 Posted Saturday, February 21, 2009 12:43 AM
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The discussions and questions bring back a lot of memories. I was 4th generation, and my kids were the 5th generation of Christian Scientists in our family. One Grandma was a Practitioner, but before her death in '83 was going regularly to a Wesleyan Methodist Church.
The other Grandma was brought in at 17, much against her will, by her mother -who had been into Spiritualism.
I was late in joining - I was 13. Since then I have often wondered how many 13 year olds are prepared to evaluate a religion for truth or lack of it? I'd been studying CS since I could read, and grew up in the Sunday School. I only went to Prin for kindergarten & 1st grade, and cried when my parents took me out. There was so much love and kindness there... unlike home. And public schools weren't warm at all.
As a parent, since then, I've learned that the home problem had a lot to do with Asperger syndrome, undiagnosed. There were other things, but they would have taken a lot of behavioral therapy to fix. Dysfunctional doesn't begin to describe it. However, they did get better over the years. My older brothers didn't outgrow their jealousy or cruelty until around 18 years old, and my little brother didn't calm down until they did. I won't go into details, but I know that whatever church had claim to these kids would have had their hands full. I've since dealt with 1 kid with Asperger's, and I know 3 would have been next to impossible. It took from the time I was 10 until I was 14 for them to really start to calm down, and act like civilized relatives. That was one of the biggest answers to prayer I'd had.
Still, I didn't know until 17, when I left home for good, what it meant to be treated well. I got permission to leave by applying to Tenacre for the Nurses' Aide training program. Loved it.
I married a Roman Catholic in 1984, with the understanding that we wouldn't try to covert each other. That didn't stop our parents from trying! His did it by just living their Christianity (and loving us). Mine was subtly preaching to him in every letter or phone call. Fortunately, he didn't notice until years later!
It was on an exchange of favorite religious books with a friend, that I first read "More than a Carpenter" by Josh McDowell. Jesus really God? OMG! And yet, it was still over a year from that, when I finally knew I had to leave Christian Science for good. I couldn't sit there any longer and listen to him put down, when I knew who HE was. And I knew I needed baptism.
The final nail in the coffin of my old beliefs was Habakkuk's discussion of how "God is of too pure eyes to behold evil,..." The day I opened to that, and read the context, I realized it wasn't what I'd been taught to think. (But I won't ruin it for you.)
My sister in law had been challenging me for years, and in the interest of converting her, I'd listened to her objections and explained them all away. This chapter from Kingdom of the Cults, particularly came up, so I let her send me a copy, and we talked. She wasn't equipped with the Bible knowledge I had (or the pride!), but she had the basics. Years before when my husband had answered my question on something key to Christianity, I remembered thinking, "I wish it were that simple." And doubting it of course. So anyway, after this bit from Habakkuk hit home, I knew if that pillar of our teachings had cracked, there would be others. It was simple logic.
There was another bit, but it wasn't as key as this. Oh, well maybe. Any book that alluded to deification of Mrs Eddy didn't belong in the Reading Room - or if it did, I didn't.
That was the big turning point. I was overjoyed that I didn't have to be perfect anymore. I worked on trying to master the emotions that came flooding up. Then came the free-fall, trying to patch together medical care for everything that was suddenly coming up. Partial paralysis of my hands (from repetitive strain injuries before they knew what they were), Sciatic nerve problems, and knees that hurt like the blazes... back & neck...(pinched nerve & arthritis) and so on. And as that slowly came into place, and I learned how to talk to doctors, I found I was nearly incapacitated. Didn't dare use CS treatment, since I didn't want to go back. I couldn't. And so, I'd switched the translation to New American Bible -for Catholics, and started daily study of it, and its footnotes. I went for the training for Catholicism. No I didn't know right away that it was the church for me, but eventually I knew. (that's another story)...
Instead of pursuing healing, I tried the opposite, and accepted all that happened, and offered it up. I didn't reinstate any prayer styles or habits that weren't provably Christian. Some of that took years to track down, too.
