The Embrace, Extended.

The term "extended embrace" is ambiguous. Here's what it means to me. Part 2 of 2

Read Part I.

In February 2012, I was one of six travelers on a “Discovery Team” trip to visit the Word Made Flesh communities in Asia, along with Nikole Lim (founder of Freely in Hope), Rudy Rasmus (a Houston pastor who married Beyonce and Jay-Z), Tiffany Walt (Chris Tomlin's former manager), and my husband Harold. The goal of these trips was to promote the work of Word Made Flesh among influential Christians. Our 11-day itinerary consisted of traveling to Chennai, Kolkata, Nepal, and Thailand. 

Nikole, Chris, and I stayed up late one night during our second stop in Kolkata, talking and sharing music and photos on our laptops while Rudy and Harold retired to bed. Chris had been drinking earlier that night at dinner, falling asleep on the couch at one point while we were hanging out. As Nikole went up the stairs to our sleeping quarters at the YWCA, I woke him up to go to his room. "Hey Chris, get up, you need to go to bed." He stirred and opened his eyes, a disoriented look on his face followed by a look of realization that he had fallen asleep. I helped him get up from the couch and we walked towards the stairs. Before taking his first step, he turned towards me and hugged me, the kind of hug that someone gives affectionately because they’re drunk or delirious. The kind that is usually paired with a slurred “I love you, man!” and makes the sober one reply, “Alright alright, love you too, time to go to bed.” 

But this hug morphed as he held on longer than the benevolent 1-5 seconds, and what he said was not incoherent, but clear and serious. “It’s not ok that we haven’t seen each other in a long time,” he said in a soft voice into my ear, referring to the fact that we didn’t get to see each other the last time he was in Durham, four months prior. He said that we should never be apart for long periods of time.

The longer he held his hug, the more my body stiffened up. The longer he kept talking, the more time he would have to say something progressively more inappropriate. The longer he held onto me, the less chance I had to dismiss this hug as a drunken moment. And the longer we had this prolonged hug, the more our friendship and mentorship was at risk of blowing up and disappearing. It was a long 10-20 seconds.

He finally released me and climbed up the stairs to his room as I numbly followed behind and turned towards mine. I wondered what just happened as I lay awake in the dark next to Harold. All the months that our two families, but really Chris and I, built a friendship. The feeling that he knew me better than myself, the potential he saw in me, the way he singled me out and showered me with affection even though he seemed to know a lot of important people. The fact that he bought me gifts and diligently commented on all my social media posts. The time he and Phileena flew my family out to visit them in Omaha, wining and dining us. The quarterly stays at our house when they flew into town for board meetings at a local organization, each night filled with good food and laughter. I refused to accept that it was at risk of being destroyed just because of a long hug with some inappropriate comments. I wanted this friendship and mentorship to continue. Before I fell asleep, I decided to dismiss the incident as a tired and delirious overdose of friendly affection. 

The next morning, we gathered in the lobby for our outing of the day. Chris looked tired and bleary-eyed, a little quiet. During a brief moment we were alone away from the others, he asked me if he had said something weird the night before. “I’m sorry,” he said, with an embarrassed look on this face. I told him it was ok, and I asked him if he was ok. I wondered if behavior must be related to a deeper issue, otherwise, why else would he act this way to his friend? Was I doing something to make him mess up and behave this way?

He kept his distance from me for the rest of the day, which felt cold and odd compared to our normal friendly interactions. I remember trying to play it cool, as if nothing happened between us, making the same kinds of jokes with him and wanting to be in the same room with him in defiance, trying to prove to him that I was fine, and that our friendship was fine. He continued to resist conversation and being in the same room with me, and I chastised myself for even being bothered with this situation while we were visiting women in much more dire and vulnerable places. 

Over the course of the day and into the night, Chris seemed to warm up and I felt relieved that we were back to normal, hopeful that our friendship could remain intact. Crisis averted, I thought, grateful that we could contain this incident between us.

Little did I know that this was only the beginning of the “extended embrace.”

Either that night or the next, we went out to dinner at a crowded and lively restaurant with some of the Kolkata staff. Pastor Rudy and my husband Harold had grown considerably tired throughout the course of the day and excused themselves early to make their way back to the YWCA. I moved closer to the other end of the long dinner table and plopped down next to Chris, eager to get to know the Kolkata staff some more. 

As we laughed and shared stories, Chris casually slipped his hand under my thigh, palm down on the chair under the table. I froze for a second, wondering how Chris had managed to hide what he was doing so well, in the presence of the whole group. I tried to adjust to this new situation, not knowing what else to do at the crowded restaurant in an unfamiliar country with his friends and subordinates present. The top half of my body above the table was warm, friendly, and lively. Underneath the table my thigh felt frozen, detached from the rest of me. Underneath the table it was just us, with his hand, which had now rotated palm up, under my frozen thigh. When we got back to the YWCA, I went straight to bed, not wanting anything else to mess up our friendship. He didn’t apologize the next day, and I can’t remember if he even acknowledged it.

