The Things I See and Dare to Believe
Eight months after my former pastors were removed because of spiritual abuse, I left that church. In fact, I moved countries. I realized I needed separation in order to gain clarity. After over seven years of living in South Korea, I returned to the States, hoping to leave my traumatic experiences behind me. But I […]
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In spiritually abusive environments, some form of truth is present. And some good things might be happening. This makes it harder to identify what is off. The Bible is quoted. God might be moving in some powerful ways. So what exactly is wrong? As I have tried to mentally untangle my own experience of spiritual […]
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Four years ago, the co-lead pastors of my church at the time were asked to resign because of spiritual abuse. That church had become my family, my community, my home. The news was shocking, but I was also deeply grateful the dysfunction was finally being named. While I am still unpacking the realities and consequences […]
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The past year and a half, it has been hard for me not to define myself by my trauma. I have been through some things. I have had some long, complicated experiences that have been arduous to process. Years worth of mess to sort through. And it has been hard not to stay stuck. I’m […]
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I’ll be the first one to admit that I think platitudes about gratitude are lame. (Though I’m sure I’ve made plenty on this blog . . .) Gratitude cannot be the solution to everything, and besides, some problems need to be wallowed in and solved that way. Right? Waiting In the middle of 2019, I […]
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At the beginning of the year, I left the home I had built in Korea. I left my closest friends, my job, my routines, and all the futures I had envisioned for myself on that peninsula, and I returned to the States. I was excited, but I was also heartbroken. In one hand, I held hopeful excitement about my new beginning; but in the other, my whole world seemed to be slipping away like sand through my fingers […]
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I have been learning the same lesson over and over the past several months, actually more like the past two years. The lesson is this: I am weak. At times I’ve felt intensely frustrated, stuck, even hopeless, wondering if this season will ever end. But what can I say? God is a thorough teacher. Not Okay […]
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Trying to Move On I used to see the dark times as something to forget. I wanted to pretend they had never happened. My struggles and failures, the moments of intense loneliness, fear, and confusion––I just wanted to put all that behind me. The point was to overcome. The point was to move forward. But in […]
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