Edit

[Edit 11/17/25:

I've explained before, but I'll do it again.

I'm stretched out on a rack that is pulling in 4 different directions.

 

1) My love for God and His Word.   Going to a different church would be an easy way out of this mess for all of us.  But doing so would mean sacrificing various vital things, in doctrine and practice.  Which of the Words of God should I let go of?  Which of them don't matter?  Which of the treasures of inestimable value should I sacrifice?  I just can't do it.

 

2) My love for my husband.  He wants me to have nothing to do with you.  He hates that I still attend our church, and interacting with you has a direct and negative impact on my marriage.  I must honor my husband's wishes as much as I can - and indeed considering what happened, his hurt and his restrictions are more than reasonable.  (I am beyond grateful that he pulled me out of the mess before things progressed any further.)  My love for him runs deep, and I want to repair our relationship (and indeed things are so very much better now)...and even if he is misunderstanding motives, etc, as his wife I will do what I can to honor him and his concerns.  

I do care about you and your pain in the matter, and how it hurts - truly I do.  But I've explained this to you:  If someone came to you for pastoral care and said, "I'm close friends with this man, but my husband isn't comfortable with it and wants me to cut ties...what should I do?"  it's kind of a no-brainer.  The husband comes first, full stop.  No pastor worth his salt would advise otherwise.

Please, be my Pastor. 

3) My love for my children.  Their faith hangs in the balance.  With an unbelieving father, their odds of remaining in the faith are very slim.  I know I'm fighting a battle against great odds, and will likely lose.  But trying to switch churches, pulling them away from this one where we're at home, connected, and they're involved and have friends...to either go to one that's an all-day trek we can only make once every other month or so (and my husband is very not keen on that option), or accept false doctrine to varying degrees at other churches, would be, I fear, the death knell for their young believing hearts.  The mama-bear in me will endure all manner of torture before taking such a risk.

 

4) My love for you, your family, and our church.  I desperately want and need spiritual counsel.  I need to talk to someone who shares our confession about everything I've been wrestling with, so very very much.  But to go to anyone in our church and share with them my perception of things, could end up creating a disastrous mess that could harm all of the above.  So, I continue to drown, rather than cry out to those on the shore who could help pull me out.

 

And somehow, I have to walk a narrow tightrope that accommodates all four.

 

All I ask of you, is understanding.  Care.  

Please, be a pastor.  Act like my Pastor.

 

I don't know how to act.  I'm afraid.  Please, can we at least be at peace?  Can you understand - even if you feel you can't support - why I've distanced myself as I have?  Your attacking instead has made everything so very much worse, and it is why I hide even my face from you: I fear what you might do, or say, or not say, to continually hurt and punish me.  I am, in a very real sense, afraid of you; you are not safe.

And in writing this to you (if you ever manage to read it), I'm making myself yet again vulnerable, probably unwisely.  Please don't use this knowledge to make even more precisely-targeted wounds (not that any of it is new, as though I've never before explained these things to you.  You know all of this, as my many "walls of text" have relayed in the past.)  

 

 

I keep trying to fix things by being open and honest, but my baring my soul keeps backfiring and resulting in more hurt.  Despite it all, though, I still seem to be clinging to some shred of hope that you do in fact care about my well-being.  If you do, please receive this as yet another cry for peace, and don't use my bared heart as yet another opportunity to draw blood in vengeance.

 

You said you're still my Pastor.  Prove it.  Be pastoral.  Care about me; stop hurling darts at me.  Please.

But if you can't, then please understand as I continue to put on thicker armor.  ...I'd like to take it off, though; it weighs so much.  But I will do what I must to survive.

 

 

(...I never thought I'd have to shield myself from you though.  You were the safest of places, once.  Or, so I thought.)] 

[Edit 12/17/25:

The fact remains, you spiritually abused me.  Pretty seriously. 

And in many ways, you continue to do so. 

 

I am not wrong for prioritizing my husband and family.  I am not wrong to have put up the boundaries that I have.  They protect both me and my marriage.  I have made these decisions carefully and with a LOT of time and analysis, wanting to believe the best about you.

But time has shown what is more likely to be true.  Lord, have mercy.

 

I don't think I will ever trust you again.  Certainly never anywhere near as much as I (foolishly) used to.

 

The guilt that I feel from how you act, the fear that I have that I am in fact the one who is oppressing you, that you are the victim, is not in accord with the Word of God.  I am acting in as faithful a manner as I can, in accordance with the 10 Commandments and my station in life.  So for you, as my supposed Pastor, to continually try to make me feel bad about doing just that, is quite simply you continuing to abuse me spiritually, and continuing to prove your untrustworthiness to lead and guide me in the things of God. 

