Feelings, Nothing More Than Feelings

I've described for you the body of believers that I was once a part of. I've also given you an idea how difficult it is for me to tolerate change. I think now I can try to put into words just what I've been feeling since the summer of 2008. I don't know if I can accomplish this in one post, because I've experienced such a variety of emotions. I'm learning that my honesty is going to offend someone out there, and the only way I can prevent that from happening is to remain silent. Since I intend to continue blogging, I'll just have to apologize up front for any hurt feelings my blog may bring you. Please understand that I'm trying my hardest not to be critical of certain people or churches and that my thoughts are not complete. God is not finished with me and my journey towards acceptance.

I'm familiar with the stages of grief, as I have been through all of them since the day we learned that our beautiful, first-born child was autistic. I will most likely go through some of them again as Pierce makes his journey to adulthood. It is debatable just how many stages there actually are. I thought there were only five, but it has recently been discovered that there may be as many as seven. Since the summer of 2008, I feel like I've visited most of these stages of grief again as I've tried to process the changes in our church community. That summer, an announcement was made that change was coming to Antioch Church Of Christ. Some people were accepting of this change, but some were not. The stage of grief that I went through first was Denial. I thought that everyone's emotions would settle down eventually, and we could go on worshiping together as we always had. We loved each other and we loved the Lord, so surely nothing could come between us. I even thought that if we discussed our differences, we could find resolution and no one would feel compelled to leave. Alas, every Sunday our class got smaller and smaller as dear friends decided it was time to find another place to worship. I began to feel as if the life was being sucked out of our church, but I clung to the hope that we would see those "glory days" return. After all, we still had many friends that remained, and Antioch was the only church our children had ever known. Once so many of our friends were gone, it became blatantly clear to us that there were things that our family needed that could not be provided at Antioch anymore. We had chosen not to dwell on those things before, because we loved our church family so much and couldn't stand the thought of leaving them. Finally, we decided that the time to move on had arrived for us as well. Our last Sunday at Antioch Church Of Christ was Easter 2009.

I thought for a little while that I would move pretty easily to the Acceptance stage. The new church we were visiting was vastly different from our former home, and I appreciated some of the newness. The children's ministry was outstanding, the worship was joyful, and while the church was huge, the bible class we were attending was small and somewhat intimate. It helped that there were many familiar faces from Antioch to make us feel more at home. However, I soon discovered that the thing that stayed so constant here was how much they loved changing things up. Tim and the kids fell in love with this new church immediately, but I entered into the next stage of grief: Anger. I had left everything that was familiar and comforting to me. Now, bible classes were constantly changing so that I felt I'd never get to know anyone. We were always learning some new praise music instead of singing the old hymns that I so loved and had grown up with. Everyone I knew seemed to be happily moving on, while I felt betrayed. Betrayed by my friends and my church. Why did a few decisions have to destroy the church I loved so much? How could my closest, dearest friends just abandon me and start over some place new? I resented this new church we were attending with a passion. I refused to sing these new praise songs. One Sunday, I felt the tears coming, and I had to hurry out to the ladies room where I sobbed in one of the stalls. I didn't want to start over again. I didn't want to make new friends. I just wanted everyone to return to Antioch; I wanted to go back in time a couple of years.

Whew! I think I need to stop here for now. This is a pretty emotionally exhausting process. Maybe I should take a friend's advice and just write about sunshine, rainbows and unicorns.