I’m currently committed to the discipline of writing about the six anchors that have helped me examine and call out abusive theology. Just like when you leave an abusive relationship, reality feels skewed, and it’s hard to decipher what love really is. Exiting the fundamentalist religion of my past felt a lot like this: hazy, confusing, and exhausting. These anchors give me something to cling to when the self-doubt starts creeping back in. It is my hope that writing about these six anchors will help me grow and potentially provide others some stepping stones on their own journeys, if needed.
The Six Anchors
1. Unconditional Love Doesn’t Have Conditions
2. Love Celebrates the Individual of Its Affection
3. Love Does Not Equal Control
4. Love Takes Responsibility and Does Not Threaten Harm
5. Love Builds Boundaries, but Not Isolation
6. Love Won’t Feel Fearful and Confusing
I was completely enmeshed with my past abuser. As a codependent, I felt incapable of separating myself from her. My world revolved around our relationship and attempting to stabilize her fragility. Maintaining such an allegiance grew hard during a semester when she studied abroad. I slowly started making new friends and stopped responding to her emails as quickly as I used to. There was something freeing about my new friendships: I didn’t feel afraid nor confused. I found myself feeling free for the first time in over a year. Genuine laughter returned, and the knot in my stomach disappeared. I didn’t consciously acknowledge this, though, which caused a lot of confusion when she returned from her semester abroad and I hid on the floor.
I watched from a window inside the dorm room as her car pulled into the parking lot. My hands started quivering, and my mind raced. Before I could form a cohesive thought, I threw myself to the floor and hid on the ground behind a couch. A dear friend came in to find me hiding in the dark. “She’s back!” she exclaimed, “Aren’t you excited!? I thought you’d be running out to her car!” I was just as confused as she was. Why was I hiding? Why was I afraid? Shouldn’t I be excited to see my best friend again? I should get up. I should put on a smile. I should go greet her with a hug. I should stop hiding.
This example is extreme, but showcases the innate reactions we have to unhealthy relationships. Sadly, we often overlook feelings of fear or confusion when they arise. These two feelings, though, are teachers, if we would lend our ear to them.
Though I couldn’t formulate the thought or make sense of my own reaction, my body created a response of fear and confusion and physically drove me to hiding. Why? Because, deep down, I believe our bodies know we are valuable and worth protecting. Though my conscious mind did not, my intuition knew my relationship was abusive and unsafe, and my body worked to protect me. Had I known to listen to fear and confusion as guides, I could have come to more conscious awareness much sooner.
Throughout our entire friendship, I often felt uneasy. I felt a need to impress, walk on eggshells, overcorrect mistakes, and prevent potential abandonment. This bred confusion, though, for I thought that my abuser loved me and saw me more than any other person had. I fought the nagging questions in my own mind about discrepancies between what she said and how our relationship actually played out in action.
I see the same threads in church experiences. Often, church-goers are fearful of who they can talk to, who they can be honest with, how much they can share about their doubts, where is the true line between inclusion and exclusion, etc. I see people wrestling with the questions of confusion about how church word doesn’t match the deed. “If we are loving, why are people being ostracized?” “Why are the some sins highlighted more than others?” “Why do they boast about me being welcome, when I feel more lonely here than ever?” Often, the response to that is an overwhelming list of “shoulds” that push those fears and confusions down: I should be reading my bible more, I should reach out to others more, I should be more like him/her/them, I should join a small group, I should raise my hands, I should confess, I should pray, I should be excited, I shouldn’t feel fearful, I should trust God, I should stop doubting. I should get up. I should stop hiding. But sometimes we hide because, deep down, we know we are not safe.
The Bible tells us perfect love casts out fear, not a list of shoulds. Where there is genuine love, fear and confusion dissolve. We can judge a tree by its fruit. If you feel joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control budding in your life, then you are rooted in love. If you feel fear and confusion, examine where you have planted yourself.
Notice I say examine and not “uproot yourself immediately.” As a survivor of abuse and trauma, I know good and well that our instincts can often create confusion around goodness and love. My brain grew so accustomed to mistreatment that sometimes I experience fear and confusion in the midst of being loved and supported. Those feel foreign and uncomfortable, at times. They were also mirages people promised before some of the most intense hurt I’ve endured. My trauma brain says, “Nope! Not falling for THAT again! We know how this goes! Alert all fear and confusion responses! TIME. TO. RUN!” I have to examine the soil in those moments. How? I have to find my footing. Something Glennon Doyle calls The Knowing.
When I experience fear and confusion, the first thing I must do is get in touch with what I know. Scripture tells us to be still and know God is God. That Being lives and dwells within us. If we still ourselves long enough to sink below the chaos of shoulds and fear, we can know.
Doyle writes in her book Untamed, “I can know things down at this level that I can’t on the chaotic surface. Down here, when I pose a question about my life–in words or abstract images–I sense a nudge. The nudge guides me toward the next precise thing, and then, when I silently acknowledge the nudge–it fills me. The Knowing feels like warm liquid gold filing my veins and solidifying just enough to make me feel steady, certain. What I learned (even though I am afraid to say it) is that God lives in this deepeness inside me. When I recognize God’s presence and guidance, God celebrates by flooding me with warm liquid gold . . . The Knowing never reveals a five-year plan. It feels to me like a loving, playful guide, like the reason it will only reveal the next right thing is that it wants me to come back again and again, because it wants to do life together.”
Sometimes The Knowing makes us shudder with fear, but the brave kind that is about to be bold in action–not the kind that is hustling for worthiness* and belonging. The Knowing causes us to step out of hiding, not cower in it. The Knowing guides us on the path of Love. You may call The Knowing “The Holy Spirit.” And you may call Love “God.” I believe they are synonymous. And I believe The Knowing calls us out of systems that are built upon power and fear to step into the wide open fields of Love. We become skilled at ignoring the ways our Knowing fights for our attention. We’ve been taught that. We grow more fearful, buckle down with our hands over our ears saying, “No! I will not fall astray! I will keep my eyes on The Truth! I can do this!” What we often fail to recognize is the fear is a teacher, the confusion is a signal. If we would pause the voices, sink deep, listen, and trust, Love will not lead you astray. Instead, one small, shaky step at a time, Love will lead you home.
*Brene Brown coined the idea of hustling for worth. I think there is no better way to describe that weird dance we do where we beg, borrow, and steal for some semblance of feeling like we matter.
this wordy world 