Well, there's a lot more to it, but that's the base part. Whenever I asked God for help or guidance, there was always something. A book, a person, money on the ground (for food), or something. I knew I hadn't left God, and certainly hadn't lost Jesus. I'd found him.
There was a time that I had to pull back from contact with my family of origin, due to their responses. Fortunately, it came to an end. And equally fortunately, they grew some from it too. It wasn't just me growing.
I think the thing I detested worst about the denial feature was when it was obviously misused, as in justifying maltreatment of someone (often me or little brother), or justifying some neglect. Fortunately, I learned from the mistakes of my parents, and broke the chains as soon as I found them, to do better for my kids and husband than what I had experienced growing up. I made it my business to read all the self-help books that applied to anything about me. I'm not sorry. My husband has had tons of patience to make it through all this still smiling. My kids are delighted with their lives. I can't say how happy I am today, but I am. There are difficulties, sure, but they're balanced with lots of warmth and joy. If this reads like a testimony, maybe it's ok to consider that there are Christian churches out there who give witness & gratitude too.
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Posted Saturday, February 21, 2009 6:31 PM
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| Hi Jennifer, I only have a minute but wanted to thank you for stopping in to tell us your story. Each person's experience in leaving CS is different and interesting and helps me in my struggle to overcome my life experience with it...it helps us all! Keep on talking! Square Peg
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Posted Sunday, February 22, 2009 2:02 PM
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Dear Jennifer, Your story is so touching it brings huge tears to my eyes. You never know the good that your words do for another person but that is why we are all here I am sure. Your sharing of your Catholic identity was very helpful to me since I was raised in an East Coast town where Catholics and Protestants treated each other with such disrespect as to border on hatred. And then in college I the doubtful CSist eloped with my secret Catholic high school sweet heart; we were months pregnant and would most definitely have married a year earlier when sex first became a huge issue, but the rage that our families felt for the religion of others kept us wondering, scared and breaking up; and eventually we solved the family religious wars by driving to another state to a Justice of the Peace and not telling anyone to this day when or where we signed our vows.
Of course that was a horrible start to family planning and bonding; the parents were preaching hell to us on one side and Animal Magnetism to us on the other. Our marriage ended in divorce after 15 good and bad years, and my former husband immediately married a Catholic woman and saw to it that my marriage to him was anuled and his family insisted that I had dragged my former husb. into hell and sin and that I had never really been married to him, and they dragged my children into the Church insulting me all the way as the heretic, the infidel, the dirty harlot and crazy one. Those were horrible years for Catholic/Protestant relations in some families in some parts of the country.
Things started to change within the churches in the 1970's I think. Anyway I think that the deep spiritual teachings of God come in many languages and many denominations and no church has a perfect history or flawless attitude at all times in all corners of the community. Now that one of my own daughters has converted to Catholicism I can no longer hold even a fragment of fear against Catholics and her/their/your church .... I know the deep agony of bigotry and division, no matter what our clergy tell us about those issues. So the more I listen to Catholic radio and TV programs and read what Catholics have to say about their religion the better understanding I have that we as decent working class folks on the ground are on the same search for daily cleansing and purification (if I might word it that way) and we have nothing much to do with whatever sins we discover our imagine that the leaders at the top may or may not be committed to. We need just to keep our own inner selves clean and our actions will follow. That's our first job. Protesting the sins at the top is another job, not to be held against our neighbor here on the ground with us so to speak. I am here on earth to find the common spiritual thread among us, and to pray that others do the same.
Life should not be about "Divide and conquer" It is that kind of division that led to CS swallowing up so many of its own people! The alienation of affection all over the church disguised as sweet sounding Love. It still makes me cringe inside when I hear the voices of practicing CSists. It is not love they are practicing, it is alienation, working out the problem within one's self, between them and God. When I have come to learn that all that was wrong with me is that I never had real "talk therapy". There was no such thing as personal, honest, meaningflu dialogue. Absolutely shallow forms of "Fellowship" where you talked about MBE and gratitude towards her and CS and never about what the knives felt like in your heart and soul as a child, as a pregnant young adult, as a new parent, an unemployed worker; nothing that meant anything to you. Family members sat alone and isolated in their rooms working on their problems through hours and days and weeks and months, and years of reading Science and Health with Keys to the Scriptures by MBE. That way of life, of isolation (in my view) is demonic and we are supposed to be casting out demons, not arrogantly denying that they are demons.
