A Scary Diagnosis, and When Leaving a Church Unmasks a Cult-Like Mindset

In this episode, I share my experience of when my 6-year-old son was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes, and how I thought I might have a nervous breakdown! I also talk about my experience of leaving a church, and how it revealed some very toxic and unhealthy thought processes that are not Biblical by a long shot! 

Transcript

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Welcome back to the Dissatisfied Podcast. I am Rochelle Smith. Thank you for listening. I hope that you feel encouraged. I hope you feel inspired. That's my goal. And my goal is always at the end of the day to point people to Christ and to point people back to the Word of God. So I hope and pray that that's what these episodes are doing for you. Okay, so let's just get to it. At the beginning of 2018, when my son Joel was six years old, he was really sick. He got the flu. And as the weeks went on, he just wasn't getting better. So he would have days that he was seemed fine where he was playing like a normal six-year-old would. But then he would have a day or two where he would just randomly throw up and feel like crap and he'd be on the couch. Then I noticed he was losing weight, which is not normal for a six-year-old. Then I noticed he was always thirsty, drinking a ton of water, and of course that was making him get up three and four times in the middle of the night to pee. And it didn't take me long to realize that these were symptoms of type 1 diabetes. And as a parent, you know, it's hard to accept and believe that your child has a disease. So at first we were trying to make excuses, like, you know, he's six years old, he's super active, he's always on the go, never stops moving. That's what's making him thirsty. But nope, that's not what was making them thirsty. Sure enough, we made an appointment and he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. And the protocol, when someone's blood sugar was at what Joel's was at that time, the protocol is that that person would have to be admitted to the hospital and be put on an insulin drip. But since Jared, my husband, is a firefighter and an EMT, our doctor agreed that Joel could just come home with us, which I was so thankful for. So he came home with us that night and we monitored him. And then the next day, it was just a whirlwind of stuff for the next few days because we had to go to the pediatric diabetes department at the hospital. We meet with a million different people. We had to learn all the things. In order to keep Joel alive, we had to know how to do that, how to keep him in good health, how to keep him alive. We had to learn how to calculate the amount of insulin based on the number of carbs he would eat. We had to know how to do a correction dose. I had to learn how to use the needles, how to fill those needles. And I'm the person who gave Joel his first insul insulin shot. So I gave him the shot and afterwards I sat down and we were at a table with probably eight people. You had a dietitian, a caseworker, a doctor, a nurse, and then us. But I gave him the shot, you know, I was feeling strong, like, okay, this is what we've got to do. But then I sat down and I just lost it because I was so overwhelmed and stressed out and kind of in shock, too. So I just lost it and I cried. And I hate crying in front of people. Dang it. And these were a bunch of strangers, and here I am crying. But I'm sure I wasn't the first person who had cried in that circumstance. But Joel, he did great. He was six years old, and even though I know he probably didn't comprehend the vastness of what was happening, he handled it so well and he was so brave. All he knew is that he had been feeling like crap, and these were the things that were going to help him feel better. So he did so well. But those first few months were so stressful for me because it had only been about two years since my brother, Rich had killed himself. So I was still dealing with grief and emotions from that. And then here this comes, which is a different type of grief that you deal with. So those first few months were just so stressful. I mean, we had to wake Joel up several times a night to check his blood sugar because now he's on insulin. So there's a possibility that his blood sugar could crash in the middle of the night and he could die. And when people are sleeping, you don't know that it's happening. So I don't think I slept for two months because I would get up so many times through the night to go in and look at him to see if I saw any signs that he was having a low blood sugar. Like, is he sweaty? Is he shaky? It was a very stressful and scary time. And on top of that, Jared and I were not doing well in our marriage during that time. So you had the stress of that. And I think I was very close to having what they would call a nervous breakdown. I think I was on the edge of that. But I didn't. I did not have a nervous breakdown because God held me together. I fully believe it was just the grace of God in my life because I was crumbling. I felt like there were so many burdens and weights on me, I didn't think that I could keep going. But I did. I kept moving through the overwhelming stress, kept going forward, and believe me, it wasn't pretty at times. If you've ever been stressed, and I'm sure all of you have, you react to things in a way you normally wouldn't. If you if you have high stress, we end up behaving in ways we normally wouldn't. So unfortunately, my poor kids got a side of me in that season that wasn't very pretty. So I apologized a lot, but you know what? I never gave up. And Joel is 14 and a half now, and he's pretty much doing everything on his own. He's he's pretty much an expert at this point. And I am so grateful because he has not lost his joy or his funniness. He is still full of life and laughs. He loves the Lord. And here's the deal: we all have difficult things that have happened in