Whatever you do to the least of these: Shunning Part 1

A friend loves at all times,

and a brother is born for adversity.

Proverbs 17:17

Every time they fight, I remind them, "Don't forget. Your sister is your best friend, and she will be for the rest of your life." This has always been true. But never more true than the past two years.

I left the church silently and by increments between age 14 and age 18 due to the child abuse I suffered in the church. I didn't walk through church doors again until my brother, part of a college church plant, begged me to bring my piano fingers to his band in 2001, when I was 22. I didn't start attending on a regular basis until my first child was a toddler, when I was 26. And I didn't open my heart to others at a church until I was 28 and diagnosed with cancer. Still, I held people at arms length. I felt like their prayers and their support were conditional, as though I was often in the position of supporting them emotionally rather than vice versa. Something finally changed around 2009, when God sent two particular women I never would have pictured being friends with into my church and I dropped my guard. And so, 16 years after I started holding everyone at arms length, I finally held someone close again. I opened up my home. I went into homes. I even napped at a friend's home. I spent long lazy afternoons with friends. It was one golden year of Christian community.

And then the other shoe dropped. Accused of a sin neither my husband nor I felt convicted of committing, we were slowly but surely expelled from our community in a cloud of foggy accusations coupled with affirmations of conditional love - if only we would repent, we would be welcomed back with open arms.

When all was said and done, the entire church was instructed to completely avoid us - in person, online, on Facebook - even to stop reading my blog. We found ourselves completely alone. We used to entertain frequently. We were left with no one to entertain. One by one, our friends dropped out of our lives, some with painful goodbyes, some with a simple "unfriending" on Facebook and silence. Many nights, when we went into the children's room for evening prayers, we had to deliver the news that another family that included some of their closest friends had chosen to stop contact with our family. There are no words for how devastating those conversations were - for us as parents, or for them as children. How do you explain to children - ages 6, 5, 4 and 2 - that their friends can't be their friends anymore, simply because we no longer attend the same church? Because their parents think that Mama and Papa did something sinful?

We brainstormed together, with the kids. We joined a 4-H club. We signed them up for summer ball clubs. We go to homeschool events and weekly homeschool physical education and swimming classes. We called neighbors to try to establish more regular visits. But there is only one set of homeschooling neighbors - and their girls are 5 and 8 years older than my eldest. There is only one other family in the neighborhood - all boys, and their parents prefer to be left to themselves, like a lot of people who choose to live in the country. Two years have gone by, and none of my children have a single friend within their age group outside our family. Not one.

I've watched my children hide themselves in public, draw themselves inward. Try to blend in. Hide their individuality under a facade of "sameness". Listen for a long time and then try to strike up conversations around what they've heard the other kids talking about. They're afraid to be outsiders. Individuals. Free thinkers. I hate that. I hate what this has done to them. They have always been free spirits. I don't ever want them to feel like they need to conform to make friends. I also see them turning into loners, kind of like me. My oldest daughter especially has a "devil may care" attitude about friendships these days. Who needs 'em? If they don't need me, I'm fine without them, I can see it in her face. At her coach pitch games, she's a star athlete, and she should be one of the crowd. But the rest of her team is joking around on the bench, and she stands hugging the fence, intent on the action, ignoring their antics. Building up her walls. I want to go in there with a sledgehammer and break down her walls and show all of them her beautiful, tender, intelligent, funny heart. I want her to whip out one of her hilarious accents for them, or tell her to do one of her practical jokes. Because she'd make a great friend! The truth is, she has to work through the wounds inflicted on her just like I have to work through mine. And I have to remember that God can heal her just like He can heal me.

We're part of a church now. Real members. We plan to be there for a long time. The youth ministry is thriving, and the kids are happy with the size of their classes. They talk a lot about the loud, rowdy boys. I have one friend from "before church" who attends there, and there's hope for an emerging friendship with her family. Will it materialize? Can I overcome my fear of developing another friendship within the context of church, where I've been burned so badly twice now? Last time it took me 16 years to overcome my doubts and fears. I simply can't afford so long a healing this time around. I owe it to my kids to trust God again sooner. But the heart is slow to do what the mind may quickly realize.

I still have this question: are church friends really friends? Friends who love at all times? Wouldn't a true friend love me when I'm sinning, wouldn't a true friend love me no matter where I go to church? Wouldn't a true friend understand how deeply and irrevocably shunning damages me and, even more importantly, my tender and innocent children?

And deep in my heart, the most painful question is: if you can't love these kids of mine, these sweet, funny, endearing, beautiful, gregarious kids of mine, how could you possibly love me?

The friends that by God's grace are left - the "brothers born for adversity" - sisters and cousins.

This week, we're going to take a deeper look at the practice of shunning in the Christian church. You'll hear a little more about my experience, along with the experiences of several guest writers who have their own stories to tell. What have your experiences been with shunning in the church? Have you been shunned? Have you ever participated in shunning someone? What is your take on Matthew 18? Have you ever thought about how shunning affects children?

If you'd like to join, link up with a post old or new about your own experience with shunning in the church below. Please include the community graphic in your post so we can find each other.

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A man and his son

Your desire will be for your husband...

...He will turn the hearts of the father to their children,

and the hearts of the children to their fathers...

