Hey friends, I was invited to be on a podcast to talk about healing and moving on after leaving the church. It was a wonderful conversation that I think you’ll enjoy.
Happy Tuesday! I’m sure some of you know I have a Substack, but I’m not sure if you know I post journal prompts over there. My prompts are for those who are thinking about leaving or have left a UPCI church or other high-control group. If you haven’t checked them out yet, follow the link below. I’ve covered many topics. Let me know if there is a topic you’d like to see covered.
Many of us here in America have been struggling. The election did not go the way we wanted it to, and now we are feeling demoralized. If you’ve been keeping up with my Substack you know that I have been trying to engage in self-care and self-compassion in order to make it through this difficult time.
I have therapy today, and as I’m sipping my coffee, I’m thinking about how the current political landscape reminds me of the church I grew up in. One of the big standouts is hypocrisy. I do not understand how the evangelical church can quote Jesus on the one hand and be so viciously mean on the other. Before I dig into this further, I need to say upfront that I’m not interested in debating with anyone who identifies as MAGA. I’m writing this from the perspective of a survivor, and I will not tolerate any trolls.
When I was a little girl growing up in the United Pentecostal Church, I experienced it as having an undercurrent of meanness. Some of that was due to how judgemental they were, but also because of the classism and racism that was always bubbling under the surface. It never felt safe to me, and although they taught me about Jesus, I couldn’t see him reflected in them. They were a harsh group of people and not likely to show you grace unless you were a man.
I don’t understand how you can be pro-life and care nothing about children and mothers after the baby is born. How am I supposed to see you as caring about family values when you’re okay with separating children from their families? When you despise those seeking asylum and your greedy desire to keep what is yours and not share with those in need, you’re not reflecting the Jesus you claim to be your savior.
I realize I’m probably just preaching to the choir, but I’ve felt a need to voice my feelings. I’m sure many others feel the same way. It’s triggering to be swimming in this political cesspool while constantly being reminded of your religious trauma. I keep returning to the question, why can’t people see through the hypocrisy? Sadly, the answer that floats back to me is that maybe they can, and they don’t care. I believe that the UPC church knows in their heart they are wrong about so many things, but in the end, they just don’t care. They like the feeling of sitting in judgement of others and the feeling of superiority they feel about other Christians. Just like the MAGA evangelicals they use the parts of the Bible, they can twist into a club to hurt others and leave the rest behind. I suspect Jesus is just too woke for them now.
For those of you who have been struggling, I hope you are taking care of yourself. I’m always here to provide any resources I can. You’re not alone in your feelings and questions.
The last couple of weeks have been a challenge. As you know I’m currently writing a book. I’ve been feeling stuck and frustrated with the process. At the same time I’ve been having many fresh realizations. It feels like more and more layers of UPCI indoctrination are being stripped from me. I’ve had mind blowing ah-has that have left me overwhelmed as I’ve tried to process them. I find myself thinking how strange it is that there is still more to be stripped away. It feels like after all these years there should be nothing left, but there is always more.
For decades I have been seeking to better understand what happened to me when I was a child. I’ve engaged with all sorts of ideas that range from Christian to atheist, always unwinding the past and trying to make sense of it all. Writing my memoir has heightened my questioning which in turn has given me more to unwind and process. Writing while processing can be really taxing and so at times I feel compelled to just surrender to the waves. This means stepping away from my keyboard and taking time to just tear the layers away and see what is underneath. Each wave removes another layer and then there is a tiny transformation, I am changed. Some of these transformations bring joy and that is always a nice surprise. Other transformations reveal another layer of anger and resentment. Next, I have to make peace with whatever has been revealed. I have to learn to accept this new to me self that has been buried deep within. During this time I usually end up asking myself many questions, this part can lead me right back to the unwinding stage. Finally when my emotions and questions have quieted down I can find my way back to the keyboard. Hopefully then my transformed self can bring something fresh, a deeper insight to it all. This is often needed as it can be hard to keep revising the same chapters over and over.
My desire in sharing this with you today is just to reach out. I’m still here, I’m still willing to listen and help, and I’m still working through my own trauma. Please feel free to check in and let me know how you’re doing. Now, I’ve got to get back to my book.
It’s Sunday and I’ve had a slow start to my day. I’m planning my week while siping a cup of iced coffee. While doing this I am reminded of how my Sundays were when I was a child. They were anything but relaxed. My mother was often very stressed on Sunday morning. She rushed around the house trying to get both of us ready. While doing this she often talked about how she felt people in the church didn’t like her but she made herself go anyway because she didn’t want to anger God. This was not the best way to start a long day of church. We didn’t just go to church in the morning but we also attended an evening service. When I was young there was usually a fight in-between as she tried to get me to hurry up and eat my lunch so we could both get a nap in before returning to church for the evening.
Age 4
Being at church with my mother was never a good time. She was always worried about what people were thinking and who was talking behind her back. She did not tolerate any silliness during the service and would often pinch me if she felt I wasn’t paying attention. She allowed me to bring a toy with me, usually a doll when I was very small but even then I was expected to be quiet and pay attention. Because my mother preferred hell-fire churches the sermons usually scared me enough to keep me inline without her having to do much. I was always happy during the worship portion because I loved to sing but when that other part rolled around I wanted to be anywhere but church. After church my mother would run down who said what to her adding up her hurts one by one. I usually just quietly listened because I had my own worries to unpack. Was the pastor right about hell and what happens if you miss the rapture? Was it true that God and Satan were always watching? One to count my sins and the other trying to tempt me?