our lives or that will happen in our lives. Because unfortunately, we live in a fallen world that is full of corruption and decay and sin. That's the world we live in. So pain and hardship is unavoidable. But if Christ is your foundation, if he is your anchor, you won't be overcome. Can you be overwhelmed at times? Yes. Can you feel stressed and angry? Yes. Will we feel sad and have doubts sometimes? Absolutely. Are there times when it feels that things are so bad that you feel like giving up and you question like, what's even the point of this life? What's even the point of following God? Yep, for some of us, there will be times like that. There have been times like that for me. But here's the key you have to take everything to the Lord. Don't stop doing that. Every doubt, all the anger, all the hurt and pain, even your anger at God Himself. Take it before Him. Because He already knows exactly what you're thinking and feeling. So you might as well be honest with Him, right? And He can handle it. He can handle anything you've got. But when we stop going to God with our emotions and our feelings and our pain, then what happens is those things actually become our God. Meaning the things in this life, the trouble and the problems and the issues and the stress, those things will have more weight and impact than the Lord will. And that's when those things become so heavy that they can crush us. 1 Peter 5 7 says, Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. Matthew 11, 28 through 29 says, Then Jesus said, Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. And believe me, those are things that you don't become an expert at. None of us will be an expert at doing those things, casting our anxiety on God, letting Him take our burdens. It's something that we have to do all the time because life is full of all sorts of surprises, isn't it? Some good, some bad. Not to mention the anxiety that just existing in this world can bring us. We could easily fall in to anxiety and depression and feeling the weight of all the burdens because of what's going on in the world. And it's not just the world, but it's even inside the church amongst believers. In fact, the body of Christ, right, the people inside the church are as much of a mess as the people outside of it. And yes, I know that the church is not perfect. I know it's made up of people, and people have problems, and we're all sinners. I get that. But it's getting out of hand. It's getting out of hand to the point where you can't tell the difference anymore between who's a Christ follower and who's not. And I want to share a little bit about my own personal experience with something that was very eye-opening and painful to walk through regarding the church. And it was really a season of learning how to hand my burdens over to God. How do you even do that? What does that even look like? So it was a season of a lot of learning and growing. So we attended a church for almost eight years that we were very committed to. And we started going to this church from the very start of it because some of our closest friends helped us start it. And we were already transitioning out of another place, so it was perfect timing. And we ended up serving in multiple areas. We loved it. We had lots of close friends there. Our kids' best friends were there. Basically, our kids grew up in that church and they served and they loved it. They were excited to go to church every Sunday. So we did a lot of life with the people there. And it was a smaller church, so you basically knew everyone, and it was good. And it was such a great place for so many of those years. Honestly, we thought we would never leave. We never had any intention of leaving. But God had other plans as He does often. Proverbs 16, 9, a man's heart plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps. You know, we think we have it all planned out. And then the Lord says, Well, actually, and this was one of those, well, actually. So here we are thinking, we're never leaving this place. And well, actually, God says. So two and a half years ago, we ended up leaving that church. And what happened is about a year before we left, I started to feel unsettled. I guess that's a good word to use. I just felt unsettled. And I started to see some things and hear some things that I hadn't really paid much attention to before. And the Lord just started to really speak to me about so many different things. So Jared and I started to have some conversations during that period of time because he was feeling some of the same things. So we needed to come together and have these conversations to try to hash some of the stuff out. And ultimately, after almost a year of processing it all, we made the decision to leave. And this was a family decision. We included our kids. You know, they were part of this. So we had conversations that included them. They were able to share their thoughts and their opinions, and we made this decision as a family. But it was one of the hardest decisions I've ever personally made in my life because this church and these people were like our second home. And, you know, we knew it wouldn't be easy to leave. And we knew that there would be people that would feel hurt by our decision to go because that's just life. That's what happens. But when you feel the Lord is telling you to do something, you better do it. So once we made the decision, we met with two of the leaders who happened to be two of our closest friends. And our plan was to tell them that the Lord had been speaking to us and that he showed us that our time there was done. And we wanted to let them know that we planned to finish out our serving schedules. And, you know, we hoped that the door would be open for us to be able to come visit once in a while. We hoped that we could continue on in our friendship. But the meeting did not go well. In fact, it went a lot worse than what we had anticipated. You know, we we weren't we weren't being