writing my life

"How to love and not judge."

A few years back, when I was following Doug Addison, he released a course called, no joke, "How to love and not judge." It was his instruction manual for the church to become more healthy in how people relate to others. With the experiences I've had in the evangelical fundamentalist church, I can sincerely say this is desperately needed.

I'm more than sick of the nit-picking and back-biting and performance orientation and denialism and moral positioning. And I don't know where to go from here. I don't trust anyone and I don't want to keep offering myself to people and places that will probably betray my trust and my heart and try to kill my calling if the current expression of it challenges their artificial ceiling(s).

All of this has happened before and if there has been no repentance, chances are that all of it will happen again.

Why would I keep doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results? This, as I'm sure you know, is the definition of insanity.

I was gaslighted by purity culture and the idolizing of marriage within Christian culture. My ex gaslighted me through 12 + years of marriage, gaslighting his big, Christian family about how it was really going and how he was really treating me, positioning me and my perspective as illegitimate.

He denied his addiction and the very real needs that were being neglected in the marriage, both mine and the kids'.

I tried everything everything I possibly could biblically to get things to be better for everyone.

He spun fancy stories for those in the church who were supposed to hold him accountable for coming out of the addictive behaviours and they believed him, not me. They blamed me, too.

They sent a woman into our home to talk to both of us. I was looking forward to it, thinking, finally, someone will believe me. Someone will talk some sense into him. When I went to the washroom for 2 minutes, he had convinced her that I was speaking to him badly. Instead of being honest with him about how his addiction was affecting the marriage, she turned on me and told me that I was the problem: that my expectations were too high and that I wasn't nice enough to him, that I was complaining and this was the biggest problem in our relationship.

That plunged the knife of betrayal even deeper into my heart. I never spoke to her again, and several months later left the church altogether.

And now that I've found someone who is fully invested in the relationship, and I've finally got love and presence and support and covering that I've never had my entire life, the E.F.'s are constantly questioning it if not outright attacking me and my character.

So tell me, am I supposed to continue in cognitive dissonance when I'm told that God approved of my marriage that was unhealthy, neglectful to the point of abusiveness, characterized by mocking and relational betrayals, based on lies and at the end, basically entrapment, but he disapproves of my current, healthy relationship with a Christian man who actually lives out his faith instead of hiding abuse behind the front of virtue signaling?

Am I ACTUALLY SUPPOSED TO BELIEVE that good is bad and bad is good? I'm not that naive anymore. I won't tolerate it. Those who tell lies will not continue in my presence.

This memory has been tormenting me for the last few days. One of the first Christians we met when we moved here was a woman who was building a new YWAM base with her husband.

We met at a watchmen-style gathering of healing between first nations and other nations two years ago. She was happy but exhausted and looked relieved to have met another woman that she could relate to. I sensed a deep exhaustion in her soul. I was happy to provide the relief of a friend, of a kindred spirit, even if we only had a few minutes to chat between things that were going on.

I did end up sharing that Bill and I were married in a Cree and Scottish handfasting ceremony but we considered it a covenant before God.

Honestly I don't know how her husband got wind of it but a lot of times these weak women will attach themselves to blustery, crazymaking, suffocating males who get to make all the decisions about what she thinks.

So the next think I knew I was trying to get a few more words in with her and her husband was across the grass yelling at no one in particular, "THAT'S NOT A REAL MARRIAGE!" Then he muttered something about, "I've got some friends who have done that and I don't need to pray and ask the Holy Spirit because the Bible says it's sin," and then he yelled, "AND I'M NOT GOING TO READ YOUR BLOG!" I guess maybe they have blogs too.

I kind of brushed it off because I thought maybe he was talking to/about someone else. But since then, I did go out to see the base with my kids, and she invited me to a bread-making day which she then didn't text me about, and then said she would invite me to the next one and then she didn't, but she texted me to tell me that they had a great time and it was probably better without me because they had just the right amount of people.

I asked her why bother texting me if you've decided I shouldn't have been there, and she didn't reply.

As a side note, I have spent decades learning to be a life-giving person whose presence is nurturing and not draining to those around me. People literally crave this when they meet me now and deeply desire my friendship, but refuse to make time to have their own needs met. I have seen it time and time again and I would like to tell them that they are not only robbing themselves (seen as acceptable) but also me, of the richness of friendship. But it is their choice, and I have to just let them go.

I had a couple more interactions with her wherein she decided she was too busy to have any further contact with me, as she was homeschooling my kids. I didn't believe her for one second, calling her on her bluff and inviting her to collaborate on curriculum as I had just been hired as an elementary EA.

"I'm homeschooling," she replied, as if that were an answer to the abusive and abrupt cut off. I haven't heard from her since. I feel bad for her, alone with an overbearing husband and four kids. I could tell from the minute I met her that she was lonely and emotionally exhausted. But this is what she has chosen. She let him tell her that I was in sin and cut me off because of it, without being honest with me about it.

I have wondered if maybe I was wrong, and maybe I didn't get it right - but I saw them again at a YWAM dinner for a mutual friend and neither of them would make eye contact with me, even when I went over to say hi.

The kicker is that within the times that we were fellowshipping, she shared a prophetic word they had received as a couple. It was, in short: horses. She said it hadn't made sense but was part of a larger word about them and the ministry they were building that did really fit and encouraged them at the time. As we were talking, I shared with her that Bill and I had a heart for a small ranch with horses. She mentioned the word and thought maybe that part of it was for us. I was greatly encouraged by this and wondered about it with her - from what I remember, she said it had been a part of the ministry in the prophetic word, and we talked about a possible ministry partnership in the future.

So to be cut off like that without a word was really brutal. Don't you even want to know what we are thinking? I wonder if they even believe inthe grace of God. It kind of feels like a Jonah moment...he doesn't want us to be blessed because he thinks we are in sin and therefore we should be punished relationally and possibly for the rest of our lives???

I guess he's never been in the position of a neglected, autistic woman with functional limitations, narcissistic parents and PTSD stuck in an abusive marriage. My counsellor told me that no woman will tolerate getting stuck in that twice, no matter how good the rhetoric...she always makes sure she is safe...no matter the moral positioning...she will always try things out to make sure she's not being gaslighted before being "locked in" again. She will NEVER allow purity culture to be used to entrap her again.

So I guess that I believe that this evangelical fundamentalist is an abusive man. I also don't believe we're living in sin because we made a covenant before God. I could go into all the racist and colonial implications of saying that a Cree wedding isn't a real wedding...but that would run the risk of redundancy. What I will ask is: when the land as taken, did that annihilate the orignal 'laws of the land?' Or do those laws still stand?

But since it's been two years since we've co-habited, (more the sense of a depuis than a since here, but I digress) we are technically married even by the civil laws of the land.

Did not even the Old Covenant contain laws that were merely ceremonial and some that were essential to moral/spiritual health?

So we can see a model there of a separation, two different types of things. I also have a ton of experience with things being 'sealed in the spirit.' before they are done in the natural, with Watchmen.

For example, when Canada got married (the French and English symbolically 'married' each other at a gathering in 2005,) the vows were set to be spoken out loud by everyone in the congregation.

Before we had a chance to do that, the worship team went off on a tangent in the Spirit and it was this beautiful interplay between the saxophone and I believe, one other instrument.

When the minister (I think it was David) got up to speak, he was touched and softened by this 'language,' of the spirit and said that he felt that the vows were already done, that it had been done in the spirit already; that it was already done in our hearts and in the spirit, and that had been symbolized by the musical interplay.

Can it not be the same for us? Did Adam and Eve have an illegitimate marriage? God gave them to each other then they were married. As far as I can tell, there was no witness except him, no paper to sign, no government to register with. If that counts as a marriage in the eyes of God, why would our union be considered illegitimate?

How much of these things do we do for people? What part of these ceremonies is civil law and what part is moral/spiritual?

Did Jesus himself not teach that marriage is when a man leaves his parents and is joined to his wife? Did he not command that what God had joined together, no man should separate? To me that says more about what happens after - that they shouldn't be separated - than exactly what happens before.

In modern Christianity, the Old Testament is not taken literally in pretty much any other context, except, maybe, the 10 Commandments. So why do we pick and choose the sex-before-marriage part and decide that's the only part that we are going to split hairs and be legalistic about? (What about the book of Esther?)

Maybe it's wrong, but if it is, I am the one who needs to be convicted about it - not somebody else's overbearing and probably emotionally abusive husband who yells toward me but won't talk to me about it. They think they're doing God's will but they will probably be very surprised when they get to heaven and find out what God's will is actually like or what it actually was in many situations where they thought they were right.

I'm tired and this is exhausting, having to prove myself constantly, to write it all out. I'm sick and tired of narcissists in the church trying to pull the ground out from under me so I have to spend all my extra energy trying to re-stabilize myself instead of moving into my calling, (finishing my novel) and relaxing so that I can recharge, rest and heal.

Post Script:

After writing this last night I couldn't- recharge, rest and heal - at least not easily. I hardly slept and I'm going to have to take all my plans for today and put them on ice as I continue to try to return to normal in my mind and my body. My nervous system was on high alert all night and as a result I have had an extreme allergic reaction, having woken up several times during the night because my nasal passages were so swollen that I couldn't breathe. I felt parts of my body starting to get prickly as if developing heat/stress rash. Another histamine dump. The only cure for this, I have found, is to just do nothing, pamper myself and rest. The problem is that as someone who was trained to feel guilty for having my needs met, rest is also threatening. Comfort is terrifying, and sometimes leads to never-ending loops of OCD wherein I can't trust that it's safe. Sometimes getting sick/falling ill is the only end and I collapse in exhaustion.

