Dear Church,
I think it's finally time to let go. I've been struggling with this for some time and I honestly thought that you hadn't hurt me that much. That I could just let it go without any processing and before I just didn't have the time to think about it. I had four young kids to take care of, five college classes to pass and one very hurt and depressed husband that mattered more to me than you did at the time.
But as time has passed, Andy has healed, thank God, I passed my classes with three A's and two B's and we've left the place that we came to love so much I started to realize that maybe I'm not over it. Maybe I haven't even begun to process it and now as I've come out of the fog to find myself in a different state both literally and mentally I think I'm ready to let it out and let it go.
Since the leaders in our church didn't care much to hear our side of the story or to think of us much at all I have decided it's something I need to do on my own whether you want to hear it or not. My husband has shared his side of the story and while we are one his story is not the same as mine. So church, I just wanted to let you know, you hurt me. When my family needed your support and love more than ever you turned your backs on us. When my husband was so physically injured that he could not walk and his mind was turning on him you shrugged your shoulders, not your problem. When I told you he stumbled and fell and couldn't make it down the stairs your first thoughts were not of prayer or concern but, "So is he working today?"
If I said this began and ended with Kevin that would be a lie, we put our hearts and souls into building up our church in every way possible. We literally lived and breathed that old busted down, leaking ceiling, broken toilet, fuse popping place. I was, mostly, proud to call it both home and my church. But as time passed we began to feel more used, our job situation made us feel more like indentured servants than respected vital parts of the operation. We were expected to take care of all aspects of the building, fix broken things with our own finances, which weren't much, and do it all while being mentally abused by members of the church. While nothing was good enough for you it was all we could do. We strived to make the church building a place of trust and love for those that came in, our own friends that had been deeply hurt by the church and Christians, began to let their children be present in a place they didn't trust but because of the love and acceptance we gave to everyone who came to the building and a slow healing began to take place.
As time went on, yes, we felt worn out. Perhaps that you wouldn't be able to do it without us, and that's where we were very wrong. As the church grew to accept a new priest, another leader for our parish of about ten, his vision was distinct. To help the homeless and needy of Oahu, especially veterans, and we were behind him. We had an empty room on the second floor of our third floor building that we converted into a temporary homeless shelter. And by converted I mean that my family provided all our own bedding, furnishings and food. I cooked three meals a day for whichever homeless or needy person was there at the time. We washed their clothes, we gave them shelter, compassion and love. We felt it was our purpose to show God's love in the same way we felt it. We took in people that stole from us, that cursed and threatened us but still we took it in stride, we were not perfect people and we didn't expect perfection from anyone else. Towards the end of our time at the church we took in a young veteran named Kevin. Kevin was charismatic, he was also an ex-addict with a lot of mental issues. But like always, we trusted, we allowed him in our home to shower, he ate dinner at our table with our children and he spent Christmas day with our family. We felt that everyone deserved to be loved and accepted and who are we to judge another person's sins.
Kevin became a large part of our family life, someone we saw everyday, that we included in our BBQs with friends and movie nights in our home. He was so grateful for our family and all we had done for him he gave us small amounts of money on occasion to help with the cost of food, etc. That's when things went wrong.
Kevin found out I had been smoking weed, we are as transparent as we can be about most things in our lives and I have never been ashamed of this. While I understand where this could be seen as wrong as an active member of my community, a loving Mother and a hard-worker, weed for me is medicine. A God-given medicine at that, it calms my anxiety and helps me not be overwhelmed. I have always and probably will always be a smoker, I don't really drink, I curse like a sailor and I am staunchly pro-life. I am not a perfect person but I have always believed that God cares less for the rules of man and more for the way men, or women, show themselves. This apparently was not ok with Kevin and he became increasingly angry with us and stopped eating dinner with our family and talking to us all together. We were sincerely confused, we didn't know where we had gone wrong but we also knew Kevin had extreme PTSD, or post traumatic stress disorder, from his time in the military and chalked it up to that. As time went on he became more aggressive, as he lived in the same building as us he would stare us down and with young children both in our home and in the apartment next to ours we began to be concerned.
