Turns out, I don't have to go inside the building to feel agitated by being there. I spent about five minutes in the parking lot, spoke to only one person and that conversation was pretty innocuous.
Afterward I felt wound up and agitated, like I'd had three too many cups of coffee. If I'd sat still and thought about it I would have cried.
I expect this. I understand that I have a conditioned fight/flight response to this church. An acquaintance put it succinctly: "Even people who don't believe in God believe in B.F. Skinner."
I understand it and I hate it.
My husband is the same way. I like driving past our old parsonage, seeing my lilies and tulips and forsythia and mulberry in bloom. Last summer, my daughter (who never got to say goodbye to her home) was back in the midwest visiting, and the two of us stopped by the old house and wandered around the church property and nibbled mulberries off the tree we planted. My husband, however, is uncomfortable driving on that 15-mile stretch of interstate that's a few miles from the church.
ReplyDeleteI, too, feel the same way. My wife and family visited our former congregation but I would have a hard time. I would like that to change about me. But if it doesn't that may be ok as well.
ReplyDelete-oms