i just want someone to take the time to read this…i know its long so i appreciate those who do.
to give you a heads up as to why i consider this mental health, this was the first time anything like this had ever happened to me. My family has always had mental health issues including schizo and bipolar, ptsd…many things, but this was my first experience. I was a fairly central piece of a church team volunteer-wise, it was a small church so most people there knew me and we got along. I thought the pastor’s family and I were friends…but I was mistaken. After several years of friendship and what i thought to be mostly amicable, the pastor’s daughters just randomly started ignoring and avoiding me, and the pastor’s son approached me and said i was barely tolerable. thats it…no discussion, no warning, no prior incidents (they were all college age at time of incident 18-25, I was 30 at the time). I felt so awful after this, i couldnt sleep and eventually starting having hallucinations and paranoias and delusions, i had delusions that the girl ran away from home and thinking it was my fault turned myself into the police, who sent me to mental health, who released me, then I had hallucinations the police were scanning my home, so turned myself in again…eventually i was admitted to the mental facility at the hospital…I received medicine and the hallucinations and delusions have stopped…but there has been one big big problem…I have carried this around for years…since they are the pastoral family, i feel like just sharing it with people from the church would only damage me more if anything. i don’t know if i want revenge, justice, i don’t know what i want. All I know is I want this pain to end and to stop thinking about them.
to save time, I am just going to copy and paste a “review” I wrote but never posted online–I suppose it was a way for me to get my thoughts out without hurting the pastor’s family, even though they have done everything in their power to hurt me, and you can just follow up with your input afterward. sorry but it is a bit long.
After being insulted directly by the pastor’s family, and being discarded and abandoned by the pastor’s family; I was told I would only be allowed main service and men’s breakfast—no bible studies. Despite this, I blamed myself thinking I did something wrong; and tried apologizing; only to be told that a). they did not feel slighted and b). my feelings aren’t their responsibility. but let’s think about that: if I ran over your dog by accident; perhaps my actions were unintentional; but your dog is now my responsibility; the damages done financially and emotionally are now my responsibility, even though the dog is not. I may not be able to bring the dog back; but I am responsible to that owner, am I not? In the same way, when you hurl insults, and abandon people without a word; are you not responsible for the damage to that person? I won’t sit here and tell you I played no part, because I did; and I tried to put myself in their shoes and sense their discomfort; but my main issue with all of this is that it doesn’t seem like they think they did anything wrong; when they clearly did. When I tried bringing my concerns to the pastor; I received blocks from the entire family on social media; another clear indicator I was not really “welcome,” though they insisted I was (mind you, I was only allowed to main worship). After a couple attempts at reconciliation, was told they were doing boundaries as a way to help me move forward. It was all very coded and lacking information and felt either more like an outing, or a way to make their lives easier. If their intention was to help me; it did no such thing as the only thing it did was cause my own family to abandon me for seeking mental help; and destroy any trust I had left in the church; it is almost as if when I walk into a church I expect to be betrayed now.
If your boundary involves not allowing someone to worship with you; I honestly question your heart. The funny thing is I know what most people are going to say: “I just need to forgive them.” And this is the crux of the problem: When Jesus talked about forgiveness, there was this little precursor: “if they come to you and repent, you must forgive them.” I went to them for anything I might have done; but have yet to hear any repentance from them. And, IF it is indeed true as the pastor said I didn’t do anything wrong; then it would follow there would be no need to punish me (even now I still feel that I did do something wrong; but even so I tried to make amends for what I believed my actions to be). To confuse things even further, the pastor said my actions have consequences, and that I have to take responsibility for my actions. But…I thought you said there’s no animosity and didn’t feel slighted? So…which is it? Because I have been very forward about my actions and tried accepting responsibility on my part, while your family has not taken any, despite calling me “barely tolerable,” shutting me out without warning, and blocking me on social media, AND one of the church’s facebook pages. (my mental health issues only took effect after the shunning, not before)… The pastor even told me to, “respect their space, and wait for them to come back, and then embrace them,” filling me with a false hope, because that day never came.
The whole issue here is I’m being told to respect boundaries. The problem is that the boundaries, and how they were implemented, were extremely disrespectful; and my feelings and concerns were not respected to begin with.
To further exacerbate this issue; I’ve heard some of the sermons…about how we should reconcile, love annoying people, if they knew this about me could they still love me…I heard it all…but unfortunately, none of it was true in my case.
Hey there @mlssufan01, I’m so sorry to hear that you went through all of this, I can’t imagine how much it affected you and how much it hurt. No one deserves to be treated that way and then shunned from something they hold so close to their heart. I wish I had more advice or suggestion for you but I’ve never been through something like this and I’m relatively young so I don’t have much experience with something as big as this. What I can say though, is sometimes it’s easier to let go of the past and move forward. I know that’s way, way easier said than done. Sometimes forgiveness or reconcilation isn’t what’s needed. I’m a Christian too and I know how we are taught forgiveness, but to me, letting go is a essentially a form of forgiveness. Acknowleging what happened, realizing that it felt wrong, and deciding to not let it hold anymore control over you can be just as important as forgiveness, and sometimes it can be even more important, or could even be a step towards forgiveness and reconcilation in the future. It’s not fair to you that this situation happened, that it dragged out for so long, and that it caused you so much distress in your life.
Like I said in the beginninng of this reply, I’m extremely sorry to hear that this happened to you. It wasn’t right and there’s no excuse for it, especially in a place where you’re supposed to be loved immensely. I hope that you can find some peace while moving on from this and I hope that they will come to you someday and realize what mistake they made.
Always remember that you’re never alone and you’re valued so much. You mean the absolute world to me, friend. Hold fast. 
thank you for the reply and kind words.
Believe me…I have tried letting it go…numerous times. idk what it is but i always just get sucked back into the story somehow.
after a few years the pastor’s wife started liking my facebook posts but i couldnt take it so i unfriended the whole family, i thought that would help me move on but honestly it didn’t. today the former assistant pastor of the church friend requested me on instagram…he left before this incident so he probably doesn’t know what happened…but i just hate being reminded of that church and i dont know how to tell this assistant pastor that i dont want any reminders of that church, because honestly he is a decent fellow as far as i can tell.
If you want to tell the assistant pastor that you don’t want any reminders of that church, I think the best thing you could do is be honest about what happened and how it made you feel. If you think he’s a decent person and feel like you can open up to him, I’d say trust your feeling about him because it’s probably correct. He may even understand where you’re coming from and might be able to help you figure something out to move past it.
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