issue, but a reluctance from leadership to address or take a stand on LGBTQIA+ rights, among many other issues. We just didn't feel at home there anymore. It hurt to leave, and we hurt many people by leaving, but it was the right thing to do. I hope your hearts heal and find peace and a new community, whatever that looks like. Thank you for sharing your story.
I’m so sorry for what your family has endured and is still enduring. May God continue to bring you peace and healing. Thank you for telling your story. It is important for you, your family, and no doubt others who need to hear it. It makes me so sad and having left a church community for similar reasons, I feel your disorientation, grief, and pain. I wish it wasn’t a familiar story. I just started reading Emily’s book and like you said, the timing of it is a gift! I’m grateful you have her friendship and wisdom. One thing is certain: we never walk alone. God is near. ❤️
I am so, so sorry. Leaving a church community is so hard and leaves one feeling positively bereft for a very long time. The words from your books have brought me comfort and joy. Hoping you find the same (as you did with Emily’s words) along this journey to find another room.
I see your pain and am praying you will find a safe faith community. We left our SBC and Acts 29 church (double whammy) after the Guidepost report came out in 2022. At the same time, our pastors were busy accusing a dear friend of mine of being prideful and power hungry (listen to Joy’s story on Bodies Behind the Bus podcast—I was there in real time. It’s all true.). I told my husband he could stay at the church if he wanted but I wasn’t going back. We left as a family but haven’t found a soft place to land. I was wondering if Emily’s book was right for me, and now it is confirmed. Ordering now.
We are rethinking the purpose/value/idea of faith communities and taking it all slowly. Sometimes being home on a Sunday is the softest place to land. ❤️🩹
I simply have a faith community carefully discerned and filtered. Any behavior that looks disordered or off, sets off my mommy alarm.i have a well-tuned BS alarm too. Plus, all workers are checked by VIRTUS which does a background check and everyone has training to spot an aberrent behavior.My kids r grown now, so....
My only issue. We've gone to far to the other side. I couldn't even hug the kids in my Sunday School class. Really?
I am in full body sob mode - for you, for your former congregation, for Cory's sleepless nights, for the only church your children have ever known, for the garden and the ashes and your worn out nervous system. I love you beyond measure.
Love you through every long night and new day. Thank you for leading us so well.
I am sorry for all you and Emily have been through. Our family is going through something similar.
And I really love Emily and her books!
But I would have appreciated your story even more if it was not an advertisement for Emily's book. That's my personal opinion as a reader. It seems difficult these days to just read someone experience without being sold something else.
This is one of the resources (and one of the people) who helped me through a personal hellscape. And SO many others are going through similar things, as even you noted - I'm sorry you're going through it. Some writing projects make all the sense in the world - this was one of them. A clear connection and an opportunity to point hurting people in a hopeful direction.
(Also, I write weekly here and I also write on IG every week. 90%+ of that content is just my life, my thoughts, intentional work about the things I care about. 🩷)
I am the director of a center that works with child abuse victims and the compulsion to protect predators is astonishingly common. I am so sorry for your experience and the loss of your church family. You have been brilliantly brave on behalf of voiceless victims. Thank you. May grace abound in your life in the most unexpected ways.
It is SO incomprehensible. Thank you for your good work, Deb.
I work for an organization focused on protecting children. Not within the organization, but I too have found that families & various institutions will often work to protect the predators rather than believe the children. It's heartbreaking on the very best of days.
Here to agree that the way your church went about things with this man was unacceptable. There is a right way to allow a person with a criminal past, even one in which it was a child victim to worship with you. In our church we have a couple that comes to celebrate recovery and our church. They approached our leadership before they ever began attending and explained that the husband had done prison time for soliciting a child. They answered all questions, told leadership what was being done to prevent further aberrant behavior (many many things) and they agreed to all limitations put on them. Which included not being in the building where we have Sunday school, only being there to worship with wife, etc. He has also been open about his story in the celebrate recovery ministry where many church members attend.
Just wanted to give you confirmation that there is a way to do this with grace and love toward the former offender while still loving and protecting the church body appropriately.