When our three girls were 2 years old, they entered the "But why?" stage. Every time we told them to do something, they responded with, "But why?" instead of "Okay" or simple obedience. Our son is four and just entering this stage now. It is a frustrating stage, as we say 100 times a day, "DON'T ASK WHY. JUST OBEY!" Trying to walk the tightrope of expecting obedience while not stifling curiosity. I tend toward the side of not stifling curiosity, while my dear husband definitely tends toward demanding immediate obedience.

But in the gentle moments when they are united in some interesting task...baiting crab traps in South Carolina, preparing the lawn for mowing here in Wisconsin, fixing cars or sorting tools or digging in the garden, I marvel at his patience and the foretelling of a deep and satisfying relationship of years to come between father and son.

Happy Father's Day!

Scattered thoughts

In the four years he's been with us, there's been a lot on our plate. It's easy to feel guilty about all the moments lost to other things - things more difficult or stressful than this fairly easy little boy who entered our lives with a bang, who fills our home and our days with a little more noise than we've had in the past.

At t-ball, the other little boys come running to tattle - he's always throwing sand, or casting someone out of his "castle" atop the playground, or taking on some much bigger boy for the title of king. I'm not sure where he got all his bluster, and I'm not always sure what to do about it. So when we're at the beach and there are no other little boys around, I let him toss sand until he's content, and I just sit there and we belly laugh together as the handfuls catch the afternoon sun.

His needs come in great big tidal waves that wash over me and throw me off balance - 24 hours of cuddling at a time, regression so severe that I literally throw my hands to the heavens and tell God I don't know what to do next. And in the dark of the night, when I'm confused and I feel malnourished of both sleep and wisdom, I go to the kitchen looking for the prescriptions I forgot to take that evening in my rush to get him to stop crying. I can't find anything I'm looking for except for the leather bound Bible on the counter. About as a far from Christian Science as you can get, my hand falters over the cover. I keep looking for my meds. But another 20 minutes, and I'm still coming up empty, and I stumble back to bed thinking 12 hours can't make that much of a difference, Bible in hand.

I read four Psalms that night, Psalms 74, 75, 76 and 77, four in which I had underlined nothing in my red Bible in which almost every chapter there is something underlined. One line jumped out at me, and I remember falling asleep murmuring that line, a holy prayer from the Word. But I read those four Psalms today, to quote that line to you, and I cannot find it. I don't know what caught my heart in the hours of the long night.

It's a mixed up story, this. A mother's heart all worked up over her children. I have so many fears about how I'm parenting them and schooling them and how it derails. Especially during these times of anxiety over health concerns. I have fears about the disproportionate amount of time I spend thinking about, praying for, weeping over, and planning for Amelia's needs. How do I tend to the others well when things like this are going on in our lives?

The one thing I know is this: in the most difficult season of all for me as their mother, these children are shipwrecked with me on the most amazing island of all - Grace. We are discovering together, me as if for the first time, the unsearchable depth of forgiveness and second chances that await all of us when we take hold of the forgiveness that is ours through the Cross. And while I have taped to my kitchen wall Ephesians 5:14-16 ("redeem the time"), I am coming to define it differently. There is always a tomorrow for times tables and not-throwing-sand-ever and learning your alphabet, but for character and love and Grace? That time is today, that season is always now, and I cannot afford to waste one moment.

Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.

Baffled and blessed

So far, we don't have any definitive answers about Amy. We did go to Mayo yesterday, and it had to be the shortest trip we've ever had! Every one of Amy's tests was scheduled one after the other, with no long waiting periods in between, and they were all on the same floor! The staff was all the great pediatric staff, and she did really well, even with her blood draws. She informed me she was going to be brave and she was!

The cancer doctor who saw Amy thinks her history is intriguing and thinks it is "likely" that the cause of the current problem is an infection or a problem with her immune system. She referred Amy to an immunologist, a doctor who can better diagnose under- or over-function of the immune system. Amy will see him next Friday down at Mayo again. She also said leukemia is absolutely not on the table. Praise the Lord! Unfortunately, lymphoma is. She thought it "unlikely" that it was lymphoma - and told me that, with what she knew yesterday, there was about a 15% chance that it would turn out to be lymphoma. I didn't like that number very much, I'll admit! But I've gotten over it and decided to dwell on the "unlikely" instead of the statistic for now. She sent Amy immediately for blood work for several of the most likely infectious causes, especially cat scratch disease since we have two kittens, as well as a chest x-ray to rule out pneumonia or a raging case of lymphoma.

This morning, she called me to let me know the chest x-ray was normal: as in, no pneumonia, and no raging case of lymphoma - which unfortunately doesn't rule out early lymphoma. The blood work was also all negative - it still doesn't look suspicious for an infection. The doctor commented that with each other cause ruled out, lymphoma does seem more likely. But for now she is going to start Amy on a 10 day course of antibiotics to see if the lymph nodes get smaller, and if they do, we will know it was infectious, although we will probably never know the cause. If they stay the same or get bigger, she will need surgical removal of the largest lump for further diagnosis and treatment. Hopefully immunology will have some insight as well next week.

Thanks for all your prayers! We will keep you updated as things progress!