The Idea of Grieving

More E-mail: (No, we have not abandoned posting, but we wanted to get more of these e-mails we keep getting up onto the site.)

As a kid who grew up at LFF, I am very well acquainted with the pain, hurt and anger that my past brings up. All of us visiting this site and expressing our emotions and feelings are at different levels of healing. Most of us have moved away or cut ourselves off from LFF. Like many of you I moved away from Pullman, but because I still have ties to Pullman and LFF through family, I find myself returning there once in a while. I often re-live those feelings and emotions the minute I set foot in Pullman and especially so when I walk through the doors of the church. Images flash through my mind and I can hear conversations that make my insides want to curl up and die.

I remember being back there at Easter one year and I had geared myself up to be strong. I had been gone a while and I thought I had dealt with my personal issues with LFF. I was choosing to forgive and move on with my life. They were not going to drag me down any longer. I marched right through those doors and I swear, everyone who caused me the most pain and hurt that was still attending that church managed to run into me and greet me like I was some long lost friend. It took everything within me to plaster a smile on my face and respond to them civilly. I was angry, so angry. Why did it take me going away from LFF for these people to realize I even existed? How could they possibly greet me so warmly when they had completely ignored me in the past and through many things inadvertently made my life a living hell…not to mention the times they actually DID made my life a living hell?

The feeling and emotions hit my defense wall like a giant wrecking ball. I felt defeated…they had gotten the best of me…again. I felt hopeless and wondered if I would I ever be able to put this behind me. Later as I was contemplating the feelings and emotions this situation evoked, I came to this revelation. It is the concept of the Grieving Process.

All of us ex-LFFers have lost something because of our exposure to LFF. For some of us that might be innocence, our values and beliefs and trust in people especially leadership of any kind. Maybe we have lost faith, hope, and the ability to forgive. It may be that we have lost relationship with our families or even in some cases we have lost our own children. This loss, once realized can lead to gut wrenching waves of grief.

This outline is simply to help you identify or give a name to what you may be going through if you find that helpful. You may have seen it before but I expounded on each point as it relates to LFF.

The process goes like this.

Denial and Shock:

Do you remember when you first became aware of what was really going on around LFF? For me it was a gradual process but when you grow up in something like this you don’t necessarily know anything different until you are outside the walls.

Anger:

Need I say more…We are all angry. Angry at the pastor that told us we were in sin for a myriad of things like having boy/girl relationships in high school...you fill in the blank. Or the pastor that screamed at me for not asking her how to turn on her vacuum cleaner before I even got the cord off the unit while I was her servant (slave) minister. Angry at those pastor kids, who thought like their parents, they could thumb us into submission. Being yelled at for other people's "sins." Anger toward people who refused to hear us out and jumping on us for our sins when we dared ask for help. Angry that we were forced to suppress our feeling and not being allowed to stand up for ourselves. Living in fear of going to school because we never knew which pastor was going to jump out of the blue carpet and yell at us. The list goes on and on and on.

Bargaining:

This means you make deals with God in return for favors, healing, etc.

Guilt:

You may find yourself feeling guilty for things you did or didn’t do. I think that regret easily fits into this step as well. Here you have to learn to forgive yourself. We are human and in many cases, we weren’t able to see what was really happening in this particular situation.

Depression:

I think all of us have been through varying degrees of this step. Simply put, it doesn’t feel good to be used and abused. The efforts of trying to forgive and move on are difficult, especially like in my case when I thought I had conquered it or at least gotten a grip on it.

Loneliness:

As you go through changes in your social life because of leaving LFF it’s natural to feel lonely and afraid. I personally have found that as I have taken tiny steps forward, God has brought people into my life that I have been able to befriend and the feeling of loneliness doesn’t come up as much. Don’t get me wrong, it is hard to make friends and restore bridges of relationship we have burned because LFF told us to. But don’t lose heart it will happen in time. I refer you to Twisted Scriptures at this point. It has some good advice to moving on after getting out.

Acceptance:

Here I stress: ACCEPTANCE DOES NOT MEAN HAPPINESS OR FORGIVING AND FORGETTING! It simply means you accept the reality that this happened to you. It was a part of your past and it was painful, but it is behind you and you can move on if can accept that fact.

Hope:

Eventually, as you reach this point, you will find memories and the things that trigger strong emotional responses will be less frequent and less painful. Realistically, the scars are there and they are not going to go away. But like in the acceptance stage, you will able to see past them. You might even be able to remember some good times because I bet every one of us has at least one good thing or relationship that evolved during our time at LFF. You are not alone and we can help each other.

Sometimes I feel I have gone through this process for each individual painful memory or thought from my past. With some of them I am still far away from resolution. It’s going to take time. Some days are better than others are. But when I allow myself to go through this grieving process for the things I have lost, I know it’s okay to feel and to allow time for forgiveness to bring healing. I have had success in dealing with some issues as I have worked through this process so I know there is hope to be found here.

Don’t be afraid to grieve because it is how healing takes place. We have all lost things that are important to us and it has been very painful, but God will bring healing for us by His grace and love if we let Him. Just be patient. Give yourself time to go through the process and let the healing take place. We can find support in God and each other as we grieve our losses and find the hope for tomorrow.