We traveled to the next stop in Nepal. At the Kathmandu airport, in moments when no one was looking, he whispered that if I worked for him, we could take trips like this together all the time and I could co-lead with him. He complimented me on how fast I worked my way through airport crowds, and how the people we met, especially the kids in the group homes, really loved me. I felt both intensely uncomfortable and really special at the same time. My whole body felt casual and relaxed on the surface, yet frozen with uncertainty underneath. My mind and body disconnected from each other just to get through the day, a crack forming between my spirit and soul.

Kathmandu was less crowded than Kolkata and I felt like I could finally take a breath of the crisp air. We stayed in a small hotel with its own restaurant and a rooftop with a view, much nicer and calmer compared to the Kolkata YWCA. By this point in the trip, Rudy and Harold were extremely tired at the end of every day and went to bed early every night, while Chris, Tiffany, Nikole, and I stayed up later to hang out. I thought I was safe as long as I didn’t spend time alone with him. Safety in numbers, I thought.

One night, Chris decided to take us to a local bar. I was glad to go out and let out some steam after such an intensely rich day visiting a group home. Chris ordered us drinks and later ordered additional shots. It didn't take me long before I felt drunk, but I felt safe with Nikole and Tiffany there.

When we got back to the hotel, I turned away from my hotel room and ran up the stairwell to the rooftop. It was a beautiful and clear night, the sky filled with stars. I didn’t notice that Chris ran up after me. When he arrived I hoped that he wouldn’t do anything to mess up this perfect night sky.

He had an app on his phone. If you pointed it up at the sky, it showed the constellations. We looked at his phone together, identifying constellations and having fun. This was the fun Chris that I really vibed with, the kindred spirit I first met a couple of years before when he spoke at Duke. I felt relaxed with this version of Chris, even though we were the only ones on that rooftop. 

As we walked back inside the stairwell, he led me to the stairs. He pulled me closer to him and sat down on the steps, pulling me all the way onto his lap until I straddled him. My mind was racing. "Angie, what are you doing right now? What are you doing??" But my body felt detached from my mind, numbly following his lead. He put his mouth on my ear. I returned it, and he moaned. He took off the scarf I had on, and touched my hair. I touched his hair. We hugged and touched each other, rubbing up against each other, fully clothed as I straddled him, him moaning and my mind racing and panicking.

After a few minutes, we stopped going further. I'm not sure if it was because the alcohol was wearing off, or maybe Chris heard the sound of a door opening. I got up and straightened my hair and clothes when I heard a noise from down the flight of stairs below. "Angie?" My husband Harold poked his head around the corner, staring at us. My face grew hot as I casually said, "Hey, we were just looking at stars and now we're coming down." 

After we got back to the hotel room, Harold confronted me. At first I denied anything happened, hoping he would adopt my belief that it was an overdose of friendly affection and that nothing was wrong. But my husband, filled with rage, only saw the ugly truth. I knew that the rest of the trip, our friendship with Chris and Phileena, and possibly my marriage, had ended. Less than 36 hours later, we were on a plane back home.

Days after we got back from Asia, as I sank in shame and the weight of Harold’s anger, I found myself actually missing Chris. He was one of my closest friends, and I didn’t know what else to do, or who to turn to, in my moment of need. I decided to call him. On the phone, he told me that Phileena asked him to stay somewhere else while she figured out how to handle the situation and their marriage. He said he added a personal contemplative practice and was seeking help for what happened. I felt terrible and responsible for the downfall of his marriage and his ministry, and I blamed myself for being the reason he suffered in pain. How could I have let this happen, after everything he and Phileena had done for me? By offering their time, attention, and friendship? How could I do this to my friend Phileena and my husband Harold?

My call to Chris seemed to work in his favor, because he wanted to discuss our official statements to the board and to his wife. “What I’ve found is that details don’t help Phileena,” he told me, hinting that a general confession without all the physical details was enough for her to feel the full effects of the betrayal. “I’m going to say that we hugged for a long time that night in Nepal, and touched each others’ hair.” Wanting all of it to go away as soon as possible, I agreed to say the same thing. Maybe skipping the humiliating details to Phileena meant that we could pretend they didn’t happen. It seemed like a good idea, but I wondered how he knew that details didn’t help Phileena? He seemed too familiar with giving these sorts of statements, a kind of slickness that reminded me of his hand under my thigh at the dinner table, or the selective moments he chose to whisper things in my ear.

I gave my statement to the Word Made Flesh board without the “unhelpful” details, Harold asked the board for money for therapy, and our friendship with Phileena and Chris was effectively over. I felt that I was to blame for the loss of Chris and Phileena, and I suffered loneliness in my marriage because of my shame and humiliation. 

