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I love the church - there are so many good and beautiful experiences I have witnessed while being in a community with people who wanted to become more and more like Jesus. But not every experience I’ve had in the church was healthy or holy; my heart was simultaneously broken for her and bleeding from her.
I left a situation where I had endured prolonged spiritual abuse, but I didn’t have the tools to name or process it. I was in a new church community that I loved, but I was angry and overstimulated because I was carrying so much pain and angst just underneath the surface of my skin. Those intense feelings in my gut are what lead me to a place of desperation where I would take a chance and attend Freedom Academy in January of 2020.
I was rightly angry at the abuse I had experienced in the past, and… I was also projecting my trauma and fears onto the people around me when I felt like they were being unsafe or unwise. I became the judge: attempting to control outcomes that were none of my business to fix. I was tied up in knots of anxiety that were choking out even the simplest joys of everyday life. I showed up feeling like this was my last resort; I was furious, frustrated, and tired of fighting. "This had better work. This had better fix me”, I said to myself, as I walked into that academy.
I finally saw lightbulbs going off where only sirens had been present. This light was an instant comfort, but it wasn’t instant healing. Karrie had clearly communicated on that first day of Freedom Academy that my story not only mattered to God, but that it needed to matter to me if I wanted to experience healing; I needed to get honest about the pain I was in. I knew in my gut that these words were true.
For the first time ever, I had hope for a transformation of MY heart, of my STORY. But the only way out was through; and it was going to be a long season of “through”.
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