Blast from the Past

      I'll never forget that first summer I worked with Pastor Gorman* (name changed).  I was twenty years old--experienced but zealous.  I held the same convictions and beliefs I hold today, but I have since mellowed and prioritized, learning how to pick my battles.  When you're a young, zealous college student (even if you are a committed Christian), every battle feels worth fighting.  Wisdom and experience (and just plain normal growth in our Christian lives) teach us that isn't always the case.  

I am pictured at age 20, around the start of the story in today's post. Here, I am with another good ministry friend (in case you can't tell, I'm on the right). 

     Pastor Gorman and I were hired at the same time, and we ended up working together seven and a half years.  It was mostly wonderful...but that first summer--well, I'll get to that.  

     Pastor Gorman was a calm, patient, gentle person.  I gleaned so much from him.  I'll never forget our adventures taking kids up to camp, being part of home Bible studies, or doing evangelism at the Los Angeles County Fair.  So much of what I put into practice today was learned from this wise, kind man.  He led many people I love very much to Christ, and discipled them as they took their first baby steps of faith.  Everyone loved him.  I could share story after story of lives he impacted.  I am confident he will hear Jesus say "Well done" one day.  

     In all the time I knew him, I never saw him angry.  The most upset I saw him was in a Bible study once, when some of the youth were goofing off, and he said, "Come on!" in a kind of annoyed voice.  I was so surprised to hear him even that mad (even though it was pretty mild), and I thought the Rapture would probably happen then!  A bunch of us jokingly called him the Violent Aggressor (the joke was in the fact that this was the opposite of who he was).  

     Pastor Gorman was at my Bible college graduation, and my wedding.  He served as a reference for me a few different times.  He played an important, supportive role in my life.  I say all this to illustrate that I held him in high regard.  I still do. 

My Bible College graduation (at which Pastor Gorman was present), age 24.  This time, I'm on the left.  My hair was longer and straighter by then!  HA! HA!  Also, the friend beside me is not the same as in the earlier picture, though she sort of resembles her.  She was the valedictorian and I was the salutatorian.

     Only one thing ever frustrated me about Pastor Gorman, this giant of the faith.  He was so overwhelmingly calm and gentle, and he wouldn't allow me to own negative feelings or emotions.  In ministry, we often ran into hard things.  That's what happens in life in general, and even more so in ministry.  Satan loves to pit us against each other.  When a difficulty would happen, Pastor Gorman would calmly tell me to forgive and not talk about it anymore.  If I didn't feel over it yet, I was told phrases such as, "You need to give preference to others," or "You need to forgive."  Or he would just tell me not to be negative.  This was at a time before the phrase "toxic positivity" was used, but those words could definitely have applied to Pastor Gorman at times.  There is truth to what he was saying, but there is also a time and place when we need to talk about negative things, or deal with unpleasant situations.  I remember him even getting onto me once for sharing my testimony, because it had something negative in it (even though it ended on a note of victory).  He told me, "Those things are in the past, and you shouldn't dwell on them anymore."  

     Pastor Gorman wasn't a hypocrite about this.  I constantly saw him extend positive kindness to everyone, no matter how they acted.  One time, he took someone out to lunch who had really hurt his family.  He wanted to be a blessing.  I just watched this, knowing I could never be that good and godly like him.  

     How did this make me feel?  Well, at the time, I really saw myself as spiritually inferior to him, and I felt terrible about myself for somehow not being as forgiving or positive as him.  I thought the fact that I wasn't over things ten seconds after they happened must mean I was a despicable human being, a horrible Christian, and that God must be disgusted with me.  Please know that Pastor Gorman didn't ever tell me that.  That was the conclusion I drew about myself based on his admonition to be more positive than I was able to be.  

     I went forward in my life trying to just let things go, even when really, in my heart, I knew they should be addressed.  I allowed people who hurt me to continue having access to my life, because I believed anything less was unforgiving and negative.  I remember one time, I was leading a Bible study group with a woman who was very difficult, but I refused to allow myself to have any negative thoughts about her.  The hurt feelings just festered inside of me, and led to very bad things for me.  

Me (center) at an event with people from the Bible study.  The difficult woman is not pictured,  but this was a time in my life that I was stuffing my feelings and practicing toxic positivity. God had a lot to show me.

     Years later, I learned that it is healthy to have those boundaries, even if only in my own mind.  Admitting how hard people can be is how we start to heal from what they did.  We can choose forgiveness and heal once we actually acknowledge and move forward from it.  I had been criticized (in a gentle, nice way, but criticized nonetheless) by Pastor Gorman for needing to do this, so I had stopped.  It had made me feel crazy inside to try to be sweet and positive all the time, even when someone was doing something very wrong.  Jeremiah 6:14 TLB says, You can't heal a wound by saying it's not there.  Talking about problems is how we heal.  It doesn't mean we are unkind.  It doesn't mean we complain.  It means we speak the truth.  Jesus spoke the truth.  We tend to think of Jesus as meek and mild all the time, but He also turned over the tables of the money changers (Matthew 21)!  He confronted the Pharisees for their hypocrisy (John 8).  By the same token,  the Apostle Paul continued to tell his story (Philippians 3), even negative aspects, not dwelling there, but using it to teach.  

