Mending on Mission: A Companion for Injured Leaders: How to Survive the Fall and Rise Up Stronger

By Rebecca Denny

This book is for anyone who has been injured on mission. No one should have to walk this road alone but that’s often exactly where strong, effective leaders find themselves. Why? Because Satan knows the influence these leaders have. Our enemy works hard to isolate, cover the truth, immobilize, and convince us to give up.

Were you threatened? Did you have to sign a non-disclosure? Were you forced to be silent about others’ wrongdoing? Did people, who you thought were your people, disappear without a word or response? In your hardest moments did they decide their own safety and lies were more important to protect than telling the truth? Or maybe the accusations are true and for the sake of family or career you feel like you have to bury what happened.

Whether you were injured or caused injury, there is hope. How you choose to work through this season of life will determine your recovery toward health and effectiveness. You have choices.

If you are broken and bruised, burned and betrayed, this confidential community of women Mending on Mission is for you. God has something so much stronger and more beautiful for you on the other side of this insanely hard thing. And if you can even imagine it, he has so much for you in the midst of this hard thing. Arm yourself with the Word of God, some helpful resources, and women who are no longer isolated and paralyzed in their pain. Let's find the strength to rise up and experience a life mended on mission.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
• Release date: Jan 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662919206

Book preview

Chapter 1:

Shattered Pieces

Idon’t believe I will ever forget the traumatic details of the day my life shattered to pieces. Sometimes I still catch myself replaying it in my mind from the very first scene. It was a Tuesday afternoon, around four thirty. I was in the storage closet finding a gift bag to wrap a small gift I’d purchased for my husband when he suddenly walked through the garage door looking like he’d seen a ghost.

You’re home early! I said. I wasn’t expect—

We need to talk, let’s go upstairs was all he could say. His eyes were red and his expression blank. I followed him up the stairs as my survival instincts kicked in, and I began to feel the walls closing in around me. What was happening?

After we closed the doors so the boys couldn’t hear, we sat on the couch and time moved in slow motion. I could hear and feel my heartbeat pulsing through my body.

He said, I know this move has been hard on you, and the administration here has been difficult. It hasn’t been what they promised. I’ve done everything to try to make it work, but I resigned today. They came to me with lies to protect certain others from their own poor decisions. I want no part of it. Resigning and signing a nondisclosure is the only way out that protects our family. I know you never wanted to come here. If you want to leave me after all this move has put you through, I understand. You were right. I’m so sorry.

Shattered.

The shock set in immediately. I was struggling to process. I didn’t understand. How could I have sent my boys off to their first day of school just yesterday under a literal rainbow of promise, and today feel like all the promises had been broken?

Then came the questions. These were questions I would wrestle with for weeks and months.

How could this happen? How could they get away with it? We just built our forever home and moved in two months ago. I vowed I would never move again. How could they do this without due process, without telling the board the truth? Could we fight it? What about the boys finishing the school year? It was AUGUST. How would my husband find another job this time of the year? What were our legal rights?

I found myself repeating out loud, Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. What are we going to do?

Utter shock. We had given up a beautiful life out of state to come and serve at this school. We said goodbye to family and friends. We spent months preparing for the move. We sold our house with a pool and chose to start over in a tiny townhouse after twenty years of marriage and three grown smelly boys who needed space. We moved our family (fourth quarter) only a year ago to find new doctors, a dentist, car registration, driver’s licenses, neighbors, church, grocery stores, and school friendships. And it wasn’t the first time we had done this—intentionally answering the call to serve and investing in five schools had taken its toll, this one was supposed to be it.

We sacrificed to serve others.

We risked it all to lead wholeheartedly in faith only to be betrayed, discarded, and abandoned, so others could assure political protection for their iniquities. I was immediately nauseous and didn’t find my appetite for weeks.

In the hours, days, and weeks following, we would experience the painful yet healing process of picking up the pieces of our life and deciding how we would put it back together. We learned about ourselves, our weak spots that God wanted us to surrender to Him, disciplines we needed to adopt, safeguards we needed to put in place, and hindrances we needed to let go of. We worked through triggers and navigated a rollercoaster of emotions daily. We learned to better prioritize our lives, to value our family first, and to protect ourselves spiritually. We had individual work to do and marriage work to do. We were forced to trust God to provide and He did. We were forced to surrender justice to Him and it stung fiercely. It was messy and awful, but we did it, one fragile moment at a time.

Many months later, I can confidently say, it was the worst and best thing that has ever happened to us. What man meant for evil, our heavenly Father meant for good.

God was so kind to guide us through the muck by drawing us closer to Him, placing the right people in our path to provide their expertise, counsel, prayer, and encouragement. He directed us to His Word, resources, podcasts, books, conversations, devotions, etc., all of which I have curated for you. And as He always does, He made a way where there seemed to be no way so that we could only give credit to