As I grew older and my mother stopped attending church as much, but I still stayed faithful. I attended Sunday morning and evening and also Thursday night midweek service. There was never any question about whether I would be in church on Sunday. People even looked for a UPC church to attend when they traveled. It was better to be safe than sorry. My Sunday morning started very early. I had to get ready and then to the church to hop on the Sunday school bus. I helped pick up kids along with the bus captain. There was often no heat or air conditioning on the bus. I remember my toes being very cold in the winter. Once we arrived at church and all of the kids were seen to their classes then I’d go to my own Sunday school class. By the time that class started I was already exhausted. Sunday school was either super boring or we were being raked over the coals by the youth leader for “something I’ve been noticing lately” or whatever. After Sunday school I raced back to the bus and made sure all of the kids made it on. We dropped them off one by one and then doled out candy as they disembarked. Once back at the church I was free for a few hours before heading back for prayer time. I tried to make the most of this in-between time because I knew Monday often meant going back to school and the grind of the week.
Sunday night started with pre-service prayer time. I tried to attended this as often as I could. It wasn’t considered required but most of the adults I admired went and as with most things it seemed better to be safe than sorry. During this time I would pray for missionaries, my family, and lastly myself. I tried to turn it all over to God but my worries were never lifted. I thought that was my fault because I just didn’t have enough faith. One thing I did enjoy about Sunday was being able to see and sit with my friends. Once the service started I would lose myself in the worship and singing. This was the one thing that uplifted me. During the time I was being abused Sunday meant I saw my abuser. I watched him pass as a good Christian man all the while knowing his secret. The sermon came next and that either drove me to the altar to recommit myself to God or I left feel guilty about not having enough faith. No matter what the topic was I never felt good about myself. I may have felt good about God but I always walked away feeling hopelessly broken. The next day whatever good I gained from church washed away in the reality of my family and church life.
During my childhood church never felt like a choice. It was always a requirement if you wanted to make it to heaven and escape hell. It was always stressful and a reminder that I would never measure up and that God was the ultimate scorekeeper. I never experienced grace or comfort. My family was stressed about it and they passed that down to me. There was always the question of whether or not we were going to the right church to add to the mix. Even as a young child there was a seriousness to being at church. The Sunday school stories seemed harsh and so did the teachers. When heaven and hell hang in the balance you really can’t afford to enjoy life.
Lucky for me that has all changed now. I feel like I can breathe on Sunday morning. I can rest, get little chores done, and plan my week. No one is reminding me of how flawed I am and I can lay my head down at the end of the day without worrying about hell. I do take time on Sundays to focus on the spirituality I practice now. The difference it my current experience fills my cup and I walk away feeling at peace. Being required to go to church so much might seem mild compared to much of my story but don’t let that fool you. A childhood of Sundays served to keep me trapped in a belief system that hurt me. After all those years I’m still unwinding that damage. Sunday church was the mechanism that kept me in the pews taking in all of the toxic messaging. Sunday church ensured that my abuser had access to me at least once a week. I went to church sick because I always believed that my illness wasn’t a good enough reason to miss even one chance to go to God’s house. The underlying reason was fear. No matter what stress was happening in my life it was never a good enough reason to step off the treadmill of Sundays.
If you’re trying to step off this treadmill please feel free to reach out to me. I’d be happy to listen and help in any way I can. Remember you’re worthy of rest, time to care for your needs, and time to heal.
Whew the last couple of summers have been challenging. Many of us in the survivor community have had to be brave in ways we never thought possible. Looking back it makes me beam with pride to see all we have accomplished. I have not seen the kind of justice I’d like to see but I feel good because I know I’ve worked hard to bring forth as much justice as possible. I’m tired but I’m not going to quit because this work is too important to me.
Speaking of rest, I have taken time over the last few days to strive less and rest more. I’m in the midst of a fibromyalgia flare and I’m once again reminded that I am not invincible. My eating disorder has popped back up probably due to stress and so I’ve had to be mindful to fuel my body. I’ve been struggling to sleep well so I’ve had to give myself some grace on the days I sleep later than I’d like to. All of this work has a cost and right now the cost is my sleep, my ability to eat, and the flaring of my chronic pain disorder. I’m not trying to come off as complaining but I’m trying to be honest about my personal limitations. I’m grateful that I can fill up on time with my children and grandchildren. I’m lucky to have two sweet doggos who are always up for a snuggle or a game of fetch. When I’m on my own I try to remind myself to breathe deeply and show myself self-compassion. Self-compassion is key to remaining healthy when doing work that is triggering due to trauma. I’m also working toward leaning into my softness and not feeling like I have to be in self protection mode all the time. This is especially difficult due to the C-PTSD I suffer from. Trying to heal while being hurt by the process of your work, being triggered daily, and never feeling like you’ve done enough can really throw a person. I wrestle every day with the drive to keep moving forward and also the desire to cut myself a break. This week I’m trying to be on the side of giving myself a break and resting.
This blog post is about what comes next so I suppose I should let you all in on what I have on my agenda. I’m currently working on revisions for the book I’m writing. It is exciting and taxing. I’m loving the process and I can’t wait until I have something to show you! I’ve also been considering what I’d like to research and share with you all here. The church teaching that caused me the most stress as a child was the theology of the rapture. I intend to talk more about that here and on my Youtube channel as I unwind the teachings that I took in as a child. I finally feel like I’m in a place with my trauma where it is safe for me to do that. After that I’d love to dive into the idea of original sin, but I feel that is a ways down the road. What would you like to see discussed here? Do you have a trauma sticking point you’d like me to cover?
Lastly, thank you. Thank you for sticking with me for so long as I work through my childhood and try to gain justice for myself and others. In some of my toughest times your comments have helped to see me through.
