I have a bad habit of being really passionate about a thing, doing that thing everyday, then once the buzz or adrenaline wear off or life simply gets busy, I step away and then forget what I was so passionate about. That's why you will see literal years go by between blog posts. I forget until I remember.
I also avoided the blog because I knew it was time - time to share what happened at our old church in 2020 - time to lay it all there - share my side of the story - explain why we made the choice to step down from ministry and leave that church. But every time I sat down to write, I just couldn't find the words. It was still so fresh and it still hurt so much and still made me so angry, that I would just stare at the screen, not able to put the words on paper.
But I think it's time - so I'm going to start writing and see where it goes.
I think we can all agree that 2020 was the worst. We faced a global pandemic that put us on lockdown and we were isolated, and the busyness of life that normally kept us distracted was gone, so we were left to see things as they really were. I was in the camp of at first thinking this Covid thing was being blown out of portion until I realized the danger it posed to my youngest daughter - the daughter who had pulmonary hypertension and chronic lung disease and was in the group of people most at danger of dying from Covid. My daughter was in that small percentage of people that the rest of us were so desparately trying to protect. So in March, when lockdown went into effect, I stayed home with Ellie. We didn't go to church, we didn't go into the grocery store, we didn't do therapy, everything was done via video chats and live streams. Eventually I started keeping the big kids home as well so as not to risk them being exposed and then passing it along to their baby sister. So in our final months at our church, I only stepped in the building a handful of times, but watched the live stream every Sunday morning.
But Covid wasn't the only hard part of 2020. 2020 was also the year that we watched George Floyd be killed at the hands of police. 2020 was the year that learned of the murder of Ahmaud Arbery at the hands of 3 white men who literally chased him down in their vehicles because they decided he looked like someone who might have broken into a construction site. 2020 was the year that Breonna Taylor was murdered in her home in the middle of the night after LMPD issued a no knock warrant that we later found was retrived under false information. 2020 was the year that we watched protests happen all across the nation calling for change, for the end to systemic racism in our judicial system. And I was a vocal advocate, using my voice and privilege to call out the injustice I was seeing, to declare the truth that "Black Lives Matter".
I remember the weekend after George Floyd was murdered I looked at my husband, who was the worship leader at our church, and I asked him, "what are you going to say on Sunday? I don't think you can remain silent on this issue." I had this overwhelming feeling that being silent was being complicit in what was happening and that to love God and to love his image bearers meant speaking - pointing out the injustice, fighting for change, and opening our mouths to speak. We could not remain silent anymore.
So I started posting on social media. A lot. I was posting pretty much every day, sometimes multiple times a day. And I was using the hashtag, #BlackLivesMatter and #BLM, not because I supported the organization (because I didn't and still don't), but because as I continued to watch black bodies be murder I couldn't help but see the black people in my life. My nephew, who has autism - I couldn't help but think of how easiliy Elijah McClain could have been my nephew. My brother-in-law, who travels all over the country as a musician - I couldn't help but think that Ahmaud Arbery could easily have been him. My neighbors two houses down, who also happen to be the parents of a friend - I couldn't help but think of how easily the wife could have been Breonna Taylor. And the list goes on and on. I knew the stories, I knew the systemic racism, the implicit bias that was pointed at them, and I knew that their beautiful black lives mattered. So I used the hashtag and I made the posts.
Then my son and I attended two protests. The first was in Louisville with other families. We made signs and we stood on a busy street in a predominately white part of town and shouted the worth of black lives. We stood in solidarity with our black brothers and sisters saying, we see you, we see what is happening, and we will not stand for it anymore. I think my favorite memory from that day was watching the faces of the black people driving by, the smiles of being seen. And watching my son soak it all in and having hard conversations about what we were trying to do. We also attended a protest in New Albany where we wrote the names of those killed by police on the sidewalks and kneeled on the hot sidewalk for 8 1/2 minutes in silence. We were putting our privilege where our mouth was. And this was all shared on social media.
Not long after my son and I attended the protests, Aaron was called into a meeting with our interim pastor and the pastoral intern (you may remember him from earlier blog posts as the Sunday School teacher who dismissed me and treated women poorly). As Aaron sat down, this man dropped a STACK of papers on the desk. He had actually printed off every post I had made over the prior months and wanted Aaron to explain them. He wanted Aaron to make account for the things I had said - he wanted to know why Aaron couldn't control his woman. Aaron understandably got very upset and defended me and was less than pleased when he came home that afternoon to relay what had happened. And he did encourage me to make sure that all that I was saying was rooted in Scripture.
