rejection

The face of the betrayed: wilted sunflower "face" seen through shattered glass

Treachery and divorce: When God sees betrayal

Post published:June 15, 2023
Post category:Healing from Toxic Church
Post last modified:December 9, 2024

If you have been betrayed by a spouse: The God who sees you has been there. He hates treachery. He calls out the treacherous - and he defends the betrayed.

Against a snowy background stands a black iron gate, locked with multiple padlocks of different colors and shapes.

Shunning in the church

Post published:August 25, 2022
Post category:Healing from Toxic Church
Post last modified:August 15, 2024

Any group that shuns is withholding your deepest needs in order to control you. That’s the opposite of loving you. It’s people you trusted, trying to erase you.

Three gray wolves, standing together on a rock ledge, threatening, howling

Cliques in the church

Post published:April 22, 2021
Post category:Healing from Toxic Church
Post last modified:July 15, 2024

Cliques are by nature, exclusive. Wherever they occur in the church landscape, they fragment the church. They prevent the people of God from becoming one.

A man stands on a a rock ledge, looking out across a sea of clouds. Black, blue and gray arrows drawn onto the photo point in all different directions

The enemies of rest

Post published:October 12, 2019
Post category:From: Return to Your Rest
Post last modified:March 14, 2024

I’ve updated Return to Your Rest, and included a chapter about enemies of rest I have faced. May God give us courage to rise up in the face of all that fights against it - and to return to rest.

Old black-and-white photo of a Piper PT-1 airplane, sitting on the ground, with a neighborhood set among mountains in the background

The dream

Post published:January 7, 2019
Post category:My Story Trauma and Grief
Post last modified:November 3, 2024

Fifteen years ago, I began a journey of awakening. The end of that journey exposed the beginning of my life. At long last, I saw the hard-to-face realities and easy-to-embrace fantasies in my childhood that led to everything else.

My mother lies in her adjustable nursing-home bed, her upper body and head elevated. I sit beside her bed, reading her a Psalm. She tolerates it, for the moment. Even when she had no more words, my mother rejected me, as her dad had rejected her.

Newborn

Post published:September 8, 2013
Post category:Trauma and Grief
Post last modified:March 9, 2024

Now, at last, my mom is getting to experience what a newborn should experience. But it didn't have to look like this. It didn't have to end where it should have begun, with the middle of the story lost in the chaos of trying again and again to rewrite the start.