I’m back after a long break! I’m writing a book and so I’ve been putting much of my focus there. There are some things happening within the UPC Wisconsin District and hopefully soon I will have an update for you all.
The reason I’m here today has to do with some fresh spiritual abuse coming from my family. I do not have a ton of extended family and I’ve mostly put space between them and myself due to how judgmental they can be. I know that my mother’s fear of the rapture and hell came directly from her parents and then she passed it on down to me. When she decided to attend a church that her parents disapproved of it created a ton of drama in the family. Their brand of Christianity comes with a heavy dose of fear and standing in judgement of others. My uncle Mike is an assistant pastor in Florida. He posts the services from his church onto Youtube. A family member made me aware of some things that my uncle Mike first said about me and then about my brother. This all came about because my uncle has had some really unkind things to say about my brother and his sexuality and lack of church attendance. I stayed out of it until I felt I had to step in as a shield for my little brother. Then my uncle Mike turned his venom onto me. After I asked him to stop talking about my brother and I in his sermons and also to stop harassing my brother I blocked him from my social media. After this he went in front of his church and told them that he had been to the gates of hell because of the conversations my brother and I had with him. He has gone on to lie further about his communications with my brother. I just don’t understand how you can get up in front of your church and lie about your family. Both my brother and I have been nothing but respectful toward him in these conversations. I did tell him to remove the beam from his own eye before trying to remove it from my brother and I. I tried to explain to him in language that he could understand that he should focus on his own salvation.
My brother and I have suffered a lot because of our family. Many of them have held a zero tolerance policy towards homosexuality but also just towards churches that are not exactly like theirs. Every time they attempt to speak with us about God it always comes with a fear chaser. They dangle hell over our heads and then wonder why we want nothing to do with them. Here on earth they have not been kind, loving, or nurturing. Instead they have been judgmental, intolerant, and cold. They speak about the love of Christ but that is not what they are projecting out into the world. They only have love for those who are exactly like them or believe close enough to what they believe. Over and over I have heard how much they miss me and yet whenever I interact with them I’m told that hell is waiting for me. My uncle Mike even alluded to wanting to be present when we are standing before God so he could bare witness to what happens to us. Maybe if they approached us with love, acceptance, and care we wouldn’t feel the need to run away from them. Maybe if they presented God as love instead of a wrathful judge we would be more inclined to want to be a part of their faith. I have presented my uncle Mike with this perspective but he doesn’t want to hear it. Instead he uses his interactions with my brother and I to talk about how there isn’t much time and you never know when you’re going to die. He talks about us making his life so hard when we didn’t go looking for a fight with him, we are just living our lives. He attacked and then is hurt that he didn’t get the response that he wanted. I feel that even if we agreed with him and came back to church we wouldn’t ever be good enough. We would never be right. We only serve as a way for him to toot his own horn and celebrate his ability to scare us back into the fold.
I wish I could say that I’m beyond being hurt by them. Whenever something like this happens it triggers that part of me that has suffered so much at the hands of the church. It reminds me of my mother and all that she suffered because of her family. I think of her praying night after night begging God for help and never feeling rapture ready. I was the only witness to that pain and I lay the blame firmly at the feet of our family. In this moment as I feel the tightness in my chest that comes when my C-PTSD is triggered, I’m trying to remember to be grateful. I’m so grateful to be free from the fear virus that my family line carries. I may not always feel free and so I have to remind myself. I’m surrounded by my children and grandchildren who love me and a supportive community of friends. Lastly I’m free from the scary, always constant monster of a God that was introduced to me in my childhood.
Yes that is me. My face covered in acne and my uncut hair frizzy all over the place. Not exactly the picture of temptation that the church tried to make me feel I was. It was hard to walk the harsh line set in place by the church when all you want to do is get away from all of the adults and explore the world around you. That desire is normal and part of adolescent development. It felt like the harder we tried to be “normal” teens the harder the church tried to bind us closer. Shame was a tactic often used along with the old standby, fear. Pretty much everything that a teen would enjoy doing was off limits to us. This was a very tough time for me. I felt the pull of the “world” and then I felt guilty for desiring what is perfectly normal. Most of the things my friends and I did were so harmless. One thing we enjoyed was going to the movies. Now this was a big no no and so we often felt edgy and like big sinners when we did it. We would have one girl look out for church people and another buy the tickets. All the moves we went to see were G or PG rated. Things like “Pretty in Pink” and Disney movies. At times I would feel so guilty and swear to myself that I would not go again. It really made me feel sinful, but then at the same time the call of teen culture was very hard to resist. It was made harder by the fact that my parents did not see going to the movies as wrong. So I had to be my own spiritual police. I have happy memories of going to these movies with my friends. We would get candy and popcorn and for a little while we could forget the world we lived in. The movie theater was in the mall and one time a woman from the church did see us going in. She kinda waggled her finger at us but she did not tell on us. Interestingly she was also the women who helped my mother pay our light bill that one time. She was always kind to me and I’d like to think that when she saw us her compassion kept her from telling the pastor.
