I deconstructed three times. Only now with a great deal of hindsight do I see with humility how God holds us; we cannot possibly hold on to him. But it is His great love that keeps us from losing Him.

The first time I left I was 12. Mom didn’t know how to fit in anywhere and when presented with rules could not help but question them. For this she was shamed, blamed, and treated terribly. And I saw. When she sought help for abuse, the church adamantly insisted that, in effect, she would go to hell for leaving marriage and that destroying marriage would destroy me, but they refused to hold her spouse accountable or help him get treatment. No, they only blamed and shamed her more. When I would question them for their treatment of her, I was the rebellious child that didn’t love Jesus. And I saw. Additionally, I was three when I was raped by someone that was an elder at a church, and of the 4 other molestations by the time I was 18, 2 others happened at church and were known and brushed under the carpet by pastoral leadership. My child mind at the time could not reconcile a good God with an abusive religious community. 

I always liked Jesus though. He seemed cool. But everybody talked about him, he was the church’s version of the popular kid and I never related. But who was this God “the Father” guy? He seemed dark and weird and maybe I could be friends with him. So, at 16, I thought I’d get to know that guy. I wasn’t ready to hang with church-jock-Jesus, but emo-Abba maybe do-able. At 19, God placed this platinum blonde surfer dude pastor in my life. This guy makes international diplomacy look like a breeze. God knew what he was doing, and he shook up my black and white world. He was never afraid of my questions or abruptness. He never shied away from my fear, anger, or pain. He wouldn’t give me a direct answer but always asked questions to make me think (He still doing it too, lol), but most importantly he reflected Jesus while holding space for my rage and hurt. His grace and holy affection held me and reflected God and Jesus in a way that finally made God safe. If it were not for that pastor reflecting Jesus so thoroughly, I would not have come through my two more deconstructions still owned by Christ.

From ages 19-27, I pressed hard into church. At 27, I was hurt from a failed relationship, burned out from serving too hard, acutely aware that I did not fit the “pretty girl role” within the church and asking all the inconvenient questions. So, I quietly pulled up my tent pegs and left church. Not done with God but definitely done with his people. At 29 ,when I was preparing to move from WA to TX, God had a chat with me. “When I come back, I am to attend “x” church” I laughed and said, “I’m not coming back”, and he repeated himself. I said, “I’m going to TX and marrying myself a good southern boy and I’m not coming back”, and he repeated himself a third time. I said, “FINE! If I come back, I will go to “x” church.”

2 years, 10 months, and 2 weeks later as I was pulling into my home town with all my belongings in tow, I said, “Yea, I heard you, I will be there next Sunday.” I planted myself at “x” church with the intent of being the invisible quiet girl that tithed and never asked questions. The same church that had hurt my mother and I so much before I was 12.

I needed to see with Jesus’ eyes his people and learn to hold space for their pain as much as my own. Between October 2015 – June 2019 God taught me to apply grace and work through forgiveness. It was during that time that I found out the pastor who so ardently advised my mother against divorce was at the time he advised my mother himself struggling with his own marriage issues and was considering divorce. He was working out his own wounds on my mother without understanding or having the emotional space to objectively consider her needs. I needed to sit with all those lessons. Wounded people, wound people. God still uses wounded people. God continues to use mightily this man. God does not always retire from ministry or influence just because we are broken and cause pain. However, this is where we must walk in humility and prayerful consideration of the other person’s needs. ALSO AND VERY IMPORTANTLY: There are consequences to harm and there needs to be justice. There are levels at which someone needs to be not just removed from leadership but held criminally accountable.

In the summer of 2018, I was appointed to head up small groups but for a year there was an ongoing mismatch of expectations. In the summer of 2019, there was a sermon about how the church is family and we should be a healing center. That following week I sent an email to only 2 pastors, the one that was my lead over small groups and the teaching pastor of that sermon. The email consisted of how "yes, we are to be family and a healing center, but to be that we also need to be honest about our own flaws and change/grow so we can become a safe place for people". I don’t know the outcome from the teaching pastor, but the pastor that was my lead over small groups informed me the next day that I was too wounded to serve and that I should take counseling from one of the two female pastors at the church. When I reached out to the women, they said, “you know where I am”. Which translated to me as, “I’m too busy for you.” I took a break to think and heal and covid hit. I begged God for the words, so that I could officially resign my membership, but they never came. He had not given permission to leave yet. In 2020-2021, through church hurt, work hurt, and life altering illness, I was at the end of myself. My car saw more tears and heard more words than any human. I cannot count how many times I shouted, “Do you see me? Face me like a man! If you are my father fend for me!” 

A lovely faithful wise woman friend had told me many years before of a time when she hurt was so deep, she had to just sit and wait for God to find her. She knew he would, she just needed to wait. And the waiting was long, but he did. Her testimony echoed through my mind day in and day out. I knew Jesus would find me just like he found her, but I wasn’t sure if he would find me alive or if he’d only find the skeleton of my soul. But he put a longing for his breath. Even before I was at my end, he was speaking to the breath in me, and I see that now.

“Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’ ” So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army. Then he said to me: “Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’ Therefore prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: My people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.’ ””

‭‭Ezekiel‬ ‭37‬:‭9‬-‭14‬ ‭NIV‬‬

In the spring of 2021, the Chosen (which is not gospel but a series of what ifs that make it more relatable) released season 2 and in one of the early episodes this guy, Nathaniel loses everything when he is falsely accused because someone else doesn’t want to take responsibility. So, he goes out to the wilderness, only 1 tree and not another human for miles. He burns all his life’s work, tears his clothing, and covers himself with the ashes of the burned papers, (a common traditional grief response for that culture), and scream into the void, “Do you see me?!” In the Bible, we don’t have the backstory on Nathaniel, it only quotes Jesus as saying, “I saw you under the tree and in him there is no guile”. But in that moment, I was wrecked, beautifully wrecked. Jesus saw me. He found me before there was nothing left.

God gave us a few names to call him, but the first time we give a name to him, it is “El Roi”, the God who sees me. And the first person to say it is a woman, a slave, raped and forced to give her child to another woman, to be treated as not human and to be subjected to every kind of emotional and physical mistreatment. So, she goes out to the desert to die. And God comes to her and provides her a well of her own and asks her to go back but promises that through her also nations will be born. Hagar is the first person to name God and his faithfulness. And she does go back because of God, not because of the abuse or abusers (And God still uses her abuser, even calling him faithful. WHAT?!?).

“so she said to Abram, “The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.” Abram agreed to what Sarai said. So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. He slept with Hagar, and she conceived. When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. Then Sarai said to Abram, “You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my slave in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the Lord judge between you and me.” “Your slave is in your hands,” Abram said. “Do with her whatever you think best.” Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her. The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. And he said, “Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?” “I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered. Then the angel of the Lord told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” The angel added, “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.” The angel of the Lord also said to her: “You are now pregnant and you will give birth to a son. You shall name him Ishmael, for the Lord has heard of your misery. He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.” She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.”

‭‭Genesis‬ ‭16‬:‭2‬-‭16‬ ‭NIV‬‬

We have another example of God’s faithfulness in Job. God honors Job and does face him like a man. He doesn’t promise or give answers, but he does face us in our pain. Likewise, Joseph said “what you meant for evil God used for good”. Not that it wasn’t evil in the first place, but that God does see us and use the pain.

In truth I was badgered back to church, and I went back begrudgingly. When I finally came back to church, I asked God why and he told me that it wasn’t for me anymore, it was for others that hurt like me and needed to be seen and witness someone else that had walked through it. It was time for me to hold space for other people, as so many had held space for me.

In the summer of 2023 God finally gave me permission to leave “x”, my work changed and needed me to be available on the weekends, so I needed an evening service but only one church in my home town seemed to have one, the church I began my adult walk in Jesus in over 20 years ago. A couple months later a very sweet woman (Site Pastor) oblivious to the pain I had walked through previously, invited me to take point with small groups. I had a private, personal meltdown, still reeling from 4 years earlier being told I was too wounded to serve much less to serve in small groups.  As I worked that through with my counselor, the teaching pastor spoke the following week about wounded healers. People that maybe don’t have answers and maybe will forever walk with a limp in their soul but that have walked through the fire and pressed firmly into God and choose to love fiercely, and he never let them go.

Deconstruction is Reconstruction.

You are not necessarily going to like the results. They are always questioners and hurt angry people. The Shiny Happy People doesn’t exist. It is a falsehood easily seen through. Messy Mercy has been my tagline since I was 19. I have owned the URL on and off for nearly 22 years. It is my identity. Life is Messy, Jesus’ Mercy Covers Messy Completely.

But I am not ashamed of my questions or my pain anymore. I am not ashamed that I’m not the thin, outgoing, dynamic girl on the platform anymore.

God calls Job to make a sacrifice for himself and for his, not so fine, friends, and Job does. Before Job is blessed and healed, he sacrifices. The strength of Job is not just that he was righteous and clung to God, but also that he even amends for the griefs of his enemies. While we were enemies of Christ, he died for us. Job, Hagar, Joseph, and most importantly Jesus demonstrates that our suffering buys life if we will surrender it to God’s plan. Not that it doesn’t hurt or there isn’t blood in the water, but that God will build nations, redeem households, and mankind, as a whole. Deconstruction, if we walk humbly before our God and truthfully, without desperation for the “Shiny” may very well lead to reconstruction if we as the body of Christ will submit to the process.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands. Instead of the thornbush will grow the juniper, and instead of briers the myrtle will grow. This will be for the Lord’s renown, for an everlasting sign, that will endure forever.”

‭‭Isaiah‬ ‭55‬:‭8‬-‭13‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Faithfully and very vulnerably - Rebecca