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Originally Posted by Unregistered
Hello,
I've decided to leave the recovery and not look back. I am a young adult, and I am curious if anyone has any experience telling their parents and or family about their decisions. I'm worried that I will lose them as the recovery conditions its members to look down on outsiders and those who have left. I also worry that if I go into details it will turn into an argument rather than a good faith conversation as these people hold the recovery so near and dear to their hearts. Would love to hear what people have to say on how to tell your family / parents about leaving.
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This is my first post on-forum. I am mid-40s and have grown up in the LCs and strongly identified with LC culture until ~10 yrs ago. In the last year the cognitive dissonance between the LSM publications with its associated church life culture and our reading of Scripture and experience with other Christians. I signed up to get some help and context earlier this year when my wife and I made our exit. Our experience, while not particularly easy for us and still somewhat unfolding, has relatively smooth compared to some of the other horror stories I have heard.
I have a good relationship with my parents and have made a point of maintaining it with regular calls and visits. I've practiced discussing concerns with them, and they heard from me when I couldn't swallow "culture is a result of the fall" or understand what, exactly the brothers meant by "Christ replacing culture" during the Thanksgiving 2020 conference. And when, from in front of the blue chalkboard, I heard the words "good is somewhat worse than evil, because it's deceptive", "It's deceptive to call it the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil", and other such contortions, we had another long talk, and I told them (along with the responsible brothers) that I could no longer represent the ministry as a "Responsible One" in my district and was stepping back from that role.
I took 3-4 months to do some due diligence to make sure I hadn't misunderstood what the brothers were saying. I read "The One Publication" and such books as "The Genuine Ground of Oneness" to see whether the church life cultural problems were a product of wrong practice (in which case there was some hope of reform) or of wrong teaching (in which case I needed to get out). In the end I concluded that the LC stance to other believers is fundamentally unhealthy and that trying to practice a proper understanding of fellowship in the Body of Christ was going to be like holding back the tide with a broom; possible for a small area, for a limited time, and with great expenditure of personal energy.
During a family gathering, my sister (who is on a different journey but with some similarities), my wife, and I presented these struggles to my parents and we let them know we were moving on from the LCs. I know it was especially hard for my mother not to feel like I/we were rejecting her and the way they had raised us. I affirmed that they had given us a good Christian upbringing, that I didn't regret growing up in the LCs (I don't), but I just don't agree with the claimed ground of oneness that has actually become a cause of division. It was an exhausting conversation, but we did our best to be respectful, loving and not get personal. My father in particular was very supportive, saying right at the beginning "this is not going to be a cause of division in our family." Surprisingly, in the end, we all prayed for the Lord's will to be done and for the Lord to use our departure for good.
In another surprise, and much to the credit of the other "ROs" in my district and the elder who supported us, when we met with them a few weeks later to let them know our decision and say goodbyes, they listened, didn't argue, and asked questions, including what they should learn from our departure. That was another honest but exhausting conversation. I was surprised again when they took the lead to pray for us and ask to Lord to use our departure for His will.
I know this is a substantially different narrative than many that have been posted on this forum. I'd like to offer hope that it may be possible to leave without a lot of negativity and damage. But even in a case like ours, when things went "smoothly" for the most part, it is still emotionally exhausting. The conversations with friends and acquaintances are not easy. I know that we will not hear from some of them again, and there is a sense of loss. My wife and I do a lot of processing together to talk through the transition, figuring out what to keep and what to discard, how to make sense of the experiences we had and how to move on in a new church community. So far, though, it has been like fresh air and sunshine to be released from the constant cognitive dissonance induced by things read in the HWMR and heard from the conferences, trainings and random repetitions from the dear saints on Sunday mornings. I would describe the tension I was feeling a year ago as a growing oppressive weight, like heavy clouds, affecting my mental health and my marriage. I don't miss that at all.
A lot depends on the state of your relationship with your family. It's important to create safety in conversations so people don't feel attacked or threatened personally. And it's important to realize that sometimes people respond in an ugly way because they don't feel safe, and it's critical for you to not take that personally. Our Lord is the Redeemer, the Healer, and the Father of us all. Lean on Him for the strength and wisdom to get through the hard conversations.