100% The UMC actually has a rigorous Safe Sanctuaries policy that sounds quite similar. But a policy that no one intends to follow is nothing more than performance. There IS a way, as you've said. It requires a lot of work and even more trust. When that is bypassed by any party, it seems almost impossible to move forward in health. Thank you so much for sharing. ❤️🩹
Thank you for this and for you. We have some unresolved things hooked in our very middles that happened (and required the Unspoken Rule of Silence - protect the brand like good little soldiers, ya know 😜) nearly *thirty* years ago. Just two days ago, someone from our life back then resurfaced and asked what happened, and I realized I have an opportunity to simply tell. the. truth. My knee jerk is still to "be gracious," (i. e. - don't tell the truth and instead say the nice and gracious things 🤮) HOWEVER, I'm done participating in coverup culture and it starts, for me, with getting okay with simply stating facts. It happened, it was so incredibly wrong and harmful. That's not gossip or "raising my hand against God's anointed" (🙄), it's truth-telling, and freedom and truth are directly linked. Thanks for blazing a trail, and sharing about it, because - as in so many other kinds of instances - you make me brave. 💗
YES!! Stating the facts is honorable and right. And (even when warranted) does not = judgment. We are conditioned to believe telling the truth is judging. What an absolute crock!
When necessary, raise hell. ♥️
Thank you for drawing a line and standing up for the vulnerable. As tough as it must be, you’ve sent a profound message to your children and the church members who understand the truth. Praying for God to heal your wounds and for your story to encourage others.
🩷❤️🩹
1. You are my favorite writer. You’re so good at giving words to all the things.
2. I’m so sorry. Church breakups are excruciating.
3. Every part of saying this is brave and good. So was waiting until you could hold the story well.
I can't tell you how many times over these months the constant gas-lighting disoriented me into silence. 💔 Thank you for your kindness.
This singular comment resonates with me so deeply. I'm proud of you - and terribly sorry, for all of it. ❤️🩹
I walked this as I exposed my (now ex-)husband to church leadership at our seemingly progressive and feminist mainline church. It still makes me sick. It’s like taking something beautiful and dredging it in slop and muck. Thank you for sharing and for doing the right thing.
Thank you, Anna. ❤️🩹🩷 We are not alone.
There’s no adequate words for the layers of betrayal in that statement. I’m so sorry.
I am so very sorry this has happened in your beloved church. Why does the church always choose to protect the reputation of a man over the safety of women and children? We were where you are about 10 years ago. An older, married man became obsessed with our family and particularly our 19 year old daughter. He started stalking our family, parking in front of our house and just sitting in his truck while my husband was at work, and saying inappropriate things to other men about our daughter. I went to our pastor and told him what was happening. I said, “I don’t know what to do.” He told me, you don’t need to do anything else, you’ve told me and that’s all you need to do.” We stopped going to church and didn’t hear from the pastor or anyone in leadership again. NO ONE reached out to us. We heard through a friend who had also contacted the pastor about the situation that he didn’t want this spreading around the church. About two weeks later, as this guy sat in front of our house at 9pm, our 21 year old son went out and confronted him. A terrible fight ensued. I called the wife and told her what was happening and that I was going to the police. She told me “this isn’t about your daughter”, and “I don’t want his reputation destroyed over this.” We went to the police the next day to file a report and heard through the grapevine that the guy was committed to a hospital for 6 weeks. As far as we know, the church never dealt with this. The pastor reached out to us a few years ago and we didn’t respond. The real irony is the wife is a marriage/ women’s counselor with a practice in the church and teaches the women’s Sunday School class. We haven’t been in a church since.
This is horrifying and I'm so sorry. Thank God your family is safe. It should never be this way!
This is awful! And sadly, there are so many stories like this. 💔 Your family deserved better. I am so sorry.
I am so sorry this happened to your family, and especially to your daughter. As an adult, I learned that the man my parents let me work for as a teen was a convicted sex offender for assaulting his own teen daughter. His wife was also a school counselor, taught women’s Bible classes at our church, and taught a lesson to the girls in our youth group about sexuality where she told us boys will be fine if they have sex but girls will carry it with them. My dad is the minister and this is one of many reasons we have a very distant relationship.
