A Covenant (Forgiveness/Cults and Promises Pt 2)
I poured my heart out in the post that I wrote the other day and there was so much on my heart that my emotions started to overwhelm me so I wrapped it up but I have so much more to say. I had a conversation earlier via Twitter with someone I communicate with frequently on FB and the irony of me going to find her Twitter page was realizing that I was blocked. We laughed a little after she unblocked me because we had apparently bumped heads in the past about this particular ministry. I could not tell you when because I spent so much time defending these people, this ministry and this world that shaped half of my twenties.
I lost so many "souls" and I was a mean girl at times, I cringe now thinking about the women I isolated and the ones I hurt. I remember about a year ago one of our sisters lost her battle to cancer and I recognized someone at her funeral, I politely waved thinking we are all here to pay respect to our friend... the girl rolled her eyes and instead of being upset I kind of held in my laughter (my emotions were already on high, we had just lost an amazing friend) like seriously? I had left that ministry a few years prior and so had our friend who passed! Today I started to try and calculate but I just cannot spend time thinking about the past, the person that I was or the mistakes I have made! This whole ordeal has triggered me in ways I thought that it would not... it's a grieving process. I started grieving in 2016 when this world of mine started to crash. I have been reading and scrolling through the opinions of outsiders all day (not the greatest idea) only to realize that people enjoy mess! The "churchy" really love mess and they have been having a field day while so many of us are grieving and we are heart broken as well.
We literally built relationships with people who became family and it is still hard to process or use the term "occult" or refer to it as a cult. I realized today how young the majority of us were, how lost and vulnerable many of us were. It started off innocent and I was telling my sister earlier that everything happened so fast! From the launch to the downfall we are talking about an eight year span which is not even a decade! This "ministry" is NOT even a decade old, many of us remember being approached about the idea of small groups because of a bracelet, the bracelet's success and a newly married woman moving from Mississippi to Atlanta. We were committed, we were loyal and dedicated to helping "build" this ministry which was before there was even a church or a BASE! We met all across this world not just this country and we met in basements, living rooms, community centers, restaurants, coffee shops... we traveled to Atlanta, shared rooms with women we had never personally met and PACKED out that Hilton/Marriott for a few years! I remember in 2015 there had to be about 3000 women or close to that and it was only the third year of the conference. We were unyielding in bringing souls to the kingdom, we were PURE... at heart and in spirit. I think about all the nights that there were either young women on my phone, in my inbox or EVEN on my couch! We were committed to not only God but to really getting the word out about this ministry.
My heart is in shambles, my spirit is grieved today and it is not like a lot of news is NEW to us but a lot of it is and now it is VERY public. There are a lot of opinions from "outsiders" and I've been referred to as gullible, naive and even stupid in so many words from complete strangers today. The most painful part is that there is no apology being given to the people who actually worked for this ministry, uprooted their lives and families! There has been no apology to the women who promoted, volunteered and freely opened their hearts/homes to others.
The definition of a covenant is: an agreement and instead of an agreement with God... I'm a little emotional so going to wrap this up shortly but instead of an agreement with God there had to have been a different one made at some point by our leaders! There is no way that they started out with the intention to hurt us or to ruin lives. This investigation and call to action is not based on messiness, it is the cry of people who have been abused and ignored! Too many "church incidents" are looked over and not publicly addressed, accountability is NECESSARY so if speaking my truth helps the others? I will speak on it. 💕CDJ
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