Now I Know Him

JUNE: Driving across the country with my kids in the back seat, I had a lot of time to think. On a particularly long stretch of interstate, somewhere on Route 66, a thought came to me: Now you know Him.

Over the years, I’ve learned so much through my healing from abuse and betrayal. One of my favorite resources; The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast has helped me throughout my healing journey. Betrayal Trauma Recovery has helped me deconstruct so many words or concepts that haunted me for years.

One such concept was “forgiveness.”

Growing up in the church, I never fully comprehended the Lord or the Atonement. I remember learning that Christ experienced all things. I always wondered how—how in the Garden of Gethsemane did He feel what I’ve felt? How could He understand what it feels like to be betrayed so completely by a spouse? And how could He feel such pain and still forgive those who betrayed Him? How could I? The thought of it hurt my heart, like a dagger stabbed through it. I had suffered profound abuse and betrayal—trauma that could break a person ten times over. Could I forgive?

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A Betrayed Woman is an Abused Woman

TW: Infidelity, adultery

JUNE: Do you know what it is like to not trust yourself? Everything is upside down and backwards and all you can do is float through your own life like a helpless spectator who forgot to take off her cheap 3-D glasses when the movie was over. If you do, you may have a past like mine. I was the wife of a serial adulterer.

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The Only Church Disciplinary Council I Ever Saw

READER POST: I once served as the Ward Executive Secretary in my small-town, Texas ward. During this time my bishop openly groomed me for future leadership roles. “Someday when you’re a bishop or stake president…” As such, I was invited to participate in almost everything the bishopric did. While this boosted my ego at first, the more I saw of the inner machinery of administering the gospel, the less I wanted to ever have any part in the realm of church leadership. I saw many things that turned my stomach but just happened to follow the Handbook perfectly. This story is about just such a time: the time I saw a disciplinary council.

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