The philological and spiritual implications?

This was so incredibly painful. Writing about anything in my marriage is. It's more painful than any of the stuff that has happened in the church because it was a source of so much hope for so long (when I was young, that I would get to create a family of my own that was safe and loving). It feels like I've been ripped open.

I also feel pushed very close to the edge of the 'cliff of no return.' Somebody, or a lot of somebodys need a very harsh and final consequence for all that they've done.

Not sure how to express this but when I feel the warning in my spirit about the judgement that's coming to the North American church it gives me a chill. My blood runs cold. Because it's coming. We've been too arrogant for too long and it's inevitable. My story is not unique. There are so many who cried out in pain and all they got from the Body was emotional backhand after backhand. This isn't how it was supposed to be: this isn't love.

Where are the consequences they should be receiving for doing the enemy's will in trying to destroy me (the Lord's anointed) all these years? I'm called to redeem and create culture. Does that mean the enemy is terrified of my calling of me? Why does God in his wrath not overturn their demonic protections and avenge my blood?

When Jesus comes back, will he find faith in the earth?

When Dale Anderson visited Prince George from IHOP-KC, he wanted to bring a fresh, powerful word that would bring catalytic change to the region. He looked around, prayed about it and he brought one word: Unbelief. The leaders repented and called it done, but I sensed that it ran much deeper than that. The ones in Jamie's family brushed off my concerns with a few quick, disdainful comments.

Dale took a few sessions to describe that it's something that everyone, when they're first called, has to wrestle with. (Chosen One trope, anyone?) He described how Jesus' own family didn't believe in him (his brothers, with whom he spent the most time). He said that his parents probably did, but it was the day in day out living and jostling with his brothers, neighbors and friends that would have been the thorn he had to deal with.

He expounded that everyone has to deal with unbelief about their calling...

I conclude that if we don't successfully deal with it, we will go the way of the Israelites in the desert who allowed the slavery mentality to define their world until their bodies fell in the dust. They allowed their wounds and past experience of slavery to blind them and keep them small, allowing unbelief instead of the goodness, vastness and infinite nature of God to change them into people who could believe and enter into the freedom of possessing their promises, which at the time was beyond their highest hopes and wildest dreams.

Whenever circumstances put them in a crunch, instead of clinging to faith in God's goodness, they reverted to slavery mentality, looking back (as Lot's wife) to the provision of the fleshpots of Egypt. (Dutch Sheets)They preferred the reliable provision of captivity to the terrifying potential of freedom with personal accountability at it's centre. As a result, they never entered the promised land, never entered into His rest.

Therefore, it is of UTMOST IMPORTANCE to ensure we are in faith, and in the faith.

If, "without faith it's impossible to please God," and the church has been full of unbelief, how is their walk really going? If unbelief is what I've been wrestling with and is behind all the posturing, narcissistic control tactics and mudslinging, am I really the one in the wrong? Or are they reacting from their place of poverty to my wealth mindset and attacking what they can not abide because it flies in the face of their deepest toxic programming?

Listen, if you refuse to acknowledge and face off with your toxic programming, you will only get so far. It's like trying to run a race with your arms and legs tied together. You can move a bit, but you'll never reach your potential, and you definitely won't win.

I acknowledge that there are probably areas of sin in my life that God has yet to show me. Yet I'm no longer willing to continue in places where I know I'm being trampled, for fear of sinning and even if getting out of that cycle of abusive/neglectful family and marriage causes some to believe that I'm sinning, I know that I began and continue that journey in faith.

Look; I no longer believe that I can do this perfectly and I'm no longer relying on conformity to externals to get me there. I don't think that I can do this, and I have no more confidence in the flesh-

I must have the courage to walk out what I truly believe instead of being forced into a false mold just to please the masses. I have truly thrown myself fully on the grace of God and if He can make me stand, I believe that He will. To me, that takes a lot more faith than standing with the crowd and relying on my own performance (which is pretty much filthy rags anyway) to get me to heaven.

I now believe that mercy triumphs over judgement and that His Grace is sufficient for me.

So the implications of my last post, for me...

I'm still deciding.

The River's claim that they did church better than every other body in the vicinity was fairly correct - they leaned into the religiousity and legalism, calling it 'Lordship,' and lorded their false rules and dysfunction over everyone, ruining their emotional health by forcing them to sacrifice their individualism for a toxic collectivism.

So if Dutch Sheets is right, and the general model is narcissistic and cannabalistic, then they did do it with greater focus and intensity: harder, fast and 'better,' but their sense of true north (godliness) was completely messed up. As a result, they got to a worse place faster.

I believe that they came from a place of good intentions, but they were also birthed fairly quickly out of a church split, (several months later they became pastors) which didn't give them time to heal. (Nobody ever wants to admit their wounds these days, or take time to heal completely.)

The senior pastor was also from a single-parent family: he only ever had a mom growing up. I don't know why men from single-mom families have such a strong urge to rush into ministry before they're healed, but I've seen it several times - enough to discern a pattern. I think they get saved and realize that God is fathering them and suddenly this gaping wound and need they've had their entire lives is being met and they want to share a good thing with everyone. That impulse is not wrong - but the lack of knowledge of their own neediness and the time it takes to heal and grow into maturity in love, when mixed with trying to do their own version of ministry is dangerous.

They tend to fly high very quickly and then crash hard. I think there are many lessons and much love-wisdom that can only be learned by having a father...and when those things are missing, and they don't know they're missing, it creates these big windows for blindspots (they're already there.) It is then easy for the enemy to swoop in and exploit their wounds and blindspots in the group and ministry dynamic and create huge messes that God did not intend. It is most harmful when they are exposed to new believers who are even less experienced at spiritual things than they are. They become blind leaders of the blind. It is important to note that they are largely without guile but not without culpability in these situations.

If we know that teachers are judged more harshly than everyone else, we should want to make sure that we are ready before rushing to the platform.

Apparently Pastor Greg had just finished a sermon series on security (in our salvation and Christ's love) before I started attending. Someone told me this after I had been there a significantly long time and was commenting on the performance orientation. I had been feeling terrorized by the emotional flip-flopping. What was even more alarming was that I couldn't tell that anyone believed it, even the leadership. That was another major red flag that lead me to leave fairly soon after.

They had a knack for seeing where people were at, discerning the emotionally healthy practices in their life and demonizing them. I've honestly never experienced a more toxic fellowship.

I made one friend while I went there...I have remembered that they told her at one point to stop talking to me and limit contact because I was in makeup school. She basically told them no, that she would keep me as a friend, thankyou very much.

But several months later after I left, I wrote to her and asked her to re-evaluate the level of wisdom in that body - she had been saved into it and didn't know anything else - and she also refused.

She allowed them to divert her from the path of her lifetime creative calling - she was a brilliant fashion designer- (just graduated top of her class from Kwantlen- and often wore her own clothes...)because they demonized it.

They told her that she had just done nothing of significance and that she should go back to school to become a teacher because it's more practical, even though she had a practical plan, timeline and budget set out for her start-up. This is something that I find infinitely tragic. We didn't email again after she told me that. She was incensed at me for asking her to get an outside perspective, and I was mortified at her choice, having left my narcissistic family of origin to follow a creative calling of my own.

The other memory that surfaced in relation to this was of another young woman, slightly older than the two of us. She had prayed with me a time or two and I'd visited her house (one of the rentals with only people from that church there) to chat with another girl who lived there.

Have you ever noticed that when you're trying to leave something toxic, that it follows you and tries to stop you from leaving?

I ran into her twice after I had left, once in Surrey, near the 'Christian' coffee shop where I worked. I was staring at the building that had a sign in front of it: "The River: coming soon!" and I was terrified. That was the last thing this town needed - a toxic church plant. I had been wondering if it really was that River, when she approached me and started talking as if we were old friends. She was going on about this new building and how the church was growing and wasn't it incredible?

I just looked at her and stated sardonically, "Oh look, it's spreading."

She picked up on my sarcasm and launched into a mini sermon that started with, "You shouldn't say that."

After a few minutes she perceived that my heart wasn't agreeing with her and decided to get up on her way.

I had hoped that was the last of it but I did run into her one last time, in an even more far-flung location. I was in Quebec at a Watchmen for the Nations conference and she told me excitedly that she was at the same conference (yay) and how amazing it was to see me there.

She asked how I was doing and I was honest about the abusive boss - and again this launched her into a sermon about how I "shouldn't say that," and that it was probably a misunderstanding and it was probably my fault. I told her that unwanted touching from a boss was never a misunderstanding and it was most certainly abuse and not my fault, and informed her I was taking the long way back to my hostel.

She was on a ministry track - and she had certainly learned well from the leadership of the River - she had become infinitely more toxic in the short time I had known her. She had told me she had just won a fellowship with Faytene Kryskow and was super excited.

Maybe I really was hearing God and a lot of those who opposed me were not, after all, in the right.

Reflecting after I wrote the previous post, I realized that The River was very dysfunctional, similar to the way a dysfunctional family system works. Not only were the members enmeshed, but also distanced. We were told we had to be close but also that we were unimportant as individuals and so not to expect any affection or anything resembling love - this was labelled as humility, but I believe it was false humility.

