Spiritual Abuse: My Healing Journey

January 27, 2023.Reading time 19 minutes.

My journey of healing from spiritual abuse is still ongoing. It has been long, slow, and winding. Understanding what happened in my mind has only been part of the journey.

Spiritual Abuse: Truth, Lies, and Manipulation

December 7, 2022.Reading time 27 minutes.

In spiritually abusive environments, some form of truth is present. And some good things might be happening. This makes it harder to identify what is off. The Bible is quoted. God might be moving in some powerful ways. So what exactly is wrong? As I have tried to mentally untangle my own experience of spiritual […]

Spiritual Abuse: When Church Becomes a Damaging, Dangerous Place

November 16, 2022.Reading time 21 minutes.

Four years ago, the co-lead pastors of my church at the time were asked to resign because of spiritual abuse. That church had become my family, my community, my home. The news was shocking, but I was also deeply grateful the dysfunction was finally being named. While I am still unpacking the realities and consequences […]

More than My Trauma

May 20, 2020.Reading time 13 minutes.

The past year and a half, it has been hard for me not to define myself by my trauma. I’m sure others have experienced trauma much worse than mine, but my story is this: I got hurt in a place I thought was safe. A church. A particular church that I loved with all my heart and to which I gave all of myself.

Accepting the Good: Gratitude in the Midst of Deep Uncertainty

January 25, 2020.Reading time 6 minutes.

I’ll be the first one to admit that I think platitudes about gratitude are lame. Gratitude can’t be the solution to everything. Some problems need to be wallowed in and solved that way. Right?

Weightlessness & Restoration: The Risk, Hope, and Loss of Big Life Transitions

August 28, 2019.Reading time 5 minutes.

At the beginning of the year, I left the home I had built in Korea. I left my closest friends, my job, my routines, and all the futures I had envisioned for myself on that peninsula, and I returned to the States. I was excited, but I was also heartbroken. In one hand, I held hopeful excitement about my new beginning; but in the other, my whole world seemed to be slipping away like sand through my fingers […]

Learning to Be Weak

August 20, 2018.Reading time 8 minutes.

I have been learning the same lesson over and over the past several months, actually more like the past two years. The lesson is this: I am weak. At times I’ve felt intensely frustrated, stuck, even hopeless, wondering if this season will ever end. But what can I say? God is a thorough teacher. Not Okay […]

Remembering the Dark Times

April 26, 2018.Reading time 6 minutes.

I used to see the dark times as something to forget. I wanted to pretend they had never happened. My struggles and failures, the moments of intense loneliness, fear, and confusion––I just wanted to put all that behind me. The point was to overcome. The point was to move forward. But in the midst of recent […]