I am so sorry this happened to you AND, as a lifelong United Methodist I am shocked that the church would protect a sexual predator. How naive of me.
I don't know why I was surprised too, but I sure was.
Unwritten codes are red flags. If you don’t want to be up front about it - don’t protest when someone questions your motives. Healing is coming for you and yours. There are more people than you can ever imagine going through this same situation. Your story needs telling!
That's my main motivation, knowing this has happened in so many places and will continue to happen. 💔
It has continued because people have been bullied into keeping quiet- I’m SO encouraged by you (and many others) being unwilling to look the other way. Jesus will have no time for those who were appointed as shepherds and welcomed Satan himself into the church.
Shannan, I’m so sorry. My heart is heavy for you and with you. I’ll continue to pray for you and your family. He is holding you still.🩷
(“Wintering” by Katherine May is a lovely book you might enjoy in this season. I recently finished it and it was comforting to have someone put new words to difficult seasons.)
It's on my list but I am a weirdo and cannot begin it until September, when the book begins. 😄🥰 Thank you!
I had that thought when I opened it, so I guess I’m weird too, but trust me, the months don’t really have anything to do with when you read it. It will minister to the “season” of your soul.
Not weird! Completely normal! I also loved wintering and I think it would be a great book for you to read *next* winter.
I’m currently in the middle of Wintering, after just having walked out of a church that refuses to deal with its crisis. It’s a gift to be reading it with a group of others who have also left. Such a great recommendation.
OOOOoooo, I'm so sorry to hear this, Shannan. And it is so relatable-- I'm usually one to reluctantly pick the last (green) tomatoes in November and still set them on the windowsill to ripen. It's so hard to let go of a good thing, even when the good thing is over. We left our church recently too, not over the same issue, but a reluctance from leadership to address or take a stand on LGBTQIA+ rights, among many other issues. We just didn't feel at home there anymore. It hurt to leave, and we hurt many people by leaving, but it was the right thing to do. I hope your hearts heal and find peace and a new community, whatever that looks like. Thank you for sharing your story.
I am proud of your courage and resolve. And you will find Emily's book especially helpful. ❤️🩹
It's unconscionable that church leadership would act this way especially in light of all the abuse that's come to light in recent years.
It is truly impossible to reconcile. That's why, for so long, I believed there was hope. 💔
I’m so sorry for what your family has endured and is still enduring. May God continue to bring you peace and healing. Thank you for telling your story. It is important for you, your family, and no doubt others who need to hear it. It makes me so sad and having left a church community for similar reasons, I feel your disorientation, grief, and pain. I wish it wasn’t a familiar story. I just started reading Emily’s book and like you said, the timing of it is a gift! I’m grateful you have her friendship and wisdom. One thing is certain: we never walk alone. God is near. ❤️
We never walk alone. ❤️🩹
I am so, so sorry. Leaving a church community is so hard and leaves one feeling positively bereft for a very long time. The words from your books have brought me comfort and joy. Hoping you find the same (as you did with Emily’s words) along this journey to find another room.
I see your pain and am praying you will find a safe faith community. We left our SBC and Acts 29 church (double whammy) after the Guidepost report came out in 2022. At the same time, our pastors were busy accusing a dear friend of mine of being prideful and power hungry (listen to Joy’s story on Bodies Behind the Bus podcast—I was there in real time. It’s all true.). I told my husband he could stay at the church if he wanted but I wasn’t going back. We left as a family but haven’t found a soft place to land. I was wondering if Emily’s book was right for me, and now it is confirmed. Ordering now.
We are rethinking the purpose/value/idea of faith communities and taking it all slowly. Sometimes being home on a Sunday is the softest place to land. ❤️🩹
I am fond of saying "sometimes Jesus wants you to go to brunch" ♥️
You are absolutely right. Right now our faith community is friends all over the country who text, email us, and call us. 🩷
I simply have a faith community carefully discerned and filtered. Any behavior that looks disordered or off, sets off my mommy alarm.i have a well-tuned BS alarm too. Plus, all workers are checked by VIRTUS which does a background check and everyone has training to spot an aberrent behavior.My kids r grown now, so....
My only issue. We've gone to far to the other side. I couldn't even hug the kids in my Sunday School class. Really?