1000 Hours of Grieving Bethlehem

In 2022 our family was doing the “1000 Hours Outside” challenge (see here), and we had a chart on the side of the fridge with little bubbles we could fill in each time we spent an hour outdoors.  I like the principle of “you manage what you measure,” and tracking our hours prompted us to get outdoors more.  And it was satisfying to track our progress and see the chart slowly fill up.

That spring Mickey and I hit our lowest point emotionally in grieving all the painful things that happened at Bethlehem the prior year.  I found Mickey weeping on the couch three nights in a row, and floated the idea that maybe it might help to go to counseling.  The next day I had a meltdown in the bathroom and started screaming at the elders and suddenly realized, “Wait, I think I need counseling too.”  So we started that process together.

 

As I slowly worked through all the painful emotions (grief, anger, hurt, confusion, rage, betrayal, disappointment, disbelief), I wanted a tangible way to process what was happening.  I printed a second “1000 Hours” chart, put it on the fridge next to the other one, and jokingly titled it “1000 Hours of Grieving Bethlehem.”  I labeled each of the 10 groups of dots with a different way that I was coping:  counseling, talking with friends, feeling angry, writing blog posts, etc.

 

I remember thinking to myself, “there’s no guarantee that after 1000 hours things will be better or fixed.  But I probably won’t be in exactly the same place either.”  So it felt hopeful.  I was on a grief journey heading somewhere, not sure where, but at least I was moving, and filling in the bubbles gave me a sense of progress. 

 

Here are some of the ways I processed the grief:

 

1.      Therapy.  We did pretty intensive counseling from spring 2022 to fall 2023.  Weekly through that first summer, then biweekly that fall, then monthly for the next year. 

 

We used a technique called brain spotting (similar to EMDR, which is described in The Body Keeps the Score), where you look at different points with your eyes while letting your mind wander through old memories.  It helps your brain sort and file those painful memories away, similar to what happens in REM sleep, so that they no longer dominate your thinking.  And it was very helpful.  It didn’t magically solve any of the problems, but it gave us a bit of emotional distance, so we could heal and recover without feeling trapped in the memories. 

 

After that we switched to talk therapy.  Our therapist was excellent.  She was very familiar with the issues at Bethlehem.  One of my favorite memories with her was when I mentioned three names (Brian Tabb, Joe Rigney, and I forget the third – Ken Currie, maybe?) and she said, “You know, there are some names that come up over and over again.”  I have no idea who else has sat on her couch, but apparently many of them have been so hurt by Tabb and Rigney that they have sought out counseling.  (It must be so frustrating for her to see all these wounded people pouring out of Bethlehem and its church plants, and yet be powerless to change anything upstream to stop the bleeding.) 

 

Another favorite moment was when I was ranting about “why aren’t people willing to look at the problems?!  We tried so hard to persuade people; why won’t people look?” and she very gently asked, “Have you considered cult culture?” and Mickey said, “Oh yeah, Bethlehem is totally a cult.”  (Maybe I’ll write more about that later.  That perspective is actually the thing that has helped me most when I feel rage at people who have stayed at Bethlehem.  Realizing that they are trapped in a system and can’t see the truth helps me feel slightly more sympathetic toward them.)

 

2.      Talking with friends.  I had many long conversations with friends processing the Bethlehem junk.  Describing various betrayals.  Hearing them validate things.  Trying to make sense of it all.  Grieving the losses together.  Trying to diagnose the problems.  My friends were kind and gentle when I was emotional.  I remember arriving at a playdate in tears and asking my friend, “Can you watch my kids?  I need to go for a walk and cry.”  She graciously watched my kids and then listened patiently when I came back and wanted to talk.  Another time with that friend, I arrived at Moms In Prayer in tears and apologized for being late:  “I got lost.  I was crying about the Bethlehem stuff,” and she just instantly understood.

