Pink Story: Cracks

My husband was a youth pastor of a church for over 3 years.  Our oldest daughter was a baby and he didn’t want us to be stressed or busy so he asked me to stay home with her for most of the required attendance church events.  Because I wasn’t present, thee people talked about me behind my back.  One of the leaders attempted to turn the young women against me by telling me lies about how they were upset with me.  Fortunately, I met with the said accusers and cleared the air.  They had never said anything and relationships were made stronger despite the efforts of the person spreading lies.

During that time we had no family living nearby, the other church leaders never invited us for holidays, like Thanksgiving. They all got together, but left us out.  We actually were never invited to dinner or even coffee in the 3 years we worked with them.  We were taught that we needed to be examples to the people in the church and we needed to keep our problems to ourselves.  We should not share our problems with the people in the church because they might not respect us as leaders.  

Because of this, I felt badly if I had any problems.  I beat myself up over having a messy house or for watching television in the middle of the day when I should have been be working.  I held the highest standards for myself and had convinced myself that all these people had these standards as well and were daily judging me by those rigid standards.  

This experience made me doubt if I could really trust people in a church.  If I told them how I struggled, would they judge me?  What if I shared my doubts with them, would they tell me I was wrong?  Could I really trust these people with my true thoughts and feelings?  All this baggage came with me into this church full of people only desiring to be real, honest, and loving.  

This history explains why I was surprised by their compassion, their non-judgmental comments, their willingness to do whatever and to pray for me.  I appreciated them remembering that people are fragile, especially the ones that look like they are made of granite, like me.  They let me break and crack in front of them. They held me gently and didn’t even try to glue me back together.  They let me be and accepted me, cracks and all.