Several months later, I saw that Chris and Phileena rekindled their marriage, feeling so relieved that what happened didn’t break them. A year or so later, they started Gravity, an organization for contemplation and spirituality. I was simply elated. Maybe this painful moment in 2012 resulted in something ultimately redemptive, and now they were in much better places and healthier environments. I missed them so much, and I admit I also missed their attention. But they were doing so much better now, and life would be better for them without me in their lives.

Over the next few years, I felt the weight of my grief over the loss of their friendship. Chris had invested time and energy on me, helping me figure out my Enneagram number and giving me encouragement as a Strengthsfinders coach. He knew all the tools to help me know myself. He told me that I was one of the best worship leaders he had ever seen in action. He and Phileena told me that it was I, not Harold, who would be doing great things for people in the world. Chris emphasized how cool I was, and he repeated several times that he knew this because he knew a lot of important people. He often texted me from the back stages of huge Christian conferences or from Hollywood recording studios. He gave me his private email address and called me when he was traveling internationally. He diligently liked and commented on all my posts on social media. I didn’t realize how attached to him I became until I lost his attention, and I went from having 24/7 access to him to having zero. I did not know if any of what he said was even real. Did he really believe in me, or was he just saying that because he was attracted to me?

I continued to carry grief and shame, painfully learning about things like co-dependency and taking steps to repair my marriage. Meanwhile, Chris and Phileena seemed to be moving on with their lives together, healed, and gaining traction with Gravity. They continued to travel and hang out with important people.

I thought everything was fine until four years later, in 2016, when I met up with my friend Mary (not her real name). Over dinner, she suddenly looked straight at me and said, “Angie, I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but something happened between me and Chris Heuertz.” She told me that Chris tried to grab her thigh multiple times in her hotel room after she told him to stop repeatedly. He was so persistent that she pretended to take a phone call in the bathroom and locked the door until he eventually left. Mary’s incident happened in 2014, two years after me. 

I was incensed. I thought Chris had changed his ways and was now a devoted husband and contemplative advocate, enlightening people everywhere through the Enneagram book and through his new organization. I thought he had moved on and healed, but what Mary told me told me something different. And unlike me, who reciprocated his advances, Mary clearly told him no, several times. What made it worse was that Mary is a real-life survivor of human trafficking. And even worse and disturbing was the fact that Mary and I are both Asian. I couldn’t believe he had such a reputation for helping vulnerable women and children all around the world, running an organization for spiritual contemplation with his wife, rising up in notoriety as an Enneagram guru while harming Asian women at the same time. I wondered how many more women he harmed, and if they were also Asian.

Mary’s case seemed so clear cut, but it took me nearly ten years of counseling and processing with trusted friends to face the reality of what happened between me and Chris. It took a long time to remove my denial and fear over words like grooming and spiritual abuse. It took me a long time to remove my self-blaming and shame, and to deeply understand how to move through it to heal.

The journey to untangle what happened and identify what was real about my faith, identity, and worth took a long time. It took so much therapy and the help of very patient and wise friends. The healing continues today and every day, and I know I am specifically blessed with the relationships and resources to do this work. But what about others?

I’ve been looking around for anyone offering resources on the intersections of women of color, purity culture, spiritual abuse, or sexual harassment. In my search, I came across a small handful of people. I connected with two therapists named Abby Wong-Heffter and Danielle Rueb-Castillejo who gave a workshop on this very topic. I found out that their workshop was sold out within a week and now they are expanding to multi-week cohorts and eventually in-person retreats. My friend Erna Kim Hackett of Liberated Together also curates theologically healing and pastoral spaces for women of color, virtually and in-person.

I may only have two vetted sources for people to turn to, but it’s two more than I had even a year ago. And if you can trust what I’ve said so far, you can also trust these people to offer nuanced healing and provide intentional spaces for women of color.

I plan to share more about what recovery has been like for me, and what it can look like for others like me. And there is much more to come in the future.

*For information on the next cohort for BIPOC Women and healing starting in November, email Abby Wong-Heffter at abby@yellowchairconversations.com, or Danielle Rueb-Castillejo at danielle@wayfindingtherapy.com. Donations to fund these cohorts are also welcome via the same email addresses. 

*I recorded a podcast just yesterday with Brandi Miller of Reclaiming My Theology to talk about Race and Purity Culture, part of her Purity Culture series. Check it out here, or wherever you get your podcast fix.

*A special thanks to Charlene Brown, Ana Yelsi Velasco-Sanchez, Vickie Reddy, Erna Kim Hackett, Zakiya Jackson, Jonny Moy, Daniel J Camacho, Alicia Crosby, Kai Ngu, Myles Markham, Latifah Alattas, Irene Cho, Sueann Shiah, the Women of Color and Justice steering committee, Nikole Lim, Daphne Eck and the 33, Helen Lee, my incredible husband Harold Hong, and many others who advocated for me when I just couldn’t. Y’all kept me going. And a very special thanks to Audrey Velez, whose tireless advocacy and friendship over several years will never be forgotten.