The Stuck Spots of Spiritual Trauma: Stuck Spot #2-CHURCH!

If you ever have or still do attend a church, why do you do it? Is it a practice that brings you closer to God? A ritual you feel obligated to do based on some understanding of Scripture? A chance to connect with fellow believers and socialize with friends?

Now, here’s an even more telling question: do you like going to church?

I’m going to type it in small letters so the pastors of my church don’t hear: ^{_{I don’t really like going to church}}. Well, I like the people who comprise the church, and sometimes I like the coffee at church, and various churches have produced some of the best friends of my life. What I mean is that I have never truly enjoyed the structure of Sunday morning (or Saturday night, take your pick) church services. And I’ve experienced this phenomenon my entire life at a variety of types of churches! Church of Christ, Vineyard Church, Calvary Chapel, Calvary Network, Fellowship of This, Community of That, Southeast, Northwest, Supercalifragi….Oh, wait. 

You know that anticipation you feel when you can’t wait for something? Friday night pizza and movie, sleeping in on a Saturday, a beautiful hike—you sort of count down the days, hours, and minutes until you get to exhale a sigh of contentment because you’re doing that thing you just love. I can’t say I’ve sighed that sigh for Sunday morning church. 

I really don’t mean this as a derogatory slam to the structure of Sunday mornings. I don’t know how else we could have any weekly get-together involving hundreds of people without structure. Many people work hard to set up Sunday mornings so everybody else can enjoy worshiping together. And I appreciate that. 

But it is freeing to be able to admit that it sometimes takes a lot for me to sit silently, receiving the one-way conversations of songs, prayers, and sermons. I want to insert my thoughts, feelings, agreements, disagreements, and musings. But that would be super awkward to do on Sunday mornings at most churches. It’s relieving to admit that the lobby small talk before and after service generates anxiety and a desire to make a beeline for the exit. It’s a release to confess that I don’t like donuts and don’t make deep connections on Sunday mornings. Yes, I said it. I don’t like donuts.

I doubt I admitted my lack of enthusiasm for Sunday mornings to anyone in earlier seasons of life. I imagined I dragged my feet to church through much of elementary and middle school. But that’s fairly normal. I liked going a little better once I had friends in youth group, but, again, it wasn’t the church service itself I enjoyed. It was all the hanging out OUTSIDE of Sunday morning church service that was so fun with my youth group friends. 

As a college student and young adult, I dutifully attended church. The best part of church for me before losing Elliot was the music. Though later, I didn’t love the rigidity of requiring acapella singing as a stringent rule in the church I grew up in, the actual beauty of four-part harmony is hard to beat. I wish more churches would try it. I remember that during my college years at Harding, sometimes scheduled and sometimes unscheduled, large or small groups of us college kids sat on the floor of the McIntyre Rotunda and sang song after song in harmony. We all knew all the words and all the parts. We didn’t need lyrics, instruments, or even a plan. I dare the fanciest mega-church with the biggest band to rival the simple, sweet sounds of those Arkansas nights. 

Music was fine at churches I frequented after leaving college. I found new freedom at these other churches to close my eyes and raise my hands, and sometimes, the loudness of the instruments allowed me to be a little more in my own world with Jesus. This was worship with an abandon I was not used to. 

But if church was already a difficult ritual before losing Elliot, after losing him, it felt like a farce. As I said previously in my previous blog about hearing God’s voice, all the certainties that made sense to me before the death of my little boy in regard to anything related to church, the Bible, or God made no sense to me. I actually felt the very worst with God when I was inside a church or even in a Bible study. Panic began rising up in me at about 3 pm on Saturdays, and I slept fitfully on Saturday nights. By Sunday mornings, I was in near anxiety attack mode. We forced ourselves to attend church every other week so our children wouldn’t lose out on the experience. But for my husband and me, it was the absolute lowest, most triggering point in the week.

In my memoir, I unraveled a little of why I think that probably occurred. Some of the theologies that are present in mainstream evangelical thought were quite triggering to what I had just lived through. Someone saying, “I’m praying for you,” could even rip my insides apart. I would feel the betrayal again of being in the moment and praying for my child: praying and knowing that God would hear and act for my child, only for my prayers to be as if I was simply talking to the stars. 

Listening to sermons that boiled down the major truths of existence into a 30-minute talk always left me shaking my head. Even if they were very good, and they probably were very good! However, the challenge with Christian culture’s church structure is that it is centered on a talk by one individual, even in a room with hundreds or thousands of individuals. We are missing out on so many more conversations that could bring life and healing. And each of us who sit passively listening, unless we are very brave and bold to share our hearts with someone after service, may swallow a pill of phrases, conclusions, or theology we wrestle with. Many times I wanted to stand up in service and say, “But what about ____?!?!” But of course, we churchgoers appreciate social norms, and we don’t do that sort of thing. And then we’re left to wrestle alone. 

