His Friends: Bearing Burdens

A friend at church said he struggled to have a quiet time. I had to suppress a smile because his inconsistency made me feel even better about myself. I was translating the Bible from Greek in my seminary classes, so I felt like I was on a different level from him.

After I resigned from Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, a spiritual darkness descended. I'd held the gaslighting, spiritual abuse, and bullying at a distance for months. After I was out of that environment, I collapsed. To try to recover, I went on a retreat to a mountain cabin with sweeping views of the Great Smoky Mountains. As I tried to pray, I pressed my pen into a journal until it nearly tore the page. I tried to capture my angry prayers on paper, but I gave up. The pain was too much to face by myself. Before I left, I threw the journal into the community dumpster so no one would see what I'd written.

On Sunday, April 8, 1945, in a schoolhouse where he was held prisoner, the German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer led his fellow captives in worship. He had barely finished when the guards arrived and said, "Prisoner Bonhoeffer, get ready to come with us." He knew their summons meant execution. Before they took him away, he turned to another prisoner and said, "This is the end. For me the beginning of life."

"After I got hurt by a church, only one person ever reached out to make it right." I thought that seemed unlikely. In an entire community of Christians, how could hardly anyone want to apologize? But looking back on my situation nearly five years later, only one person ever reached out to me. If no one is sorry, how can I forgive?

I wanted to live in Dorchester to serve a struggling neighborhood. But no one from my church had ever visited, and a number of people told me they didn't want to come. I knew it wasn't a safe area, but the reluctance of Christians to get involved contributed to the problem. The loneliness eventually overwhelmed me, so I reluctantly moved out.