Certainly the years would have been much better years in our little East Coast town and in my particular marriage had people understood the spirit and the commands of the Christ as you and your in-laws seem to understand them. Like you, I too cautiously read little bits of Catholic literature and I too read nearly every self-help, and therapy book ever printed, which can become a addiction in itself instead of an actual healing tool if I am not careful.
I measure my healing by the fact that dysfunctional things that happen around or to me do not bother me for hours on end. I get raging mad in appropriate ways, and I do not scare people who hear me, I understand family dysfunction well enough to not to judge them or shame them but to stay away because I do not have to visit people who do not enjoy or appreciate me, and vice versa. I don't carry sorrow, fear and anger hidden inside of me that tarnishes and takes the gusto out of my joy. I have something real to give to those who are hurting.
Many CSists believe that the most loving thing that they can do is to ignore their loved ones' pain. I don't think that is love at all. I think that borders a bit on indifference or aloofness, and as I read psychological journals I read that "hate is not the opposite of love, hate is love gone berzerk, but aloofness is the opposite of love." (my spin on the quote anyway). So I think that CS is dangerous just on that fact alone.
Again, nice reading all of your posts here on the forums.
You are another great healing balm sent by God like the boat in the flood!
Keep posting.
Keep getting happy. Keep getting well.
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Posted Sunday, February 22, 2009 3:06 PM
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Thank you for your replies & encouragement. It's great to know there are live people around who actually know what I'm talking about!
I will say this, on my Mom's behalf, and I don't know how many others had this kind of experience... when I got those ear infections or threw up or had other illnesses, I remember exactly how much she did. At nights she sat up with me and read to whoever needed it (you know what from), until we fell asleep. For months, she sang me to sleep, or sat and held my hand (praying) when she knew I was struggling with nightmares. The time she took to teach my developmentally delayed brothers took infinite patience, and she was there for every moment. She never got cross or impatient with us. In fact, she was more patient than I had patience for! She saw to it that I learned to sew, knit, and cook - and enjoy the whole gift of homemaking and decorating. She made sure she told us about her flopped efforts at healing, and taught us about what it took to heal and be healed. On trips she read the Bible lessons aloud in the car. I could go on. I bet each of us could come up with the good things our parents did.
So what happened? What went wrong? I could see that she really was trying, and really did love all of us.
Well, it seems that she basically picked the worst possible technique for raising my brothers (and I had gotten the worst end of that for years). Later, before her death (in 2006), she was able to explain it to me, and ask to be forgiven. Apparently she'd copied the parenting style of her best friend's folks - and didn't know why. The deuce of it was that she knew it had left her best friend tormented (abuse level) by the only brother. I'd stack that up as a true mental problem, rather than a CS-caused problem. And yet, though she'd allowed me to be virtually sacrificed for my brothers, she couldn't understand (or accept) a Father who would allow his son to die for our sins. Kind of ironic, isn't it? More another time...
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Posted Sunday, February 22, 2009 7:08 PM
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Jennifer, Your posts on this forum are very helpful. I hope that you are being helped here too. You have been on a long and difficult journey and you should be proud of yourself, your stamina and your dedication.
I will add this to your post about mothers:
On behalf of all of our mothers: They ALL did the best they could with the tools they had. And as one of my mentors often says "If I had been riding on the same bus they were on with the same people they were riding with I might have turned out the same as they."
I can only bless my parents and be grateful for the fabulous things that they did give me, and the sacrifices of self that they made for me.
It sounds as if your issues with your brothers are somewhat similar to my issues with my sisters. I never thought of your angle on it, so thanks for that analysis. It gives me better perspective.
I hope to hear more from you for a long time forward.
In Service,
mender
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