When we allow God to minister to us in the form of reconciliation we get our lives back and we give life to others.
When I was 17 years old I felt pain like never before when my family abruptly and unexpectedly had to said goodbye to our home church. It wasn’t our choice. I remember our last Sunday morning service together and feeling as if I was watching my own funeral as people wept and hugged our necks. This congregation had helped raise my sister and me and in a matter of a few days my parents were packing up the parsonage and planning our escape. My young mind was trying to wrap my head around the clues and bits and pieces of conversations I had picked up on over the past few months but my parents had sheltered us from the details behind the drama.
I remember pulling away from the house with all our belongings into the complete unknown. My dad didn’t have a church to pastor. My mom was exhausted. I was no longer a pastor’s kid. I would begin my senior year in high school a church orphan with my family now a shell of what it had once been. I did what any teenage girl would do. I wrote pages and pages of hate poems, songs and journal entries in my diary and ate a LOT of ice cream that year.
We would spend that year in what felt like exile living in an efficiency apartment above a garage on a horse farm in the country. I watched my dad work a secular job while my mom tried to continue family traditions and make my senior year extra special. I no longer wanted to attend the Christian college affiliated with our denomination so with deadlines looming I began applying to other universities.
Without social media, cell phones or other platforms to keep tabs on others there was no way to know what was happening in the lives of those we’d left. It was as if they’d disappeared from our lives forever and I was mourning the loss of hundreds of people at one time.
A year later I went on to college and tried my best to start over. Despite all my attempts to run from ministry I found myself immersed in leading worship and writing songs that put a melody and language to my story. The walls I had built up around me weren’t as strong as the community asking me to let them in so I slowly came out of hiding and the Lord began teaching me to trust His Church again.
Not a building. Not a denomination. Not an organization.
His sons and daughters. My brothers and sisters.
18 years later the last brick came crashing down. At 35 years old I fell back in love with God’s Church and it’s people.
I write this in Nashville sitting at the kitchen table of my childhood friend who knows this story all too well. We had both been raised as PK’s in that church at the same time and for different reasons both of our families left abruptly and without much explanation. We never got to really say goodbye to each other or celebrate what God had done in our time together. We went from being together every single week to never seeing each other again.
Until this past year. This year has been our year to remember and in our way start new.
We talked about it during my visit, how even in all the chaos, hurt and pain that came with poor transitions and communication God always had a plan. A plan of reconciliation. Forgiveness. A future. He knew 20 years later we would be sitting on a couch recalling our favorite memories and laughing until tears were dripping from our cheeks.
We aren’t ignoring the pain or pretending we haven’t experienced hurt and ultimately betrayal, but we’re choosing to let God heal us so we aren’t trapped in a life of bitterness and isolation.
When we allow God to minister to us in the form of reconciliation we get our lives back and we give life to others.
Every single one of us has been hurt. And in our hurt, every single one of us has hurt another.
Despite all of that, God is good and His Church, His Bride, is beautiful even in her flaws.
I think we sometimes choose not to be healed through reconciliation because we want to be mad. We want to stay hurt because it’s easier than having difficult conversations that might reveal our scars and weaknesses. We might even have to admit we have been wrong.
Yet God is asking us to trust Him with our wounds and allow Him to heal those relationships that have been broken and tear down the walls we’ve been building.
I learned my trust issue wasn’t with people. My trust issue was with God. I didn’t trust Him to protect me from being hurt again.
The longer I stay offended and wounded the less likely I am to have a positive impact on the Kingdom, in the Church. I’ve been wounded more by the Church than the world and yet I can’t help but love her. She’s not perfect but neither am I.
So I guess my question for all of us pastor’s kids and those in ministry raising pastor’s kids is when was the last time you were hurt? Why is it hard to forgive and forget? And do we really want to be healed?
Who do you need to talk to? Who do you need to forgive? Who do you want to ask to forgive you?
What’s stopping you?
I won’t ever forget that night we pulled away from our church or the people we left behind. But I look back on it and I smile and remember all the things that made her beautiful and unforgettable.
Thank you, Jesus, for the gift of reconciliation.