We knew at this point that our church did not care about us so we began to become more and more concerned about the situation. Andy had also hurt himself in the beginning of the year and his health was slowly deteriorating. He went from being a fully healthy man to crutches and then eventually a wheelchair, by the end of our ordeal with the church he could no longer stand on his own. In addition to the stressful home situation we also had trouble trying to establish insurance with the state and his only solace was the emergency room that would just give pain killers and send him home. As this went on the church called Andy in for a meeting, at this point I had stopped attending church with my children as our church community was a hostile, unloving place. Families would scream at each other from the front row pews and the elders would constantly scold the kids if they were not silent. It was not a loving place, I did not feel God's presence and every time one of our friend's would come visit I was so ashamed by the way they and their children were treated. That's not to say there was never love in our church or even that there was none by the time we left but our church was not a community, it was a place for legalism and name calling.
As Andy entered the meeting he was approached by both of our priests, our deacon, and Kevin. He sat, in pain, for over an hour while they berated him, told him he was entitled and wrong. The icing on the cake was when Kevin accused us of stealing funds from the church, the money he had given us for food etc. was now meant for the church and how could we have done this? Andy called me after the meeting panicking and scared. The church had demanded we pay Kevin back the "thousands" or dollars he had given us without any documentation or proof. During this meeting Kevin told all of the elders of our church that he, "Hated Andy so much that I try not to see him because I want to throw him down the stairs." After I had heard this exchange I was blown away. How could our church so willingly trust someone they had known less than two months when we had given so much of ourselves for almost a decade? When I called our priest to ask him why this would be allowed his response was, "He didn't say he really would do it, just that he wants to." Needless to say this didn't comfort me and we quit our job that day. Doing so was not an easy decision, everything we had was wrapped up in our church. Our home, our only source of income, everything. But anyone being threatened in their own home will understand our urgency, we no longer felt safe. Kevin had already threatened Andy and we were now locked in a building with him with our four young children and my husband injured enough that he could not protect himself or us. The next few months were a blur of pain and suffering that we are still trying to wade through. Andy got worse before he got better, depression set in for both us. In the span of a week I, and our dear friends, packed our home as fast as we could. Selling what we could but eventually letting go of almost all our earthly possessions. I found myself crying as I went through our stuff knowing we could bring little to none of it. While I know these things Fleeing our home in the middle of the night I couldn't help but think of all we had lost.
Thus began our time of moving from house to house, I honestly have never been under as much stress in my life. Juggling school with kids and a husband that could no longer care for them I wanted to give up many many times. When I sat down to begin this letter I didn't really mean it as a re-hashing of events but am realizing this is what I need to move on....
So, former church, I just wanted to let you know you hurt me, you hurt us. God tells his followers that there will be pain and suffering I just didn't realize that it would come from within. It hurt that my family could have been one of the homeless that you were trying so desperately to help, that without the grace and love of our friends we would have been on the streets and our church wouldn't have cared. We left our home and church in the beginning of March and stayed on island until I could finish my finals a week early in April. Not once did our church leaders call and ask if we were ok, I heard from my former tenants that they went around bashing us and telling everyone what a poor job we did. Such a poor job that they were content with us doing it for over three years right? It hurt when Andy wrote the leaders of church, the bishops and priests of other branches of our denomination looking for guidance, comfort, even a kind word and got nothing, he wasn't even worth a response.
I have been filled with anger about this situation for some time, even now as I find my family somehow in Colorado, stunned with the changes that have happened this past year I am having a hard time letting go. It hurts me to think that my weed smoking was enough to be dismissed, a sinner with no hopes for redemption. I have wanted to rant and call them and cry and scream about the hurt they have caused us, how betrayed and unloved we have felt by people that call themselves Christians. I am sad that these events have shaken my faith to the core, that I no longer know what I believe, if I believe. I don't know if I will ever trust a church again or if I even desire to.
I guess that's my end. I hope I have processed enough to let it go, the anger, the frustration, the hurt. To know there will never be closure on the other end, that I will never get an apology or even a second glance. That my sins were enough for our family to be dismissed, that the church would rather look perfect than be forgiving. Good-bye Church of the Risen Lord, you were my home for so long. The place I went back to and cherished, I'm sad for how it ended but I will not let your pointed fingers define me. I still trust that I am a child of God, that I am loved by Him and that it's time to move on.
Nicole Hope.
