Deb M

Divorce, Family, Southern Baptist Church

The Aftermath

January 25, 2018 Deb M

My relationships with men and god were always a struggle. My father was not someone I could rely on. He was in and out of my life over the years. He sexually abused my stepsister. She was around the same age as I was when I was molested. He went to prison and then was deported to his home country. Watching that situation unfold and hearing my stepsister’s story was like reliving what happened to me, it was heartbreaking. He blamed me for not siding with him and our last words to each other were harsh. He is lost to me.

When I think about it, it is amazing I can have relationships with men at all. My childhood was filled with predators and unreliable men and my father ended up being one too. At age twenty I got married. It was a bad idea from the start. I loved him but I knew that he would not be good for me. After my mother died I was barely holding on and I desperately wanted a family. I wanted something that seemed normal. The problem is I had no idea what normal was. After 12 years of being together, I decided that divorce was the only answer.

My mother got divorced and due to my upbringing, I felt that divorce should never be an option. When I got married I told myself this is for life and you will figure out how to make it work. I was so naive, I had no idea how hard my road would be. He was abusive in every way possible. The world saw the physical abuse and thought that was awful, but in my eyes, bruises fade, the things he said to me still linger in my mind.

At this point, I was attending a Southern Baptist church. These churches were kind of rare in Madison. Even though the church was Southern Baptist officially I feel it was more liberal than other churches of its kind. In many ways, this church healed me. Once I was able to get past the lax holiness standards and the use of the NIV. My kids enjoyed the Sunday school program and I jumped back into ministry. In the background, my abusive marriage continued. My husband was convinced by an elder of the church to attend a Promise Keepers rally, at that rally my ex-husband became born again. He was quickly baptized and I thought my prayers were finally answered.

I was wrong. We would go to church together and everything would seem ok from the outside, but once we got into the car the abuse would start. He was very good at showing the right face to the church but at home, nothing changed. I tried to get help from our elder. We went over there for dinner often and my ex-husband liked him very much. Time kept rolling on and at this point, we had three young children.

I remember the day I decided I had to leave. My heart was tormented because I knew what the Bible said about divorce and the one thing he had not done was cheat on me. I knew the church of my childhood and the church I was attending would think this divorce was sinful. It was Christmas time and my almost three-year-old son had just tried to be a human shield between my husband and me. My ex-husband was throwing holiday gifts at me in a fit of anger and I was curled up in a ball on the sofa trying to hide from his anger. My precious baby boy had stretched his body across mine to shield me from the blows, thinking about it now cracks my heart in two. At that moment I knew what I had to do, even if it cost me, my soul.

I left him and it was ugly. Our elder phoned me to tell me that I had to go back to my husband or I would go to hell. He said we could be temporarily separated as a sort of cooling off period but divorce was not what the Bible taught. This conversation broke something inside of me. Mel (the elder) told me he understood that my husband was a bully but I still needed to do what was right. Calling him a bully seemed like an understatement to me. My ex was threatening me and also threatening suicide. He told me he was going to take my kids away and never pay me a dime. Cooling off was not going to solve anything.

I went ahead with the divorce. This is also the point when the Christian god lost his hold on me. It wasn’t an instant thing, it took a couple of years. These men, these churches drove me to the point of not caring about hell or my own salvation. In my mind, I would rather burn for all eternity then suffer another day in that marriage. If god required me to suffer my whole life in order to be with him in heaven I did not want any part of him. At this point I still believed in hell I just could not bring myself to put my kids at risk in order to save my own soul.

This left me an orphan. No parents and no church. Thankfully I’m married now and I have four great kids. I have good men in my life. Men who have proved to me that I can trust and have friendships that do not always have a risk attached to them. These men are not great spiritual warriors but they ask if I’m ok and care about what matters to me. They listen and appreciate my intelligence. They make my world a better place. I am grateful for these men.

Compassion, Depression, Family, Fear, Illness, United Pentecostal Church

Funeral

January 24, 2018February 28, 2019 Deb M

My mother was not well. She had very severe asthma and had to be on disability. On top of that, she suffered from horrible depression. Mostly she was ignored. She had one close friend in the church. I don’t have anything bad to say about that woman, she was one of the few who always showed my mother kindness. I feel that because we were poor and my mother made some choices the church did not agree with she was deemed to be unimportant. She suffered for years with her illness and an alcoholic husband. She had my brother when I was 13 and it was hard to raise him after she became sick. My stepfather was no help. I became a second mother to my little brother.

When I was nineteen, about three years after leaving the church my mother died. It was sudden and the worst thing that has ever happened to me. My mother, even with all of her flaws, was my whole world and I loved her unconditionally. It felt like time and space stopped and all of the colors were drained from my life. My mother’s super religious family flew here from Florida to attend the funeral. They were not much help. At nineteen I planned the funeral, picked the casket and acted as the executor of her estate. I became an instant mother. My stepdad was in rehab at the time and so he could not care for my little brother.

The funeral was surreal. Many people from my old church showed up and I was really shocked. A few were people who I knew and had friendships. I was not the only one who had left. I had a lot on my plate. My grandmother was complaining that I was not paying enough attention to her. My little brother needed me more than anyone else, and now I had to deal with these church people. Pastor Grant was offended that I did not ask him to speak at her service. He felt that because he had been her pastor for so long he should have the privilege of handling the service. This was shocking to me because he never cared about her when she was sick. She had not heard from him in years. Thankfully none of the church people said anything really offensive to me but they did go after my stepfather.

