The Possible Move and My Required Informal Resignation

When I told Chris about the meeting he blew up. He was so angry and I found myself making excuses for my pastor’s behavior and begging Chris not to call him up or say something on Sunday. At that moment, Chris was wise enough to see that I needed his support and he shut his mouth. He saw that the hold my Pastors had over me was beginning to crumble and he was glad because that meant he would finally have his wife back.

We managed to get through my birthday dinner with the Pastors, although it was strained. We also managed to get through the next Sunday too. But the whole time the Lord was speaking to my heart, telling me it was time to move on. Chris was just waiting for me to say “let’s go” and we’d pack our bags and say goodbye to our little church of five years. Chris had known for some time that our church, and my relationship with my Pastors, was toxic and if something didn’t change soon it would have eventually destroyed our marriage. Chris had seen it where I had not and he had wisely kept silent, knowing I would never see the truth until I was ready and God showed me.

During that time there had been rumors at Chris’ work that layoffs were a possibility. Higher management had not been doing their jobs and had not secured any work for my husband’s department to do for months. They sat there every day doing nothing.
Doing nothing is very hard for a man and so the lust to do something else started creeping into my husband’s bones. That lust was contagious too. Soon, with the help of the Holy Spirit, I began to see that leaving was what God wanted me to do. But in my own strength, I reasoned that “moving” was the right thing to do.

At the time, I didn’t know how very bad things were going to become but I knew, based on previous experience, that no one left our little church on good terms. If a person left the church, they were excommunicated from the church and they were bashed and gossiped about. It didn’t matter if the individual was family or not. I had personally witnessed where the Pastors own family members were given the silent treatment, threatened, expelled from the church, and humiliated with gossip. I was not going to let that happen to me. The only way anyone ever left on good terms, without the humiliating treatment, was if they moved, preferably out of state. Chris and I knew both knew this and so, to spare me the humiliation of the gossip mill, moving somewhere else became our quest. Anywhere was better than here.

Chris soon found a job in Montana that he thought he was qualified for, in the same pay range as what he was currently making, so he applied. We strategized about what we would do with the house and we started making plans. If it wasn’t Montana it was going to be somewhere else. The somewhere else where we were hoping to go was Georgia, close to our good friends who had moved there not too long before.

Since we were making all these plans and moving seemed inevitable, I decided that the right thing to do was to inform my Pastors of the possibility of us leaving. I never would have expected their reactions.

It was a Wednesday after one of our staff meetings that I decided to broach the subject of us moving. I explained how Chris had been doing nothing at work for months and that the job security just wasn’t there, so he had applied for a job in Montana. My Pastor’s response was to immediately announce that he would start looking for my replacement right away and as soon as he found someone else I would be fired.

I was completely shocked. Why would I be fired? I tried to ask him these questions as I again sat there dumbfounded with tears streaming down my face. His response was the same one as just three weeks before.

“It is unfair of you to hold me and the church hostage. What if Chris get’s this job? You could be gone in two weeks and I would be left scrambling to find a replacement?”

My response was, “What if he doesn’t get this job and we end up staying here in Panama City?”

“Well, it sounds to me that you guys have already been making plans and I cannot leave this church to the off chance that you are staying. You still haven’t gotten back to me about whether or not you and Chris are going to have another baby. With the possibility of a baby and you guys moving, my hands are tied. You have left me no choice but to immediately start looking for your replacement and as soon as I find one you will be relieved of your duty. Every person in this church is replaceable. As the pastor, I’m replaceable. The associate Pastor is replaceable, and you are replaceable. This is God’s church and it will go on without you or me. No matter how good you are and have been for this church, you are replaceable.”

“But why not wait until we even know if this is a real possibility or not? Even if Chris does get this job why not wait until then, because Chris and I already discussed leaving me and the kids behind for a time so he could find us a place to live. We did that once before when we moved down here to Florida.”

“Husbands and wives always want to be together and let’s face reality…Are you really gonna want Chris up there in Montana, alone, without you, so he can end up cheating on you? This is just how it’s gotta be. As soon as find a replacement for you, you’ll be out of a job.”

That was not how I thought that conversation was going to go at all! I had expected some rational thinking but instead I got a touch of hysterics and a lot of anger. At that point, I wished I had kept my mouth shut and kept our plans to ourselves, but little did I know that it was all in God’s hands. God’s prompting me to alert my Pastors to the possibility of us moving, and their reactions, was exactly what I needed to tear away the last scale from my eyes so that I could see the truth. After that day, it was like I was seeing the truth for the first time. Every time I turned a corner it was like God was directing my gaze to the piles of garbage and dung, the junk, the religion, the traditions and selfishness of man that God never intended to be associated with His church. Every time I looked around and God showed me another portion of truth, He was confirming in my heart that it was time to leave. I had my running shoes tied tight, and all I was waiting for was God’s commanding shout that would start me running.

“GO!”