When We Left the Mountains Behind

More difficulties force our family to move from Wyoming back to Michigan

Photo by pixelshot on Canva Pro

Note: The story of my faith journey, church trauma, and spiritual abuse is inextricably linked to the stories of my parents and sisters, but this is my story. Their experiences, memories, and hurt are separate from my own and I do not speak for them. Details are also their own and not mine to share, and so I keep the details where they matter only to my own experiences.

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It had been a long five years for our family.

And I really mean it had been a long five years for my parents. After the first two difficult years of living in Wyoming, my life started to look up by my eighth-grade year. I was still suffering going to school and church with a bully I couldn’t shake, but high school was around the corner, and with high school, a whole new world opened up to me. A Midwestern girl, I fell in love with the mountains after three summers at youth camp in the Lander Mountains. Our family trip to Yellowstone with my maternal grandparents helped me see the beauty of our new home. And while I still missed my friends in Illinois, I eventually made good friends at both church and school. Life was good, for me and my sisters.

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A Rocky Transition to the Wilderness

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But while my mom had learned to love parts of Wyoming and had developed a closer friendship with our pastor’s wife, she still pined for the Midwest. Then my grandmother unexpectedly suffered a quick-moving illness that was discovered the summer before my sophomore year, and by October we were driving back to Michigan for her funeral. It was a tough blow being so far from family, and there were concerns that my grandfather, who had never been as healthy as his wife, would suddenly take a turn now that the love of his life was gone.

And then there were the difficulties at church.

Our first year had been rough, but that was to be expected. We didn’t arrive until October, the pastor died a couple of months later, my dad was tasked with starting an elementary school from scratch, and the church was also looking for a new pastor who would be able to fill a position, heal a hurting congregation, and would be willing to support the expansion of the preschool and Kindergarten to a full school that would go all the way through 7th grade in its first year.

The position was filled by a pastor and family who not only filled the hole in the church, but some of the holes in our own family’s emotional and spiritual health. The school started and, while I wasn’t happy with my situation, appeared to be adequately staffed and filled with students eager to learn. The church appeared to be happy to continue funding and supporting the growth of the school so that community members would have the option of attending a Lutheran school instead of just choosing between the local public school and the Catholic school two blocks away.

I uneasily settled into my position as the DCE and Principal’s daughter and kept my head down and my record clean. Then I went about my life as a teenager enjoying high school and trying to avoid too many fights with my parents.

While I was living my life, my dad was having his own struggles with the complicated relationship between the church and the school and trying to hold everything together.