Last year in August, I wrote a post titled, “How Are You Doing?” (link- https://religiouscultsinfo.com/?p=3090 ) The subject of the post was prompted after watching “Tsunami” The Aftermath, an HBO Films® 2 DVD set which was produced in 2007. This was a dramatization taken from accounts of survivors and observers from the aftermath, drawing from the rescues and the clean-up process from the tsunami in the Indian Ocean on December 26, 2004. I drew several analogies from the film to my time at Word of Faith Fellowship (WOFF) and the results afterward.
From the post, “When a simple question of concern “How are you doing?”; prompted such an intense emotional reply from Ian Carter (main character in the movie) , I remembered the first few months when I left Word of Faith Fellowship (WOFF) I remembered to feelings of being “lost” and without direction. After 16 years, my life had been deeply shaped by Jane Whaley and her teachings. For many years, I had been taught directly and by inference that those who left WOFF were out of the will of God, attackers, Judases and headed to hell. At times, I felt that I had been pushed out. And I was put out of the church. At other times, I knew I had left to keep what little sanity I had left in July of 2008. The shunning from those around me had put such a sense of hopeless, helpless, defeating anguish on me that leaving, to me, though tearing me up on one hand, was the only course I saw in order to regain some sense of stability. When I reread the emails I sent during those weeks between June 5, 2008 and the month of July 2008, it has been clear to me the anguish I experienced in considering leaving WOFF and those I loved. The anguish was real and still is very real.”
During this past year, my wife filed for and was granted a divorce in May. Many would have considered that the final result of what I termed the “WOFF-tsunami”, but, it has not been so. Last year, I referenced “the aching numbness that chases sleep away as you seek relief from the deep resounding pains of regret in the heart. Yet, can words fitly describe it?” The numbness has subsided to a small degree. But, it roars load at times when I consider the destruction that has come upon my family. My family, still in WOFF, acts on what they have seen and heard others do at WOFF; they treat the one who has left and survived the tsunami as the one who is now dead. That is all part of the twisted wreckage that WOFF brings into the lives of many.