Church Abuse Recovery... a basic roadmap for overcoming loss
Church Abuse Recovery…
A basic roadmap for overcoming loss.
Ever since I wrote the book, Broken Trust, I’ve been involved with a number of people who are trying to recover from their church abuse.
I usually coach individuals but recently I’ve been working with an entire church over a number of weeks, helping them to understand what happened to them and how to get their lives and their church back on track.
A Roadmap for Recovery
In one of my meetings I mapped out a road to recovery based on another book of mine called, Return from Exile.
If you are looking for a way to recover from an abusive church experience I thought you might like to hear the steps that I offered in my meeting. I’m just giving you the bullet points to point the way for you, without the Bible verses to back them up.
If you’d like more information I hope you’ll check out the books I mentioned or contact me through my website at readingremy.com
Here are eight steps that can help you to return from the “exile” of church abuse or any significant loss.
1. Invite God to walk with you.
This might seem obvious but sometimes church abuse causes people to run from God, not toward him. But God wants to join you in your healing process. So, it’s important to open your heart to him and invite him to guide you through your recovery.
2. Name the loss.
In my book, Return from Exile, I’ve given any significant loss in life the name of “exile”. Exile is when life throws you a curve ball and you end up in a place you never imagined you’d be.
Naming your loss as “exile” is helpful in visualizing loss and recovery.
But it’s also helpful to name the emotions found in exile (confusion, disorientation, disillusionment, anger, sadness, etc.). These are the same emotions you experience with any deep loss.
But these emotions often go unnamed. And that’s because we aren’t always in touch with our emotions. We tend to just drift from day to day in a funk, never addressing what’s wrong with us.
It’s important to name your loss (abuse, divorce, etc.) and what you’re feeling so you can bring those losses and emotions to God for clarity and to process them.
3. Grieve the loss.
Grief is more than an emotion. Grief is a process that takes time to work through the anger, denial, confusion, and depression until you can reach a place of acceptance and move on with your life.
Grief takes time. You can’t rush your way through it, It will often take longer than you imagined or what others expect from you. A broken heart doesn’t heal overnight so give yourself permission to grieve.
4. Learn from your loss.
I recently heard a saying that goes,
“If you have to walk through hell, make sure you take something from it.”
Meaning, learn from your troubles.
If you leave your exile without learning anything, that would be a terrible waste. So ask God:
What do you want me to learn here?
What is it about myself I need to learn?
What is it about others that I can learn?
What is it about you, God, that I need to learn?
5. Reframe your loss.
Reframing comes from the idea of framing a picture. Imagine a scene with a beautiful setting sun but with an approaching storm. You can frame the sunset or the storm. How you frame the picture tells the story.
Reframing well can help you to see things from God’s perspective rather than your human, and sometimes negative perspective.
6. Forgive your offender.
Church abuse involves a person, or people, offending you. They take control of your life for a moment and cause a loss in your life.
When that happens, it’s easy to think that anger and resentment toward them will win back your control and keep it from happening again. So, you refuse to forgive your offender unless they fulfill your demands and put things right.
But instead of taking back control, your resentment gives them more control over you. And that’s because as long as you think they owe you, you feel obligated to resent them. This only prolongs your time in exile.
What you really need is to be free from your offender. Forgiveness gives you this freedom. The author and theologian, Louis Smedes, once said:
“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you."
Forgiveness doesn’t excuse the offense. It simply frees you from the need to provide payback of any kind. It enables you to close the book on the past and give your full attention to the present moment and the future.
7. Expect to return from your loss.
There are many exiles in the Bible. It’s interesting to see that God always brings his people back from exile. He continually offers hope of a return and restoration.
If you want to return from the hurt of church abuse it’s important to believe that God has your back and is guiding you toward a full recovery.
8. Make a heroic choice
There are different paths that you can choose in exile. You can choose the path that I’ve laid out for you here. Or you can play the victim, always complaining and pointing the finger at whatever or whomever may have caused your exile.
But that won’t change anything. That will only keep you in exile.
Instead, you want to make a heroic choice…that is, you want to choose to live out a good story.
Author John Trent wrote:
“If we want our lives to tell strong and compelling stories in which the characters grow into people of blessing, then we - the characters - have to make choices. Choices that are sometimes difficult. Choices that are sometimes painful. Choices that are sometimes critical, where something important is at stake.” Choosing to Live the Blessing.
Take control of your life by choosing to move toward healing.
Next Steps
This is just a brief outline of my teaching but I hope it’s enough to point you in the right direction for your recovery.
Whether the cause of your exile is church abuse, a betrayal, the loss of a loved one, or any number of devastating events, this is a path that will bring healing.
If you’d like help walking through these steps you can find resources on my website at readingremy.com.
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You might also be interested in my YouTube page where I have a number of videos on spiritual abuse and a variety of topics related to faith.