I was greeting people as they came in and my stepdad was sitting slumped in a chair, grieving his loss. I saw this old woman come in and I could not help but groan. She was a busybody and always gossiping. She approached my stepdad and proceeded to tell him that if he did not get his life right with god that he would end up like my mother. This filled me with rage! Not only was she saying this to a man who was out on a day pass from rehab, but what exactly was she implying about my mother? My mother died from an asthma attack in the middle of the night. She was implying that my mother died and was probably in hell because she had sin in her life. That was the reason for everything within that congregation. Do you have cancer? It is probably because of unconfessed sin or because you do not have enough faith. Are you plagued with depression? If you would just get your life right with god everything would work out. Over and over I watched people approach my stepdad not from a place of compassion but from a place of preaching at him.

This whole scene made me so angry. Ninety percent of the people from the church who showed up did not show compassion. They were more interested in saying “see we told you so.” The weeks following my mother’s death were some of the darkest days I have ever know. All of those church people disappeared and I was left alone to handle my grief. From here it just gets worse.

Ten days after my mother died my stepdad was released from rehab. He arranged to meet me at the house so I could help him find some documents. When I arrived he was dead. He had shot himself in the head and timed it so I would find him. This time around no one from the church showed up. I shut down and to be honest I have almost no memory of this time. I don’t know how I survived or moved through the days that followed.

My poor mother had such a hard life. The church could have been her refuge. They could have strengthened her through fellowship and loving-kindness. They could have visited her when she was ill or helped when she was hungry. Instead, they offered gossip, judgment, fear, and shame. My mother loved god so much and wanted nothing more than to serve him. Eventually, she did start going to another church but she did not build strong friendships there because she was unable to attend regularly due to illness. She knew what the congregation thought about her and that kept her away. They never came after her, just like they never came after me. She had no money to offer them, and she was too sick to earn their love through service.

I did not see people from that church much after this. I avoided all contact because I could see their true colors. The older I became the more clear things were. They are often referred to as Jesus Only people but I did not experience much Jesus coming from them.

Childhood, Family, Fear, Rapture, Sexual Abuse, United Pentecostal Church

The Monsters

January 23, 2018October 27, 2022 Deb M

There are many things to be afraid of from my childhood but the thing that has scared me the most is rapture culture. It still haunts me at 47 years old. I have complex PTSD due to this teaching. I have had to work with a therapist who specializes in spiritual abuse in order to stop having flashbacks and nightmares. None of that is gone completely, it is the monster under my bed and just behind every door, always threatening my peace of mind. If I let it in even a little bit I will spend a week fighting it back into its cage. It is real and more dangerous than any man who ever put his hands on me.

My mother was tormented by fears about the rapture. She could never be perfect enough so she spent long hours on her knees praying and that meant she was not really looking after me. As a small child, I would sit outside her door and worry about if she was ok. She would cry and speak in tongues for hours, I would listen and try to play with my toys…alone. I know that much of my adult anxiety comes from the rapture culture I was raised in. I was always worried about what unconfessed sin I might be missing that would cause me to miss the rapture. I could never rest easy and I could never just be a kid. Add to that those grown men trying to creep on me from the 6th grade on, my life was always about trying to be purer. I thought something I was doing was causing them to lust after me, and that might make me be left behind.

In 1972 a film came out called Thief In The Night. It spawned a series of 4 films and my church would show them once a year. I was two in 1972 and one of my earliest memories is of my dad taking me out of a showing of that film at the Assemblies of God church we were attending. There is not a time I can remember when I did not have nightmares about those films. I could not sleep alone as a kid because I was afraid of being left behind. My mother finally forced me to sleep alone in the 5th grade and I think that is when my insomnia really kicked in. I have had horrible insomnia for most of my life. Tired is the rule, not the exception. I don’t believe in the Christian god or the rapture any longer but my poor lizard brain still does. That is what is so awful about this teaching. When you start teaching it to very young children it becomes part of them and they are stuck with it for life. My therapist explained to me that the brain cannot always tell the difference between something it sees that is a movie and something actually happening, especially when you see it at such a young age. This is why my brain thinks it witnessed a beheading. I am traumatized like a soldier who actually witnessed someone being executed because my child mind could not logic out the difference. This is an interesting thing to research if you are into brain science like I am. I have been trying to hack this out of my brain for many many years.

When I was in early elementary school I fell asleep under a plastic sled. I had been using it to create a fort in my living room. When my mother came home from work she could not find me. My little body was completely hidden under the sled. She screamed and ran to our neighbor’s house sure that I had been taken and she had been left. Suddenly all of these adults come crashing into our living room screaming my name, it was not a nice way to wake up. She was relieved and I was freaked out, it really drove home that she and her friends really believed this stuff.

Since starting this blog I have spoken to many people who suffer the same fears that I do, we all attended the same church. The aftermath of this teaching is anxiety, fear, nightmares, and depression. I wish someone could explain to me why my parents and church leaders thought it was ok to show small children these films. They are violent and if they had been rated they would have not been appropriate for kids. They showed people being beheaded via guillotine and they featured a child awaiting execution. They showed babies starving due to parents not accepting the mark of the beast. Oh and the people running from the One World Government. I spent so many sleepless nights due to dreaming of being chased by men in white vans and armbands. To this day white vans, helicopters, barcodes, and guillotines can still trigger me. It is an awful price to pay if you are an adult raised in this culture. I can be just out enjoying my day and suddenly I’m triggered and I will often have a panic attack. All this because I see a white van parked on the side of the road. My logical brain could care less but my hindbrain really thinks it is a threat. I will have heart palpitations and I will experience fight or flight sensations. I just have to power through it so it doesn’t take over the day.

