At some point in my journey, I forgot that church leaders are flawed humans too. I have a tendency to overly respect authority for the sake of their position. I assumed, being a pastor meant that there is some how a higher spiritual connection.
Consequently, I would turn off my own discernment in favor for whatever I was being instructed to do by our church leader. The person I have grown to distrust the most and the person I betrayed the most was myself.
Examples:
Early in our journey, we had a small group. For the most part, I LOVED small group nights. Until we had a change of seasons. I had just had my third baby. We were living in a rental property while renovating another home ourselves. I was working on leading our developing children's ministry and feeling over my head. Ian worked afternoons so either small group would take one of only two family nights or would be when he was working, leaving me to attend alone most of the time. Our small group had roughly 10-15 small children 9 and under, usually unattended. One small group I had finally had enough. Our rental sustained actual damage from unattended children doing pull ups on a closet rod. We stayed up late remaking our children's once made beds, that were now stripped down to bare mattresses. We bagged up three trash bags of now broken toys. Among many other issues we discovered. I then communicated, in frustration that we needed a break from small group. The factors kept piling up. Eventually the church leader indicated that not being in small group was not an option as a leader/members in the church plant and it was actually clear to him that I was clearly in sin and needed to repent in front of my entire small group for allowing myself to get so frustrated and not being honest with them about our struggles. My leadership position meant a lot to me. And I felt that there was some truth in what he said. So that next small group, without my husband at my side (he was at work), I tearfully asked for forgiveness from my small group for not being honest with them about my needs. Head down, I continued to drudge through small group.
In another situation, I was consistently struggling in a relationship with a fellow leader at the church plant. Not shockingly, I was a mom of a newborn with untreated PP. Ignorant to ministry with no real experience. Over stretched. When this relationship continued to cause me distress (and I continued to ignore red flags, shouldering unearned blame), I was instructed to double down and keep trying harder. I tearfully explained that I was expected to work harder on this relationship than I am even capable of giving to my own marriage. But I pushed it down, and complied. I complied to the point that our relationship was managed by an outside third party on two separate occasions.
There is so much more, but I am story building a pattern here.
So finally, today I unlocked a core memory.
The feet washing.
The church leader scheduled a meeting with 4 of us families that has been through a lot of conflict. For clarity, 3 of us had conflict with 1 family. Not 4 families in conflict with one another. Coming out of the conflict resolution, I had made some effort to make amends with the family. But it often fell flat or fell short. On the same token, I had this sense that I was shouldering the responsibility for all of it. The squeaky wheel. The mean girl. And in-spite of all of my efforts, it still wasn't enough. I resented being called into another meeting. So. Much. Time. And. So. Much. Energy. spent in attempting to resolve the same dynamic. And here I was. Getting another baby sitter. To sit in another meeting. Investing more time and energy that I didn't have.
What was it going to be this time.
After a hyper-spiritualize spiel, and a scripture reading, I realized what was going to go down today…
The pastor and his wife were going to wash our feet.
Everything in me wanted to yell. Cry. Scream. Run. But my body went into freeze mode. I was frozen. If I blinked. If I said no. If I said when, I wouldn't be Christian or pious enough. I would be bad. I would be the problem.
So I sat there frozen and let it happen.
Let me be clear, I am not opposed to humbling myself and having my feet washed. But in that moment, the gesture seemed to gloss over deep rooted issues we were continuing to ignore. I wanted us all to lay it out there. To be honest about our hearts. And then maybe we would wash feet.
But instead, I sat there, broken hearted. Frozen. Never saying when.
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