Condemned as bitter

Needing to grieve

Some ideas take me a long time to work through. This is one of those. I spent many miles walking and thinking about what I really want to say. I sat to write and rewrite. I let it sit and come back again. Thanks for reading this piece as part of the process of my work. Here we go.

A photo I took of art hanging in the AGTS library when my daughter was a library assistant there.

I hear a recurring theme from people wounded in ministry. Their grief is bypassed, and they are condemned as bitter.

Take for instance, Jim & Jana. They served overseas for 30 years without making waves, but when leadership declared everyone must move to church planting teams, they asked to opt out. They had proven their capabilities! Leadership denied their request. “Join a team or go home.” After a few tough years, they returned to their home country filled with grief for the vibrant ministry lost. They tried to speak with friends, but, instead of kind listening, friends called them bitter.

Susan loved pastoring. She had purpose, and God was working through her. When her lead pastor left, new leadership cut her position. She was given two days to be out of her office. There was no closure. She spoke to a few close friends about her pain in transition. Leadership whispered behind her back, calling her bitter. (Somehow the whispering always makes it back to the person whispered about).

Mike landed his lifetime dream—pastoring the church that formed him, but he didn’t realize how the church had changed. During the interview process, the search committee put on a good show, expertly hiding the infighting that characterized the congregation. Soon after he started, a group began to spread rumors about Mike. He couldn’t fix things and, not three years in, he resigned, and his family was forced to move again. He and his wife took marketplace jobs. They attended a mega church, which felt like a safe place to heal. When he finally found the courage to talk to his pastor about his pain, the pastor responded, “You are a bitter man.”

Labeling a hurting person bitter is far too common, and when someone is wounded by the church, it rubs salt in an already painful wound. Healing becomes elusive.

Let me be honest. I also have been called bitter. Words were spoken about me as I began to name spiritual abuse. I suspected it. Recently a friend confirmed that her coworkers, missionaries I had called friends, named me bitter and spoke negatively of me.

When I began to talk about wounding in ministry, I wasn’t bitter, and I still am not. But I did grieve. Sometimes that grief was harsh. At times I still find myself sucked into the grief of what was and what will never be.

Those who labeled me bitter have their reasons, likely they are loyal to the system. It pays their bills.

I have realized that when people can’t handle the discussion around spiritual abuse or can’t handle the pain of another person, they often haven’t dealt with the pain experienced in their own lives. So they deflect and pick the quickest label available: Bitter.

There is a major difference between grieving losses suffered in broken systems and holding bitterness.

Bitterness

So why is grief labeled as bitterness?

To answer that, let’s begin by acknowledging bitterness is a real thing. According to an online dictionary, bitterness is, “anger and disappointment at being treated unfairly.” Clearly, spiritual abuse is unfair treatment. Anger and resentment may flow from a person.

I’m not denying negative emotions, even bitterness may come from a person who suffered abuse. But might we also acknowledge that this might be an unhealthy byproduct of not being allowed to properly grieve? And for those naming someone else as bitter, do you have a right, not being in the other’s situation, to label them bitter? You don’t.

When a missionary or a pastor faces the loss of place and people, profession and purpose, they must grieve. Grief may sound harsh and angry, and that is okay:

“They didn’t let me say goodbye.”

“I gave them my best years.”

“They labeled me rebellious and unsubmissive because I questioned their demand.”

“The system is broken.”

Grief

Grief is not bitterness. Grief is the emotional, physical, and mental reaction to major loss. Our culture doesn’t do grief well. We expect the grieving to move on quickly, no matter the situation. Whether the death of a loved one or the exit from a position in ministry, we put a timeline on grief, believing we can name the ending like an expiration date.

And because our culture does not process grief well, we personally are often stunted in processing grief.

We have little place for the sadness of unmet dreams or a calling interrupted.

If we can’t handle it in others, is it any wonder that we have even less place for it in our own lives? Rather than grieve, we put on masks. We face the world with our best happy faces, all the while dying inside.

When we cannot grieve, it compounds. It doesn’t simply go away. When grief is labeled bitterness, when talking about the problem is reprimanded as gossip, or when feelings are called wrong, we stop the process of grieving. We edit ourselves. But grief doesn’t leave, it explodes in the body’s systems.

The grieving person experiences loss of sleep, loss of appetite, and numbed feelings. Or maybe they only want to sleep, gain 30 pounds from overeating and cortisol spikes, and explode in rage at random times.

In my childbearing years, I suffered three miscarriages, one before each live birth. Although each miscarriage was early in the pregnancy, there is something strange and wonderful that this tiny being within my body can bring such hope and joy and then such complete sadness when the pregnancy is lost. The emotional pain was intense.