naive. We knew that they would be sad. We knew that they would have questions, but what we didn't expect were the attacks that came. So it started with a lot of questioning, questioning if we actually heard from the Lord. There was questioning us on what exactly we heard from God and what our next steps were going to be, where were we where were we going to go to church? But the reality was God had not shown us the steps beyond the one we were taking. And that's okay because he can do that. He's God. I mean, how many times in our lives do we actually see the whole picture? Try never. And if you feel like you see the whole picture, it might not be God's picture because he's the potter, we're the clay. And he likes to take us on all sorts of twists and turns that we don't see coming. That's how I felt in my life, and I know I'm not the only one. And when you read the Bible, that's what you'll see. People who heard God's voice, followed him, but they didn't have the entire plan. They didn't have all the blueprints. When God told them to go, they went. And then he would show them the next step and the next step. But our friend was questioning us in a very accusatory way, like we must not have really heard from God. So the conversation quickly turned very negative. And I'm going to share a few things that were said to us, not because I am hung up on those things or because I'm bitter, but because I believe that this is happening way too much in the Americanized church. And this might help somebody. And that's what we need to do is try to help each other as the body of Christ. So these are things that should literally never be said by a church leader to anyone who is leaving the church. Number one, we were accused of leaving because of offense. We were being accused of being offended, which was not true. In fact, our decision was almost a year in the making, and God showed us very clearly with confirmations that our time there was done. It's as simple as that. Now, over an eight-year period, were there times that we were offended by something? Well, absolutely. When you spend any amount of time with the same people or in the same environment, there's going to be things that can be offensive to you. But that doesn't mean that you hold on to the offense. And we didn't. This decision was had nothing to do with being offended. Number two, when we said that we loved them and the church and how we would love for the door to be open to us if we wanted to come visit, and how we wanted to, you know, continue to maintain this friendship, we were told, you are divorcing the family. And that statement was said twice. You are divorcing the family. And in that moment, that was so shocking to me that those words were even said. I challenged it. I challenged that statement. And I told the person, I said, you know, that seems like a very strong state statement, but they stood by it. Number three, we were told that by leaving, we would not have the same friends or be able to keep the same friendships. Hence divorcing the family. It was literally spoken to us that way. You will not be able to have the same friends. And there's more, but these are the three that stood out. This is not the way. This is not how churches, which are supposed to be the body of Christ, unified together, should be treating people who leave. If you leave a church and it means that relationships and friendships are cut off because you leave, I'm sorry to say this, but that is not a church. That is a cult. If a friendship exists only because you attend the same church on Sunday, that's not a friendship. So this meeting was so much worse than we imagined. Because we were made to feel like we shouldn't even show our faces there. And the following day, we we ended up, you know, texting some people and sending messages to people that we felt we were close to to let them know that we were leaving. And we didn't give details, we didn't give reasons because those were between God and us. We just told the truth. We said, God is leading us out. Our time here is done. And we expressed to each of those people that we love them and we would love if we could continue our friendship. But we knew it wouldn't be possible given how things were handled the night before and what was said to us. You know, you wouldn't think that leaving a church would be that difficult, but it was. It was extremely difficult in multiple ways. And not just the break of relationships, but one of the ways it was difficult is that God was pruning my own life. He was pruning my own heart. And, you know, the pruning, the cutting off of things is a painful process to go through. But there's so much growth on the other side of that when we let the Lord prune us, so to speak. And, you know, when you let God till the soil of your heart, that can be a painful process because many times we go through our lives and we don't realize that our soil in our hearts has become hard. So when God gets the tiller out to break up that hard soil, that's not a fun process. It's painful. But through all this, we were content going the way that God had shown us. And, you know, the loss of friends and relationships and the people we loved was painful, but we knew we were on a path that the Lord Himself had set before us. Now, what would have been nice is if we could have stepped into it without being lied about, slandered, attacked. But here's the reality: when you're obedient to the voice of God, there will be resistance. And unfortunately, many times that resistance comes through people we love. So through this process, I was personally accused of trying to pull people out of the church after we left, which was a lie. We had only told a few people that we were even leaving, and we wanted to leave on good terms. I had no intention or even a thought of trying to get other people to leave because I didn't care about that. It wasn't about anybody else. And this wasn't a church split. We weren't heading off to start our