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Irving Bible Church Retreat

Denton, Texas

Date: April 11 - April 14

marydemuth

Wow. This quote hit me. So much of my suffering

Wow. This quote hit me.

So much of my suffering as a child was experienced alone. I could feel an unexpressed atmosphere of “don’t say anything and keep it all together; regulate yourself for the sake of the family.”

So I buried it all.

No one bore witness to the anguish within.

Perhaps that’s why I share openly today. Maybe that’s why I’ve processed my church grief here in this space. Because I know the toll my forced silence took on my soul.

And maybe that’s why it brings me joy to bear the weight of another’s story.

But today? I’m grieving. I’m sad that little, fatherless Mary had no one she felt safe with to share her story. That she endured the abuse, neglect, and constant vigilance alone.

Trauma, according to @chuckdegroat, severs us from ourselves. We live disconnected or numb because it’s easier than facing the pain. And doing so can be incredibly lonely.

My prayer request? That I would come back to myself from this hard year. It’s slowly happening through the healing salve of good relationships, a healthy church, and rest.

How does this quote hit you today?

We like to think the church is a haven for the hur

We like to think the church is a haven for the hurting. But what happens when it’s not?

Author and advocate Mary DeMuth urges the church she loves to rise up and face the evil of sexual abuse and harassment with candor and empathy. Based on research and survivors’ stories, along with fierce fidelity to Scripture, DeMuth unpacks the church’s response to sexual violence and provides a healthy framework for the church to become a haven of healing instead of an institution of judgment.

In the throes of the #MeToo movement, our response as Christians is vital. God beckons us to be good Samaritans to those facing trauma and brokenness in the aftermath of abuse and provide safe spaces to heal. DeMuth advocates for a culture of honesty and listening and calls on the church to enter the places where people are hurting. In the circle of that kind of empathetic #WeToo community, the church must become what it’s meant to be—a place of justice and healing for everyone.

#itendswithus #church #abuseawareness

You never know (as an author) whether your book wi

You never know (as an author) whether your book will be translated into other languages. There are foreign rights people in publishing houses that negotiate all that, but the process is not communicated.

So one day, you’ll just open your mailbox to a couple of books with a familiar name on the cover and a letter that tells you where your book is going on an adventure!

Thank you @Bethany_house_nonfiction for believing in this book enough to make an edition for India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the UAE! If you live in any of those countries, and you’re struggling as you love your adult kids, pick up a copy!

(Aside: authors seldom, if ever, see any royalties from these books. Instead, we have to view this through a kingdom lens, rejoicing that our words are more far flung than we ever expected!)

I’ve heard this statement uttered in several chu

I’ve heard this statement uttered in several church contexts over the years, and it never felt right to me.

While it is always good and right to contextualize the gospel for your particular setting (Paul becomes all things to all people, for example), it is dangerous to dance near sin’s line.

We are not to even have the appearance of evil, and the Bible is clear that we are called to live holy, set apart lives. So to blur the line between sin and non-sin is problematic. Jesus did not sin, but began the most powerful movement on earth. And when we place sin as the center of our strategy (or coming close to it), it becomes easier and easier to justify wrongful actions and motivations. “Oh, we are doing this iffy thing because it will win people.” That’s a dangerous place to be.

The deeper issue is our obsession with numbers, which seems to have come from the church growth movement that originated in the 90s, as far as I can tell. There, numbers became the sole determinant of growth, and if you weren’t growing, something was wrong with you. We created systems (baseball diamonds, for one) to measure our growth and ensure people who came through our doors started a journey of discipleship.

Problem is, discipleship is hard to measure. It’s personal. It’s one-on-one. It’s relational. When Willow Creek went through their “why aren’t our people growing in Christ” study several years ago, the result was jarring. They were a mile wide and an inch deep. And when people started growing in Christ, they left because there was nowhere in their existing model to really grow as a disciple.

Jesus didn’t call us to make converts, according to Matthew 28:18-20. He called us to make disciples—which means we sacrifice for the sake of others. We pour into people. We watch ourselves and our own proclivity to sin. Discipleship is messy. It’s not easily programmed on a Sunday event. It’s difficult to measure, nor is it flashy. But it’s good.

A quick few hours in Venice, Italy. One word: ench

A quick few hours in Venice, Italy. One word: enchanting.

While flying from Geneva to Venice, I prayed, aski

While flying from Geneva to Venice, I prayed, asking God why he didn’t do the usual maintenance on me in Switzerland. Usually, the dross of the year falls away as I walk the picturesque foothills of the Jura mountains, or as writers pray for me. But this time, while it was a fruitful experience, I could not find the solace I needed.

I sensed God saying to me, “You can’t heal from grief in a location of grief.” And it made sense to me.

Switzerland has been my joyful respite, a comma in a run-on sentence of my life. But a shifting of things at the locale had made my happy place more a location of ambiguity. New grief lived there. And in the midst of that grief, I could not find a healing foothold.

It’s the same for us all. We have a hard time healing if we are still in a physical location of grief. The problem for me is that when I am home, I am reminded of the grief of church hurt. The whole town seems to be circling around my former church.

The solution?

I’m not sure, but it must involve creating a safe haven where I am. Perhaps that’s helpful for you, too.

It’s like an open wound that keeps festering. You must first bandage that wound so that contaminants cannot infiltrate the wound. You have to separate the wound from the environment. And then when it’s healed, it can interact again with the air.

To heal, friend, seek a safe place. As in my case (and I assume this may be true for you), that safe place might not be evident, or it may be so obvious that it’s right in front of you.

If I were to guess today, my safe place is actually people: my husband, children, and my group of friends.

May you find yours again.

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