Why is Leaving so Hard?

Leaving toxic faith spaces is never easy, but sometimes it's the very thing you need.

Screen cap from one of the worst sci fi/horror movies ever filmed “The Food of the Gods”

Many a long years ago I sat through the movie referenced above. It crystalized a moment in my mind where I knew it was likely I was going to have to leave a serious life situation - my young marriage. I married very briefly in my teens to a man much older than myself, a professional musician with some very questionable life choices.

When he had a free weekend off with zero gigs booked he liked to do things like the midnight to 4 am bowling at the local bowling lanes, or hit the drive in. Yes, we had drive ins still in the 1970s. He’d load up the back of his pickup truck with a pile of other musician friends, hide them under a pile of stuff like chaise lounge cushions, smuggle in an ice chest or two filled with delicious adult beverages. He and I would sit in the truck, drive in like we were just another couple out on a date night until we were parked far enough away from the ticket stand and his buddies would emerge from beneath the cushions to party the night away.

Saw a variety of bad movies that way, one with a clearly ailing Omar Sharif many years post “Dr. Zhivago” and a pile of horror movies, my least favorite genre.

I’d loved the outlaw rebellion of the early days of my relationship, but by the time we were in the drive in watching Marjoe Gortner battle giant chickens the bloom was decidedly off the relationship’s rose. I wasn’t interested in the drinking and drugging ensuing in the back of the truck, so I sighed and watched one of the most ridiculous films of all time with a utterly crazy failure of a special effects team. You could see the strings on the bugs, and one sequence you can easily see half the stuntman emerging from the chicken head. Very low budget filled with has-beens.

I remember sitting there thinking that this was my life, and I didn’t much like what I was contemplating, thinking about the vista of years ahead of me being involved by happenstance in my ex husband’s low level criminal behaviors. At that point I’d already been arrested for being in the truck when one of his friends played mailbox baseball and I’d begged his friend to stop. The charges against me were dropped thankfully, but I didn’t want to ever be put in that position again.

Then it happened again, my ex husband, his cousin David and I were driving through a rural area where they decided to stop and pick a few grocery bags of psychedelic mushrooms from a local cattle field. I grumpily refused to exit the truck, sitting there reading a book while they trespassed and then harvested an illegal substance. Of course law enforcement rolled up mere minutes later, asked me why they were trespassing and picking a controlled substance. Told the cops yes, it was exactly what it looked like and that I did not approve in any way. This time I wasn’t arrested, but both men were.

All this and so much more had already happened. I knew that to stay I would likely end up in jail for something I so definitely didn’t approve of. Much of it illegal or immoral. I knew in that moment, while watching this dumb movie with my soon to be ex partying with his boys that this was the end. The marriage was practically over. I was done. I just didn’t have an exit strategy at that point. I wasn’t virtuous, I was just fed up. It took another year to completely disentangle myself and get away safely.

I tell you this little tale to point out that leaving a toxic high-demand religious organization is the same. You reach that breaking point and you contemplate leaving for the very first time. You know that to do that thing you desire, to leave and never look back, carries a very high price. You know you must plan, pick your timing exactly right, put structures in place. You have to count what this will cost you, the broken relationships, the loss of your support systems and friends. But you do it anyway, because you must or you will die inside.

Start planning. I did this to get away from a bad marriage but I neglected to do that when leaving my old church.

When I left my original toxic church I had no plan in place, and ended up having a rather rough reentry into the world experience. I should have anticipated it better. The thought reform took the longest, changing your own theology and inner dialogue takes time. But the freedom makes it all worth it in the end. Proverbs 17:1 comes to mind ESV “Better is a dry morsel with quiet than a house full of feasting with strife.”

One word of caution: It’s too easy to be sucked right back into the same toxic drama if you’re not careful. About fifteen years ago one of my ex husband’s friends contacted me through social media. It was someone who’d once had something of a crush on me. He still did. I shut that down quickly, but during that brief window back into that world I got to see what had happened to those in my former circle. None of it was good, none anything I wanted in my life ever.