I would often have sleep overs and sometimes I would go to sleep overs. This did not start happening until I was maybe 14 or 15. Some of the more liberal parents would have me over and these same parents would let their daughters sleep over at my house from time to time. It didn’t happen all the time but maybe if one of the girls had a birthday or something like that. My one friend Joann and I would cuddle up on her bed and listen to the radio. Usually to hear this one love song that we liked, “Almost Paradise”. It was 1984 and Footlose was the movie associated with the song. We watched Footlose in the theater and the story resonated with us. We could understand what those kids were going through, a town that outlawed dancing sounded an awful lot like our church. One particular weekend her parents let us go down to the local county fair and we walked around trying to look like everyone else in our skirts and uncut hair. We talked to boys our age, worldly boys, and for one night I felt kinda normal. These boys were not bad boys, they did not try to get us drunk or get us into bed, they just wanted to talk with girls their own age. Looking back I can’t help but comment on the difference between “worldly boys” and church boys/men. I can only speak from my experience, whenever I interacted with boys outside the church they were very sweet to me. They did not try to get into my skirts or lead me down a path away from the church. Usually they just wanted to talk on the phone or watch tv with me. Without exception, every boy I dated within the church tried to be sexual with me in some way. You might say that maybe they thought I was easy because they knew about SD and what happened when I was younger, but it wasn’t just boys from my own church. It also happened with boys I met at church camp and other youth activities. They all wanted one thing, physical intimacy. Some were sweet and innocent in their approach and others were downright grabby. I suspect that this is because of the churches attitude regarding sexuality. You are not supposed to think about it, talk about it, or act on any desires unless you are married. I am not advocating that teens be allowed to run out and have sex, but I do think that pretending that teens are not overrun with hormones and questions about sex is just ignorant. Creating an enviroment where just thinking about it and having questions is frowmed upon causes curiosity to bubble over. I’m about to make a rather blunt statement that could be viewed as controversial, but by now I think if you’re still reading you’re expecting my opinions to be this way. I think the church watched young teen (and in some cases pre-teen)girls being courted by adult men way too old to be trying to gain the attention of these teens. I believe many in leadership thought it better that these teens be courted by adult men than boys their own age outside the church. The boys outside the UPC were seen as bad influences but the adult men trying to sleep with teen girls were seen as safe choices. When I was a teen I had five or so dating options within my church. You are not supposed to date outside the UPC and long distance dating often did not last. If you did not like the boys in your immediate area you would just have to pray God would bring the right boy at the right age into your church. When I say 5 or so options that was including at least one boy who some would argue was too old for me. I was attracted to older guys, like in their 20s but luckily for me none of them bothered me too much. That being said it is normal for teen girls to get crushes on guys who are too old for them. These church guys are dressed nice, they smell better than teen boys, and they are just more mature. The trouble comes in when the adult men are paying too much attention to these girls. What teen girl within the church would want to date an akward teen boy vs a handsome man who is also manipulating her? You watch them in church, these men, and they are all putting on a godly show, and so you think you will be safe with them. Then when they get you alone it is another story. This is complicated by the fact that females are expected to guard everyone’s purity. It doesn’t matter if you’re 11 and he is 29. Even though these men are fully grown adults they are often seen as the victims.
I dated, if you can call walking around together at camp dating, a few boys. For the most part they were all preachers kids. All of them were pretty experienced sexually. They all wanted to find a dark corner to kiss and pet in. It almost seemed like they had something to prove. I don’t blame them, they were young like me and trying to figure out the world. They probably suffered being a preacher’s kid, I’m sure that road had to be a tough one. As strict as the church was regarding sexuality, as much as they tried to ignore it and pretend sex wasn’t happening, it was going on all around them. I’ve said this before, I think the UPC has a sex problem. I feel the more you try to ignore something the bigger it becomes. I think that had they just been willing to speak more openly about it that might have acted as a release valve.
I fell in love or what I thought was love. I was 16 and there was a part of me that thought I might marry this boy. What I witnessed within the church is people date and then they get married. We actually dated a couple of times, once when I was about 15 and we got back together when I was 16. We spent a lot of time together and talked on the phone every night. He was the one, I was sure. In the end he broke my heart. This might sound silly and trite but it was awful. I sat by him at school, we had assigned seats, and our world was so small I could not escape him. It did not help that he started dating my nemesis the next day. I want to be clear that we were teens and I’m not trying to drag either of these people for who they are now. When he broke up with me he said this, โIโm breaking up with you because I cannot keep my hands off of you.โ I admit we did make out a lot. Up until this point he had never mentioned it being an issue, in fact he was the driver in that part of our relationship. I said yes to his advances because I thought that is was what I had to do to keep a boyfriend. We never had sex, Iโm pretty sure I would have said no to that. I wanted to save myself for marriage, but heavy petting I would allow. I canโt say that I blame him now he was a boy trying to figure things out too. His mother, the dreaded church secretary, hated me and Iโm sure she reminded him often that she did not approve of our relationship. At least a couple of times I heard her say things that were pretty unkind regarding me, I believe she wanted me to hear. My nemesis was the direct opposite from me. She was white, blondish brown hair, and her dad was an elder. They had money and now he is a minister within the church. She was a golden child. This doesnโt mean she did not do all of the things I did, it meant that people didnโt care. Only the lower classes get held to the strict standards. They can turn a blind eye if you are the right kind of person, much like my abuser SD.
When this relationship ended it broke something inside of me. Seeing him walking around with my oh so perfect nemesis was almost unbearable. It was a final โfuck youโ from the church or that is how it felt. This was the start of a long time period of almost constant shut down or dissociation for me. The first thing I did was I found the baddest boy (actually he was a man within the church) I could and I started to date him. His name was Mike and he was a known problematic church member. He was in his early 20โs and I was 16. BTW, no one ever questioned our age difference and no one ever checked in with me or counselled me about it. Mike had been in and out of the church as long as I could remember. I had known him since I was a preteen. He has done time and I think he just recently got out of jail. He was a drug dealer and user and felt like the most dangerous choice on the menu. He would attend church and rededicate his life to God and then backslide. I ran into him on the backslide and we became an item. He started coming to church with me and I reveled in the looks of disapproval. It wasnโt his age that was the issue, it was his sinfulness. Members of his family were part of the โinโ circle so that meant they cut him a little slack but I donโt think anyone trusted him or believed his godliness would stick. We would sit together in church and then he would take me back to his place. I would watch him and his friends play guitar and smoke weed. I felt bad like I had switched sides and now I was walking in darkness. He took my virginity and I did not care. It felt like something to be crossed off a list. They think Iโm a slut so I will be a slut! It wasnโt about enjoying the sex, I didnโt, it was about giving up and giving into my destiny. I was destined to be rejected by God and hell was all that was awaiting me. I conflated the churchโs rejection with Godโs.
