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Thanks for visiting my diary. I've been journaling since 1984 and have chosen to share some of my entries online. They are not all positive thoughts, but I hope that reading them might be a blessing to someone who needs encouragement.
If you are just coming to my diary for the first time, please read my introductory entry, where I share some background that is important if you plan to follow this diary regularly.
Please also visit my music page, where you can hear samples from my debut CD, I Believe, which features songs written based on experiences shared in this journal.
Someone sent a questionnaire to an email group I'm on, and I wrote back. Here's what I wrote.
1. How was your religious upbringing?
I grew up in a rather conservative Protestant family. My dad was a minister during my infancy but stopped doing this as a profession when I was still very young. He remained active in the church, teaching Sunday school and preaching occasionally. Mom played the piano. My maternal grandparents lived nearby and were elders in the church. We attended a nondenominational church which was part of an international movement which began in the 1800's and was designed to remove denominational barriers and represent the idea that there is no denominational barrier between any person and God.
2. How was religion used or not in relation to punishment?
I didn't realize this was an issue for me at all. And of course, I'm answering this late at night when I do my best ponderings.
I started out to say that there was no connection between religion and punishment. On the surface this is what I remember. My sister and I got spankings--one or two swats on the behind--or we got grounded. There were always predictable reasons for this. We knew what we could and could not do and why. We knew what to expect if we defied this.
But underlying this we have the teachings about self-sacrifice, and I took these quite literally. I took them so literally that I stopped being assertive about my own needs. This is something that I did realize was an issue and am working through. There is such a thing as unhealthy self-sacrifice, and admitting to having needs does not make a person selfish.
But there was one instance which obviously had a very deep impact on me. My sister and I were fighting, and I guess Mom had tried all the other discipline methods to no avail. She sat us down on our beds and made us read 1 Corinthians 13. I remember being angry and just knowing that my sister wouldn't read it. But I read itbecause my norm was that I did what I was told or asked to do. I read it, and it didn't make a lot of sense to me. I was only 11 or 12 at the time. I'm sure it made less sense to my sister, who must have been about 7.
But now I understand something that happened not too long later. I understand why it was a similar incident which inspired me to ask Jesus to be an active, alive part of my life. I was ashamed of all those fights we had, and apparently something about that one incident had made me think that God has the answers to the problem and that He was even displeased when I fought with my sister. (Writing myself a note to ponder this sometime when I'm more awake and strong.)
3. Did your parents or adult figures in your life ever say that they were doing something because "God commanded it"? If so How did you feel about it then and how do you feel about it now?
Not that I can recall, although my ex-husband did. I had seen other abusive spouses do this. I got out real fast and have not regretted it. I take a lot of the things people claim God tells them to do with a grain of salt, especially if I don't have absolute trust in the person or am not familiar with his/her belief system and background.
4. What role did God/Religion have in your household when you were growing up?
I was taught to approach God with my concerns and that He listened and cared. There are definitely aspects of the spiritual life which I feel I was not taught and that my life would be richer if I had been taught these things, but nothing was taught to me overtly that was wrong or hurtful.
5. Was God ever used to abuse you? If so how did it feel and how does it feel now?
Not by my family, and not until I was near 20. I went through a lot of mess with some people from a local church regarding physical healing and the fact that I must not want to get well enough because I was still blind. That is another one which has taken awhile to work through. I'm getting there. I was pressured to do a lot of things common to the Pentecostal experience and felt very condemned because I didn't conform to the norm. I realize now that God is a very sensitive God and knows my individual needs, preferences, and comfort levels and that He never condemns me for anything.
I've had my share of injuries delivered in church buildings. All of them were emotional and spiritual in nature, and I tend to count them as less painful than the physical injuries some people have endured at the hands of so-called Christians. But I am learning not to minimize pain. I am learning that when someone hurts the heart and soul at the core of what gives me life, that is abuse and it is valid for me to call it painful. To go a step further with this thought, I'm also learning that it is pain which God wants to heal.
It annoys me that people put so much emphasis on the physical death and even on the physical resurrection. It is all metaphorical. I believe it did happen physically--actually that this is the only way it could have made any sense to most people. But the physical aspect of it is the least important thing. Easter is about overcoming, about the One who overcame this life and who enables us to overcome it in spite of all this pain we go through. I think, actually, that I appreciate it more because of all the pain I've been through. Had I not been through the pain, I wouldn't need God at all. But He created me to be His own beloved child, and all this pain just causes me to draw strength from something much bigger than myself, from Him.
I am blind, and although I can never be compared accurately with someone who is not, it is still valuable for me to understand the norms of people who are not if I expect to live in this world and have any desire for acceptance by that group of people. If I am wanting to heal from certain issues and to find out if something I experienced was abusive, I need to look in both the community of survivors and the community of those who are not abuse survivors. Religious abuse is fairly common in the survivor community but may be less common in the population as a whole. So if "normal" is of concern to a person, then this would be important.
Ok, now I'll jump on the issue of normalcy. Our society is built around the idea that people have to be alike within certain limits, some of which are defined legally and some of which are just unwritten. Lots of things influence our need for approval by others, and that in turn influences how much we feel pressure to conform to the norms of society and in fact which norms to conform to. So when I said "normal" above, it was a rather invalid statement. Being normal is becoming much less important to me than it used to be, and I do not now consider the survivor community abnormal. Survivorhood is just the characteristic we all have in common. We seem to have endured more pain than most people expect to have to endure in their lifetime. I cannot speak for all survivors, but I hope that my share of this has actually made me a stronger person than I would otherwise be. Perhaps that's why I make friends most easily with other survivors.
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