 

Similarly, a few years ago, after our miscarriages, I found it really helpful to talk about feeling sad.  I remember telling someone, “Each time a friend asked me how my summer was going, I told them about the miscarriage, talked about it a little more, and by the end of the summer, I felt better.”  It was a similar dynamic with the Bethlehem junk; just talking about it helped me work through the grief.  It also made me feel less alone.

 

3.      Feeling Sad/Angry.  This category had by far the most dots filled in.  It was also the most amorphous category.  Part of grieving was just letting myself feel all the emotions.  I spent many weepy mornings in the kitchen cooking, listening to all manner of breakup songs and just feeling deep betrayal or rage.  Later in the day I’d recall, “This morning was hard.  I felt miserable.”  And then I’d fill in a bubble and remember that I wouldn’t be stuck here forever.

 

4.      Walking/Thinking/Praying.  At our old house, I could walk out my front door and in 5 minutes be walking on trails along the Mississippi.  I loved those trails.  And I spent hours walking, thinking, processing, praying, trying to bring the emotions to God, trying to make sense of things.  It was emotionally exhausting.  I read somewhere that the back and forth motion of walking is soothing for our bodies.  And it helped to get outdoors, which is always good for mental health.  I would usually come back physically and emotionally worn out, yet also feeling a bit better.

 

5.      Writing Blog Posts.  I found that I was carrying so many questions.  Why won’t people look?  Why was I so convinced that Bethlehem was always right?  Why do the elders keep talking about good fruit, and why does that feel so wrong?  Why won’t the elders listen to people’s concerns?  The sheer quantity and complexity of the problems made it hard to keep track of things.  I couldn’t hold it all in my head, so it helped to write.  Writing helped me tear off one little piece, wrestle through it as best I could, and write it up.  And then my mind was freed up to process the next piece. 

 

Before I wrote, I had to think, and I did most of my thinking while walking.  Often I would wrestle with one specific question I was stuck on, and think and think and think until I could make a bit more sense of it.  My memories are often tied to place, so for the next year, I’d be walking on a certain trail and suddenly remember, “this is where I mentally wrote my “50+ Reasons” blog post, or “this is where I wrestled through so-and-so’s letter to me.”  I’m kind of glad that we moved and I don’t walk those trails anymore, as the reminders would probably feel too poignant. 

 

6.      Talking with Mickey.  We spent so many hours late at night, lying in bed talking, trying to make sense of everything.  Rather than bemoaning the late nights and lost sleep, I would wake up the next morning and fill in a dot or two, as if to say, “Those hours weren’t wasted.  We’re trying to process.”

 

7.      Escaping.  We tried to intentionally do fun things to offset some of the grief.  Taking the kids out for ice cream.  Reading a light novel.  It felt like proactive effort to try to stop the grief from dominating our lives.

 

8.      Worrying.  I labeled this category “Pushing the rock up the hill.”  Anxiety is often my core struggle, and Mickey uses the Sisyphus image to remind me that worrying is futile.  So when I’d catch myself wallowing in anxiety, I’d fill in a bubble to acknowledge it.

 

My daughter jokingly labeled an empty category on the chart “being an angry mom” in her wobbly 9-year old handwriting.  It was a rough season in parenting.  Mickey and I were both pretty stressed out, and it’s hard to parent well when you’re stressed. 

 

After awhile, the chart had served its purpose, and I took it down.  I saved it in my Bethlehem folder as a reminder of how hard that season was.

 

I’m writing this three years later (tomorrow will be 3 years to the day after I started the chart).  A lot of healing has happened, though there are still many scars and some open wounds.  But it’s good to look back and remember how deep the grief was and how long it took to work through it.  Grief work is hard, draining work.  Church harm is a real thing, and it leaves deep wounds.

 

But as expected, we’re not in the same place we were three years ago.  And we’re so glad we got out of Bethlehem.  It was a brutal process leaving, but there has been so much good on the other side.