Frances: Step Three

Frances has degrees in higher theological education, received her ordination, and is an expert in her field of pastoral care. She has lived through trauma, grief, heartbreak, and challenges and has counseled countless people to help them know that God is near them when they are in pain.

Frances, with her wealth of knowledge and experience, is more than capable of being the guiding force in her spiritual life. It's time for her to step into her authority and lead from the front rather than relying on others, be it her husband, children, pastors, or supervisors.

Should Frances claim the inner authority God has given her to move through the world as a spiritual and theological leader, here are some transformative spiritual practices that might move her spiritual life forward, inspiring hope and growth.

Frances can publish her manuscript.

Frances has been working on a manuscript about her life for years. She began writing as a therapeutic tool as a young adult, liberating all the grief and vulnerability her family’s code silence had stifled. Over the years, Frances has written chapters articulating all she’s endured and learned. Despite friends’ encouragement to publish her manuscript, she has refrained from doing so because of some complicating factors regarding her husband. She says she doesn’t care whether it ever gets published. She’s unsure she cares enough to do all the work to share it officially. Even so, her husband’s lack of support means he has become another religious authority figure holding Frances back from stepping into her full voice.

Under stress, Frances may repeat the unhealthy secret-keeping patterns she was born into by remaining vigilant about how anything she shares could damage the reputation of others. Publishing her manuscript could trigger the fear that family or friends will abandon her if she tells her truth. However, Frances has found through therapy that she is the authority figure in her story. She can make decisions that prioritize safety, even when relationally complicated. 

Frances has reached a point where denying reality is too dangerous to her well-being. No matter what it costs in her relationships with her husband and children, Frances can commit to telling the truth in love as an act of stubborn resilience. Even if she self-published the book and shared it with just her close friends, publishing her life’s story would be a testament to her spiritual vitality, which has endured the soul's darkest nights.

Frances can define spiritual practices as more than church attendance.

In Frances' family of origin, religion was defined by church attendance, with the image of a pew packed with family as the image of faithfulness. She has had a rocky relationship with churches over the past few decades due to church conflicts, overburdened volunteers, and a lingering sense of religious homelessness. After being in and out of church over the past few decades, Frances is no longer attending a church – a matter of which she’s conflicted. Frances is well versed in spirituality outside of the church walls, as is evident from her training and experience, but when speaking of her faith life, the first words on her lips are about whether or not she’s been at church lately. 

Frances can find ways to name her spiritual life in other terms to move forward. 

• Writing can be how she lifts her voice in worship. 

• Leaning into her civic life in her small town allows her to steward her gifts of time, talent, and treasure. 

• Spending time with her adult children can be her spiritual community. 

• Spending time in nature and gardening is a form of ecological spirituality. 

• Speaking an honest word, especially if it’s difficult, can be a form of gratitude to God for the bravery God has instilled within her through this long journey.

• Attending church can add to these spiritual practices but need not define or measure her faith life.

Frances can find refuge in Mother God.

When Frances is stressed, she can still feel like a little girl since she was so young when the abuse began. Even now, at an older age, Frances turns to the people around her to give her the safety, belonging, and purpose that her inner child craves. Maturity invites us to parent ourselves in ways our parents could not. Frances can provide for herself what she needs in ways that the people in her life cannot. France can mother herself, providing for herself what she needs.

After living with a mother whose parented using shame and judgment, Frances can reimagine motherhood by connecting with a maternal image of God. When she finds her mother’s words shaming her and filling her memories, she can think of Mother God, whose voice is filled with compassion. She can reclaim her daughterhood before this Mother God, whose love is tender and protective. 

As scripture shows, God is like a mother who takes her children under her wings.

“Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me, for in you my should takes refuge; in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge, until the destroying storms pass by” (Psalm 57:1).

Mother God comforts her people when they are in distress.

“As a mother comforts her child, so I’ll comfort you” (Isaiah 66:13). “Can a woman forget her nursing-child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you” (Isaiah 49:15).

Whenever Frances reads a common prayer, whether at church or elsewhere, she can substitute “Father God” for “Mother God.” When she sings a hymn, she can replace “He” with “She.” These small moments of choosing Mother God are ways she can mother herself, providing a spiritual refuge for that young girl within her who still craves stability, safety, and solace.

She can substitute “Mother God” for “The Lord.”

“Mother God is near to the broken-hearted, and saves the crushed in spirit.” (Psalm 34:18).

Connecting points to put each story in the context of our current day (resources), scripture (lectionary), wise thinkers (worth reading), and your personal story (reflection questions)

Frances: Step Two

Amidst the toxic religious setting of her childhood, Frances held some healthy beliefs that carried her through and allowed her to escape, find safety, and heal. These beliefs reveal theological threads that connect her past with her present.

Salvation is an internal job.