So once a year my church would show these films 4 nights in a row. They said it was to save the lost, but really it was to keep the congregants in line. After the film, the altar would be filled with congregants and maybe a stray “lost” person. You may be saying to yourself, yeah but they are just movies. The thing is when you are shown them in early childhood, and then the pastor reinforces the teaching all year-long until you watch them again, that all feels pretty real. Every adult in your life tells you it is real. In your world it is real. Our pastor would make a speech before every film saying that we don’t actually support everything in these films. What he meant was that they were softer than his teaching. The films showed people being saved after the rapture and he did not teach that. If you missed the rapture your only hope was to be killed for not taking the mark. Add to that constant talk of demons and devils trying to deceive you and oppress you, and you can start to see where all of the anxiety comes from.

This is child abuse. I have to wonder what I would have accomplished in my life had I not been fighting to keep my sanity. Not turning in predators is child abuse. Who would I be if I had not been preyed upon by those men? I’m happily married now, but I have been through two divorces because I have an awful track record with men. One of my exes was emotionally and physically abusive and the other one ran off with a much younger woman. By the way, the second one grew up in the same church as I did. I have to wonder if that has anything to do with his upbringing and what he saw happening all around him. He basically told me I was too old. My relationship with my parents suffered due to what they exposed me to and the resentment I felt about that. All of the people from my childhood I basically avoid like the plague, which has left me alone to struggle through the wreckage of my childhood. I’m going to end this post with gratitude. I have found others and I think they understand my struggle, I feel validated and their compassion has warmed my heart. I have 4 amazing kids who I love more than anything. They will never know the sorrow of being raised like I was. Lastly, I have a husband who has stood beside me as I reveal this story and I know he understands. I’m grateful for having survived.

Childhood, Sexual Abuse, United Pentecostal Church

Trying To Understand

January 22, 2018 Deb M

As my story has become more known I’m hearing many stories from others who attended the church of my childhood. These stories are heartbreaking and have torn me up inside. I have wept tears for all of the girls who have been so hurt by this congregation and Pastor. I am aware that the little flame of my adolescence is still alive and burning within me. I want to do something to stop this from continuing to happen, I just don’t know what to do. Maybe that has always been the issue, I have never known what to do about it. In the end, it is my word against theirs and there are many more of them. For now, I’m going to keep telling my story and I intend to help others who have been hurt by this church. Their stories are not mine to tell, but if they decide to tell their truth I will offer this blog as a space to do that work. I will stand beside them as they tell their stories and help in any way that I can.

I have been trying to understand how this congregation seems to cultivate an atmosphere of older men preying on younger women/girls. It seems to both cultivate that and draw that type of man in. I’m sure that the teachings of women being submissive doesn’t help. If you have read my other entries you know I was molested by a man 20 years my senior. Not only did he molest me but he also molested at least 1 other teen. When I really sit and think about it, I was hit on by older men all the time. They flirted a lot and no one seemed alarmed that 2o something men would be hanging out and flirting with someone between the ages of 11-16. The age gaps were not always 20 years but they were still not appropriate.

When I was very young, again about 11 or 12 (They really started that young) both boys my age and older men started to notice me. I was an early bloomer physically so I could see how a man on the street might misunderstand my age, but these men in the church knew how old I was. I’m not complaining about the innocent attention of the boys my age. I remember having notes passed to me during church telling me how pretty I was, that is a sweet memory of sweet boys. I’m talking about grown men hanging out with young girls, flirting, and sometimes more.

I was 16 when I first had sex. The man I was dating at that point was 25. Let that sink in…he was a regular church attendee and 25 years old. Everyone knew we were dating and they knew I was 16. No one ever said boo to me about it. It was just accepted. This was a man who I had known for most of the time I attended that church. We continued to date after I left the church. He would swing back and forth between being out and being in. When I broke up with him he stalked me for a short time and even told me that I was his virgin in God’s eyes, therefore I could not break up with him. Thankfully I had a manager at the restaurant I was working at who told him to leave alone. He told him not to come in anymore and to stop following me. It worked but the pattern had been set because the next guy I dated was also 25. It seemed normal to me. As I look back on it now I have to wonder how my youth leaders and the pastor did not see the problem with a teenager dating someone who was a legal adult. I always thought I was the exception to the rule, but now after hearing other stories, I find that I am a part of the rule. As a young person, I thought that my pastor and congregation just did not like me enough to protect me. I knew I had faith and so it did not make sense why God did not answer my prayers and why he did not protect me. I thought there was something wrong with me. I wondered if I was being punished for my parents’ sins. I wondered if God just couldn’t forgive me for what Steve did to me. Somewhere in my gut I knew dating a man that age was not acceptable by societies standards, but no one in my life seemed too worried about it.

Another more mild example of what I’m talking about involves a man who was 19 when I was 11. Again not a 20-year difference but still not ok. He would flirt with me and he tried to give me expensive gifts like a new watch on my birthday. My mother put her foot down about that one, but not because of his age. He was black and my mother was as racist as the rest of them. She would not have a black man giving me gifts or attempting to court me. He never laid a finger on me but he was always around, sitting too close, and trying to give me things and trying to keep my attention. I think he gave me flowers at one point. Now that I have raised 4 children I can say that there is no way I would have let any of my kids date a 19-year-old when they are only 11. Wallace and I never “dated” but I had no doubt about how he felt and if my mother had not scared him away who knows what would have happened.