I am not angry (generally), I do still forgive you.  But this is an area in which I am confident, and I will not budge.  Sometimes I need to re-visit things to remind me of that fact, and I do still want peace, and I do want to figure out how to temper my actions to avoid "shunning" you, if I can do so safely.  But beyond that...no.  I will not let you make me feel guilty any more.  

Yes, I'm not innocent.  I'm an adult with a free will.  But as I've said, I confessed and received absolution for my actions long ago.  Christ has forgiven me; my sins are gone, as far as the east is from the west. 

 

I am grateful for the office that you hold.   And I do care about you as a person, as a fellow Christian.  I pray for you to one day open your eyes and repent.  And I look forward to the Last Day when all of this will be gone, and we will all be with Christ, with no more sin or hurt or pain.  That day will be glorious.

 

 

But for now...I am sorry.  This is how it is.] 

 

 

[Edit 4/27/26:

I am sorry but, the way things are now cannot be the way that things stay.  

One way or another, this will change.  Either you will repent, or I'll be destroyed in the process of trying to call you to repentance.

 

It takes time, sometimes, and distance to see things clearly.  As time has gone on and I've been able to emotionally cut ties with you and step back, and as I've become willing to consider other angles, I finally found, this past January, the explanation that makes the most sense.  I wish it didn't, truly I do.  But having seen it, I can't unsee it.

Yes, it was abuse.  It goes beyond the spiritual, even. My husband was right all along: you were grooming me.  And that after I'd gone to you for help with sin, after I'd trusted you and made myself vulnerable in that way.  

It's a very big deal, and one that can't go unaddressed.  

 

Tell me, is it right for a pastor to meet with a female under his care for frequent, private, long personal conversations behind closed doors?  Should he argue with her saying there's no need for boundaries because there's no danger in a close relationship?  Is it ok for him to try to meet up with her somewhere, just the two of them?  Text her all day long?  Send her raunchy memes and suggestive songs?  Touch her arm, grasp her hand, hug her - real hugs, not side ones - often?  Say "I love you?"  Does saying the love is of a familial type make it all ok?  Does saying, "It's not sexual!" mean he's allowed to do these things?   And when her conscience flares up, should he tell her she's just crazy?

And when her husband objects, feeling betrayed by the pastor and pushed even further away from the church, is he just misunderstanding?  Should said pastor proceed to guilt the woman when she distances herself from him, trying to do the God-honoring thing and save her marriage?  Should he refuse her many, many bids for discussion, become angry at her attempts to point out his sin, and allow her to carry the full weight of responsibility for what was, all along, primarily his?  Have the gall to hear her full confession, absolving her of her sin, and then act like his only wrong was in misunderstanding her, or in caring too much?

She was running from sin; he turned her back, again and again, on to the path that led to destruction.  She was fighting; he convinced her it wasn't something to run from, but was in reality a good thing that should be embraced, that it was actually God's will, His way of providing for her needs.  As her pastor, she trusted him completely; he used that trust and abused it, terribly.  It was only by her husband's intervention that things did not go further, and it is by God's grace alone that she did not lose her faith completely.

 

You need to repent.  Please, please, repent.

 

 

 

I went to you privately.  I've involved some elders.  And I will, as much as it is within my power, stay faithful to following our Lord's admonition in Matthew 18.  

Stop deflecting.  Stop pretending innocence or naivete.   Stop minimizing.  Don't hide.  Be a Christian; be a man.  Own it and repent.

This isn't "just how it is now."  I won't leave you trapped in your sin.

 

The Bible holds pastors to a higher standard.  If you as a pastor can't even acknowledge that you've erred - not just because you've somehow misunderstood because I haven't been clear enough or some other nonsense - if you refuse to repent in the face of causing severe spiritual harm to one of your parishioners, then how can you be trusted to serve as a pastor to others?

 

You are not and never can be my Pastor again.  Sadly that ship has very much sailed, at this point.

 

 

 

Why, if I believe all this, have I not left?  Truly it's ridiculous that I haven't.  But I've given the reasons, and they're still true.  This has all ripped me to shreds, continually.  But I'm stubborn, when I have to be.

You can discredit me, sure.  You can easily take from me my reputation if you choose to, yes.  You can throw my many sins out into the light.  

But I know that I am not crazy; you cannot have that.  And you can never have my trust again, especially as you persist in unrepentance.   And God be praised, you can never take from me my faith; I will continue to cling to Jesus, however things end up.

Lord, have mercy. ]