As I sat down to write this post, I’ll admit, I was feeling angry. Disappointed, hurt, misunderstood…But mostly, just really pissed off. I asked myself, is this a topic that needs to be shared on my blog? As I considered the answer, I literally looked up the definition of the word “blog”. According to Dictionary.com I found this:
“A website containing a writer’s or group of writers’ own experiences, observations, opinions, etc., and often having images and links to other websites.”
I also thought back to my initial post, “Why The Third Quarter?” My goal with this blog is to share my mid-life experiences so that hopefully they can speak to others going through similar situations. In addition, I want to showcase what it is that I do in my coaching program – help others replace negative habits with beneficial ones, find solutions to struggles, and reach the goal of a fully balanced & healthy lifestyle. Anger is definitely a struggle of mine that I constantly have to address. So, yes, I will share it here. Get cozy. This will take a minute.
I’ve mentioned before that we lost our church in late 2016. This place was our second home; the people, our extended family…or so we thought. I won’t dive into the event that triggered the avalanche, but it was devastating, it was quick, and it caused a spiral of painful events that I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to fully overcome. The result was our pastor and his wife, basically overnight, were no longer a part of the church. These people were my husband’s and my good friends, had been our mentors since before we were married. Their youngest son and our oldest were close friends. I could go on and on explaining the depth of importance these two people had within our family, but I’ll leave it at this – It left a tremendous hole in our world. Within one week those who remained in the church were left with shattered hearts, anger, fear, and no direction. My husband was one of three of the church leaders at the time. He and I were heartbroken, but had to move forward. Scott was in the middle of onion harvest, the worst time for something this enormous. He was driving the two hours back and forth for several days, attending meetings as the leaders tried to figure out how to navigate this mess. A friend and I stepped up and took over the Sunday School program that our pastor’s wife had been running. Everything was absolute chaos for weeks. To top it off, the interim pastor that had been sent to help us through this was useless. He was among the group of people who were happy our pastor was gone, seemingly “too liberal” for many of the congregants and people at the district level. So, for them, they saw this as an opportunity to get the church back the way it should be. Whatever that means.
The months that followed were a roller coaster of emotions and things just kept getting worse. To keep this from becoming a novel, though, I’ll move on to what caused my family to leave the church. As I said before, we were close to our pastor and his wife. There were certain people at church who didn’t like that. They wanted to rid the place of anything connected to the “old way” of doing things. I overheard one of the women talking about the need to get rid of the puppets (us being the puppets). The leadership used an app called Slack to stay in communication. My husband and I, being in leadership, were on that app. Unfortunately a few of the others didn’t understand the concept of channels. One evening there was a conversation being had over the app about my husband and the need to get him off the board. The interim pastor didn’t really like him much and took every opportunity he could to try and sully his reputation. Their mistake? They hadn’t removed me from that channel. I was seeing every word!
From there it was nothing more than us hearing from the few people we had left that we could trust that things were definitely being said behind our backs. I left. I was done. I can’t explain the disappointment I felt. The hurt. The betrayal. It was 100 times worse than the original problem that caused our pastor to leave in the first place. Scott stuck it out a while longer until he was accused of having a drinking problem (which, if you know him, you know is absolutely ridiculous) and told he needed to “get his family in order” by the interim pastor…who didn’t know us at all. The worst part? The people who DID know us, never stood up in our defense. Nobody had our backs. That was the end. Never in all my life of being involved in a church had I experienced this sort of thing. We were crushed.
Now, why did I tell this story? What does this have to do with why I woke up angry today? And how on earth does it relate to the title “Drop The Rock.”?