This one experience has been stuck in my head for days. There was a young woman in my church who was the daughter of one of the elders. She was a few years older than I. She never really dated much and when she got engaged it happened really fast. The guy was older and I think she was a senior in high school, or just graduated. When they announced the engagement during a church service the pastor made a big deal about questioning this guy regarding his intentions. He made this big speech about how she had grown up in the church and how everyone felt responsible for her happiness etc… He jokingly (did not really seem like a joke) told the guy that he had better treat her right because the men in the church would come get him if he did not. I find it weird (or maybe not given what I now understand) that the pastor made a big show of being protective of this young woman but then could care so little about what happened to me and others. I think I know why first off her parents were elders and lifelong friends with the pastor and his wife. She was white and her parents gave the church money for years. Her mother was the church secretary for all of my childhood. She was part of church royalty. It seems to me that if you are related to the pastor, close friends, you give lots of money, or you are an elder you are treated as church royalty. Everyone else is just commoners. As a young person watching the pastor give this speech, I could not help but feel how low I was in importance.

I think that is it for today. I have so much more I want to share with you all and I’m sure I will have another post before the end of the week. Please feel free to ask questions. My thoughts are kind of jumbled and so if I was unclear in any way I am sorry.

Childhood, Education, United Pentecostal Church

Leaving

January 9, 2018January 9, 2018 Deb M

Since I started blogging about my experiences within the UPC church people have been asking me how I left. I think of it as death by a million cuts. As my teen years went along things became more and more obvious to me. The hypocrisy and racism were pretty hard to ignore. The only man of color in a real leadership position had that position because he was an amazing worship leader. I felt because he performed for them they honored him with elder status. Most of the people of color in our congregation were poor and ignored or shunned. My pastor taught that interracial marriage was unacceptable unless you came into the church already married that way. My dad was from Mexico which made me only half white in their eyes. When I asked the adults around me who it would be ok for me to marry they mostly shrugged at me. You might think this was signaling that I could date who I wanted but you would be wrong. Some of the boys I dated had parents who did not care that I was half Mexican, others flat-out told their boys to stay away from me for that reason. My pastor never talked about this issue from the pulpit, it was more understood and whispered about. It was assumed. I’ve got many stories about racism within that congregation and I’m sure I will share them with you eventually.

Molestation. My being a molestation victim meant that I was branded as a slut. Remember I said it was treated as adultery. Again carried out mostly in whispers, but every once in a while blurted out and those times were pretty painful. I was a super Christian in those days, trying to be perfect in order to gain God’s acceptance. Some people were kind but for the most part, I had a scarlet letter pinned to my chest and they would never let me take it off. This also impacted my dating experiences. Boys would tell me about the lectures their fathers gave them regarding falling into sin with me.

Being a bright kid and knowing what the Bible said meant that I could see the cracks. I could see that the rich had more of a voice. I could see the lack of forgiveness and compassion. I could see how many of the men in positions of authority treated their wives badly. As time went on I could barely stomach being in church. I went from sitting as close to the front as possible to sitting in the last pew refusing to sing or follow along in my Bible. Weirdly none of the adults in my life seemed to be alarmed by this. No one could see me drifting away, or if they did they did not care.

At this point, my mother was married to an alcoholic. She met and married a man who had joined the church. As soon as they were married they both stopped attending altogether. Some of this is because my mother’s remarriage caused a big scandal within the church. The pastor gave his blessing because my mother divorced due to adultery on my father’s part. Because this wasn’t a well-known fact a few of the older women in the congregation brought it up at a church business meeting and made a big stink. Also, not everyone agreed on when it was ok to divorce and remarry, they would defer to the pastor but that did not stop them from gossiping. It got ugly and my mother never forgot how they treated her. Because my stepdad was a drinker I ended up moving in with my biodad. My dad was basically never home. He spent most nights with his girlfriend and so I was living alone. Neither of my parents were involved in my church life and they were both too involved with their own lives to parent me. So the decision to leave was all mine.

You might remember that I quit the quiz team and my coach was very unhappy about it. Soon after that, our church built a huge new building and the school moved with the church. This new building was way out in the country where there is no city bus service. For many years I carpooled to school and when I couldn’t do that I took a city bus. Many of the older kids with cars had graduated and the one monitor I could catch a ride with was no longer working at the school. So basically I had no way to get to school. I started to ask around and it became clear that I was not going to be able to ride with anyone. I tried to meet with my school principal and he always seemed too busy to sit down with me. With no parent to help me deal with this, I felt stuck. Finally, on the Sunday night, before school started, I tracked down my principal and told him about my problem. I explained to him that I had no way to get to school. I also told him that because I was living with my dad I had access to a public school within two blocks of my home. He argued with me about what a bad idea going to public school was, but he also offered me no solution or help. I tried to be nice at first and I explained to him my position and argued that all of my Christian education had prepared me to be out in the world. By the way, I only had one year left so I would have been out in the world by the next spring. After going around and around he started to get very heated with me, almost desperate sounding. I was confused, what did he want me to do? He told me that he suspected if I walked out that door to attend public school I would end up in hell. This infuriated me, and I cracked. Remember I wrote before about that little flame that had been kindled in my adolescent heart, well now it was ablaze and threatening to burn the room down.