Mike learned one thing from the church and he learned it well, women are property. Even though he smoked weed and drank he would never let me partake. He said that he had to protect me. This might sound sweet to some people but trust me it was not. He was very critical of everything I did and more than a little jealous. It soon became clear to me that I was his Madonna figure. When he finally got his life straightened out he would marry me and be a good Christian man. He had to preserve me for that moment. Just like SD would rail at me when I was 11 Mike would rail at me about our sinful behavior. When he was backslidden he would want and expect sex but when he was trying to be a Christian he would tell me what an evil temptress I was. He would write me long letters about how bad I was and he would even break things off with me, then a week later he would be begging me to give him another chance. I showed my friends some of his letters and they started to tell me that they thought he was psycho. His letters would sometimes be 7 to 10 pages of handwritten text, double sided, on notebook paper. He was a musician and so he would often include song lyrics. โ…American woman, get away from me, American woman, mama let me be. Don’t come knockin around my door, donโt want to see your face no more. Colored lights can hypnotize, sparkle someone elseโs eyesโฆโ โBeen dazed and confused for so long itโs not true, wanted a woman never bargained for you. Lots of people talk and few of them know, the soul of a woman was created belowโฆโ Now I had not been exposed to these kinds of songs. Yes, I did enjoy popular music but it was the 80โs and when I snuck to listen to the radio it was Madonna not Led Zeppelin I was tuning into. I started to become afraid of him. Eventually it was me who ended things. He did not let go easily. In fact he stalked me at my job, and had to be removed by my boss at one point. His excuse was that I was his virgin. He deserved to own me because he took my virginity. I get where this idea came from. In our church if you were single and caught having sex you had to get married. That was the right thing to do. Once he had sex with me it was his duty and right to marry me…eventually. In the meantime I had to wait for him to figure his life out. He would show up at my house and question me about who I had been with and what we had been doing. Eventually he faded away.
Often Mike would not attend church with me and so I would go alone. I still went to everything but I became as silent as the grave. I no longer went out after church with my friends and I no longer sat with anyone. My close friends would look at me with worry, this was a constant after my big relationship ended. My friends, teenage girls, stopped talking to him and even left the room if he entered. At school none of them would sit with him and eventually I got in trouble for it. I was told to call off my dogs more or less. The thing is they did this all on their own, a little rebellion because of the unfairness of everything. My closest friends were girls of color and also poor. They knew the score. I never told them to do anything, I was too broken. I think they were afraid. I was always the strong one and I just checked out. I stopped socializing at school, I stopped eating, and I stopped sitting with them at church. It came as no surprise to me that I was blamed. Eventually our principal called all of us older kids into a room and demanded that everyone be nice to him. We were a family and it was not ok to be angry at him for his choices, he was after all one of the chosen kids.ย
As you might expect, none of the adults around me, not even my youth pastor asked me if I was ok. I went from sitting in the 3rd row to sitting in the back by the door. I stopped opening my Bible during church and I stopped singing. I was defeated. I was tired and very depressed. I was going through the motions after years of struggle. I dissociated much of the time I was at church and I had become a shell of my former self. I know I have shared with you things that some might see as sinful, I see them as normal teen struggles. During the time I was a teen I also worked hard to serve within the church. I tried hard to be a good kid and I wanted Godโs love and mercy, I just never felt like I could attain it. I would go to camp and be so uplifted and then I would come home to my own church and the feelings of depression and defeat would return. I kept pushing on despite my pain until I had to leave out of self preservation. That is a story for another day.ย
Over time I became attached to SD as other parts of my world fell apart. My parents were divorced, my mother was constantly struggling to keep us fed and to keep the lights on, and being in the Christian school did not turn out to be the way I thought it would be. I became a master at disassociation and I felt trapped in a life that I did not want and did not know how to escape. None of my fears about God, the devil, and hell went away during this period. I only felt more distant from grace and I feared that my sin had crossed the line into being unforgivable. Was I the reason we did not have electricity? Was my sin keeping my mother sick? I just knew I was some kind of horrible Jezabel and maybe I hadnโt fallen far from the tree. My father was a dirty cheater after all. My mother told me all about his dog-like inability to control his impulses. I was like my father in lots of ways, maybe I was a dog too.
Eventually, I blew the whistle. I do not know how I gained the courage to tell someone but I did. I worked for the churchโs popcorn wagon. We had a little food truck that sold popcorn, soda, and fruit downtown near the state capital. The minister who baptized me ran this little operation and I would work up there a couple of days a week. It was unpaid and a part of the churchโs fundraising efforts. My partner was a young woman named Shannon. She was about 19 years old and she lived with a young couple a few blocks from my house. We became friends and I trusted her. One day when we were done for the day and sitting on the curb waiting for Brother OโNeil to take us home I blurted it out. To her credit, she did not react in a surprised or horrified way. She asked me questions in an interested way which made it easier for me to tell her. It felt good to tell someone. I had been carrying around this secret for nearly two years. At this point, I had no idea what was coming.