While her mother worked out her salvation in the public eye, Frances learned how to nurture a spirit of endurance and resilience. In the worst circumstances, she learned how to save herself when the religious authority figures could not offer her safety, belonging, and purpose. External appearances will always matter to Frances in some measure after all she’s endured. Unlike her mother, though, she knows that the health of her internal landscape is the most important thing. 

While religious institutions and leaders may have laid out paths for Frances’ salvation, they did not keep her safe. For Frances’ mother, salvation may have been about eternal life, but Frances needed salvation that was safety and freedom in this earthly life. Her father’s abuse, her mother’s silence, and the Catholic church’s blind eye left her vulnerable as a child. Frances did leave the Catholic faith and became a Baptist, but she never felt entirely at home in the Baptist world, either, as Baptists viewed her as an outsider, having been raised Catholic. 

Frances had to fight for ordination as a woman, which her Catholic family and her husband’s Baptist family never celebrated or even acknowledged. The world around her debated whether a woman could be ordained while Frances moved forward to offer pastoral care to those who needed it most. As an adult, churches have failed to welcome her pastoral counselor gifts, so Frances has found opportunities for work and ministry outside congregational settings.

Frances does not have to save herself publicly. Her salvation comes from within, where God is birthing resilience that continues to persist decades after her mom kicked her out for breaking the norm by worshiping outside the Catholic faith. Demanding a life of belonging and purpose, she crafts a life she couldn’t have imagined as a child. 

Freedom will cost something; it’s worth paying.

All the warnings she received, whether spoken out loud or implied, held some aspect of truth within them: there was no way for Frances to get free from the abusive system without losing something along the way. Freedom was possible, but not without its cost. She packed her belongings and left the house in her 20s, moving into friends’ homes until she could find her footing. She pursued Baptist education on her own, without any family support. Once she had her kids, she raised them without a relationship with her family. She was unable to rely on family support as she navigated the complicated years of mothering young children while working full-time.

Facing the brutal reality of incest in one’s family requires such bravery. It goes against our instincts as children to disobey authority figures, especially when those figures threaten abandonment and condemnation. The adults in her life suggested that her honesty held more potency for damage than her father and brother’s sexual abuse. Frances had to give up the entire relationship with her family to honor her instincts - that the true tragedy is the abuse upon the victim, not possible consequences for the abuser.

A young Frances could not have known how life-saving freedom from the abuse would be, as she couldn’t have imagined another life outside of her family. However, 20-year-old Frances nurtured this belief when she left her family’s house. Holding fast to freedom, even as it costs her something, is essential to Frances’ continued spiritual life. 

Honor yourself by doing the hard work for healing.

Throughout Frances’ life story, Frances is the heroine who makes a way while the traditional way crumbles under the weight of its hypocrisy. Her abusers had warned her that the family would fall apart if she spoke up, but she went on to share her history with a therapist and eventually with her close friends. She wrote a letter to her family exposing the abuse and opening the door for some of her siblings to talk with her about their abuse. Yes, the letter led to a strained relationship with her parents, but she had survived and was learning to value her safety above the family's reputation. 

Abuse perpetuates itself in cycles, which means that one’s own mental, spiritual, and physical well-being must be taken seriously as a gift to the broader world. Frances has learned how to be compassionate with herself when she thinks of the past. She realizes how hard she fought to survive a childhood outside her control or choice. She will never hear the long-wished-for apologies, nor can she force others to change their behavior or speak the words she longs to hear. While she had some reconciliation with her father before he died, her mother passed without ever hearing a word of regret from her lips. 

There is no “why” that has all the power to unlock peace. Peace will come when she has given up waiting for understanding, for no apology can erase what has already happened. The hurt will not go away, nor will the inner strength born of hard work. 

Frances has learned to lean into the authority (she is in charge of herself) and agency (she can take action to protect herself) that are innately her own. She has permission and the ability to act, making choices through her intuition rather than looking to institutions or relationships to initiate or approve her choices. To feel fully seen and known, she need not look outside to others. She can see herself for who she is – a survivor, a beloved child of God, a minister of healing called by God to share her story with others who need hope.

Connecting points to put each story in the context of our current day (resources), scripture (lectionary), wise thinkers (worth reading), and your personal story (reflection questions)

Frances: Step One

Here are some foundational beliefs that Frances had to abide by to survive in her childhood home. You’ll notice that the beliefs have hints of healthy beliefs within them - but the toxic and traumatizing home environment made them unhealthy for Frances and her siblings.

Faithfulness is the one way to achieve peace for the family. 

Frances' mother’s religious conviction was a binding glue that kept the family together, thinking that silence made sure the darkness within the home never reached the light of day. Her mother believed there was one right way to believe in God - to adhere publicly to Catholic rituals and doctrine. Faithfulness offered belonging to God, the Catholic community, and the family. Faithfulness allowed the family to retain good standing, which grew even more important as her father’s public indiscretions meant her mother had to work even harder to distract the public eye with further acts of family piety. 

