At 24, Amy was trying to be invisible. There were deep wounds from a recent divorce to heal, two children to feed, and rent to pay. She sat in the back during worship service, slipped out during the last song to teach in Calvary Kids, and escaped to the parking lot when everyone else was gone. She held on and held it together. Until she couldn’t anymore.
“I literally strove to be as invisible as possible at church,” Amy Buchelt says. “I am gifted with children, but I didn’t want anything to do with the adults. So I would teach 4 & 5s and then I would go home. Every week, and that was it.”
“This part of my story started when I was Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. I did everything “right”: went to Bible college, met a theology major who was going to become a pastor, did premarital counseling, got married in church. And then, it was horrible. Right after we got married, he denounced the faith. There was emotional abuse. I remember being pregnant and holding my two-year-old son while being screamed and cursed at and just thinking, ‘What did I do?’”
“When my daughter was three months old, he decided to leave. So I came home to Valpo and started over. I was 24 with a toddler and a baby. I had to borrow $25 from my mom to set up a bank account.”
“I got a job at Victory Christian Academy. I worked with Lee Braner, and she was absolutely instrumental in my life that first year. I wasn’t even a teacher yet, I was a kindergarten classroom aide, which gave me the space to just sit and listen. If you’ve never listened to Lee Braner teach Bible, you should. It was kindergarten level, but it was healing. I just sat and listened to the gospel washing over me every day.”
“When I started teaching my own classroom the next year, I had Lyndsye and Kurt Felsman’s son Jude in my class. I love Lyndsye. I knew she went to Calvary. Lee went to Calvary. So I started going to Calvary. By myself. I cried through the first service because I felt it: This is home. I just knew. My kids didn’t cry in nursery. I got to stay in the whole service. It was wonderful. I started teaching in Calvary Kids. But still I would get to church early so I could sit in the back, and then sneak out during the last song to go to my class to teach.”
“I begrudgingly joined a small group, and Cindy and Brian Wolters made sure I stayed. I don’t think I’d have gone back if Cindy hadn’t been there. She said, ‘Amy, we have almost the same story. I’m just 5 years ahead of you.’ She pulled me along, kept me in group, and answered my questions like, ‘How do I respond to my ex-husband in this situation?’”
“I thought I was handling everything. Kids cared for. Work done. Budgeting a small wage to cover rent and food. But all my internal stuff was growing and growing until I was having a panic attack almost every church service and just trying to breathe through the sermon. It took some strength to admit I wasn’t okay and needed help. Lyndsye was the only person I could say it to at the time. Two days later, she showed up on my doorstep with pizza and a plan to get me counseling.”
“Lyndsye had experienced depression and anxiety too. She picked me up every week, we got coffee, and then she sat in the counseling room with me so I would feel safe to share. That was incredible because I did not want to go to counseling. But when I admitted I needed help, people could help.”
“That changed everything for me. I look back now and see things I couldn’t see before. Like if Cindy and Lyndsye hadn’t chosen to embrace their pain and do the work of healing and then meet me in my pain, I wouldn’t be telling my story right now. I would not be married to Bryan. I would not be serving in the Rebuilding After Divorce ministry [as a table leader with Bryan]. I would still be hiding in the pew, still on my own, facing inward and focused on myself.”
“Now I get to do for other people what they did for me. Lee Braner taught those kindergartners that Abraham was the blessing that God promised. She told them that God blessed him to be a blessing, and he blesses you to be a blessing too. It can’t stop with you because that’s not how God created it. We’re blessed with his grace and love and given his gospel so we can go looking for people to bless.”
“I see it with our Rebuilding After Divorce small groups. I’ve seen ladies come in on the first day who couldn’t even talk; they just sat and cried. I’ve been there. Now they’re serving in children’s ministries and walking alongside other people at Calvary. You have to get help and let Christ’s love and power and grace fill you up so you can pour back out.”
“I wish Calvary had Rebuilding After Divorce back then because I might have gone. Sitting at the tables now, listening to the teaching and the worship and the people discussing their own experiences, I often think, ‘I wish someone had told me that.’ I still get so much out of it now though.”
“When new people show up partway through Rebuilding After Divorce,” Bryan says, “and they see all these other people talking and laughing, I want to say, ‘They were like you once, terrified and unsure, and now look at them. They’re a community and excited to see each other!’ To come to a place where you unpack your pain over these deep, scarring situations is hard, and yet over time, you form these bonds of community and fellowship with others. That’s incredible.”
“So many people become hardened after they go through divorce or some kind of relationship trauma. What God can show you, and I’m thankful he did this for us, is that what you actually need is to be broken down and softened. That expands your capacity to love and understand people more.”
Bryan speaks from experience. In his late 20s, he was headed toward marriage when he discovered his girlfriend was in a relationship with another woman. Her parting words cut deeper still. “It had all been fake. She never loved me, she just wanted to see if she could force herself through a relationship to have the white-picket fence ideal.”
“I was ready to be married and start a family, but I knew then it was going to be a long journey to healing. Letting go of what I wanted so I could let God work was very difficult for me.”
“It ended up being 10 years before I met Amy. When we started dating, I saw how things could come full circle. We don’t have the same story, but there are times when you just have to grieve alongside someone and understand their hurt is deep. When you’ve been hurt too and healed, you can do that. God softened me, and ultimately prepared me to walk alongside Amy, and I don’t regret that.”
“You wouldn’t recognize Amy if you had known her before,” Bryan adds. Then he teases her, “You went from being the most intentionally invisible person at the church to ending up as a pastor’s kid!” Bryan is one of Pastor Steve Buchelt’s children and now Amy is too.
“You couldn’t have a common name like Smith or something,” Amy teases back. “People hear my name and say, ‘Oh! You’re Steve’s daughter!’ And I just say, ‘I am.’”
“Her confidence has blossomed,” Bryan says. “I see the woman that God created her to be, and she has done such an amazing job of stripping down those layers Satan piled on her. Now everyone can see how she has found her confidence in Christ and how God’s view of her radiates out of her. It’s beautiful and incredible.”