Shannon was one of the only adults who did not fail me in this situation. She may have only been 19 but she acted much more mature than the other adults. When she went home for the evening she discussed what I told her with Sister Cox. To her credit, Sister Cox who was a friend to me tried to do the right thing. She told Shannon to tell me that if I did not tell pastor Grant what was happening she would. At the time this sounded like a threat but now I actually believe she was trying to help me. Within the UPC this is what you do. No matter what the issue is, you take it to the pastor. No one went to the police or even talked to a mental health professional and the last thing you would do is call social services. This is the part of the story where Iโm in awe of the strength that I had. After all, I was only 12 or 13. The next day I set up an appointment with pastor Grant. This took guts! I was afraid of him and I avoided the church secretary like the plague. She had always made it clear she was judging me and everyone else and I firmly believed she did not approve of me or my parents. Once John Grant came in for the day he called me to his office. There I was in the lionโs den! We were never this close and I was never alone with him. He asked why I wanted to see him and I started to explain. He stopped me and got out a small (for that time) tape recorder and started taping our conversation. The distance between us seemed enormous. John Grant is known for his ridiculous oversized desks. If you talk to any survivor of Calvary Gospel Church they will tell you about his gigantic desks. I felt like Lily Tomlinโs character Edith Ann, everything in the room was huge and I felt small in my chair. He asked me questions, very generic questions, and I answered very generically. He knew what happened but he did not ask and I did not give details. He knew enough to know SD had been molesting me for almost two years and that he had tried to have intercourse with me. Our conversation ended with John Grant telling me he would get back to me but he never did. I then left his office and took the long lonely walk back to my desk. I bore this burden alone. No one checked in on me or asked if I wanted to speak to a therapist. No one offered to pray with me or even offered a hug. It was almost like it never happened. The only proof that it ever happened came in whispers and innuendo.
At this point I did not have much trust in adults. It took a lot of courage for me to tell anyone what happened to me. What crushes me as I write this is how strong I had to be to reach out to an adult and how thoroughly they all judged me and offered no help. The lesson I learned from this is to keep my sadness and pain to myself because no one would care or help if I shared. I received the message that I was not worthy of help. If my world was lonely and dark before now it had darker and more ominous clouds.
The most painful fall out came from my mother who called me a little hussy and was mad at me for a long time. Iโm actually not sure how she found out. I know it was not pastor Grant because she told me, โI had to find out through the grapevine!โ My guess is that Shannon told her. They had developed a friendship. All I know is she picked me up from school one day furious. She did not see me as a victim; she saw me as a whore, probably because she did not see me as a child. If I was a child I would need more from her and she had too many other things to worry about. Around this time she read my diary and saw the things that I wrote about SD. She mocked me and called me names. I never wrote in a diary again until I was in my own apartment. I was not surprised by her reaction. Around this time she had also referred to me as, I wonโt use the word but youโll understand, lover because a young boy my age who rode the Sunday school bus with me had started calling the house. This made absolutely no sense to me. She was disowned by her own parents for a time because she married a Mexican so one would think she would be more understanding. She did not seem to have problems with black people except if it seemed like interracial dating might be going on. To look back on this makes me so sad. This sweet boy never tried anything with me and our interactions over the next couple of years involved him following me around like a lost puppy. We were children, after all, not even teens yet. One day a friend and I met him and his friend at the mall. He won me a little red furry heart out of the crane machine and the four of us ate pizza. To this day that memory warms my heart as one of the few happy memories of childhood associated with the church. My mother thought his friendship was a sin and I had to hide it from her, and she thought my sexual assault was at least partly my fault, and this is why I never went to her for help.
During this time I felt completely estranged from my mother. As I grew older she became more cruel and crass when interacting with me. She would even mock me and make fun of me in embarrassing ways in front of other adults from the church. As time went on she became more and more like Jim and less and less like the mother I thought I knew. I spent almost all of my time in my room alone. She and Jim were wrapped up in their lives with each other and my father wasnโt around much. I had an old tape player/recorder, the kind you would see in schools in the โ80s. It made a kachunk sound when you closed the cover. I would listen to Amy Grant and others for hours in my room. I had to use batteries when we had no electricity and so sometimes the music would be very slow due to the batteries running low. I read a lot and thought a lot about SD and what he was doing and if he was ok. I took long bike rides alone. I moved through the world feeling a great sense of loneliness and sadness or just being numb and dissociated.
Shannon and Jeanette (sister Cox) never treated me badly but they never offered help or went to the police. I think the assumption was that pastor Grant would deal with things. Everyone who knew about this John Grant, his wife Darlene, Jeanette, Shannon, and my mother just went on with life. My mother gave me the side-eye a lot but she never asked if I was ok or offered her support. Everyone else just went on with things but I could tell the undercurrent had changed. People were less friendly and seemed kind of standoffish at times. There was a change in the wind, things were colder now and I could feel their eyes on me. Writing this reminds me of a scene from the film Age of Innocence when Newland Archer figures out that everyone knows about his affair with Madame Olenska. โHe guessed himself to have been, for months, the centre of countless silently observing eyes and patiently listening earsโฆโ As a child, I was never really sure who knew. I knew that the pastorโs son knew because he brought it up to me in front of my peers at school. I knew that most of the younger adults knew because DD was friends with them and a husband doesnโt just disappear and no one notices. He would not be playing trumpet at the front of the church and his wife would be sitting alone. Iโm sure that John Grant would have called a meeting of the elders to discuss what had happened and at that time there were around 12 couples serving as elders. As an adult almost everyone I have spoken to who is a survivor of that congregation knew something about it, most of it gossip that they were unsure about.