I had experienced the real thing (in YWAM and with my ex-boyfriend), and the falsehood (in my family of origin), so I recognized it early on - but like I said, not everyone was like that all the time, so it took me a while (several months) to decide to throw in the towel.

I also knew they kind of had me 'by the balls,' and that I needed to do something to separate with finality, something that would keep me from vacillating due to the brainwashing. Because what they said was happening was very different from what was actually going on, and although I was autistic and not aware of all the dynamics (and we were all heavily gaslighted about them) I was had experienced enough emotional bullshit in my young life to recognize it and I was sick of the subterfuge.

Another thing I remember is that the leaders were always micromanaging people's lives, making rules about what they could and couldn't do, even down to the minutia of who in the church they should or shouldn't talk to.

So I 'dated' a backslidden blues player and attempted to lead him to Christ. He did have that salvation/rededication moment but unfortunately it took him almost another year to decide to completely quit his drugs and alcohol. I had fallen in love with him but I knew I couldn't risk my life on that...so I left, went back to Prince George and that's when I met Jamie, my ex-husband.

Recently, I've realized that The River wasn't the only church like it- there are many that are like it, in fact even most have narcissistic tendencies and dysfunctional dynamics at play. It has felt for a long time that the church is sick, that it doesn't really reflect what Christianity should be. Narcissistic really is a good diagnosis and accurate description of this.

People don't get to know each other - they just come for an hour or two and leave without really connecting. It happens all over. I think this is a symptom of a narcissistic church, and self-focused lives of those within it. Another symptom is playing god.

Instead of creating this culture of competition, which encourages performance orientation (a demonic doctrine, basically religiousity,) and divides us, placing some people and beliefs (usually us and our inner circle) on a pedestal, we should be humble and seeking God's heart not only for ourselves and our own family but for the church as a whole and networking to strategize on how to redeem our region through Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Basically, before YWAM, when I was very dependent on my own works and the outer appearance of goodness but lacking in love, my family and the church had labelled me as a golden child who could do no wrong, and after YWAM, when I came back seeking real love and connection with clarity of vision and a heart for missional living, my family and the church decided I was a scapegoat/blacksheep and I could do nothing right.

Church of British Columbia, you need a lot of healing. I pray that as the judgements of God are released on the earth as things shift toward end times prophecy fulfillment, that in this final hour that you will find repentance before ruination hits.

At the River, there was this youth leader named Corrie. She said she was related to Corrie Ten Boom. I mentioned Chris Czaicowski and the Bella Coola connection and she minimized it, saying she had no idea who she was and why the heck did I think she might know anyone else related to Corrie.

I now see her brashness and harshness as a symptom of the burnout she was going through but it was rough. She was frequently brash and not just frank but manipulative with trying to mind-control me and force me into enmeshed relationships within the youth of the church, while at the same time negging and pushing me away, insisting that I wasn't important, a cog in the wheel.

For example, I had gone out one night to a youth hang out at the Men's House (this was a frequent occurance, there were separate young mens' and womens' houses and sometimes a group would go hang out there.) That part wasn't weird. The part where we were sitting and hanging out and she seemed so stressed was. She kept telling me that her marks were suffering academically and that she really shouldn't be out almost every night with church stuff but that she was and it was the only way she was like maintaining this weird view of herself as a barely good enough human/Christian.

I suggested that she take a few nights off to recharge. She shamed me for this, saying that she was a leader and she couldn't. She also guilted me about not coming out more often, saying that if I were really a good Christian that I would come out almost every night too, for the sake of community - not that I was important or should be celebrated, it was just something that I 'should do.'

I didn't know then that I was autistic but I knew instinctively that this was very wrong. I pushed back at her and she admitted to the burnout and that she was seeing a university counsellor for it - and she was being told that she shouldn't take the things that the church leadership was saying too seriously. The church leadership was on the other side, telling her she shouldn't take what the counsellor said so seriously.

She then mentioned that they were hanging out again in a couple days - which was my birthday. I told her that I was tired and sick and I didn't think that I could commit to two evenings so close together. She got almost angry and quite preachy and for some reason I found it persuasive...and I started to believe that she knew it was my birthday and that she wanted me to come out because they were planning to do or say something special.

That would have been nice. But when I showed up, not only did they not even know it was my birthday, they shamed me for expecting it. I seem to remember her saying angrily, "Do you expect me to appologize?" and then walking off in a huff.

And I didn't come in with bells and whistles expecting a fanfare. Just even a simple acknowledgement would have been enough. Or even, when they found out - a positive remark or two. Like, "Oh, sorry, we didn't know. Happy Birthday!"

But not shaming. Not negging. Not - treating me like dirt.

The thing is, it was a sacrifice for me to be there when what I wanted most was to spend some time alone and reflect, since things hadn't been going well for me lately(I crave that quality alone time). Then to get beaten down by the negging (character insults mostly) that centred around the accusation of me being selfish to expect them to know or expect accolades for showing up or expect any attention on me at all - was almost more than I could bear after all that I'd been through in that season.

There was one woman whose husband was on the ministry team and she came and sat beside me after Corrie left in a huff (I still have no idea why she was mad. She was the one who manipulated me into coming out, almost so that she could tell me how unimportant I was).

She gave me a prophetic word. This is something that has stuck with me for a long time. She said: "You have some deep wounds. You put a band-aid on them and said, "All Better!" But it's really not better and you need a deeper healing."

As she was saying this I knew that it was true.

There was a bunch of other negative stuff that happened that night. The thing I remember most is one of the guys needed to study for a test and the houseguests were being too loud after a certain time, like 9:30 PM (as houseguests are wont to do). After asking nicely like 4 times, people just couldn't or wouldn't keep the volume at a low enough level for him. He got up and started yelling and swearing and slamming doors. The other guys started threatening him, saying they were going to tell the pastor and he would be rebuked/kicked out of the house for his bad behaviour.

Now tell me, who do you think was behaving badly in this situation?

After all that, I wasn't comfortable staying even though the party was just getting started, so I took my coat and left.

This week I've been thinking about how BC's major problem is inner healing issues- they are deep and widespread so as to be extremely problematic in our spiritual functioning both in relation to God and in community.

And because so often the nature of our wounds makes them both invisible to us as individuals and cause spiritual blindness (log in your eye sound familiar? Maybe there's a reason why Jesus chose the eye for that particular illustration,) it causes a disability and unbalance in our ability to see and relate to God, ourselves and others in certain areas where we are wounded, but think we are normal. This causes the formation of factions - those who have similar wounding and blindness and are unified around false beliefs in the same areas...perhaps this is why there is so little freedom in the churches here, and so little accord.

I think that's why I have been punished so harshly by my family and the church for going away and getting healed.

Like Julia Cameron says, you can't expect your best friends from the bar to celebrate your newfound sobriety. They're still too invested in the old life, and their knee-jerk reactions to it that have a payoff for them in the old system, for example: feel the wound - go drinking with friends and have fun. With a reward like that for the response why would one ever want to do the hard work of getting healed?

Donna Jordan was pretty nice to me during DTS as a visiting speaker, but when I returned home and I'd had a decade of bad experiences with the church, she turned on me and sent a full-page rebuke in reply to my email. I told her that I wasn't going to read THAT- I could sense the abuse and that she would be blocked if she wasn't going to chose to be a part of the solution.

She replied with an apology (after I had blocked her, I think she replied to the original email even after I deleted it). But I didn't believe that it was genuine. The repressed memory part of this that came back a few weeks ago was that she said something like, 'How old are you and you've never had someone sincerely apologize to you?"

I was like, "I'm 27 and I have no idea what you're talking about. You chose your position on this and you should stand by it. You don't get to change your mind about what you think based on my reaction." It felt way too much like the gaslighting from my vulnerable narcissist mother.

She explained that she'd been feeling burned out but hadn't stopped to deal with it despite multiple warnings from people including her husband that she might start abusing people and push them away from the faith.

The first line was something like, "I thought you would benefit from some discipline (or harshness,)" similar to the way Jamie's family church responded to my God-given freedom in the arts. (They thought harsh discipline was what I somehow needed. If all you've gotten your entire life is harshness instead of love from your family and especially your father, and God starts opening up new areas of freedom once you finally get away from them, what you absolutely DON'T need is more harsh treatment from the church that is afraid of the new.) His response was - you have NO IDEA what she's been through with her parents, and then you TRY AND PARENT?

It was really messy. I deleted the email, blocked her and never heard from her again, and was happy. But the reason for the original email (seeking healing from the traumatic and abusive experiences in the church,) never went away: it just quietly festered.

Every single one of the times that I've tried to get healing in community and was brutally rebuffed or rebuked is another notch on the wall of my cave, that THIS, not THAT, is how Christians respond. It's like being gaslighted by God himself, and that causes a major mindf*ck. It's the source of so much of my anxiety, cPTSD, OCD and false guilt. The fact that I can sit outside of those things and state that is a minor miracle. I could barely function for years trying to still plough ahead ALONE, while dealing with persecution from the church, isolation in my marriage, narcissism in my family of origin, and a sense of love from NO ONE.

I honestly don't know how I've made it this far.

I have needed to do another one of these for a while now but I've been dragging my feet because I don't want to open up another whole can of worms. But I guess the pain will hound my conscious mind through the unconscious, even if I push it away, so I may as well deal with it.