     Back to my very first summer with Pastor Gorman.  We went to camp.  His teenaged daughter Paula* (name changed) attended with us, and I was her counselor.  I had just met Pastor Gorman and his family, and I barely knew them.  Paula pushed a lot of limits at camp.  It appeared she was doing it intentionally.  When someone would correct her (it usually wasn't even me, but some other camp staff), she would act like a martyr.  I caught her in a boys cabin (completely forbidden), and she was standing and carrying herself in a flirtatious way when I caught her.  Her behavior at camp indicated she was boy-crazy and wanted to be the center of attention all the time.  There was one incident where another staff was talking to her, and Paula made some sort of commitment to Christ.  I wasn't part of that conversation at all, but later, I heard a few different stories about it (ranging from Paula approaching this staff and saying she wanted to rededicate her life to Christ, to Paula saying she wasn't really saved and wanted to get saved, to this counselor approaching Paula and telling her that she obviously wasn't saved and needed to get saved for real).  I don't know what really happened, but Paula was deeply offended after the conversation.  As with every other situation, she acted like a victim.  

     At the time, I kind of judged Pastor Gorman by his daughter's conduct, but as I got to know him better after that camp, I saw that he was a really wonderful pastor.  He and his wife loved the Lord very much, and it wasn't their fault their daughter was making the choices she was.  They had raised her to know the Lord.  Over time, it became clear that Paula was very bitter toward all of us from the camp.  She no longer attended church with her family.  I began to wonder if I had been too hard on her at any point.  I am not perfect.  As I said at the beginning, I was young, and could be a little zealous.  Had I been legalistic at all?  I asked Pastor Gorman, and he said it would mean a lot if I reached out to her and wrote a kind note, offering to talk with her and clear the air from anything at camp.  I did this.  In fact, I did this a few times over the years.  Paula never responded to me, but when I would occasionally see her, she was usually pretty sweet.  I thought things were fine.  

     God led my life in a few directions, and I was no longer working with Pastor Gorman.  I was in touch with him, but not part of his daily or weekly ministry anymore.  In 2020, the Lord led my husband and me into our current ministry.  I wanted to tell Pastor Gorman about it.  I wrote him a letter, as well as tried other ways to communicate with him, but to no avail.  I chalked it up to the fact that he was busy, we were busy, and our lives no longer had that commonality.  I was a little disappointed he could lose touch after we had served so long together in the past, but I didn't dwell on it.  

Our missionary prayer card, which I sent to Pastor Gorman

     This week (January of 2023), I received a random phone call from Pastor Gorman.  I was overjoyed to hear from him!  A flood of memories came over me--memories of seeing him lead my friends to Christ, of his wife leading the kids in Christmas caroling, of all of us going on hayrides together as a group at church picnics, and of us taking kids camping.  So many good feelings settled in my heart--for a minute.

     He told me he wanted to catch up, but he had to say something first.  The gist of it was, he had been holding a grudge against me for the last few years (approximately 2018 to the present), and that was why he hadn't responded to my attempts at contact.  I was shocked to hear this.  The champion of forgiveness who never got angry had held a grudge against me?  What had I done???  It must have been something really terrible for this gentle, kind man to harbor that kind of resentment!  The old shame came over me, just as it had when he'd tell me I wasn't being positive enough, or that I was wrong to need to talk about problems.  And yet it struck me as hypocritical, because I had never wanted to hold a grudge.  I had wanted to talk about problems so I wouldn't have to hold the grudge.  He had always put the kibosh on it.  And yet here, he was doing the same thing he had accused me of so many times.  But I had to keep in mind, he was calling to acknowledge this, and apologize to me.  He even asked my forgiveness for this.  

     So what was the grudge about?  It was about Paula's summer at camp so many years ago (2002).  The camp where she broke every rule, then played the victim when she was held accountable.  She had bitterly refused to forgive those she felt had sinned against her.  Every time she has talked about it over the years, the stories got worse.  Around 2018, she told her father that someone had tried to cast a demon out of her at the camp, and this made her dad snap, hence the start of his grudge.  Of course, by that time, the camp experience was sixteen years in the past, and is now twenty-one years in the past.  Even though Paula said the person who did this was male, Pastor Gorman somehow held a grudge against me for it.  I was floored upon hearing this.  First of all, it was the first time I had heard anything about this.  Secondly, it obviously wasn't me, since I am not male!  But somehow, about five years ago (when she shared this version of the story), he started resenting me for it, and then, recently, God convicted him, so he called to apologize.  That's great...but this was new information to me, and I need to process this. 

