Their Smiling Faces
It’s Spiritual Abuse Awareness Month and I’m using this time to share more of my story of experiencing Spiritual Abuse. I will add more details and explanations in the footnotes. This writing reflects my present recollections of experiences over time. Names are pseudonyms. All comments are moderated.
This incident occurred while working for a church in California. This was the moment I realized I was working in an abusive environment.
The office room was small with four people taking up space. Jean, at least, was another woman in the room, but my internal radar was not picking up safety.
Why?
She was a tall woman. A beautiful woman. An austere woman.
She didn’t smile much.
Adam sat near her, chair on her side of the room.
Adam smiled a lot.
I wished, in that moment, he wouldn’t smile quite so much.
Otis wasn’t smiling, but I’d noticed he’d made his tall, obese frame small, as he took a seat across from me.
My inner radar was picking up speed, registering danger before he even spoke.
Jean asked Otis to tell his side of the story. “Normally, I’d get your side before we all met together, but Katherine already spoke to me and I didn’t want to let a lot of time pass.” We were leaving on a retreat that weekend. Of course she’d want this resolved before Otis and I were alone with teenagers.
Otis made himself smaller. He spoke in a timid voice. He said a few things, but one thing registered. “I spoke too harshly the other day, and I’m very sorry.”
Jean asked me, “Katherine, do you accept Otis’s apology?”
My inner radar was blaring. I looked back and forth between Jean and Otis, Adam’s grinning face between them.
Was that it?
They waited for my response as tears congested the back of my throat.
What the hell? What the fucking hell?
The word “gaslight” wasn’t in my vocabulary at the time—but something of the form ping-ponged inside my brain.
Right in front of me, Otis had lied. He penitently confessed to speaking too harshly when the real story was he’d berated me for two hours. He’d called me insubordinate, accused me of disrespect, and brought up incident after incident of things I’d done over the past six months, assigning the worst possible motive.*
Harsh didn’t even begin to describe it.
And because no one else was there to witness, I was caught in a vortex of he-said, she-said.
Jean blinked at me patiently. But the patient blinking hid what she wasn’t saying.
She thinks I’m crazy.
The previous day, I’d called an emergency meeting with her. I’d sobbed in her office, unsure what to do. I was aware I’d been triggered—too many of Otis’s words resembled the words of my abusive father.
In my state of hyperarousal, I wasn’t able to discern that he resembled my abusive father because he was like my abusive father.
I was still in a state of denial, and couldn’t fathom I’d moved across the country for this job, only to have the same sort of man as a boss.
But there in that office, his description of “I spoke too harsh” was a douse of familiarity. I’d played a role in this scene a hundred times growing up, when my father would question my memory. When he’d say, “That’s not how it happened,” when I tried to communicate how his actions made me feel.
A deliberate questioning of my reality was happening in real time.
And Adam and Jean thought this would all go away as soon as I told Otis I forgave him.**
I choked on tears, making great effort not to cry in front of Otis. I could feel his contempt, and I was sure neither Adam nor Jean could see it.
My behavior was far from glamorous or badass, but I knew I couldn’t just say “It’s fine” and be done with it. I blubbered incoherently for several minutes. Never fully accepting the apology nor admitting all was well. My mind was reeling, and I could sense Jean’s patience ebbing away. Her face had grown stonier. ***
She was ready for this mess to be done with.
Adam continued grinning by her side, but his smile was slipping. Despite his optimism, he wasn’t an idiot, and I think he knew this wouldn’t be as clean and crisp as he’d hoped.
We all committed to discuss again soon. After the retreat.
A couple weeks later, Jean would announce she had taken another job.
The Case of Otis and Katherine would be dropped—everyone preferring for it to just go away.
But the hurricane had just begun
*It’s difficult to fathom how a ministry leader could lie. But it’s all too common in abusive environments.
** When there is a power imbalance, and the person in power injures the other, it cannot be resolved as if it were conflict between peers.
*** Church leaders, either through ignorance, or enmeshment with the abuser, will often add greater trauma to victims’ experience when they fail to recognize the signs of abuse.
For further reading see What Happened to Rankin Wilbourne?