And very sadly, music became a grating on my soul after Elliot’s death. Because singing has always connected me with God, trying to sing to the God who was experientially the perpetrator of my pain made my throat close up. Most Sundays, it still does. I sit in my chair. I don’t stand because I am not able to pretend I am up and lively with the melody. I am in a sacred space with Jesus where I’m trying not to let the cracks inside undo me in front of a sanctuary full of people. Many song lyrics are so triggering. Why do we have to sing that song It’s your breath, in our lungs when my son’s lungs failed him, and he died unable to breathe? Why do we have to sing the song we played at Elliot’s funeral? Why do so many contemporary Christian songs lack the depth of wrestling? 

The stuck spot trying to engage with church, Bible studies, a Christian community, and music is that the spiritual trauma did not just cause me to doubt hearing God’s voice; it caused me to doubt all that I thought I knew about everything we have built up in this term Christianity. As I said in my introductory blog to this series, it was never realistic for me to truly consider leaving some sort of faith in God. God is the only explanation for the existence of the universe, for the existence of us. There was never really even a possibility of my rejecting Jesus Christ. There is also too much evidence and too much that reflects who our creator must be in Jesus to have thrown out Jesus and somehow kept God.

My stuck spot comes to light in questions like:  What the heck have we been doing for the past 2,000 years? What is this church thing we’ve created? Why does each church claim to have the correct understanding of the Bible, and yet the varied churches all seem to have different interpretations of the Bible? Not everyone could be right, obviously.

Elliot’s death was the catalyst for the skeptic and cynic in me to question everything in the religious structuring of Christianity. I recently read a book about the history of Christianity from Pentecost up until the rise of Islam. Do you know how quickly various sects of Christianity started splintering after Jesus died? Within a century, there were debates and groups and excommunications from one group by another, and within a couple more centuries, there were leaders in one city disavowing leaders in other cities. There were those who thought you had to be celibate to be holy and those who said only if you were married, you were holy. There were those who escaped to the desert into monastic life, and there were those who said to do anything outside of the Orthodox Church was heresy.

We tend to think those sorts of debates began with Martin Luther and the Reformation a few hundred years ago. But these schisms have been in existence since the time of Jesus and before. In any sphere where humans are trying to somehow contain the supernatural into a document or a list of practices, ego and division seem to follow.

But here is the blessing that has come from the curse and the space in which unity in Christ remains. My spiritual trauma causes me to gaze at the history behind us, the variety around us, and the potential splinters of thought ahead of us, and I simply grasp onto Jesus. In all the hustle and bustle of theologies argued for and repeated reformations of groups and individuals, Christ is the unifying factor. In the monastery. In the megachurch. In the home worship. In the seminary. In the quiet prayer of a struggling addict. In the overwhelmed sighs of a stay-at-home mom. Jesus doesn’t seem to let us go or give up on us, no matter how messy our attempts to be “unified” through the centuries have become. How interesting.

It is a stuck spot. I just can’t believe anymore that we humans have somehow unlocked the unfathomable. That’s not to say there is no truth to be gleaned from the Bible or that we will always be in disagreement about various trains of thought.

I actually think it’s probably divinely designed that the Bible left so many holes for us to fill in the gaps with our own understanding. I honestly think it is to cause us to wrestle with God and with one another and to somehow still hold onto faith, still hold onto love, still hold onto grace and mercy, even when we really cannot agree on the nature of the atonement or the arrangement of chairs in the sanctuary.

What if the whole point of church is more to get us to wrestle than to rest?

I can go to church now that so much time has passed and that I have found a place that is usually emotionally safe for me. I’ve even started helping with the kids’ ministry, and that has brought me joy. But I no longer go to church with the assumption that church leadership is supposed to know and serve me somehow. I don’t go to get filled up by the music, which still could be the biggest trigger for me because it’s so closely linked with the faith that I lost. I enjoy it when there are interesting insights to ponder in a sermon, but I don’t even expect a sermon to have any certain effect on me.

The truth is I still go because other people who love Jesus still go. The structure is not how I would design it, but no one asked me. I wouldn’t know what to do differently if they did. I know I can be around others in whom Christ shines, and I can still struggle with the rest of it. Being triggered doesn’t mean I’m broken or that it’s wrong to be there; the triggers persist because spiritual trauma leaves tender wounds. 

But no one is more gentle with those wounds than Jesus. In safe churches, we can all bring our woundedness and share in Jesus’ gentle healing together. That’s the best part of church; it’s ultimately messy enough for me to realize my own mess is not abnormal. In fact, the mess inside me is exactly what makes me belong there. 

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In the form below, I would love to hear about your experiences. A message you leave in this form is private and will only be seen by me; it is not public or visible anywhere else. Please note that I may use your words in other articles and/or books, with a pseudonym. By commenting, you are granting permission for such usage. I may also contact you to ask follow-up questions.

Questions: What about you? What has church meant to you throughout your faith journey? When has it been a comfort? When has it been a trigger? Have you been hurt by the structure of the church? If so, how have you found healing? If not, what do you need in order to feel safe again?

Also, feel free to share anything else about your journey.