The heat, the wind and the lightning storm is keeping me up.

I have been asking myself, "WHY?" Quietly wondering in the deepest, secret recesses of my soul why God allowed his people to harm me so much, to believe the accusations of the enemy for so long, not to see me for who I really am, and attack me based on lies and their own internal mind cages instead of engaging in a redemptive relationship with someone who has pioneered and ploughed much for the kingdom. Why not at least try for a positive relationship? Have they intended to abuse me? Can they see?

I think there are three reasons for this...

A creator has been popping up on my feed and she has said that people don't have intentions to act or not act a certain way, they just react to whatever happens without the awareness that there is a separation between the external world and their internal world.

I think she's right. It takes a great degree of intraspective blindness to live at that level, but I believe that most people live there, even Christians, because we are taught to believe that at least some amount of emotional abuse is normal, and so parents abuse their children and children grow up stunted and enmeshed in their environment (infant level emotional maturity, ie: emotional idiots).

I haven't found a single church, church/ Christian 'family' or para-church organization that hasn't abused me in some way. Wait -maybe I'm painting this with too broad of a stroke. Abuse maybe seems to harsh of a word.

Perhaps what I should say is that they treated me with some sort of contempt for the freedom that God had given me as or after he delivered me from some type of spiritual 'chains.' They appeared jealous and/or offended by this freedom and used that negativity generated by their reaction to propel them to controlling and manipulative behaviour, often including threats and character assassination, sometimes including gossip and slander.

Let that sink in. Christians as a whole are so afraid of corruption from the outside when they're actually full of corruption from within in their own souls, introduced and normalized through inheritance and family culture. We inherit spiritual blindness and continue in it unless corrected.

Another reason is that some people have demons attached to wrong beliefs, wounds and areas of sin in their own lives and the devil can use even Christians who have demons to do his will in persecuting Christians, usually with the excuse of a religious spirit. A demon can be understood as a lie that someone believes, or an area of corruption. They attach to wounds (proof that this or that isn't true,) and are empowered by consent.

So if someone believes that God doesn't speak to people anymore, and they're fanatic about their religious devotion, they will be the first in line to burn Joan of Arc at the stake, even though she saved an entire nation. This is why I don't completely disagree with limiting the power of Christians in certain arenas. (But I digress)

So what is the answer? How do we get free? Jesus is perfect, and he is the healer, but we can't expect to just download a perfect blueprint of everything from Jesus. Although the word does say that we can look at him and become like him. It's become almost popular wisdom that we will be influenced by what we focus on.

I think the answer is in Jewish family. The love in those families is from God, descending down from the father of lights, and he placed the model of His love for us within Jewish family and culture.

Until Noah and then until Jesus came, they were the most uncorrupted (excellent of soul - see Katie Souza teachings on Mary and generational corruption) generationally. So it makes sense that we might have something to learn from them about the concept of Shalom, or wholeness.

In Christ we are a new creation but we can still be messed up in our souls, and have bents toward things that are not good. (Katie Souza)

The assumption that just because your family is Christian that they are 'excellent of soul,' is a fallacy. Some of the most outwardly Christian people I've met are also the most broken, completely blind to the state of their own souls.

Corruption within our souls leads us to do all kinds of evil, even in the name of God.

I have wondered why God allows His own people to act like this, to treat me with such ignorant, self-righteous corruption when he Himself is so perfect and pure. I just don't get it. I don't get how Christians can settle for lukewarm, medium depths and groupthink and be satisfied with that, and call that spirituality.

For the longest time I didn't think I was the exception, but I'm starting to.

The third reason people act this way, is because people have always acted this way toward someone who is anointed as a prophet and without even realizing it (just the purity of their and essence of their presence) call them to account for the areas of sin and compromise in their lives. It's like people start being convinced in our presence it before we even see things about them and they try to get in a pre-emptive strike (attacking the messenger,) so they can feign ignorance and throw shade on us while maintaining plausible deniablity in their relationship with God.

Jesus himself indicated this phenomenon at the sermon on the mount, saying, "Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you." (Matt 5:11-12, NIV)

Arthur Burk has said in his teaching videos and in a personal email to me that he has empathy for those who identify as prophets in this day and time because of how irresponsible the church as a whole is. Nobody is wiling to be accountable for their behaviour and/or attitudes and so prophets have it rough. I believe this is also a consequence of the hyper-individualism of our 'modern' or post-modern world.

Also, in the 60s and 70s, massive uprisings and youth rebellions won freedoms for mainstream culture that have yet to take effect in the church. So if someone who is used to those freedoms (relational, mostly, not talking the sexual revolution) walks into a space where they haven't come into effect, there is a judgement and a persecution that happens.

So, I guess I'm mollified and vindicated by these explanations, but there have been only one or two sincere apologies my entire life, placed against all the abuse that started really as a young toddler, as I stood up against the way my dad treated my mom, and I'm starting to get weary.

I don't want to go to church; it is a minefield. I don't want to deal with more religious assumptions, generational corruption, doctrines of barrenness, (Anderson, IHOP) or prophetic persecution. I just don't have the chutzpah. In the words of Bilbo Baggins, I'm beginning to feel like too little butter scraped over too much bread.

I researched it last week and what Lawrence Rae did to me definitely fits the legal definition of slander. He created something untrue about me and spread it to multiple people with the intent of throwing mud on my good name and it resulted in me being misunderstood and spit on not only in his own circle but in a new congregation, and that resulted in me being jerked around about bus change/job opportunities at the new church that I had gone to to get a new start, away from him and his lies and abuse.

I read on the board in one of the classrooms this week that there is no statute of limitations on slander and libel, but the internet said that was wrong, so I'm not sure what the limits are in that case for claiming damages.

I have been really enjoying the YouTuber, "@Devinkeptgoing," and I believe it was he who brought this up in a recent post.

Relating back to what I said about blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Jesus himself is again, pitted against the Pharisees, and he outright states that if you can't sense the work of the Holy Spirit in someone's life then your father isn't God, but the devil.

So if Lawrence Rae and other pastors looked at what God was doing in my life and instead of giving glory to Him, claimed that I was 'of the devil,' who is their father?

I believe this is a different instance than the one I quoted, or maybe just a different gospel. But the fact that I encountered it twice in such a short time within this context likely means that God is saying something, something that vindicates me.

Actually, it seems like Jesus says it a lot more harshly than I remember. Here's the direct quote, NIV version (BibleHub) of John 8:43-47.

"You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out his desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, refusing to uphold the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, because he is a liar and the father of lies. 45But because I speak the truth, you do not believe Me!

46Which of you can prove Me guilty of sin? If I speak the truth, why do you not believe Me? 47Whoever belongs to God hears the words of God. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.”

The religious leaders wanted to kill Jesus to stop the work of God in his life and in his generation. It offended them deeply because they clung more closely to their religion than the God who created it. Jesus points out that an intense desire to murder someone (him) is not a fruit of the spirit, but in fact a fruit of demonic alliances.

Perhaps the reason that Lawrence Rae wanted to see me die in the streets alone and couldn't discern the work of God in my life was that his father wasn't God, but the devil? All the things he did to me, he did after I asked him to father me. (And he said yes.) A father doesn't want to kill his daughter. He would do anything to prevent that from happening. Even when John and Elaine went to deliver my paintings a few years later, he wouldn't come off it. He reiterated the addiction accusations to them and asked them to monitor me for signs of drug addiction, claiming that my hypermeresis gravidarium, extreme nausea and vomiting in pregnancy, which I wouldn't wish on my worse enemy by the way, was a sign of withdrawal.

They told him they had several grown children and nieces/nephews who had actually struggled with drug and alcohol addiction and that they didn't think I ever had. (I didn't.) He still wouldn't give up the goat. He had the audacity to tell them that he thought I had died on the streets alone because he never heard back from me. I can hear him chuckling as I write this.

Another point I remembered which gives context to this supposition is that Lawrence had a history of shutting down the work of the Holy Spirit in his church. I have one personal testimony where I experienced this personally, and the congregation was so confused that morning...it was like witnessing a particular type of spiritual violence. One of the new ministers who were itinerant ministers from England had been running the service and giving the sermon. He ended with an altar call, asking those who would respond to the message to come up to the front and receive an impartation. Lawrence hustled to the front toute suite and took the mic, even as the minister was still talking. He was masking a lot of anger.

He said, "I think we've just established that we don't do that here," and told everyone to please go sit down and that he would pray a blessing over us. He was really agitated, the British guy was gracious, and the congregation was very confused. He said a quick prayer, dismissed everyone really fast and several congregants and I were left just standing in shock.

I was thinking, "What did I just witness?"

(Being involved with Watchmen for the Nations since then, I have heard Tabitha and Stephanie talk about this type of thing a lot - as a pain point for our generation. It's been flagged as a toxic behaviour of the older generation and those in Watchmen do their best not to cut off the Holy Spirit ever. We had a word at the Gen X gathering in Edmonton about taking the governor, like the type they put on a car engine, an artificial attachment that isn't a part of the original design off our hearts which was slapped on their to keep us from getting hurt or embarrassed so we wouldn't take things too far when we started to get into the flow with God. But back in the Vancouver days I had no closure or context for what had happened.

