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cmbl wrote:

LJones wrote:anxiety. When we finally do find something it is difficult to get rid of that security blanket of fighting heresy (imagined or real). That, in my opinion, is the origin of unsettled nature in many "converts." You have to labor to get rid of that madness. Otherwise you will continue to look for the bad in everything. Before you know it you will end up being alone, deceived, and nuts.

True. We've trained ourselves to question whatever comes over the pulpit, and it's difficult to turn that off. To trust again.

I spent like a year in my current church waiting for the terrible thing that I was sure was going to go wrong and derail everything. I had been so beaten up by the last few years before that trying (and failing) to rescue a C&MA church that had gone off of the rails. The terrible thing never happened, it was all a construction of my own anxiety. I am now living with an assurance that I am where God wants me to be, in a church I appreciate and can contribute.

Still, sometimes it takes time to shake off the bad experiences. Kinda reminds my of the opening of Arise my soul arise.

J.M.

It took me some years after we left the NWF setting until I could see a minister's number come up on my phone without my heart sinking. To this day I prefer that someone else answer the phone when that happens.

In fact, I have to steel myself to answer a phone, no matter who or what the call is. It goes back to several periods of extreme stress in my life and church life.