I did not say another word to him as my heart felt like it might explode out of my chest. I tried to get out of the building as quickly as possible. My dad had agreed to pick me up after church so I knew he was waiting in the parking lot. As a side note, not only could I not get to school but the church was basically out of my reach too unless I rode the Sunday school bus. I lived at the church so this would cut out all of my activities except Sunday morning service. As I was storming out a friend tried to stop me and asked if I was ok. I looked at him and the words “I’m never coming back” slipped out of my mouth. I knew it was true, but I only knew it in that moment. It felt like time stopped. He was my age and we had been close since age 8. He knew what I had been through and just looked at me with very sad eyes.

I never went back. I was done with them but God still haunted me for over a decade. I tried many churches and eventually ended up at a Southern Baptist church. That is a story for another day. What I’m about to say is probably the saddest part of this post. No one ever came looking for me. No one called to see why I disappeared. No one sent me a card or stopped by my home. They did gossip about me. I ran into someone years later who asked about my child. I did not have a child. The story was that I left because I became pregnant and was ashamed. Of course, that is what they thought. The truth is, I gave birth to my first child at 22 after being married for two years. Even in my angry state I was shocked that I did not hear from any of them. I was involved in many ministries, didn’t they wonder what happened? I had many adult friends, to this day none of that makes sense to me.

Thankfully I started my first real job and I met some really friendly kids. I also made friends in public school. I learned that the world was not as scary as they taught me. All the monsters came from the church and my mind. Hell, the rapture and the antichrist lingered on the edges of my mind. I’m 47 years old and have not gone to church since my late 20’s, at least three times a year I have nightmares about the rapture. They show up by surprise and make me feel uneasy for days. I have anxiety issues and all it takes is seeing the wrong image or hearing the wrong thing and I have flashbacks. The seeds planted in my childhood were seeds of abuse. Every time I think I have beaten the monster in my head he finds another way to get to me. The good news is I am free now! I have found a religion that is less toxic and I’m grateful that the Universe guided me out of that pit of vipers.

Bible Quizzing, Childhood, United Pentecostal Church

Bible Quizzing

January 4, 2018 Deb M

I was a Bible quiz captain when I attended the UPC church. The UPC had two levels of quizzing back then junior and senior. Elementary school kids would be on the junior team and then the older kids were on the other team. I never quizzed as a junior because we did not have teams when I was that age.

The UPC is pretty picky about what translation of the Bible you use. The church of my childhood only read and studied the King James Version. Before we ever had a quiz team I knew that I was special because I could read the King James better than the other kids my age. I was always a strong reader and I could read books meant for much older people. I won the big parts in the Christmas plays because I could read the text better, this made up for my being poor and brown and therefore less in the eyes of many of the adults. When we started quiz teams I quickly rose to the top because of my strong reading and the fact that I could memorize scripture very easily. I also worked very hard on whatever I did, I am still the same way and it has served me well into my adulthood.

I have many happy memories of quizzing. I won trophy after trophy and that built my confidence up. I felt needed and valued and a part of something, that was the good part. There was a dark side. My coach liked all of the attention we were receiving from the church leadership as we traveled around the state racking up wins. Soon winning became everything and the pressure on me as captain of the team was pretty high. I was struggling with Algebra at that time and I told my coach I needed less material to memorize because I really needed to focus on my school issues. I did not get any help or rest from him, he reminded of how important my role was and told me I just needed to work harder. I was smart enough to know that school should come first but I was not strong enough to push back. At that point, I was learning all of my material plus everyone else’s. My coach did not have confidence in my teammates and so he wanted me to be able to catch whatever they did not memorize. Each team had three members who played first string and then up to three alternates in case someone was sick or had to leave early. I ended up answering 75% of the questions. During that time I memorized most of Paul’s writings, Psalms, Proverbs, and a few others. We had to know them verbatim backward and forwards.

My coach was not a very nice guy. He could put on a nice face but when it was just us kids and his wife he could be a real brute. He was ex-military and it showed. He would berate his wife in front of us and it was hard to watch. She was a gentle soul, the perfect submissive wife. I remember one quiz meet when I almost refused to play. That was really getting towards the beginning of the end for me. He had yelled at his wife for something that was clearly his fault. I was embarrassed for her and I told him he was being a jerk. This kind of behavior was unheard of for a young woman of my age, and he yelled at me and told me I was being rebellious. That was a serious accusation in my church. I went into the room I was staying in (we were out of town) and sobbed with anger. By this time I had so much pent-up rage. One of my teammates came in and talked me down and convinced me to play the next day. I did play but my heart wasn’t in it, little did I know that would be one of my last games. Eventually, I quit. When I decided to quit my coach was not very understanding. I told him I just did not want the stress anymore. I needed to focus on school. I look back on it now and I am proud of myself for setting boundaries. I’m also aware that when I started to set boundaries I was setting my feet on the path of leaving. I’m sure that in my coach’s mind I did not need an education if I had a husband.

A couple of side notes, they made us do an exhibition game against all of the ministers in the church to show the congregation how good we were. I remember being angry because they did not make the ministers follow the rules and so it ended up that they beat us. Now I know that we really won but they could not allow a female-led teen quiz team beat the anointed of God. I can remember being very angry about this because I knew it wasn’t right and I knew why they did it.

