Delila's part II

. I had a very unhealthy self concept to begin with, very low self esteem. I was a total
zero (according to my mother who continues to suffer from mental illness and never
has been able to show me acceptance). If God’s people told me I had lots to learn,
that I was deceitful or lazy or unfaithful with what God had given me or accused me
wrongfully of anything, their accusations only confirmed that I was nothing.
   People like me abounded in the assembly, especially among those who stayed
a long time. We were products of abusive, often alcoholic parents, people who had
never belonged, never felt accepted. We were easy followers because we were
looking to be something and how George tempted you with that lure. If you were
really broken, if you were really humble, if you were really a beggar before God, then
He could make something out of you. With the wiggle out of the worm God can
thrash mountains, George would always say. And it was those kind of people that He
was going to make into workers - and those few got invited to the worker’s seminar
and well - wasn’t that what every Christian wanted - to part of the inner circle, not
outside, not left out?
   There are scandalous things I could say, people’s names I could mention -
Nancy Zach for example, had me under her thumb like a bug she would crush - for
my own good of course, only for my good. She went over and over my schedule on a
regular basis trying to train me, though my health couldn’t take it, to stuff all the
meetings, a part time job, full time studies and campus outreach into the daylight
hours. Still, it was pots and pots of coffee that got me through all nights of school
work and my health suffered dearly.
    I’ve been lied to by at least one itinerate brother who, I read today is still ‘in
the work’ too. You never check the story you’ve been told with anyone. You never
seek to justify yourself, especially as a woman. You just try to forget. You swallow
and you hope you’ll be accepted. God alone is your justification and if His servants
have accused you, even wrongly, then you bow your head and suck it up. Right Tim?
Darrell and I got totally different stories when we counseled with you separately.
   There is some very clever mind behind the construction of such a communal
‘consciousness.’ Someone clever, but not of God. This clever mind counts on the
fact that you, the well meaning, desperate christian, will humble yourself. Like in any
abusive relationship, you, the well meaning, do what you must to survive because you
don’t want the relationship to end. Until it must. Until you know that if you don’t,
you’ll will die, or go nuts. Because you hate yourself so much - as a Christian, you
can’t live with yourself anymore. Because you’re so demoralized you’ll do anything
for validation and now you’ve done it. You’re less than you were before you became
a Christain. Now you’re less than nothing. So you disappear.
   I was fifteen when I found the assembly. I was in my early twenties when I
left. Initially I left Estevan to move to Ottawa and learn what the Lord had to teach
me there, to be ‘broken’ as Nancy told everyone she prayed God would do to her. I
didn’t attend my own sister’s wedding because I got counsel first and well, how could
I rejoice at a wedding that was not approved by the assembly, in other words, by God?
My sister had left the assembly and therefore, the Lord as well. She was marrying an
unbeliever. If I attended her wedding I was not being faithful to God, I was told. My
sister just got used to my rejection as it was an assembly trait.
   A couple years after I left fellowship I got up the guts to phone Nancy.
“You’ve changed... sister” she said to me, sounding frightened. I wonder if she’s
scared now, I mean, she’s a Zach by birth, from Omaha and the Zachs certainly have
hands with blood on them, in God’s eyes anyway, and their name with dirt on it now,
all over the Internet. There’s that saying: what goes around comes around. Another:
it all comes out in the wash. I never thought I’d be thankful for the Internet - I mean,
what trash most of it is. I set my mailbox filter on high and don’t open any Forward
Forward messages. Still, here I am, submitting this letter and saying, how thankful I
am that those wounded people, like myself, can finally speak, defend themselves in
this free north American venue.