So I kept posting, but I tried to make sure I was very clear that I was upset because of my love for
Jesus. I believe that we are all image bearers of God and that as such deserve dignity and protection. I believe what Scripture says in Micah 6:8 "He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" [ESV]. I believe what it is says in Ecclesiastes 3:
1 and 7, that "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven...a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;" [ESV]. I hold that our call is that of Isaiah 1:17 "learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause." [ESV]. And that we are to do as it says in Proverbs 31:8-9 (which by the way is the same scripture we love to quote on Mother's Day as to the epitome of a Godly woman) "Open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all who are destitute. Open your mouth, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and the needy." [ESV]. I was outspoken BECAUSE of my love for Jesus, not in contradiction to it. While I do believe that the gospel is ultimately what everyone needs - to see their need for Jesus and his salvation - I also believe that you can't feed empty bellies Jesus and that sometimes people don't need to be given a pamphlet, but instead need your presence beside them in the fight. Then another meeting was called, this time with a church member who also raised conerns that because I was using a hashtag that I was now a full supporter of an organization and that I was now an appostate who had lost my salvation. And I should mention these concerns were not brought to me, the person doing the posting and using the hashtag, no the concerns were brought to Aaron and he was once again implicitly told to go get control of his woman. I can't remember, but I think there was a third meeting between Aaron, the interim pastor and the pastoral intern and finally it was decided that Aaron would sit down with the personnel committee and the deacons to answer questions and give defense for the things I was saying.
I still remember the day that Aaron came home and told me that because of everything, our interim pastor had decided to not move forward with Aaron's ordination. That was the first real gut punch of all of this. While Aaron was on staff at the church and was leading worship every Sunday and preaching in a regular rotation, he has not yet been ordained as a pastor. But he had gone through all the steps, he had been vetted, he had sat before a counsel of other pastors for hours and answered questions about doctrine and his theology and at the end of it all, these men had recommended him to be ordained as a pastor. Then because I had the audacity to speak out about injustice, one man decided to withhold that from Aaron and that hurt so much. Not long after, Aaron told me that we were being asked not to make anymore social media posts until after the meeting with the deacons and personnel committee. So we complied and I stopped posting.
In the days leading up to the meeting, Aaron was provided a list of questions that would most likely be asked so that he could have some time to think and prepare. Aaron then offered, more than once to arrange childcare so that I could attend as well. It seemed only appropriate that I be a part of the conversation since it was my words that had caused all this. And he was told, more than once that it was not necessary for me to be there. So Aaron went into a room and spent hours being questioned and having to make an account and defend me. And he walked out of the meeting feeling defeated and less than hopeful about our future at the church.
The day before we were to leave on our annual vacation, Aaron had a meeting with our interim pastor, where he was presented with the "first steps" that would need to be taken to move foward with reconciling and staying in leadership at the church. In a gist, we were to apologize for what we said and any discomfort or offense it may have caused, I was to remove all of my posts involving "black lives matter", all hashtags, and any future posts would need to be run past the interim pastor to make sure they were "appropriate". We were told that our convictions were not wrong or unbiblical and in fact Aaron had made a strong biblical argument for them, and that while we could still hold to those convictions, we would need to remain silent about them in public. There may have been more, but this is what I remember. Aaron almost drove up to the church the next morning before we left town to turn in his resignation, but ultimately we decided to take the week to pray and sit on everything before we made any decisions. Then when we returned home Aaron submitted is resignation and agreed to stay on for the next 30 days.
This was such a hard decision, but ultimately, we felt it was best for the church as a whole. You see our church had already been through so much, including a really nasty split that had left only a handful of families. We could stay and fight and most likely we would win, but at what cost? How many people would be caught in the cross fire and hurt? For the sake of the unity of the body, we were going to step down and the public reason would be because of a difference of conscience, but not of any fault or any disqualification. We had asked all involved to honor our wishes to not give specifics to the congregation, again because we believed unity in the body was the most important thing in this situation. And then a week after Aaron's resignation was annouced, the interim pastor got up on Sunday morning and told everyone that it was because of some social media posts and that was the final nail in the coffin for me. I knew that we were done at that church and would never be back.
It's been almost 3 years and I still get angry about it. I am mostly angry for how little I was valued in the whole situation. Not once in MONTHS of concerns did anyone ever speak directly to me or ask me what I meant. Assumptions and judgments were made about me without ever once asking me for clarification. I was deemed a problem for Aaron to deal with and as such no one needed to actually speak to me. And that was the worst part. It was MY words, MY posts, MY actions that were cause for concern, but not once was I allowed to speak in my own defense. I was a woman under the headship of my husband and therefore my status was less than. I was taking up too much space and this was a way to silence me. And it worked, I haven't been the same since.