I believe it was chronologically right after that, as I was grappling with the feeling of being cut off in the spirit, that my roommate explained to me that a couple of months (or maybe years?) prior, he had chased Andrew Smith and all the fresh fire guys out (the super artsy forerunners who were also on the cutting edge of what revival culture looked like in those days.) She told me that he ordered them to stop doing the Holy Spirit stuff in the services on Sunday morning, and when they didn't, he forbid them from coming back, and they all moved out to Abbotsford.

That was a sobering realization for me. I don't know the situation, and it really depends on how they were doing things, as to whether or not I agree that they should have been doing it in a regular Sunday service. But the fact that he didn't want it in his church at all says something. Maybe he didn't want the Holy Spirit at all. Maybe he just wanted a form of religion and was OK with tolerating a lack of power that kind of goes hand in hand with that.

I walked out of church this morning. It was as if I'd seen a ghost. If your worst spiritual/physical/mental/social abuser suddenly showed up at your church one morning and had a position of elevation and authority on the platform, what would you do?

I see this man out of the corner of my eye, sitting with my coworker and her family. He bears a shocking resemblance to Lawrence Rae, the pastor who abused me in my early 20's when I was struggling to make it in the big city. (See previous posts)

This man looks so much like him that I find myself staring. It isn't him, but it could be a brother (I remember he had three.) His look and his spirit remind me so much of Lawrence. He catches me staring and gives a strange look, as if to say, "How inappropriate, young lady." I send him a glare before looking away.

Then, when the worship team goes up to play another set, he goes with them. He's been part of the team all service; the drum set hid him from view.

As the memories come flooding back, and the next song begins, I resist the urge to leave the sanctuary. I stand there mutely, unable to make myself join in. Who is this mystery man that appears on a random morning to join the worship team? I seem to remember others appearing out of the blue, people I've never seen at church joining the team other Sundays. It makes me uneasy.

I wonder if he's 'cut from the same cloth,' as Lawrence, in soul and spirit as much as his physical appearance? I'm freaked out, wondering, can I trust this guy?

I tell myself to stay, to grey rock, to hold it all inside and keep quiet, to keep silent and don't make a scene. I don't want to embarrass my partner. You're at an advantage, I tell myself, you've got lots of experience with this. Just pretend that everything's fine.

But I'm not a kid anymore and I have the power to make boundaries and not be punished for it. Something inside me rails against the idea that I should just sit quietly and submit to anything that a man or authority figure says or does. And I won't go through the motions in my spiritual life and practice.

Then the title of the song registers: Good, Good Father. I remember all the things Lawrence Rae did to me in the name of the Father, and fathering, and I know I can't just stand there anymore.

I had another memory come back...this one wasn't a personal horror story, situationally or socially, thank God.

It was of Greg Mitchell's wife, Debby, apologizing for the state of her house when I came over to see her for the first time. When it first came back I kind of pushed it away as unimportant because it wasn't attached to a personal trauma, but over the last few days I've gone into the memory, recalling details of the mental images and what she said. I didn't really do this on purpose but as the scene unfolded, something was flagged in my mind as important, as part of a larger pattern.

She was apologizing for the 'mess,' which I didn't really view as a mess at all. She explained that she'd been talking with a friend who thought she might be neurodivergent -there's that word again- who had been making sense of this reoccurring pattern that she couldn't seem to put to bed.

It was that she would start feeling overwhelmed partway through the day, and that let her know that she needed to sit down and take a break. Knowing that she had 3 under 4, I wasn't surprised. The part that should have been a red flag was that she was self-flagelating for it, because sometimes it took 20 minutes for her to feel better, to feel normal again, and sometimes that was all the time she had before the littles began demanding her attention again, and then she'd feel guilty that she hasn't used the time to clean.

Having been through it, I know that this can be the norm for moms who are neurodivergent, with neurodivergent kids. It seems impossible and really, it is.

But her solution was what my mind had flagged as suspect. She told me that despite reassurances from her friend that it was OK, and that she shouldn't beat herself up about it, because she was most likely neurodivergent, she would "like to think of herself as normal."

The leadership had accused me of living in a fantasy world by wanting to pursue a career in the arts, but they themselves were being lead astray by delusions.

She was refusing to acknowledge the truth of the situation and instead wanting to try and solve the problem by increasing her self-discipline and accountability. She, and others in the leadership of the church, were caught in the virtue trap, (Julia Cameron) and burning out fast because of it.

The concept that she herself might have a disability was so shameful and unacceptable that she preferred to repress this impending knowledge and instead of getting it diagnosed and treated, she was going to demonize its symptoms, calling them 'sin,' and fix the problem by performing harder. I guess this makes sense if you're at the pinnacle of the pyramid structure a shame-based cult-like church and desire to live by example.

The fact that it took me 20 years to realize that's what was really going on is mind-blowing.

When I reflected on how the pastor at PGCC treated, me, it reveals a similar mentality of demonization of disabilities (calling me a drug addict) and shaming of the symptoms (overstimulation, anxiety, OCD, PTSD.) They wanted me to die alone because I wasn't neurotypical.

I believe this is one way that hyper-individualism has harmed the church of North America in this century.

We used to know that we need each other, that "it takes a village," and all that. But now everyone's so isolated in our own little silos and nobody cares to help one another, even when they're struggling. They're too tired and too busy.

I wrestle with the morality of a capitalism that forces everyone to get a job outside the home to keep its engine going, to the detriment of the running of the home and the relationships beyond it upon which humanity thrived through co-operation until about a hundred years go.

The resurgence of things like bedbugs, headlice, scabies, and pinworms that were all but eradicated by the mid 1700s due to fastidious housecleaning, shows that even though the intent is there, it's not getting done to a high enough standard when 'mom' is forced to go out and put the first and best of her energy elsewhere.

Jesus didn't tell us that it was OK to treat others badly as long as we were willing to endure that treatment ourselves...He commanded us to love God and love one another, "as we love ourselves." (Gal 5:12, Rom 13) The imperative to love oneself is there. We are not to be the lowest common denominator and settle for worshipping the God of our own understanding or our generational inheritance, or our opposite but equally harmful reaction to our upbringing...but to rise to the standard of love.

The problem with these pastors of my past is that they didn't see self-abuse as a problem. They didn't see it as a lack of self-love, because their motivation was to improve everyone's lives and make them the best Christians they could possibly be. They were blinded to the toxicity of their perfectionism and codependence, I think, by pride.

We need eyes to see where we're going, or we're going to flap our wings and get somewhere - but it won't be where God wants us, or anyone else, to be.

As Bob Birch was said to have repeated over and over before he passed, "He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches."

I believe that it is utterly wrong to observe the work of the Holy Spirit in someone's life and label it as demonic or rebellious. I believe that if it isn't direct blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, it's in the same neighborhood.

I reached out to my godparents in my hour of need and they refused to help free me from my narcissistic parents. They told me that "people who do YWAM often come back with a spirit of rebellion."

I don't believe that this was an accurate observation or discerned by the spirit of God. I do believe that it was an example of charismatic witchcraft in the church. I also believe that it was gossip against God's people, a struggle to interpret what they saw going on with their physical eyes without the spirit's help, and possibly even blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.

I have hesitated to label people's words and actions against me as this - because I know the fears that not knowing what this means has caused in me.

But it sure seems like it's a logical extrapolation of the scriptural example (in Matt. 12) of the Pharisees seeing the work of the Holy Spirit in Jesus' life (e.g., miraculous healings) and then claiming that He was from the devil.

I realized that I have written a great deal about work without actually once mentioning its redemption.

I am not sure that Rulers can actually grasp this, except in a selfish, me-first paradigm, where they are the takers and profiting off the hard work of everyone else. Maybe this desire is the greatest in them, and that's why they accuse everyone else of it? Maybe they're just so stuck on their own ability to provide for themselves and their families (and all their fears revolve around this too) that they just can't let go. It really is an area of idolatry for them, isn't it? This really is the sin of Cain and Tubal-Cain - being iron hard and relying on oneself, one's own strength to build one's own kingdom apart from God.

As believers, we should be 10 000% invested in not doing this.

I am beginning to understand now why Arthur Burk says that carnal rulers can do so much damage to their own family lines and other generational cycles like workplaces.

To explain what I mean by the redemption of work, we will have to go back to the garden.

When Adam and Eve fell, God kicked them out of the garden. He decided that Adam would work for everything he had instead of just enjoying God's provision. He would have to exhaust the potential of both brain and brawn to subjugate the untamed wilds outside the garden to somehow accrue enough resources to eke out a meagre existence for himself and his family.

One of the basic understandings of the Christian faith is that Christ came to redeem all things, including work. We believe that those who are in Christ are "a new creation," and that we are not subject to the curse of seemingly impossible amounts of physical labour in return for only survival, as detailed in the adamic curse of humankind. (This type of work is defined as slavery, by the way.) We believe that we can trust God instead for a life-giving type of work that suits our God-given gifts and talents, interests and skills.

This is basic Christianity, guys, why am I having to explain it as if the pastors of my generation had no idea of the theology behind this? This is not rocket science. This is base-level understanding, Christianity 101.

Not that work, or even hard work is BAD, but it's not our inheritance. Excruciating amounts of work just to make ends meet; ergo, a poverty level-existence, is not what we're aiming for, expecting, and keeping our levels of hope safely beneath.

As Arthur Burk says, God may be opposed to earning but is not opposed to effort (my caveat is that I think this mainly applies in terms of personal pride and hierarchical structures, which God most often subverts when he choses someone to use in unprecedented ways in their generation.)