Frances had no choice but to go along with this one way as a child in a Catholic family and a student in a Catholic school. How could she have even dreamed of a different life when she couldn’t speak to a single soul about the abuse she experienced in the silence? Frances worked to survive in a traumatizing system, which led her to be well-versed in the little lies that held the family together. She was a child learning to live in a world controlled by her parents and observed by her priests.

It’s in public that we work out our salvation.

Perfectly dressed for church, her mother would file the kids out of the house in their best clothes to get to church on time and fill up a pew. Her mother's emphasis on external appearances taught a young Frances that God cared most about what people project to the outside world. To achieve salvation, one must show the church that one is right with God and their neighbors. Maintaining one’s religious reputation requires denying and whitewashing any wrongs or flaws within the family or home.

Internally, Frances' soul and psyche worked overtime to raise red flags within her. Her body and soul cried for help, signaling she couldn’t live forever in this toxic family system. But Frances' very survival demanded that she endure the harmful actions of family members in silence.

Honor your father and mother.

In Frances' world, men were both the ordained leaders of the religious world and the perpetrators of sexual abuse and inappropriate contact. Men’s bad behavior was supposed to be ignored or excused. Addressing the abuse, they warned, would lead to estrangement from the family and condemnation by the church. Frances kept silent for so long because she loved the family.

What control did Frances have as a child in the family’s home once the abuse began? Not only did she have to endure sexual abuse, she lived under her mother’s emotional abuse. Frances' mother parented her children with shame and judgment to keep them within the fold of God’s love. Parenting from fear for their souls, she used shame as a corrective tool she hoped would stop the worst from happening. She perceived that the devil was at work in her family, taunting the children to step outside of “God’s ways,” which would disgrace the child and the family.

Connecting points to put each story in the context of our current day (resources), scripture (lectionary), wise thinkers (worth reading), and your personal story (reflection questions)

Frances: Background

Now a grown adult, Frances still cannot tell her life story without beginning with the shape and form of her mother’s faith, for it profoundly shaped her childhood. The large, happy family at weekend mass was a jewel in her mother’s Catholic crown. Catholic school classes and rituals were nothing compared to her mother’s sense of morals and righteousness. There was no room for imperfection in her mother’s faith, which left Frances vulnerable to terrible patterns of secrecy and abuse as a young girl.

Since the perception of the family mattered most, Frances' mother couldn’t acknowledge and address the sexual abuse Frances experienced at the hands of her father and brother. Her mother had to have known, but her mother never said a word. At confession in the Catholic church, Frances constructed little sins to confess. All the while, she joined her mother in projecting piety during the day and suffered at night. Frances navigated through adolescence with depression and suicidal ideation, knowing that she wasn’t safe at home, but there was no other place she could turn.

Once she was college-age, Frances visited one of her older sisters over a weekend who now lived a few hours away. While with her sister, Frances attended the conservative Baptist church that her sister had recently started attending. When Frances' mother heard Frances' report from the weekend, her mother was furious. All the usual lines poured out of her mother’s mouth: “You should be ashamed of yourself.” “You should know better than that.” Her mother warned Frances that the devil had tricked her into going to a Protestant house of worship.

But the Baptist church intrigued Frances. The next time she visited her sister, she went to worship at the Baptist church again and came home to receive her mother’s ultimatum: “If you’re going to live here, you either go to the Catholic church with us or move out.”

Sexual abuse in the home had not triggered her mother’s passionate religious conviction. Neither was it abstaining from attending church. Instead, it was worshipping in a church outside of the Catholic Church, which her mother could not stomach. Frances' religious longing for a different tradition somehow got her mother to stand up for her faith, slewing out a storm of shame and judgment; all the while, her mother did not speak a word about her father and brother’s misdeeds.

Outside of her parents’ house, Frances began a new life as a young twenty-something: exiled from her family and desperate for healing from the toxic secret-keeping, trauma-denying, and religious perversion of her childhood. Ironically, her mother’s banishment got Frances to a safe place where she could finally start the journey toward healing. 

Frances is a profoundly brave woman who has spent the past three decades wading through her grief and heartbreak in therapy. As a pastoral counselor ordained in the Baptist tradition, she dedicated her life to being present to all those suffering in silence.

After years spent in service, Frances wonders what it looks like to move forward with her spiritual life now that her children are grown and have left home. Her history with the church is complicated, and she finds herself in a period of spiritual stagnancy. What does faithfulness look like after she’s survived so much?

Connecting points to put each story in the context of our current day (resources), scripture (lectionary), wise thinkers (worth reading), and your personal story (reflection questions).