From time to time, my youngest, my 22 year old daughter, still helps at the youth group at our old church. She has a heart for the kids and hasn’t quite been able to completely cut the cord yet. Last night, late, I got a text from her. She was upset. The head of the youth group is one of the other leaders my husband had served with. We’ve known him and his family for years. He began grilling my daughter about how our family felt about the church, then continued on to say that we should’ve “stuck it out”. That we should know that sometimes people are people and we have to deal with the tough stuff. He basically said that we quit. SO not accurate. It’s five years later. Never once has anyone called us to ask what happened. Never once did anyone stop to consider how dedicated we were to our church, and that it must’ve been something enormous to cause us to leave. Not one call. And now? My daughter is getting questioned and hearing that her parents just quit.
The momma bear flared! I barely slept last night. I was fuming and ready to pounce.
Here’s where the rock comes in…Probably 20 years ago – back in what I call my “corny Christian days” – I attended a weekend Women of Faith conference. There was a speaker named Nicole Johnson who gave a lecture entitled “Dropping Your Rock”. It stuck with me. Her point was focused on our quick tendency to judge others…to throw a stone at those who do wrong in our eyes. She told the story of the adulterous woman who had been dragged into the street to be stoned for her sin, then Jesus walked over and with very few words, “Let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone”, got them all to drop their rocks. (John 8:1-11) I feel like those people in our church were throwing rocks at us. I feel like last night, that man speaking to my daughter was still throwing rocks at us. Our family was going through hell at that time and we were receiving no compassion. That man never asked why we left, he simply assumed and made a judgement.
But here’s the thing…am I not also throwing a rock at him? I believe that the only thing we have control over is ourselves. Our actions. Our reactions. Our thoughts. Our words. By me waking up so angry and wanting to call him to lash out for upsetting my daughter and wrongly accusing us, what does that say about me? What do I have control over in this situation? I need to drop my rock and realize that I know the truth. If I want that man to know it, I have the ability to call him and CALMLY explain. From that point, I can’t control what he does with that information. But I can rest easy in knowing what actually happened. I can hold tight to the truth that we did not quit. We simply understood that it was time to go. We stuck it out as long as we could then for the health of our family, made the decision to move on. I must drop the rock.
One last point I want to make…
I don’t want this story to cause anyone to think that having faith brings turmoil, pain, judgement, etc. Faith does not do that. People do that. My faith is what has carried me through this mess since day one. It was the hurtful people who caused the issues. I said above that I had “corny Christian days”. I say that light heartedly. As we grow our spirituality we mature. We learn truths, we gain compassion, we gather wisdom. My corny days were when I was still fairly young in my spiritual life. And, honestly, I’ve had to fight growing callous as the years stack up. The corniness, though, is definitely gone. I struggle with the label “Christian” because so many out there behave terribly and hurt others in the name of Christianity. I do not want to align myself with those people. I love Jesus. I want to be like Him. I want to love others, care for them, bring light and joy into their lives. It is not my place to judge. If I were standing around someone lying in the street waiting to be stoned for their sin, and Jesus told me to throw the first stone if I was without sin, I would drop that rock so fast! Every one of us deserve to be rolled up on the ground waiting for that stone to hit. So who do we think we are throwing them at others? Again, this event in my life had nothing to do with God. It was the result of people who had an agenda. Please don’t let this influence your thoughts or feelings on spirituality.
Now…as I drop my rock, are you holding one? Is there a big jagged stone in your hand that you’re holding onto so tightly that it’s causing cuts in your skin? Who do you want to throw it at? Who is it that you are judging? Is it time to drop that rock and focus on what you can actually control? Yourself? Let’s drop our rocks together.
This is a small excerpt of the Nicole Johnson lecture I referred to above.
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Kim Smith is a Certified Integrative Health Coach who lives in the San Gabriel Mountains with her husband of nearly 30 years. She offers health, nutrition, and weight loss coaching, as well as stress management training, and support for autoimmune disease and chronic illness patients. She is in the process of releasing her signature online course, “RESET Your Life”, due to launch in November of 2021.
For more information on the programs she offers, visit her website at http://www.resetihs.com
You can also contact her at (951) 634-1100 or email at kim@resetihs.com
The Third Quarter 