As I have stated, I believe that the theology that the pastors at PGCC and The River Burnaby used to flagellate me is a poverty-level understanding of Christianity.

Let's go back to the basics: Christianity 101. What is Christianity all about? EVERYTHING CENTRES ON FAITH. So why is a lack of faith so exalted in leadership? This is a fallacy and an area of corruption.

Faith is the catalyst. Everything happens by faith. Everything.

Jesus was constantly chiding his disciples: "Oh ye of little faith," when they were the ones with the most faith of everyone around. They had left everything to follow him because of their faith. Yet they still didn't have enough for what God wanted to do in their minds and what he wanted to manifest through them in their generation.

It was about 10 years ago when God started showing me this, and I started asking myself, "do you?"

I found that my answer was most often no, that I did not have the level of faith that it would take to change my circumstances. I didn't believe that God could or would break in at any time to subvert the physical reality of everything that scaffolded my bodily existence to bring about his kingdom purposes in a raema moment or a kairos time. (Some would say, "a kairotic exigence," but I digress.)

So in conclusion, I would say that faith (the character quality) should be central to my faith (set of spiritual beliefs, Christian walk/religion), and that I should take utmost care to ensure that I am walking in faith in every area, including that of work.

This feels like a hilarious redundancy, and a bit of a cosmic joke that I had to go through such mind-boggling experiences only to wake up at 6 AM on a holiday weekend 22 years later to reason out and walk through such idiocy on paper. Yes, it was the theology of idiocy that justified adding more to my chains to those pastors who abused me. An idiot is an adult who is stuck at the developmental level of a 1-2 year old child. So perhaps this underscores the need for more inner healing in leadership, and certainly, accountability to those not under the same deceptions.

There are those who did not receive the raema word with joy when my generation was called. After they made themselves enemies of my destiny, wrestling with me to try to stop, steal from and delay it for these 22 years, I have come to understand it is unbelief that stops them. The biblical consequence for unbelief is spiritual blindness and unltimately, death in the wilderness.

Therefore, I have come to believe that those who have persisted in lack the faith to believe in where God is leading his church in this generation (individually and corporately) will not be allowed to enter the promised land and poison it with their bitterness.

I had some more memories resurface in the past few days.

One of them is another episode of harrassment/slander from Pastor Lawrence Ray. I had gone to a dinner party of someone at the church who lived not far from me on the East Side. I was having terrible social anxiety so I went into the bathroom. After I flushed I was in there for a few more minutes, trying to regulate (I had bad anxiety and OCD after the narcissistic abuse by J.L. and my parents the first few years of university.) Someone knocked and I told them I'd be a minute. I couldn't get the anxiety under control, just couldn't so I reluctantly came out. As I was washing my hands, someone knocked really loudly and they said it was their bathroom and I needed to come out right now.

When I opened the door they told me that I couldn't be in there that long and that 'people,' were waiting to use it (as if there was a long line.) I hadn't been in for more than 7 min or so. I think one person knocked while I was in there, which I thought was pretty normal for a party of 30+people in a tiny one-bedroom apartment.

The person was obviously upset: they had a bee in their bonnet about something. They told me that I couldn't be hogging the bathroom and that if I did that people might think I was in there doing drugs. They shamed me for the amount of time I'd been in the bathroom (I still had unresolved G.I. issues from my time in India. Unfortunately, I don't remember if these had come into play in this scenario. They had caused some problems with my job at Sears.)

The fact that someone might think I was doing drugs was the last thing on my mind, so it didn't reall make me feel offended or insulted at the time. I knew they were wrong so I was able to shake it off without really processing what had been said or taking it personally.

However, I offered to leave the party right then and there. I reasoned I wasn't going to have any fun or make any real connections if I couldn't get my anxiety under control, and if he was irritated with me for literally doing nothing, he probably didn't value having a social connection with me; he had enough friends there already. I told him that my blood sugar was getting really low (it was well past the stated time for dinner) and that was probably contributing to my malaise.

He asked me to please stay and have dinner, so I did. I realize now that Lawrence had gone behind my back and told people to watch for signs that I was doing drugs.

If you use shame as a means to control, you are engaging in abuse.

I guess the problem with people spewing all their hate and shame on me because they insisted that I fit into a certain mold – all growing up and in my early 20’s, is that I already had low confidence. It wouldn’t have worked at all if I had a loving family surrounding me and an inner witness that “I am lovable and capable.” But my dad worked hard to undermine any such confidence in me from a young age. Maybe it was his demons finding prey, and he wasn’t aware of it, but he has been very unpleasant, extremely narcissistic to me since I was a very young child and even a toddler/baby.

When someone is already grappling with self concept and struggling to find a way in the world, it is cruel and unusual punishment to say terrible things about them – running down their character, only because they are not conforming to your ideal image of a good capitalist slave.

Trust me, if I had the ability, I probably would have – because I really, really like pleasing people to stay out of the line of fire, which I learned how to do growing up with a grandiose and a vulnerable narcissist- and if I’m being honest, my extremely high grades were probably a strategy for this. But I digress.

I didn’t have the ability to do what these people were expecting of me. This is why they call it a DIS-ability. Because it’s something that’s required in a certain society or circle that a certain category of people CAN NOT DO. We were born with the genetic incapability of doing such things. To then say that it’s a character issue is gaslighting, and ultimately, narcissistic abuse – but when it comes from those in positions of ministry, those who stand in as God’s representatives on earth, it takes on a whole other layer of significance, darkness and harm. It’s taken me 22 years to get healed of these things, to learn how to regulate, how to stand in my truth, to admit that they happened and release forgiveness and the blocks.

They say that abuse is confusing, and it is even more confusing if you’re autistic with social processing deficits.

And it’s not fair. They injected their toxic negativity into me where it didn’t belong so that THEY could feel better – making me carry their trash around inside of myself, which I don’t have to tell you messed up my internal workings at the deepest levels and stole energy that I would have otherwise been using to build my own life. This is why it’s tantamount to rape.

The other thing is – and maybe the most important – that it’s not at all biblical. Forcing someone to fit into a modern capitalist jack-of-all-trades masculine woman stereotype is nowhere in the bible. Outside of Eden, there are many other systems of government and self-sustenance mentioned (other than capitalist democracies,) that run the gamut from communes to monarchies – and none of them are denounced as evil.

If I chose to live off grid and never work a ‘real job’ in my life it wouldn’t make me any more or less spiritual, because it’s not a spiritual issue. But their small minds probably didn’t even think of this, let alone weigh what they were doing on the scales of justice. Because metacognition is only for the self-aware and the socially responsible. And no, they were not.

Did they not consider the words of Christ to Martha when she complained that her sister wasn’t working hard enough? “She has chosen the better thing.”  (I have dealt with work refusal in other posts.)

I had another memory bubble up to the surface yesterday after I thought I had put this thing to bed.

So the bit about Point Grey Community Church has a part 2. After I got fired and my term ended and my parents decided to only give me half of the CST money they'd been saving for me since I was a baby...so that I would starve and come back home...my roommate (a much older woman) decided she needed more stability in her life and told me she was kicking me out. She gave me almost a month's notice.

I had found a place to stay and even another job (working for a friend of a friend who was opening up a bistro/coffee house.) We had become closer and he gave me a start date for my new job. I had gone in a couple times to help him clean up the back end of the restaurant, and he had used my (personal) yogourt to make butter chicken.

He confirmed my first day of work and I arranged to have some help moving, with a friend of a friend. My roommate told me she would have a friend help her take the furniture out of the place. We settled on a date I would be out of there, and that was that. So I thought.

Over the next week and a half she decided that she wanted a Japanese exchange student in the room and because this person was arriving a few days before the end of the month, changed my move-out date two or three times. Yes, they communicated this dictation clearly, but I also communicated that my first day of work would not be the day I was moving. It was three days early and I had already arranged help to move. I agreed that they could move all the furniture that they wanted that day. I tried to switch the first day of work with the owner of the restaurant, but he declined. He wanted me to work the Saturday.

So I was there when they started moving the furniture, and then I went to work. About two hours into my work day, the woman and her male friend (who had decided that his work schedule was more important than mine and was the reason the move-date had changed so many times) showed up at my workplace and started yelling at me across the counter.

I wish I were exaggerating.

They said they had been looking for me everywhere. After about three loads, they decided that they wanted me to help move the stuff and that it was my duty to help them, so they had called all my friends to "figure out where I had run away to," to get away from the work of moving.

I told them calmly that it was my first day of work and that I would move the rest of my stuff with my friend on the day we had agreed. They proceeded to escalate it into a yelling match and the boss just told me to go with them.

He never paid me for that day and I wasn't welcome to work there again.

It turns out that my roommate and her friend had decided that it wasn't enough for them to just move the furniture on that day -they wanted all my stuff out- and they didn't tell me until they were halfway through moving: tired and escalated. Then they called the pastor and told him that it was my moving day and they were doing all the work: wasn't that unfair? I had run away in the middle of moving! Shouldn't he get on the phone to shame and rebuke me for my bad behaviour?

Cyndie and Tom left out the important detail that I was starting a new job that day and couldn't be in two places at once.

So they called up the pastor and put me on the phone with him, and he participated in the communal shaming, even after he learned that they knew I had another obligation that day. After not celebrating getting the new job (which he told me to do) and instead shaming me, he said something like, "communication is important," and hung up.