Many times when young girls are abused they become promiscuous. After SD stopped abusing me I did not interact with a boy physically for about a year. It wasnโt anything big, just normal puppy love stuff. Over the years I started to become more physically involved with the boys I dated and when I was 16 I had sex for the first time. I think I was chasing the feeling of friendship and closeness I had with SD but all of these encounters only left me more hurt and disappointed. Chasing my father and my abuser would be my pattern with men even going into my adult life. Both SD and my father were often unavailable and would disappear for a period of time and then come roaring back into my life. This led me into so many relationships with unavailable males. I always felt abandoned and my self-worth sank lower and lower with each relationship. Most of my relationships involved controlling and angry men. Men who would cheat on me and sex was always something to check out of. I just went away somewhere else in my head. Probably because I was having sex with men who were distant and who were not really connected with me emotionally. I wonder if all of this could have been avoided if I had received counseling about both SD and my father. I did not have any female role models to really show me how to value myself. Every woman I knew seemed to have to grovel for male attention. I grew up under the teaching that a woman should be submissive and I internalized that to mean a man can do whatever he wants and you just have to love him until he straightens out.
I learned the hard way that things can always get worse.. Soon after I spoke with pastor Grant I received a very unexpected phone call from SD. He spoke in a clipped way, โI have to leave town, it is not your fault.โ That was it. I said nothing but held the phone for a long time after he hung up. I wasnโt super surprised that he was leaving town, I figured his wife was probably pretty upset with him. I think I was surprised by how little he gave me in the end. No apology, no remorse, and no comfort. I loved him much in the same way that I loved my mom and dad. My family had its faults but my parents always told me they loved me. Within the church telling people you loved them was common. โI just love you so much!โ Bleh. I had once told SD that I loved him and his response was to say, โI know.โ It was cold and at that moment it stung. I was alone again. As bad as the abuse had been, it gave me something to look forward to. An escape from my home and the constant arguing and poverty. Don’t misunderstand me, the abuse was scary and wrong but it wasnโt the whole time we were together. Remember he fed me and talked with me, or groomed me, and that part felt good.
Soon after the phone call was our midweek service. I went and I was worried and again alone. I had no idea who knew and what people would say to me. Why my mother would allow me to go back there without an adult is beyond me. I faced it like I faced all things in my childhood, like a brave soldier. Being assaulted for two years, being heartbroken, and traumatized was no reason to miss church. No one said anything except for SDโs wife. She was waiting for me. She looked stiff and angry. She pulled me aside as soon as I walked into view and she growled in my ear, โWe need to talk right after church.โ I was really freaked out and how I made it through that service is beyond me. It felt like the shortest service ever.
After the service was over she found me and led me down into the basement of the church. She was in her early twenties and I was 12 or 13. She led me into one of the Sunday school rooms and turned on the light. She clearly did not see me as a victim, she saw me as an adulteress. She told me she had always believed she could trust me with her husband and that she was very hurt that I would betray her this way. She insisted that we pray for my forgiveness. Other than a quiet, โIโm sorryโ I was silent during this whole encounter only being able to eek out a mumbled prayer through my tears. She, on the other hand, started to pray loudly and spoke in tongues in a way that scared me. She was having an experience but mine was completely different. She laid her hand on my shoulder and pushed me back and forth much like the women did on the night I got baptized. When her frenzied prayer ended we both silently went upstairs. She never spoke to me much after that. I had lost a friend but I really couldnโt blame her. Now when I look back on this I see her in a different light. I feel for her but what she did to me was wrong. I was a child. I know I keep repeating this but I have to for no other reason than to remind myself.
DD has three sisters, One older and two younger. Her older sister attended church now and then but I never got the impression she was a true believer. Her younger sisters still lived at home with DDโs parents a couple of hours away when I first met them. One day I was driven out there by SD and DD. SD was already abusing me at this point and so the whole situation was pretty uncomfortable. Iโm pretty sure DDs parents lived on a farm and they seemed to be pretty poor. Both SD and DD thought her sisters and I might become friends and we did. Both of her younger sisters would write me letters and we became pen pals. In those days it was all colored scented pens and stickers. I would always get excited when they came to visit or when SD would take me and other girls out for a fun day. Eventually, AD, the youngest sister, came to live with SD and DD. I donโt know the reasons why but at the time I was very excited. My friend was coming here to stay and she was planning to attend the same school. AD was always shy and quiet but friendly. Once she arrived in Madison she seemed to change. She became cold and standoffish. I was heartbroken and I could not understand, had I imagined that we were friends? To make matters worse she started hanging out with the kids who were kind of mean to me. Iโm sure some of it was the age difference. She was 3 years older than me. When I would speak to SD about how sad I was about AD and Iโs friendship seeming to vanish he would just smirk and act as if it was just girls being girls. He seemed to enjoy the tension between AD and I. He never tried to mediate but would actually throw us together and then laugh at our discomfort.ย