     I can't prove that the demon thing didn't happen, but I disbelieve Paula's claim.  I can't see anyone from that camp doing that.  This story is consistent with how she was then, embellishing things to make herself look like the innocent martyr and everyone else look outrageous and crazy.  Many people from back then have tried to reach out to Paula over the years (myself included), and she has refused to let any of us help her.  She's happier being miserable.  That makes me sad, but her father's admitted grudge against me made me suddenly realize something.

     I am not despicable!  While I will always consider Pastor Gorman to be a godly man, his positive forgiveness wasn't really positive or forgiveness.  It was a weakness in that it was an inability to deal with real problems, and then he spiritualized it.  In actuality, he was sweeping conflicts under the rug, instead of working them out.  He was stronger and more spiritual than me in many ways, but not in this.  And that's okay!  It doesn't mean he is despicable either.  It just means that I wasn't walking in sin back then by needing to deal with things.  All those years of doing ministry with him, feeling like I was a bad person because I needed to deal with problems, I was in the right.  I was stronger than I knew.  I was not displeasing to God.  God was not disgusted with me!  I can look back at myself in my 20's, and see a young woman I like that much better!  In that sense, it is redemptive.

Me at age 27, a likable Christian servant, with some students I was discipling.  I can now feel good about who I was then, and am now.  By the way, this picture was taken in Riverside, California.   Who says California doesn't have seasons?  Look at those gorgeous trees!  

    All the same, it hurt my feelings that someone I had done so much ministry with could think so little of me as to hold this grudge, without the benefit of consideration.  I had been in ignorant bliss about it, and would have preferred not to know he had felt this way.  If God convicted him, I would have preferred he just reach out and catch up, without telling me all this stuff.  The conversation ended on a positive note, but my feelings are still processing this.

     So here is the takeaway (after the final point, I'll conclude).  

1) Just because you admire many things about someone doesn't mean you have to agree with everything they say or do.  Search the Bible for answers. (...they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.  Acts 17:11)

2). You can admire a person and still admit they are wrong about something.  (Biblical examples: Paul clearly had a high regard for Peter, but he disagreed with his behavior, and in Galatians 2:11, he rebuked him.  Paul and Barnabas had a "sharp disagreement" about John Mark in Acts 15, but Paul later spoke positively about both Barnabas and John Mark --First Corinthians 9:6, Second Timothy 4:11).  

3) It is right and good to talk about problems in the right spirit.  This is better than letting it fester inside and then blow up later (Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord...  Isaiah 1:18). 

4) Positivity without acknowledging the negative things is toxic positivity, and it is not godly or spiritual (For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself.  Second Corinthians 1:8).  

5) Feeling like you can't be around someone who has broken your trust or hurt you is not the same as unforgiveness.  It is okay to take your time and process, and it is okay if you are never ready to be close to that person (especially if that person has not made any sort of amends).  It is okay to remove yourself from bad situations with dangerous people.  As long as you aren't seeking revenge or wishing them ill will, you are taking care of yourself (biblical example: David fled from King Saul, yet refused to get revenge on him.  He still stayed away from him for his own safety--First Samuel 19, 24 and 26).  

6) Don't second-guess your past self.  You can't go back in time and re-do anything, and you did what you knew to do at the time.  My zealous 20-year-old self probably did some things that summer with Paula that I would do differently today, but I wasn't acting with malice or ill-intent.  I was doing my best at the time.  That was all I could do then, and all I can do now is to let it go (forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead. Philippians 3:13b)  

7) Don't make an idol of your pastor or mentor.  I can see that I did this with Pastor Gorman, and saw myself as falling so far short, when in reality, I had a strength he didn't recognize.  He is a godly man, and wouldn't want me to look to him that way.  (Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.  Hebrews 12:2).

8) Don't deny your own gifts in light of others' weaknesses.  (Do not neglect the gift that is in you... First Timothy 4:14).  

9) If you sin against someone in your heart, and they have no idea, and there is no other damage that it can have in their life, don't tell them.  Let them remain in ignorant bliss.  Make it right with the Lord, and then leave it be.  It's just common sense!  (A prudent man conceals knowledge, but the heart of fools proclaims folly. Proverbs 12:23).  

10) Sometimes, people are in your past and not your present for a reason.  Some friends are for a lifetime, but some are just for a season, and that is okay.  You can still value what a person was to you, and look forward to a more perfect relationship in Heaven!  (A man who has too many friends comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. Proverbs 18:24.  Also, biblical example: the disciples were all close while they walked with Jesus, but their lives as apostles later took them in different directions in their service for Christ.  We don't know how much they kept in touch, but they focused on the race set out for them.  We know they reunited in Heaven, and so will all believers, and our relationships will be perfected). 

     In conclusion, I can now look back on my time with Pastor Gorman realistically.  I can cherish the joys of serving the Lord and learning under him.  I can like the young woman I was, who was open to learning from her pastor, but also possessed some discernment he did not.  I can realize Pastor Gorman was godly, but not perfect, and I can forgive him his faults, as he forgave me.  I can move forward in what God has for me!  I pray you can do the same in your life.  The best is yet to come.