Why this? Why did this happen? I think part of it was disrespect because of my age. I was a young woman alone in the city and my roommate, who had once been an ally, had betrayed me relationally because I made her uncomfortable.

If I had been covered or had family or a man present in my life, this would never have happened. And if it did, these men would have been severely challenged for their overstep.

My calling and my faith and the risk I was taking all pushed into new territory that she wasn't comfortable trusting God with me for - as long as it meant that it might impact her a little. She had been afraid that my parents wouldn't get the rent money they promised to me on time and they almost didn't. She told me (after she had the conversations with Tom, and already decided she was kicking me out) that she felt 'too stressed,' to deal with it all. (She felt stressed?) She saw me as a stock that was falling, and decided to get out, with the help of a little relational violence.

Her friend was a strange, small man with a huge ego who seemed to have decided that I was a terrible person and therefore his actions were justified (save Cyndie from the terrible person).

In an attempt to control who she hung out with, he had told Pastor Lawrence that he wanted to marry Cyndie, all the while secretly dating another woman who was much younger and lived in a nearby town. Cyndie told me that she suspected they were sleeping together and that she expected a long-term commitment - otherwise why would he be tagged in Christmas morning photos with her kids?

She told me she hadn't let Pastor Lawrence know because she was keeping Tom's secret.

After ruining my chance at a new job with someone that I liked and respected as a boss, and getting me moved, they left me alone and I never heard from them after that.

I think they were maintainers, threatened by the fact that I challenged the status quo. They only wanted to think in terms of predictable patterns and known options - they wanted to "hammer down the nail that stuck out," so to speak, to make it fit in with everything else around it.

I can be completely confounded as to why the vitriol and deception in these people that seemed like good Christians. Are all Christians like this? (Tom had given me a ride to church with Cyndie a few times.) However, I now see that it is pride that allowed all of it. It is pride that enables leviathan, and humility that shields one's heart from it.

As Rick Joyner explains, Christians have one victory and the glory of the brightness of our armour blinds us from seeing things as they are. Unless we wear the cloak of humility, which allows us to see rightly again. This is a huge problem in B. C.

I have come to realize that it's pride that enables leviathan, but Katie Souza teaches us we are not to fight it on our own strength. We are to humble ourselves, stand back and let God fight for us. I have done this successfully many times now, and have seen many victories over the controlling (Jezebel) and twisting/deceiving (Leviathan) spirits inside of people, especially authority figures.

I guess my main point is that deciding that someone is moving one day without their consent, and then starting to move not only the things you said you would move (the furniture) but all of their stuff without their consent or presence, is abuse. It was more like sisterly abuse, but the spiritual abuse came in the shaming that the manner of their actions represented.

Calling the pastor to rebuke them about a character issue because of it is spiritual abuse and not telling the pastor the whole story is gaslighting.

I guess I will mention this again for those who haven't read the whole blog. I was sick with a tropical disease from India. The North American version of the amoeba is non-pathogenic, but the tropical version is very damaging and has an extremely disabling effect on everyday life of the host.

That research hadn't come out yet in 2002-3 (until around 2004) and I didn't hear about the study until 2008 (after I was healed). So I had an undiagnosed disease of a parasite that was causing a ton of pain, loss of absorption of nutrients, and physical weakness. The lack of nutrients had a deleterious effect on my brain. My body responded with extremely low blood sugar lows, during which I could barely function.

Most of the time I didn't have the money to get quite enough to eat, so I dealt with extremely low energy times in the day. I also didn't have the money to stick to a gluten-free diet, as I had become gluten and soy intolerant as a result of my India travels (a probable auto-immune response to the physical and mental distress of returning home, which I detailed in previous posts). My dad to this day gaslights me about this, calling me a lazy hypochondriac. (He is a Ruler. But I digress.)

I had been gaslighted about the severity of my disease by my parents and the entire medical community (although, interestingly, not the naturopathic one.) And now these people were repeating the trauma by picking up the enemy's refrain over my life - that my lack of busy-ness was a character issue, not a medical one.

They would have known these things if they had taken the time to talk to me - which Cyndie had. But her weird clinger-on guy friend did not and neither did Lawrence. They took delight in trying to stamp out my art, break my spirit and condemn me for trying to exist in an abuse-free space where my special needs were taken into consideration and accommodated at my place of work and I was considered not an invalid, but a real and valid human being.

20 years later, this sounds like a joke - so many people have pioneered in this area to get these things recognized that the way they treated me sounds almost criminal (it was.) But back then it was kind of normal. They were punishing me for not conforming to the norm, and the fact that it made them nervous. Something in them needed to strike out and hurt me because I was doing things differently. So they did.

There are no more damning lines in the bible than these- and there's no actual description or deductive meaning of the phrase - it's just sort of a blanket, catch-all. They just assume you will 'catch' the meaning in your spirit.

I'm not sure this fits with modern minds. Blanket words like dissipation (which literally means dilution of a substance) and licentious (having or taking the right to do something) have gained a reputation in scripture as being these undefined lurking evils which are actually quite simple to figure out specifically what they mean when you look at the literal meanings.

But if you ask a pastor what they mean - they will look at you with horror in their eyes and repeat the word in a sinister tone, and then say something like - "everybody knows what it means, everybody knows it's bad."

Meanwhile, I'm not sure they actually realize what Paul was saying there, that having the influence of the spirit in our lives diluted is a problem. That's it. It's not some big, scary bogey man waiting in the closet to overcome us. We can demystify these words by decoding their meanings and using scriptural references to figure out context.

I guess this is part of my problem with the church. It's the same problem that I have with leftists these days. They're both assuming that you will 'catch' the spirit of what they are saying and if you don't, you're an idiot with the moral worth of a scumbag.

On Evangelical Fundamentalists - the pattern set out for us in the Old Testament was not to insist on adherence to huge scaffoldings of rules based on understandings (theologies) set out by one or two key thinkers in the past.

While there was an aspect of trusting the priests to interpret and tell them what they needed to do to be right with God, ancient Jewish understanding of God was individual and scripturally-based. They didn't read books by people who interpreted scripture for them, they read it themselves and committed it to memory, talking and debating about the meanings and practical applications.

Once one of them, I used to believe that a person had to share certain beliefs and 'understandings,' like views on abortion, divorce, masturbation and quiet times, in order to be a real Christian and actually be on their way to heaven.

But now I believe that it's wrong to insist that these beliefs be put upon others. Teaching has a place in the church, but forced assimilation via brainwashing should not. Scripture should speak for itself and be elevated above 'common understandings,' as the only pure truth. Even then, what it means can be a topic of hot debate.

Like I've outlined in previous posts, I don't believe that every situation in which abortion could be considered is equal, therefore the morality isn't equal and the course isn't always clear-cut depending on the fundamental right or wrongness of a thing. I believe that casuistic reasoning belongs in the church. Case-based decisions should be made and morality is based on the situation, not the fundamental right or wrongness of a thing.

Another thing the church gets wrong is thinking if something is right, and they choose that 'right,' thing, God will cause everything to work out perfectly because of it.

Actually, Jesus promised pretty much the opposite.

When it comes to purity culture, the term 'sexual immorality' lead to an opposite extreme of belief - which I've deal with in previous posts (and the nervous system trauma suffered by many because it goes against relationship.) The point is that if you don't define something, it becomes very difficult to define the opposite, righteous response, and leads very easily into error.

I guess what I'm getting at is that there is a healthy breaking away from parental controls at some point to define what is really important to an adolescent individual in terms of values. This is normal and it is a part of growing up. If we don't individuate, we can't ever make our own choices, and will always be relying on others to make them for us: co-dependent and stuck in a child-like state of psychological development.

In Evangelical Fundamentalist circles, it is almost impossible to break away from anything because all beliefs and extrabiblical rules are prescribed beforehand, without acknowledgement of situational difference or nuance.

I know a girl who was a few years into a commonlaw relationship with her boyfriend before they both got saved. They began to be convicted of their relationship, and then planned for a year or two, then got married. Was it wrong of them to stay 'living in sin?' (Was it sin?) until they were able to get married?

I know a woman who married a screen addict when she was young. After 10 years or so, she had an affair with a non-believer who was committed to partnership and present in the relationship. She got a divorce from the husband and had been living with the partner for nearly 20 years when I met her. She was a worship leader at the church I attended. When the leadership team found out she wasn't married but was planning a wedding, they let her stay on.

The same worship/leadership team had a nephew who was engaged to be married and building his own house, with the help of his fiancee. He had been married previously and had a child, to which she was becoming a step-mom. They had been spending a lot of long hours at the house together and were slipping into some 'sexual immorality.' At this point their wedding was only three months away and they decided that it would be too hard to try not to be at the house alone together, since all their friends and family worked different schedules. So they decided to give in to the urges and just be together. The worship team decided their nephew shouldn't be on it anymore. The couple hung out with their non-Christian friends a lot for three months and they ended up with some very drunk sexual 'performances' at the wedding, to the horror of their grandparents.

Todd Bentley had an affair with an intern and then decided to get a divorce. He then repented, decided he wanted a new wife and went out and got one. Then he decided he wanted to be back in ministry. Some Christians thought he should divorce the new wife and go back to his old wife and kids. I don't agree. I think that would have caused more harm than good.