own church, which in that case would have been a reason for some suspicion. But that wasn't the case at all. And then a couple months after we left, we had a friend who was still at that church reach out to us. We had actually known this guy for about 10 years, and I think he started coming to that church two years before we left. But anyway, we had known him quite a while and had a friendship with him. So he reached out to us and he asked to talk to us because he had some questions about why we left, and there were some things that he had on his own heart. So we met with him and he shared with us that in one of the morning meetings before church started, which he was at, he was at this meeting, one of the leaders was talking about us, and he said that we were listening to demons. So telling people in a morning meeting before church that so-and-so left and they're listening to demons. And this friend who we had known for years, even you know, before he came to church, he said it made him very uncomfortable because he knew us, he knew our character, he trusted us. You know, and he had been in the church realm for many years, and he knew when he heard that statement about their listening to demons that that wasn't okay. He actually said, you know what, that's the language that cults use. And ultimately, this friend ended up having a meeting with that leader and called him out on it. He said, Look, that's the kind of language that cults will use, and that's not okay. But it fell on deaf ears. That friend actually ended up leaving not too long after that, I think. But this is the kind of thing that should never be happening in the church. Nobody should ever be told you're divorcing the family. When you decide to leave a church, what is that? That's like what a mop boss would tell somebody. And they're going to put a hit on you, which is actually how I feel. I feel there was a hit put out on us in the form of slander, gossip, and lies. But you just don't do that. You don't talk about the people who leave your church in the Sunday morning meeting and tell people that they're listening to demons. We left, so that means we're listening to demons? Now listen, if we left and we were like, you know what, hey, this church thing isn't for us anymore. I think we're gonna we're gonna start a casino, sell some drugs, maybe prostitute ourselves. Okay, I can see that. You know, they're listening to demons, because then that would be true. But we listened to God's voice. We left to move on to the next thing that God had for us, and we got slandered and accused, and accused of listening to demons, and that, my friends, is called manipulation. That is called controlling the narrative. It's weird, it's immature, and it's toxic leadership, if you can even call it leadership. And unfortunately, that is not an isolated case in the church realm. What we went through is not some uncommon thing that people experience. And again, I am not sharing this because I have a chip on my shoulder. I'm sharing it because it's okay to tell our stories and it's okay to talk about the toxic and unhealthy behaviors in the body of Christ. Because how else are things going to be exposed and dealt with? How else are people going to understand and know what is healthy and what is not, especially newer believers coming into the church. So I have learned quite a bit over the last few years. I've learned that there's a lot of very unhealthy gathering places that call themselves churches, but the underlying function is cult-like. I've learned that there are lots of people getting hurt in those atmospheres because you can't see it on the surface when you're there. And unfortunately, this behavior is quite common and it's not okay. So we need to be asking God for discernment in everything. Because discernment helps you see what's hiding. For instance, you know, if you watch a movie and all of a sudden, you know, butts and boobs are out and people are getting ready to romp, like, do you need discernment to know you should turn that off? No, you know you know you should turn that off. It's obvious. Will you turn it off? I don't know. That's on you if you don't. But you don't need discernment for things that are obviously wicked, inappropriate, evil, whatever. But we do need discernment for the things that are not obvious, for the things that seem good but aren't good. In 1 John chapter 4 it says, Dear friends, do not believe everyone who claims to speak by the Spirit. You must test them to see if the spirit they have comes from God. So we're supposed to test things. There's also a verse that says that the devil comes as an angel of light, so the enemy himself can present something to you that looks good on the surface, but he's the one actually behind it. And in my experience, Christians have a really hard time testing the spirits, using their discernment, because if it has the word church in it or the label Christian on it, then we seem to blindly trust it. And for me, those days are over. Listen, here's something with me. I did not grow up in the non-denominational charismatic church environment. I grew up Catholic. I was Catholic till I was 28 years old. So my foundation is a little bit different than maybe some who have grown up in that non-denominational charismatic realm. I am not afraid to say what's on my mind and say the truth. So for me, those days are over. I'm gonna start speaking about it. I'm gonna start being honest, and I'm gonna start warning people about what they're stepping into. Because the level of spiritual abuse and manipulation that's in the body of Christ is despicable. And it no doubt grieves the Lord. Because this is not the way. The slandering, the accusing, the lying, the manipulating, that's not the way we advance the kingdom of God. In fact, that is the way you advance the kingdom of darkness. And maybe it makes you uncomfortable to talk about these things, but I think we've been conditioned to believe that confronting, exposing, and not tolerating evil within the church is wrong. Right? It's okay to do that outside the church, but inside the church that's off limits. Well, how's that been working out? It hasn't been. Shouldn't the body of Christ be the very first place we start with the exposing, with the with the confronting, with the holding people accountable? In Matthew chapter 10, verse 34, listen to this. Jesus said this. Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. And then he continues on in that chapter to talk about how he came to divide people. He said that we would sometimes be against our own family, and sometimes that family is people in the church. And I think one of the reasons we have so much toxicity within the church is that we have become quite confused about what it means to be loving. In many cases, what happens is we forfeit truth for love. We will literally abandon the truth because we think love is the only answer. And if you look at scripture, yes, it talks a lot about love, but look at John 14, 6. Jesus said this, I am the way, the truth, and the life. He didn't say, I am the way, the love, and the life. Why is that? Because it's the truth that sets people free. That's in John chapter 8. The truth will set you free. And yes, I know all about 1 Corinthians chapter 13, right? It's the love chapter. It's what we read at weddings a lot of times. And it says, without love, our words are like clanging cymbals. If we have faith to move mountains, but we don't have love, we are nothing. Talks about things like that. So love has to be the foundation. It's not saying to not speak or to not prophesy or to not have great faith. It's saying that love should be the foundation of all that we do. But Christians get caught up in this belief that we need to be nice because being nice means you're loving, and that makes you like Jesus. And I'm gonna be honest here: nice people don't change the world. Nice people don't confront, they don't challenge, they surely don't rock the boat. But the actual definition of nice is this it says pleasant, agreeable, satisfactory. But when you look at the life of Jesus, do you think he was those things? Do you think that he was agreeable? Was he pleasant all the time? Was he satisfied with the state of the world that he was living in? Well, let's take a look. So when Jesus was talking to the religious leaders of that day, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, I think I said that right, he told them the following things in Matthew 23. You should read that whole chapter. But here's a few of the things. He said this about them. He said they crush people with unbearable religious demands and never lift a finger to ease the burden. He said everything they do is for show. And then he called them hypocrites. He said, You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people's faces. You won't go in yourselves, and you don't let others enter either. Again he calls them hypocrites in another verse, and he says, You cross land and sea to make one convert, and then you turn that person into twice the child of hell that you are. Dang, Jesus. Another verse, he calls them blind guides and blind fools. The next verse calls them hypocrites again, blind guides again. Verse twenty five, hypocrites again. He says you are so careful to clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you are filthy, full of greed and self indulgence. Verse twenty seven, hypocrites again. He says you are like whitewashed tombs, beautiful on the outside, but filled on the inside with dead people's bones and all sorts of impurity. Outwardly you look like righteous people, but inwardly your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness. And he calls them snakes in verse 33. He was saying those things to the religious leaders of that day. These are the guys who had the first five books of the Old Testament memorized. These were the respectable leaders. Were those nice things to say to them? I don't think so. He also rebuked his disciples many times throughout the New Testament. Is that nice to do? To rebuke your friends? There was also the story of the woman at the well, which we read that story and we think, oh, how nice. Well, let's look at it. So you can find this in John chapter 4. So go read it. I'm just gonna I'm gonna jump to this part though. So Jesus tells the woman at the well, he says, Go and get your husband. And she replied to him and she said, I have no husband. And this is what Jesus said to her. He said, You are right. You're right when you say you have no husband. In fact, you have had five husbands, and the man you're now with is not your husband. What you have said is very true. Can you imagine saying that to somebody? Like, well, yeah, you're right. You've had five husbands. Jesus wasn't being the nice guy here. He was being truthful. He was big time calling her out. And that's not very nice, is it? But he spoke the truth to her because he loved her. The truth is what set her free from this sinful cycle that she was living in. He wasn't concerned about her feelings, he was concerned about her soul. Jesus was not nice, Jesus was good. There's a difference. And the difference is between what will keep you safe and what will make you dangerous. Listen, the enemy does not care if you're nice. That is not a threat to him. He cares if you're good because that makes you dangerous to his plans for your life, and also makes you dangerous to his plans for the people around you, who you will influence, who you will tell the truth to. Nice means agreeable and pleasant. We all like people who agree with us. But again, nice people do not change the world. Good people do. Some of us need to pick one. Do you want to be nice or do you want to be good? Do you want to stay safe or do you want to be dangerous? I want to be dangerous. That's what I'm choosing. I hope you've enjoyed listening to this podcast, and I hope you join me next week. Thanks for listening.