a survivor’s reflections from the Foot of the Cross

It’s still hard often. The nightmares come back again. I encounter Christians (and more uncomfortable still, Christian leaders) whose lack of boundaries and poor emotional health trigger memories of unsafe relationships that have scarred me. I navigate community now always with a cautious wisdom wrought through harm and through healing. When I recall the doubts and the cynicism I have harbored, if I am honest I acknowledge that I harbor them still. I do not pretend I have no questions, no dissatisfactions. I do not deny that Christianity has created monsters. I observe the hypocrisy, and sometimes also the crimes, festering in religious spaces and I choose again not to look away. But I choose not to run away, too. The work of the faithful—the liturgy—is my path, and the house of God is my home.

I spend a lot of time gazing at the icon of Mary on my mantelpiece.  A dear friend gave it to me the year we lost our last community amongst the Evangelicals. It is a haunting image. There aren’t actual tears depicted in this icon, but the expression on her countenance and the downward line of her shoulders as she cradles Christ close to her heart make tears easy to imagine—and easy to shed. In these moments I find a friend in this precious sister, this Holy Mother.

I do not leave the foot of the cross because I am convinced that the Divine Love expressed in the Trinity, and the power of the resurrection, are truly our only hope in life and death—especially for me, carrying with me the wounds of not enough love, not enough dignity, not enough belonging, not enough safety. Where better than in Jesus’ arms am I going to find these wrongs righted?

I have seen Christ dragged through mud and nailed to a cross. I have seen Christ spat upon, denied, and worse still, appropriated. I have felt him buried in my own heart, shrouded by cynicism and pain; and buried too under the grandiosity and the small-mindedness of those who claim to represent him. I stand by the Mother of God at the foot of the cross and cry out for mercy for us all; I claim and proclaim mercy for the world Christ came to love—the whole world—all of us wrecked in our various ways by the flawed followers of this Prophet, Priest, and King; some of us wrecked by under-shepherds who we trusted to treat us like we had heard Jesus treated lost sheep. 

I do not hush the objections that sprout within me like weeds; I carry them with honesty, and sometimes also with courage. There have been seasons of despair. There have been dark nights of unbelief spanning weeks or months or years. I have felt disgust, not just for the people of God, but for God too. But I have known God to bear with me, transcending in Constancy my childish expressions of frustration or complaint, like a tender-hearted parent who remains quietly present with a dysregulated child. Always I find again that this crucified and risen Lord is the only thing that makes sense of what I see. Always I find again that Jesus is “My Lord and My God.” In my best moments, I do not press myself to parse the mysteries of the universe or its Creator. In my best moments, I do not ask Why God Would. Instead I rest my weary head on the stories and the songs and the sacraments—on this Jesus who says “Come to Me, all you who are weary.”  I weep and watch and wait with Mary. And perhaps most truthfully, I refuse to give the gatekeepers the satisfaction of shutting me out.