After I left Prince George and moved to Vancouver, I saw that pretty much every girl who wasn't supported by her parents lived with her boyfriend at that age because she couldn't afford the city prices alone.

In the Old Testament, there is such a thing as a slave marriage, where a person would get married to have their debts paid off, and then after seven years, (when all slaves were freed) the union was also required to be dissolved. How is this different from living with a college boyfriend?

How is the modern interpretation of 'sexual immorality' at all supported by things like brother f*cking for fertility in the Old Testament? That would be an awkward Thanksgiving table.

Do people just assume that it was sin and that the sacrifices of the priests would cover the 'mysterious and unknown,' sins? How could it be sin if the "law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul?"

Asking for food one time equals having a drug problem?

What about verbal, narcissistic, and economic abuse in the family of origin, health issues, neurodivergence, mental health, hidden disabilities, genetic differences (sorry but I was born of 'noble,' European blood and I got the low energy,. I can't be a peasant...I can't even be middle class. I don't have the energy. I would die if they forced me. I am actually on the 19th tier in line for the English crown, thank you very much!) TBH, I think I also had heavy metal poisoning from the lead we breathed in the open-air rickshaws during my DTS outreach in India. I seem to remember there was some rant by Danny Lehman about not "blaming," YWAM for being sick for 20 years afterward right before we went on outreach...but forcing us to breathe that shit in heavy rush hour traffic WITHOUT protection, and then also telling us it was our fault and our choice is probably abuse, right?

But I digress...

They would not even acknowledge their cognitive dissonance when I sent the paintings back years later with Jamie's aunt and uncle. After an entire two-hour conversation with them about what constitutes a person who has a drug problem and one who has never even touched drugs, they decided to circle right back to "if you ever see any evidence of [her using drugs] let us know so we can tell others (gossip about her and throw shade on her name). We are pretty sure we were right about her."

I seem to remember they also accused me of extortion. I had used the word 'commissioned,' to describe how the paintings came to be. Back when I was attending the church, I had attended an artists/ministry meeting on creative direction and God had placed a few things on our hearts, the word 'embryonic,' being one of them. He gave me an introductory sketch and a direction for the painting...which I proceeded to complete, but it didn't feel complete until years later when I finished a series of three. I didn't feel comfortable keeping them, since they were in a sense, commissioned by God and belonged, I thought, to the church and what he was doing in that hour. Even though I had long since left the church, I still felt that they needed to go back there. So I sent them with John and Elaine.

So the pastors had a huge negative reaction (not a thank you) and said that the word commissioned has to do with finance and they never commissioned the paintings, and that my use of the word amounted to extortion (trying to get money out of them.)

At 7 months pregnant with my first child and married, money was the last thing on my mind. I was trying to do the right thing by the Spirit.

I will never know what these people went through to get this janky about their relationship with money and giving. Maybe they were both addicts at some point? Maybe they shouldn't have been pastors with all this wounding (which affects judgement) still?

You thought I had gone to live on the streets and did nothing to prevent it? How is that AT ALL biblical?

What if God's word is true and he will use the words they used to judge me to judge them? What would he say to them?

That is an extremely fearful and bombastic thing to say for a shy introverted INFJ like me, so you will know the force it took to bring it up from the depths and the gall it takes to put it on the page.

But I digress..

It just doesn't add up - all the judgement I've experienced from God's people since I started fully following His calling on my life.

I've realized there are maintainers who want to keep everything the same, and there are a lot in the church, but it doesn't make sense that all of them should react that way to me.

Is it because I didn't look the way they expected?

Jesus didn't look the way the Pharisees expected and they missed his coming. The ones who traced genealogies, obeyed the law to the last tittle, even giving more than they needed in service of God, including all the extra-biblical rules, and were the most confident of their righteousness.

They didn't recognize him - in fact it hints in the gospels of an ongoing inference they made that he was an illegitimate child. They taunted him with this often, up until he came out with "your father the devil," to describe them, to their faces.

So what I've come to realize is that maybe in some Christian circles, performance orientation is required to identify you as 'one of the elite.' It talks about this in 'Candy Coated Water Drops,' a song by...IDK a Christian band. When God delivered me from it and cloaked me in confidence and humility, Big City elite E.F.'s no longer recognized me as one of their own.

I was a 'friend of sinners,' (I had one friend in recovery) so I must be one of them? Again, who does that sound like?

The Pharisees called Jesus a 'friend of sinners,' as an accusation that he was a sinner and came from the devil.

I'll tell you what: the best witness I ever had was the deliverance and emotional freedom that God gave me when he started releasing the creative freedom of my calling in my life. Everybody saw its goodness and everybody wanted to be near me. The joy was palpable.

Suddenly all the Christians thought I was 'of the devil?'

Why would a good God suddenly allow so much injustice, malice and evilspeaking to come against his child? What was He trying to accomplish in this season?

There are several reasons that have come to me over time, as I've mulled over the maelstrom that I have summarized with this relatively brief flyover in the past few months' worth of posts.

The short answer is that I will never fully know. I will never fully know why God allowed this to happen - allowed so many distortions to be viewed as truth and spewed out like vitriol toward me, why he allowed the enemy to pull the rug out from under me repeatedly for years every time i felt that I had my life on the right track. I carried the pain in silence and wept alone in quiet moments for decades. It was really confusing and messed me up a lot.

But just when I thought I had to give up, I would encounter a prophetic person or a prophetic word that would speak right to where I was at and it would give me just enough affirmation and confirmation to keep going.

Reading Job was a huge comfort to me during that season. I also found comfort in the Psalms. I could relate to the warfare referenced in them.

There were a few things that God has revealed to me in the years of processing. Firstly, there was a humbling that needed to happen. I did have a sense of spiritual pride that I now recognize when I encounter it in others. It is one of the most insidious sins, in that people don't recognize it in themselves (see post referencing C S Lewis' take on this.)

Secondly, I also needed to have unshakeable confidence in my ability to hear God as well as my own judgment and my ability to discern truth. I needed to be absolutely invincible and set my face like flint in the face of any shade of abuse, or untruth or wrongful interpretation of me. I had to be absolutely ruthless in the face of rejection and just keep on ploughing no matter how much mud was thrown in my face. It seems contradictory that a set of hardships could build both at the same time, but they did.

Thirdly, there was a separation and a threshing that needed to happen - I was called to a different place, type of relationship with God, lifestyle and purpose than a lot of my high school friends and also Christian friends in Prince George.

I felt so alone those couple of years watching nearly all my friends in the College and Careers group at church first couple up and then get married. Even though I was left alone because of it, I wasn't going back to UNBC to do a degree in forestry. This seems laughable now, but that's what the pastor told me to do (go back to school,) when I came to him despairing that I was sick, my brain was gone and my family didn't support my calling in the arts.

I missed my ex terribly but I had been obedient to break up with him, so I kept waiting for the absolutely perfect husband, God's choice golden boy to appear. He didn't.

What I believe the enemy was trying to accomplish was to get me to doubt God's purpose and calling on my life, and to abandon it. If he couldn't get my parents to break my spirit, he would use other authority figures in whom he had a foothold, many of them bosses, many of them Christian.

He was trying to rob me of the right to choose my path in the arts and the double blessing of an income stream that would come from having training in an area of giftedness. (Arthur Burk) He knew that I was autistic, and that if he could convince me and everyone around me that all I was worth were minimum wage physical labour jobs, and/ or that I was lazy or on drugs, he could burn me out and hopefully leave me homeless and starving, a short route to infection and eventual death.

He nearly succeeded.

What I saw this season of my life as was a finally. Finally, God gave me a way out of that toxic family environment of manipulation, name-calling, shame, control and gaslighting. They were over-achieving perfectionists and created one out of me also.

Just today I had a repressed memory of my dad sending me an email reply to my request to have the family come to Hawaii to see me graduate from my DTS (before all the bad stuff happened.) It was filled with hate and emotional abuse. He reviled me as selfish for expecting him to spend money to bring the family to celebrate something that was my goal and not any of theirs. Never mind that I had been asking to have a real vacation for years.

Everyone else in the small town doctor circle (and even some of the others) could afford real vacations to places the whole family could enjoy: Disneyland, Italy, Mexico, Hawaii. But my dad would never allow us to do that.

He spent all his money on himself or vacations that were tantamount to torture to the rest of the family that only he really enjoyed. Camping in the Turner Lakes, for example - he turned a 9 hour hike into a 4 and a half hour grind, when I had a heavy period and asked to be chartered in with my mom. They refused to change the trip dates, refused to let me ride in the helicopter, refused to slow down when I cried out for mercy, refused to let me stop for a snack. (My mom somehow knew and met us on the last 10 minutes of the trail with dark chocolate because I was shaking due to low blood sugar.)

Another vacation that he chose was only for himself and the dog - he chartered a plane or helicopter to set him down a week's walk into the middle of the wilderness with no food, and he walked back. Another time he spent $2000 on fly-tying equipment that languished in the basement for 10 years and then was given away when we moved.

So I didn't believe him when he claimed he couldn't afford a family vacation. What he meant is that he didn't want to spend time with the family because we were not a priority for him. (Looking back, I believe he had untreated ADHD and this was a big part of his inability to sit still and relax or allow us to have any type of actual relationship with him.)

Never mind that he had promised to actually do a real family vacation to Hawaii (more gaslighting) and this was probably the last chance I had to see that wish of mine come true.