Part (2) A little about recovery:
As we were emerging from a decade and a half or so of ever-increasingly weird and legalistic Christianity, there were several things I found that helped to restore some balance. These things were music (with or without lyrics), lyrics (with or without music), the visual arts, my husband and kids, and nature. Many of us who have been deeply involved in a spiritually abusive setting find that we eventually allow the cult's group-think to take over for us. We leave behind many soul-enriching things in our "before" life. We are encouraged to do that. We are encouraged to have our children do that. The arts are viewed with suspicion. They are seen as too worldly, as an area that can drag us down, drag us back to our former lives. Going back to some of the things we'd enjoyed before we submitted to the group-think can bring healing and restoration.
For my dh, immersing himself in music that he loved, music that had been looked down upon, music that moved him, music that healed him. Music helped and is continuing to help me. I received a lot of healing from the written word also. No Bible reading for a long time. That may sound odd to some of you who treasure your Bibles but I really had to put it aside. The Bible had become a book of hard rules and regulations to me. When I opened it, it said to me, " You're not good enough, you must perform more to even begin to touch the heart of God." Sometimes I heard the voices of our harshest teachers and leaders in it's pages, calling me on the carpet for all of my failures. I had to set it aside. I went back to the writings that I had loved before all of this and started in reading and rereading. Poetry, fiction and non, beautiful works and silly. The serious and the just plain fun. I've lately found some healing in writing.
During my time in the legalistic church environment I was talked into burning 15 years worth of writings. Yes, burning, like in a fireplace. They called it giving the works over to God. Dedicating...like in the OT. If you remember the record album burnings of the 1970s -- it was along these lines. My spiritual leaders decided that in rededicating my life to God I needed to get rid of all remnants of the "old life." I think that my involvement with occultic studies and paganism, Wicca and new age thinking was, in their minds, enough to make all of my writings (and they were voluminous :-) ) suspect. It didn't help my poor journals and pages of poetry that so many of them had been borne out of a life of drug use and the LA rock'n'roll scene, either. They had to go. A few pieces of artwork were immolated too. I was told that such writings and art could be a focal point for demonic activity, could cause a flood of dark forces to enter my new life. Most frightening of all, I was informed of ways that hanging on to these writings could hurt my children and negatively impact my husband. I was given chapter and verse and I hesitantly bought it. Acts 19:19 was invoked, along with numerous passages about sorcery and witchcraft in Deuteronomy and other places in the Old Testament. Once the notebooks went up in smoke it was too late to reconsider. This was a painful thing for me and I really chose to not look at it for almost 15 years. I decided to forget that I ever was a word-loving person. Within the church I spoke to no one about my love of words, reading them or writing them. Only my husband knew. And he was grieved, he didn't really understand why I'd allowed my work to be burned. Today I am beginning to write a little. It's been hard to face what I did with my work, and I've had to face it nearly every time I sit down to write. Sometimes it's been almost enough to stop me in my tracks. When I first walked away, I swore I'd never write again. It was just too painful realizing that I'd allowed myself to be talked into this kind of destruction. Poetry, a certain work in progress, journals, all up in smoke...Only recently have I begun to think that I might be able to pick up the pieces in this area. This has been a huge personal struggle I've faced in coming out of a restrictive church.
I've thought a lot about how a supposedly intelligent person could be persuaded to destroy something like I did, I don't have a lot of answers, but I do have a few. Part of it has to do with my being raised with abuse and disregard hence no good sense of boundaries, part has to do with the a marriage on the brink and me being very vulnerable at that time. I was told that the children and I would be attacked by demonic forces if I didn't get rid of the books, drawings, writings, etc. At that point my husband was still drinking and using and it was indicated that if I wasn't 100% in submission to God that I might hinder his progress toward the Lord and toward sobriety. I was told a lot of things. They used the scriptures for every bit of it. There was a flaw in my liberal church upbringing -- we weren't told that there might be parts of the Bible that could be viewed very literally, so when I came into contact with conservative fundamentalists for the first time (co-inciding with a very serious desire to cement a relationship with the God of my youth after a long trek away from Him) I fell for it all, hook line and sinker.
And some my entrapment has to do with my own personality and the way that a lot of controlling people view an easygoing sort like me -- LUNCH!!! I'm not as tasty a morsel anymore, believe me...
As our family walked away, we began to see the road that lay ahead of us, and decided that we needed some help navigating it. My husband and I began going to counseling with a psychologist we knew. We knew his reputation and that he was knowledgeable about cults and abusive religious systems. He was not a Christian but he was utterly respectful of our faith. He was a godsend. He helped us understand what we'd gotten ourselves into and he helped us understand some of the reasons why. He helped us understand what our children were going through. Meeting and talking with him gave us the confidence that there was a way out and that it was good.
Recovery from spiritual abuse and cultic thinking is like recovery from a lot of damaging things in life. It's hard to do it alone and there are many things that are helpful along the way.
Copyright 1999 Kathy Ward