But with my third miscarriage, I didn’t want to feel the grief, and consciously shoved it aside. Few people knew about the pregnancy or miscarriage, and I wanted to go on without acknowledging the loss. Surprisingly, to myself and my doctor, I got pregnant again quickly. So I put the miscarriage behind me. Or so I thought.

Fifteen years later I listened to a podcast about infertility and miscarriage. It moved me, and as I recounted the podcast to Andy, I found unexpected tears flowing down my cheeks. Tears I thought didn’t need to come. Grief I had not acknowledged for fifteen years had stayed in my body and suddenly found a way out.

Grief doesn’t simply go away. It must move through our bodies. Grief is held best and safest in community, but when your community has been the cause of your pain, how do you process it?

We need to find ways to process grief and move to healing.

We need a process to grieve.

A Process to Grieve

Drew Hyun, Pastor and co-leader of Emotionally Healthy Discipleship wrote about our need to grieve in his book Beautiful, Disappointing, Hopeful. He names two kind of pain we grieve—clean and dirty.

Dirty pain is the grief we bring on ourselves. Let’s be honest, each of us do wrong and bring pain on ourselves. I get mad at my husband, snap at him, and we get in a negative cycle of relating. I need to grieve the pain I brought on my marriage through repentance to both God and my husband.

Conversely, clean pain is injury outside our control. We call it suffering. In ministry it might come from a leadership change which forces you out of your role. Or it may be a broken ministry system that doesn’t allow differences. Or a congregation that turns on their pastor. Or a pastor using his power and position to sexually abuse a congregant and calling it an affair or claiming she is the liar. (Incidentally, 99% of women who make claims of clergy sexual abuse are not lying. The personal cost of such an accusation is too great. But that is for another time).

Situations like these bring pain to our lives that we did not cause. Clean pain must be grieved. We don’t simply get over it. We can’t move on and pretend the painful experiences of the past don’t exist.

Often we attempt the path to healing through blame. “They did this to me.” And while it is true that your suffering is the result of another’s wrong doing, when we stay in the blame game, we get stuck. We can’t grieve. Hyun says this:

Grieving clean pain requires an acknowledgment that the world—-while beautiful—is still very disappointing and sullied from what it was originally intended to be.¹

The world is not what was intended, and we are carried into the suffering it brings.

What do we do with lost dreams? What do we do with the hopes we had for a people or ministry we are no longer a part of? What do we do with an abrupt move we didn’t plan, the expenses incurred, the friendships lost? What do we do when we don’t have a community who will help mourn our losses?

The Gethsemane Prayer

I write this during Holy Week. Friday we will gather in our churches and remember Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. Before his betrayal he prayed honestly to God. He did not want to go to the cross. He prayed, “Father, can you take this cup from me?” The God who walked this earth and did no sin, knew He was about to suffer the most painful of deaths. And He wanted a way out. He asked God, “Isn’t there another way?”

We can pray the same honest prayers. Recently our community group went through the Practicing the Way course. I learned a powerful exercise to help process pain. I am adapting it here to grief. It is based on Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane.

Find a time to be alone and quiet with Jesus. Sit and notice your sadness, name your pain, where it comes from and how it sits in you. Let yourself feel all the feelings. Then pray this way:²

Give God your grief. Pour out your sadness. Tell him honestly what you are experiencing. Don’t hold back. He can take your honesty.

Give God your desires. What have you lost? What do you want in return? What do you hope for?

Give God your trust. Yield yourself once again to God. Jesus prayed, “Not my will, but yours be done.” Can you pray that prayer too?

We can practice this prayer to mourn ministry losses and practice it for any way we meet suffering and pain.

Jesus said, “Blessed are they that mourn, for they will be comforted.”

Blessed are you when you grieve, because through grief, you will find comfort. Jesus invites us to grieve. Jesus is here to comfort you. Meet him in your sorrow.

And the next time someone tells you that you are bitter, take it as an invitation to continue the process of grieving. There is no time stamp on your process. Eventually, comfort and hope will take the place of sadness.

Finally, it is painful to not have a safe community of faith. For those of you who lost your community amidst spiritual abuse, I want to acknowledge this is a real and sorrowful loss. My prayer for you today is that Jesus will help you find a safe and loving community of followers of Jesus. It may not look like what you have known previously, but may it be rich and full. May the love from that community and their acceptance of you, with or without your grief, bring lasting healing from the pain of your wounding.

And if any part of this has touched you in any way, feel free to reach out to me, comment on Substack, and let me know.

1. Drew Hyun. Beautiful, Disappointing, Hopeful—How Gratitude, Grief, and Grace Reflect the Christian Story. Page 110

2. John Mark Comer and Practicing the Way. The Practicing the Way Course Companion Guide. Page 92.