This is where things take a turn for the weird and unexpected. OK yes I know that sounds funny, my whole childhood was weird and unexpected, despite that this next event shocked me. I have debated how to tell this part of the story or if I should tell it at all. I have decided to tell these events as I understand them. Some of this was told directly to me and some of it was pieced together from scraps of information I have discovered doing research. On the night of or close to it that DD pulled me down into the basement, that first night I was back at church after SD left town, I found out why SD was gone and also why AD seemed to be nowhere in sight. I was standing in the vestibule and someone whispered in my ear that SD was caught in bed with A. I cannot remember who passed this info onto me. This shook me to my core and I had this feeling that SD was not driven from the church because of me but because of AD. Youโre never supposed to bring the police or social services to the churchโs door. Those in authority seek to protect the church and its image at all costs. I believe they thought I was under control, but AD had parents outside the church, who knows what they might do. They might call the cops, they might bring a scandal, plus DDโs older sister had not drunk the kool-aid so she could be trouble too. This is all my opinion but it makes sense to me. I have not been able to speak to anyone who has the whole story. I have only heard bits and pieces from people who heard something or maybe spoke to DD. My 12/13-year-old self had so many feelings about this. Part of me felt abandoned. If he was going to flee, why did he leave me here with my depressed mother and impoverished life. Part of me was shocked that he was molesting my friend and I was angry thinking that he might have been the reason I lost her as a friend. I was confused, all this time he made me think that it was all about me and my impossible to resist sinful body when in fact he was obviously struggling with other impossible to resist sinful bodies. I wondered how long it had been going on, and if there were more of us. I wondered If AD knew about me. All I knew for sure is that SD and AD got out and I was left to bear the shame and stain of everything that happened. I got up the nerve to ask one of SDโs friends where he had gone. He told me that SD fled to Vegas. He was still in contact with some of the men in the church. He was seeking restoration, now I wonder if he was seeking a quickie divorce. I donโt know where AD went but I was told eventually she was allowed to go be with SD. They are married to this day. They got married after she turned 18. The church allowed SD and DD to divorce because SD committed adultery. Adultery was the only reason you could get divorced within the United Pentecostal Church. Let that sink in, adultery not pedophilia. She was 15 and I was 12 or 13 when this all blew up. Together the two of them, SD and AD pastor a church in Oconto Wisconsin. Yes, you read that right, dear readers, SD is a pastor.ย
Iโm not going to say much more about AD. In my eyes, she is a victim whether he married her or not. Her story is not my story to tell. I only hope she is ok. SD is not ordained through the UPC organization but he still socializes with them. It is very complex. For a while, he was pastoring a daughter work of a UPC church but now he is independent. My guess is that they would not ordain him because of his divorce and remarriage. What I do know for sure is that he has been welcomed back into fellowship with UPC ministers and members. That is very uncommon. UPC people do not associate with people outside of their organization, they are very insular, but SD is an exception. He has had UPC ministers at his church to preach which is against the rules of the UPC, but again somehow he gets by with it. On social media, he is friends with people who attend Calvary Gospel and who attended when he was molesting me. These people know what he did but they say he is forgiven and so that makes it all ok. No one talks about what he did to me in terms of child molesting, they call it adultery and so does he. To this day I have received no justice. No one from Calvary Gospel has apologized to me for not reporting the incident and for not offering me any help. When confronted they claim that they did report and have always reported but the police have no records of them ever reporting anything. I am not the only victim who had crimes against them covered up by Calvary Gospel, Iโm just one of the oldest. I see myself as a test balloon. They covered up SDs crime and no harm came to the church. After my situation came many other young girls, and boys too. They were not victims of SD but of other men. SD was not an exception; he was part of a systemic problem that has infected the UPC organization. When the choice is to protect the church or the young life of a victim Calvary Gospel will always choose the church.
My day to day life at home did not change much, my mother eventually got over it. My life at church and school changed a lot. The adults around me started to give me a knowing side-eye and I knew they were talking about me. Adults withdrew from me and I could feel the silent judgment. No one offered me help or compassion. These adults who saw me day in and day out never asked why I was so thin or so sad. I tried to make friends with the church kids and I was able to establish some friendships. Most of my friendships with peers were with other kids on the margins. Race played a big role in this. They were on the margins due to being children of color and also due to being poor. I had friends whose parents were considered more โinโ but my friendship with them could only get so close. Their parents always looked at me as if I was dangerous and I wasnโt invited over for dinner or sleepovers. I never felt the same after what happened between SD and I. So many things caused me to have to grow up so fast and the abuse SD inflicted on me only sped this process up even more. It was like he threw gasoline on a raging fire. I was never the same. Now I fully understood how my mother felt at church. Silently judging eyes and smiles that seemed so forced and fake. I could be in the same room with these people but somehow there was an invisible wall between us. When I look back on it now I think that maybe they thought the sin that had come into my life through SD might be contagious. The UPC church teaches Godโs forgiveness but in practice, Calvary Gospel never really forgave me for being a victim. From what I have observed they tend to have an easy time forgiving men but women are another story. Once your reputation has been ruined in some way you cannot ever be truly restored. At 12 my reputation was obliviated and no amount of hard work on Godโs behalf or asking for forgiveness would ever remove the stain left by SDโs abuse. I spent my teen years striving for transcendence. To this day I would say that transcendence is a goal of mine. I set my sights on being and feeling worthy both in Godโs eyes and the churchโs but I never got there. It wasnโt until I was well into adulthood that I realized that only I could grant myself worthiness. My parents bear some of the blame for my feelings of worthlessness and it would be unfair to say otherwise that being said when SD decided to abuse me he set in motion a terrible storm. His acts against me caused me to seek relationships with males as an escape from the pain of my life. Those relationships always had a price and always left me alone to mend my broken heart. His actions made me feel like a Jezabel like I could never get clean or be good enough to rise above what happened between us. His actions left me alone to bear the stain of what he had done to me and his wife. He moved on to another city and I was the living reminder of what had happened. His actions caused the church to view me as damaged goods. Within these sorts of churches once you have been used by a man or even choose to be sexual and they see your purity as damaged you become something less than worthless, you become a temptress and something to be feared.
I discovered that a bunch of my last post was cut off. Not sure what happened but if you are following the story you might want to go back and reread the New Church post.
Debbie McNulty 