I NEVER wanted to leave.
I never…never ever…never ever ever ever ever EVER…wanted to leave…
This is the best way I can start out with this whole journey and what I want people to understand…WHY is this girl going to all this trouble? Live and let live..so you had a bad experience..so what? Move on with your life…Leave people alone..
But I never wanted to leave! Thats how much I loved it..I was ready..and SO willing…to spend the rest of my life there…
Have you ever felt like that? Been SO happy in a church, relationship, town…vacation spot….that you NEVER wanted to leave?
That was IHOP for me.
It was a place I felt genuinely, deeply, happy. A place I felt I was finding myself…and God. IHOP was filled with wonderful, kind, generous people. People that loved God and were serious about giving their lives to Jesus.
It’s probably still full of those kinds of people…I don’t know I left 8 years ago.
One day it finally occurred to me….
“I feel like someone slipped me the red pill!” I said to my husband.
Leaving ihop and the excruciatingly painful years that followed….felt like being slipped the red pill. I’ve never had a pill slipped in my drink (thank goodness)…but I felt like this is what had happened to me..a realization that occurred against my own will.
I didn’t get that moment-defining choice of which pill to take in the Matrix….the red pill…the one that makes you wake up- realize what is really happening all around you…or the blue pill…that lets you go back to sleep and stay in the Matrix…(might be time to re-watch that movie…)
I was slipped the red pill.
The pill-decision scene is not what I remember…I remember the scene a bit later when Joe Pantoliano’s character says something like “I know what you’re thinking….why oh why didn’t I take the blue pill?”
WHAT?!? why would he say that!? My 14yo mind asked…who wouldn’t want to know the TRUTH!?!?
Me. I wouldn’t.
Remember all that happiness I mentioned? When I felt I’d found my niche…my people…my home?
I lost ALL of that….it would have been nice if I’d been given a choice. Keanu got one.
Morpheus: “You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”
My scene with Morpheus would’ve looked more like… **shakes violently awake** “HEY YOU UP?!?!? oh sorry, um…we needed you to wake up and see this….here’s the rabbit hole of deception, exploitation, and spiritual abuse…we’re gonna take you down it now…
And yes, I’m aware how grossly elitist and self-righteous that sounds. What I’m getting at is you’re reading the words of a person who felt she’d had her happy life stolen from her. There was no specific moment of offense that made me say “I hate that place, all those people, and I’m hell-bent on destroying them!!”
Quite the opposite. After 10 years, the heart-wrenching, soul-crushing FACT remains: I’d never wanted leave. I’ve spent most of my time grieving not just the years lost…but the happiness that was within them…grieving the moment and I’m not sure when…the pill took effect and I woke up and realized..
This isn’t real.
