The Church (and Its People) Really Let Me Down, Part One

 No, that is not a clickbait title. I’m serious. The Church (and its people) let me down… and it was exactly what I needed. This is part one of two.

This weekend I finished reading Arise from Darkness by Fr. Benedict Groeschel CFR and the timing could not have been better. It had been sitting on my bedside table for almost 2 years but I never touched it because it didn’t seem like the right time. But late last week, I vowed to finally read and finish it and, yep, things definitely happen when they’re supposed to.

As I’ve written before, I’m still slowly getting back to myself after that medication-induced desolation*. And desolation has an asterisk because I don’t think it was technically desolation since medication exacerbated the spiritual dryness I already had. Or maybe it was desolation and the medication just made things worse. Either way, my brain chemistry (and, really, my entire system/body) is still recovering from 3+ years of steroid use for the adrenal insufficiency so I’m not going to beat myself over the fact that my spiritual life is still the worst since my reversion in 2006. But the book by Fr. Groeschel helped me realize a couple of things, with the big one being that everything that happened needed to happen to help me grow.

I know some of you will remember those tweets in which I would talk about feeling let down and angry over the mass exodus of people when I started not acting like myself and not wanting to do anything with the Church. It was intense and I needed my Catholic friends to help me through with it and I was met with crickets and goodbyes. People who others were/are constantly saying how holy they are and what an excellent example of Catholicism they were? They were the first to bail or kick me even harder when I was already down. Priest friends? Silent. I felt so abandoned and consequently angry because I’d always thought that we never abandoned people when they were in need… and I was definitely in need and I felt like no one gave am *expletive* on my worst days. It got to the point where I thought I would leave the Church, though I continued to fight that on my own because I knew, deep down, the thoughts and feelings weren’t me at my core.

I needed people. At the very least, I needed prayers during the peak of it last summer. I had developed an aversion to all things Catholic. I didn’t want to pray (though I still forced myself to go through the bare minimum asked of me as a Benedictine oblate). I haven’t been to a Mass in years at this point, partially because I spent a good last year and a half mostly in bed and then because of the transportation issues (it’s over $50 round trip to our parish… and it’s actually not that far). At one point, I couldn’t even look at the crucifix without feeling a physical aversion to it. My body actually felt like it was physically rejecting the mere sight of it, and that scared me. I later found out that was my body on steroids when it no longer needed them messing with my brain chemistry. I had too much medication in my body (and the doctors didn’t take me off of it until November despite the symptoms beginning in March-April). It affected my mood and mental state. Still, at that time, I was just in deep need of a community of faithful… and I was let down.

That’s not to say that everyone left. My oblate sister (sister Elisabeth Obl.OSB) checked in on me and was one of the few people who took literal hours out of their day to talk to me about what I was feeling and thinking. She was a light during that darkness and I’ll never be able to repay her for it. I also had my bestie (Charmaine) with whom I would watch new episodes of the second season of The Summer I Turned Pretty every Friday. She didn’t bring up what I was feeling but she made sure I knew I had at least one person checking in on me and making sure I had a distraction on the worst days. I honestly don’t think I would’ve survived last year without them or friends who would send me “praying for you” messages on occasion over the months. So, I wasn’t completely abandoned but it sure felt like it at the time and it was the worst as someone who sees community and friendship as two of the most important things in life.

I wish I had read Fr. Groeschel’s book during that time though, honestly, I don’t think it would’ve helped much because of the mental state I was in. In the book, he talks about feeling abandoned or let down by the church, clergy, people, when dealing with sickness and death, etc. And it was the last piece in my healing journey puzzle because it emphasized how what we go through is nothing Christ didn’t experience himself.

Friends abandoning someone when they needed them the most? There’s no better exactly of it than of the story of Jesus, who saw St. Peter (who swore to always be with him) deny him and his followers leave. And I don’t know why I never thought about it or why no one ever brought it up but this made what I went through seem doable, if that makes any sense. And it also reminded me that I had the biggest portion of blame in what happened. 

Even before I read this book, I had done some deep soul searching and I saw that I had inflicted the majority of that pain on myself. I’m going to quote Conrad Fisher (my favorite character in the Summer trilogy and the one I say I identify the most with) because it’s almost exactly what I thought:

“All of the love and pride I had in him [his father], it turned into hate. And I started to hate myself, who he’d made… From there on I set out to destroy the picture of me he has in his head… I quit it all to spite him. Anything that made him proud of me, I took away. It took me a long time to figure it out. That I was the one who had put my dad on that pedestal. I did that, not him. And then I despised him for not being perfect. For being human.” (We’ll Always Have Summer, ch. 35)

Substitute “him” and “my dad” for “the Church” and “Catholics in my life” and I could’ve easily said it. In fact, I did. When I had the lightbulb finally turn on, this exact quote popped into my mind. I did that. I put those people (and those priests and religious) on that pedestal. I was the one who believed that they were so holy that they would be saints and help me through my most difficult times. I did that. And I was let down because I failed to recognize their humanity. “I did that.”

And that helped me start to heal from the lingering hurt that is there. Because there is still a lot of hurt there. Hurt that the person I counted on to be there for me, guiding me out of this spiritually barren place. wasn’t there; a hurt my mother shares with me. Hurt that the person I thought knew me best and had my back ended up making me feel like I was a scum that didn’t deserve to be called Catholic and made me feel like everything that made me me was either wrong, unholy, or unlovable. Never had another human being made me feel like I was irredeemable, unloved, and unholy like this person. And I’m still working on letting go of that hurt (and I do pray a prayer of forgiveness for them) but also have to forgive myself for thinking that mere human beings were going to help me instead of relying on God. To this day, I’m still struggling with the latter but I hope to get to a better place with time. 

And it was a non-Catholic — a certain person I’ve nicknamed Monsieur Dimples on social media — who actually helped (and is still helping) me get back to myself and has helped me get back on track with my faith. But that’s for the next post (which I’m scheduling to post tomorrow) because this one is too long now. 

Anyway, just wanted to share this in case anyone is going through the same thing. It’s hard. Some days seem impossible. You just want to throw in the towel; jump ship from the Church and isolate yourself… and I’m glad that I didn’t do it (as much as I wanted to… and I really did) and that God brought a lot of good out of it. 

Keep your peepers out for part two tomorrow. 

I hope you are all well.

As always, thanks for reading and God bless!