the specific abuse inflicted upon me by that community was rooted in their belief that anything less than a positive response to pain was disobedient and unfaithful to god and his design. When they uprooted me, left me with no home or form of income, and relationally abandoned me for the sake of continuing to focus on building their project with the people that were there, it was both implied and directly stated that it was now my job to be obedient and faithful to both them and god because this is what god knew and intended to have happen all along—they were simply the arbiters of his perfect
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I was startled by how much this paragraph is the nearly play-by-play experience we had with my husband’s family as they attempted navigate a season of a family member’s potentially fatal health diagnosis, how that event brought to the surface long-dormant toxic family patterns, and how strange it was as we watched Scripture passages be viewed as talismans of healing.
Particularly surprising — but also traumatic —was “their belief that anything less than a positive response to pain was disobedient and unfaithful [witness] to God and His design,” as if all those sermons against the prosperity gospel had been erased in hopes of their situation being the one in which God saw prayer and positivity as meritocratic, where physical healing might be the reward if nothing negative was uttered, and suffering in silence conflated with holiness. “Jesus wept,” even when he knew the outcome.