I was encouraged to win but not to ask questions. I digested the scripture and tried to really understand it. I would ask questions and often the answer would be that I could ask Jesus in heaven. I found things that didn’t add up and that made me a troublemaker, they couldn’t see that I was asking because I wanted to know God, they saw it as questioning God. Over time it became clear to me that I knew more about the Bible than many of the ministers did, this did not help me respect them. I knew they looked down on me because of my intellect and that made me feel bad about myself. On the other hand, it feels good to know that you are smart and so I was always conflicted. I know now I would have never survived adulthood in the church because I would have never been able to be submissive enough. My teen years ignited a tiny flame in my belly that eventually led me away from them, I tried other churches for a long time, but this is when the cracks started to show.

A.C.E., Childhood, Education, United Pentecostal Church

A.C.E. Education

December 31, 2017 Deb M

The church of my childhood had an A.C.E. school. Accelerated Christian Education. They were big about being in the world but not of the world and so they tended towards isolationism. We never interacted or socialized with people who were not in the UPC church. So it made sense to them that they should have their own school to further ensure isolation. I entered that school with so much hope and soon found out it was nothing like I was expecting. While in public school I excelled at pretty much everything. I was a very bright student and always received good grades. I never had any behavior issues and I enjoyed learning. I left that school with a crushed spirit and believing that I was not very bright.

Below is a link to an article explaining how A.C.E. works along with some photos.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/leavingfundamentalism/2014/12/01/how-bad-can-christian-education-get-this-bad/

These schools have a pretty bad track record for traumatizing kids. There are support groups and FB pages where you can go to get support if you attended one of these awful schools.

What I remember most about being at Calvary Gospel Christian Academy is the loneliness. We were required to spend most of our day sitting in a tiny office with slates on either side. You had very little human contact, it was a bit like solitary confinement. My mind would drift to just about anything to take me away from my lonely situation. I am a kinesthetic learner. So reading all day to learn and never having any experiences or debates/discussions did not work for me. I did pretty well from an educational standpoint until I hit algebra. Algebra was misery for me. We had no teachers, and you were expected to figure it out from reading the booklet (PACE) you were given and then work through the problems. The problem I had with that was that none of it made sense to me. I would call a monitor (an adult who was supposed to help you) over to my office for help and usually, it would all end with me in tears and erasing holes into my Paces.

A big problem with these schools is that none of the people working there are required to have a teaching degree. They might have taken algebra in high school but that doesn’t mean they have any idea how to teach it. The adults would get frustrated because they did not know how to teach and that would roll down on the students. Not understanding algebra meant taking the class over and over. It was a nightmare. We had to get an 80% to pass. I would often clock in at 76% and be told to start over. They would send me home with whatever I could not finish in school, this did not help, no one in my home knew how to work these problems. I would return the next day with unfinished work and then be given demerits. These demerits meant you did something wrong. I would have to stay at my office while everyone else went out for recess. I would be punished for weeks at a time for not understanding what they could not teach. These adults knew I was trying but only one of them ever took compassion on me. The elementary school kid’s supervisor came to my office one time and told me to just go out with the other kids, she also helped me some with the algebra. She wasn’t a great teacher but she showed me some empathy and for that I am grateful. Those long stretches without even recess to look forward are really depressing to think about even now. Because I could not get algebra higher science was almost impossible. So then I was struggling with two subjects. On a side note, I went to public high school for my last year of school and I passed algebra with a B+. My algebra teacher told me I just needed to be shown other ways to look at it. He was a good teacher and helped to restore some of my confidence.

I was never spanked in school but other kids were. Spankings seemed to be more of an issue if you were a poor kid or child of color. I knew the score and I find it hard to believe no one else could sense it. Every part of the day was highly regimented. There was no time for asking questions or free thinking. The Bible was the main literature book. We never read any classics or really anything except for the dreaded Pilgrim’s Progress. I went to the library in my free time and read all sorts of contraband. Going to the library was frowned upon, why do you need anything other than the Bible? In order to make the honor roll we had to memorize long passages of scripture, and them repeat them to our supervisor. Some of these were passages were out of Song of Solomon and other weird sexual verses. It was embarrassing reading them out loud together and then having to repeat them to a grown adult man. I often wonder if he picked some of those passages just to make the girls squirm. The UPC is full of perverts so it would not surprise me.

I was in my late 20’s before I realized that I had received a lousy education. The history I learned was tainted with a fundamentalist view so I had to search out the truth. Even my grammar education was lacking. I struggle to this day because my grammar skills just are not as strong as other people’s. Science was from a Biblical point of view not based on fact. I had read none of the classics and had received no geography education. All that being true I have managed to educate myself as an adult. I am a curious person so when I don’t know the answer to something I search for it. I have a love for science which is a miracle considering where I came from.

As a side note, all the adults in my school knew about what Steve Dahl did to me and it was completely ignored.

My Christian school education is a deep well of pain and I’m sure it will come up again. This is just the surface. Do any of you have negative A.C.E experiences?

Childhood, Holiness Standards, United Pentecostal Church

Holiness Standards

December 21, 2017 Deb M

The UPC church is famous for their holiness standards. When I was young (70’s and 80’s) the standard was for women to only wear dresses or skirts, culottes for gym class. You had to have uncut hair and that meant no trims or going to the hair salon. We were not allowed to wear any makeup or nail polish. We were to be “shamefaced.” Jewelry was not allowed except for a wedding ring and a watch. There is more but I would be here all day if I really went into it.

Once I had my salvation experience I embraced this standard with gusto! It was expected, you could lose your salvation if you deviated from these standards. This made me very worried about my mother. She did not embrace their standards, although she would never wear pants to church. That was a leftover standard from her childhood. Because she had short hair most of the time she became the target of gossip within the church and the other ladies did not approve of her. This made my life harder, we were in but not all the way in. My mother felt their judgment and felt bad about it, I don’t know why she did not comply all the way. She had a stubborn streak so it may be as simple as that.

We were very poor. My mother often worked two jobs and my dad never paid child support. My step-dad was disabled so he wasn’t bringing much income in. It did not take long for these holiness standards to become a problem within my family. My mother landed an amazing job driving the city bus in our town. She did not have a college degree and so she struggled to find a good job. When she landed the job with the city that was a big deal! It meant union wages and insurance. There was one big issue with her taking that job. She had to wear pants as part of the uniform. Now she wore pants in her daily life, but for some reason when people found out she was taking this job it became a huge issue. People knew that you could not wear a skirt on that job and they were very critical of her. Some went so far as to tell her she would go to hell for taking the job. My mother took the job because we needed the money and benefits, and so the church never looked at her the same after that. I remember one kind woman, she was also working poor, who told my mother she wore pants to her job too. She told my mother she was doing the right thing by taking the job, that woman was the lone voice of support.

I started the 6th grade right after my salvation experience and I was devoted to wearing skirts or dresses to school every day. I did wear shorts in gym class because that was a required uniform and my mother would not make a fuss about it on my behalf. I had exactly three dresses/skirts I could wear. One was too nice for every day and was really meant to be a church dress. That meant I had two outfits to wear to school. Now I understand that lots of kids are poor and do not have tons of clothes but being UPC did make my situation harder. I could not just walk into Goodwill and buy whatever fit, it had to meet their standard. I was a size 2/3 at the time and so finding clothing was not easy. Plus I had to have pantyhose to wear to school every day. I tried to be very careful and make them last as long as I could, but I was 11 so snags happened. The standard was to have your legs covered, this meant pantyhose or tights.

Halfway through my sixth-grade year, I joined the UPC school. I was being picked on at school for being different and only having two outfits. I was also being picked on for being half Mexican. My family decided that putting me into the Christian school was the answer. My church ran an ACE school. I will post about that at another time, that school needs its own posts. The church school had a uniform and so I hoped that would make my life easier. It did not. My mother had two uniforms made and I had two shirts to wear. The uniform was a navy blue vest and skirt or a red set. She had one of each made. I learned after I started that no one wore the red set so I only had one uniform. This meant washing my uniform every night and then ironing. We were required to wear pantyhose or tights and dress shoes. Then for gym class, we had to wear culottes, I had one gym uniform and gym happened three days a week.

Again I know that being poor is common but I feel it is harder when holiness standards are in play. It is harder to find things to wear when you are living that standard and then layer on the stress of finding the right thing in a thrift store. The other part of this is about compassion. No one ever offered us used clothing or any financial help. I went to school on a scholarship, I never knew who provided it. The church had many people willing to help in that area but not willing to help with day-to-day needs. Then they would judge you for not being perfectly within the standard. To be honest I never remember my church doing anything to help the poor. Their attitude was that if you were poor you should look for sin and see if there is something you need to repent of. Maybe you did not have enough faith?

There was a class system at play. The more money you had the more likely you were to be an elder and given a position of power. The higher your hair the closer to god…lol. Then you can add the race layer onto that. I was half Mexican and so I was never seen as equal to the lily-white kids. I tried to compensate for these issues by being a very pious kid and by being super involved in ministry. I was able to rise a bit out of my class by doing those things. The UPC church I grew up in cared so much about their holiness standards but no so much about caring for the poor or sick. Charity and compassion was not something I learned there.

I’m not sure what I will be posting about next. Does anyone have any questions?

Childhood, Fear, Holiness Standards, Rapture, Salvation, Sin, United Pentecostal Church

My Salvation Story

December 18, 2017 Deb M

We started attending The United Pentecostal Church in Madison Wisconsin when I was 8. At first we only went on Sunday morning and we rode the Sunday school bus. Someone from the church came by our apartment one day looking for people who might be interested in attending Sunday school. Some Sundays my mother would not answer the door and other Sundays she would take me out to the bus. I think she liked the church but felt guilty about it because it did not line up with her Church of God beliefs. In the end, we went more and more until we were going all the time. We went Sunday morning and evening, plus Thursday night. At this point people were pretty nice to us, probably because they were trying to get their hooks in. Love bombing works.

If you’ve read any of my earlier posts you know that I grew up with a constant fear of hell and the rapture. The seeds of all that fear were planted long before I ever set foot in Calvary Gospel United Pentecostal Church. All that fear was only made worse by the fire and brimstone preaching that often happened on Sunday nights. The night I walked that long road to the altar is burned in my mind. I was 10 years old. We were seated in the second to the back row of the sanctuary. My mother was never a front row woman. Pastor John Grant was preaching about how your name is written on the gates of hell until Jesus takes it off. I was scared out of my mind. When the altar call was given I sat there and debated with myself about whether or not I should go forward. I was a shy child and the thought of walking down in front of all of those people was pretty awful. My fear of hell was worse than my fear of walking forward so forward I went. It felt like it took me forever to get down to the front and when I did I was immediately covered with women. They gathered around me and walked me through the sinner’s prayer of repentance. My only comfort was the presence of some of my Sunday School teachers, although I had never seen them this worked up. After I said my prayer then the rejoicing started. This meant loud wailing and speaking in tongues. Hands pushing me back and forth in a swaying motion. They wanted me to speak in tongues and eventually I did. When I started stammering the sounds of the women around me got even louder. Scary loud. I felt accepted and safe if only for an instant. As soon as this calmed down then they wanted me to get baptized. In the UPC church they get you in that water as fast as they can because if the rapture were to happen or you were to die unbaptized you would not be saved. I knew the drill and got baptized. They let me pick which minister I wanted to baptize me. I don’t know if they let everyone pick or if they let me because I was so young. I chose the minister that was the least threatening to me.

Our baptismal tank was behind the choir pews. Everyone would gather around and watch you get baptized and clap and sing and speak in tongues. After it was all over people came up and congratulated me. I felt high. I know that it was endorphins causing that feeling. I chalked it up to my new-found salvation. That feeling lasted about a week. In the church of my childhood you were never really saved, not for good. You could always lose your salvation through sinning. Over and over I cried out to god for forgiveness. I remember my pastor preaching about a dream he had. The rapture was happening in his dream and he could not rise any higher than the ceiling of his bedroom. Why? Because he was not godly enough. My child mind soaked up all such messages and they fueled my constant fear of what might keep me out of heaven. Our church encouraged us to repent for sins we might not be aware of just in case we forgot something. At ten years old I did not see god as a loving god, I saw him as a score keeper.

Are you seeing the overall theme? Fear. Whether it was the pastor’s sermons, the week-long revivals, or the yearly viewing of those awful movies, my church experience was soaked in fear. Did I forget to repent of some sin? How long had it been since I had spoken in tongues? Was I living godly enough. Tough questions for a 10-year-old. Once I knew the difference between right and wrong I was old enough to be accountable. Pile all of that fear on top of the poverty and my parents marriage issues and life was pretty hard. Being in the UPC church magnified my problems.

From that moment on my life changed. Not in a good way. I embraced the church’s holiness standards with gusto. I tried to live as close to the rules as possible. Next time I will post about that part of my journey.

If you are a UPC survivor I would love to hear from you. Does my childhood experience sound like yours?

Childhood, Family, Fear, Rapture, United Pentecostal Church

Beginning

December 16, 2017 Deb M

I guess the best place to start a story is at the beginning. My mother was raised in the Church of God. She came from a small town and her parents were very religious and conservative. The church of her childhood was very charismatic. She told me stories about people dancing in the spirit and speaking in tongues. When she moved to the big city (Madison Wisconsin) it was a pretty big shock. She married young and had me quickly after. My mother was always looking for the “right” church. Her and my father attended an Assemblies of God church close to our home for the first few years of my life. Eventually they left that church, although I’m not sure why. In the corners of my memory I think I remember her saying something about not liking the new pastor. I was dedicated to god in that church and one of my earliest memories is of that church. A Thief In The Night was a movie that played a big part in my childhood. That film came out in 1972, at that time I was 2 years old. It was not released in theaters but instead traveled from church to church like a virus. I don’t know when exactly it was shown at our church but I know I was not much more than a toddler. It is one of my earliest memories. I don’t know what scene it was exactly but it was a scene where someone (probably Patty) screams, at that moment I started to cry, hard, and my dad had to carry me out of the auditorium. At the back of our church there was just glass, you could stand outside the sanctuary and look inside. It was probably like that so that parents could take their kids out and still hear and see what was going on. My dad paced the floor with me and I cried because I was scared. I sometimes wonder if the scream I heard was even in the movie or if it was someone in the congregation who was freaked out by the film. That sort of movie was still pretty new for that time period and I’m sure many people had never seen anything like it. It is now considered the grand daddy of all the end time films.

During my childhood we visited many churches and my mother would only stay in a church for a short time (couple of years) until we started attending the United Pentecostal Church in our city. That was when our whole world changed but that is a story for another day. One thing ties all of the churches we visited together like a sinister cord of fear, and that is those damn Thief In The Night movies. Watching them punctuates all of my church experiences. They were a big deal in the 70’s and I could not escape them no matter how hard I tried.

My mother was a church hopper. She struggled my whole childhood to find just the right place. She was never satisfied. I hope you understand that I am not trying to be critical, I understand her struggle it makes sense to me now that I am an adult. My mother grew up believing that her church was the right church. She was raised that you had to be Church of God to be saved. My grandparents were livid when they found she was attending a “Jesus Only” church. In order for church to feel right for her it had to have charismatic worship, fire and brimstone preaching, and a strong belief in end times prophecy. They also had to baptize in the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit. The UPC had all of those but not the baptism part. She spent the most time at the UPC but never fully embraced it, because of the baptism question. I think she stayed there because it felt the most like home. My mother struggled with depression and I’m sure that is why she struggled to find a church home that fit. Our life was full of drama, her depression, my father’s cheating, poverty, and divorce, I think many pastors just did not know how to deal with all of those issues. They gave her non-answers and non-help.

She was very talented. My mother could sing and traveled from church to church with a gospel singing group as a teen. She played multiple instruments and often played and sang in church. Because of her religious upbringing and depression, plus our often dire straits, she spent a lot of time in prayer. Not bow your head kind of prayer but weeping and speaking in tongues. I would sit outside her bedroom door and wonder if she was ok. She was always worried about hell and the rapture. She heard it her whole life and then passed it down to me. The fear of being left behind punctuated my childhood. I believe it led to the anxiety issues I have today. I no longer worry about the rapture but I do struggle with anxiety and I can trace it directly back to her.