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.
I can remember the night I got “saved” like it was yesterday. I was wearing a blue jumper and sitting close to the back of the sanctuary. Boys were starting to notice me and a couple of boys sitting behind me kept trying to pass me notes. I had to be very careful because my mother did not tolerate playing around in church. I took one note and read it listening to the boys giggling behind me, the note read, “You’re a fox.” Now I had no idea what that meant but I knew those boys were always grinning at me and trying to get a seat as close as possible. Little did I know how many times those two boys would throw me a lifeline of friendship. Both of them became very close friends of mine and understood me better than most. When I asked my mom later what the note meant she was not pleased. After that, she gave those boys the side-eye for a long time. It was 1980 and I was 10 years old.
Things turned dark when the pastor lumbered up to the podium. I was afraid of my pastor. He was a big man and kind of loud. It was not uncommon in our church for a preacher to yell, stomp, and pace while preaching. This was one of those nights. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move and it seemed as if his eyes were drilling into me. His words rang out through the auditorium sending a sick feeling into the center of my chest, “Your name is written on the gates of hell until Jesus takes it off!” Pastor Grant painted a picture complete with flames, demons, and gates waiting to open for me. At the end of his terrible tale came an altar call. Just like in The Shining when Danny is staring down the long carpeted hallway, I was staring down the long carpeted aisle that led to the altar. My body felt like lead and I couldn’t stop shaking. I was too scared to stay in my seat and too scared to start the long lonely journey to the front of the sanctuary. Self-preservation won out and I willed myself to move forward. I was more afraid of hell than I was of making that long lonely walk. My knees hit the carpet and I started to ask Jesus to forgive me for all of my sins, whatever sins a ten-year-old could have, immediately I was surrounded by women, they appeared like vampires seeming to come out of nowhere. A cacophony of voices speaking in tongues and loud music was all around me. In my memory, this plays like a 1970s horror movie. The women’s faces appear like images in a funhouse mirror, all distorted and clownlike. My body was being pushed back and forth and words of encouragement were being urgently whispered in my ear. The fact that I was sobbing uncontrollably was not a reason for alarm, it was a sign that I was broken and that was exactly the desired outcome. They say I spoke in tongues but I have to wonder how much of that was just me sobbing and no longer being able to form coherent words. Their encouragement got louder and louder, “Yes Yes Yes! Talk to Jesus!” Once I calmed down, probably just due to exhaustion they told me that I should get baptized. I had been taught that this was required for salvation and so I was not taken off guard. The women were all smiles, like alligators grinning from ear to ear, they told me I could choose which minister would baptize me. I think this was supposed to make me feel less afraid but it did not. My father would often take me into the water at lake Mendota not far from our house. He was unafraid and would put me on his back and carry me out into the waves. My mother, on the other hand, was terrified of the water and would sit way up on the beach near the bathrooms. So yeah, tending to feel my mother was slightly more trustworthy than my father, her fear won out and so I was a little afraid of being dunked by a stranger.
Before I knew it I was being shuffled off to a room to change into a baptismal robe. The robe was heavy and way too big for me. Everything after this point is kind of a blur. I was very scared but determined. My heart was pounding in my chest and I now recognize that feeling. It is the same feeling I get when I’m in the midst of a panic attack. Our church had its own baptismal tank. It was situated behind the choir loft so it was easy for folks to gather all around it. It was loud, people were singing, clapping, and speaking in tongues. I was helped down the stairs into the deep water. Women were motioning me to squat a little so my robe would get wet and not float up and expose my legs. Brother O’Neal extended his hand to me and before I knew it he was saying the words and my body was headed back down into the water. My body felt the shock of the cold water as it hit my chest. Once I came up out of the water the watching crowd exploded into singing and clapping. The music and the sound of many voices speaking in tongues and clapping was so loud. I just prayed for it to be over. Soon I was out of the tank and dry, back in my own clothing.
My feelings about speaking in tongues are complicated. For much of my adult life, I felt pretty unsure about what I had experienced. The human brain is hard to understand. I can only speak from my personal experience. I see it like this, I was a child and so I looked to the adults around me for guidance about behavior and community norms. Children mimic adults all the time and so I feel that some of what I was doing was the result of mimicking. Then you add to that the hyped-up environment that puts your brain into a very suggestive state. It feels hypnotic, all of the pacing being done by the worship leader and the repetitive choruses. I feel when you blend all of that together you create an experience for people and then the UPC just slaps a label on it. They call it speaking in tongues, I call it manipulation.
After being baptized, I felt relief for a little while, for about two weeks. Jesus loved me and saved me from hell and now everything is going to be ok. Then the fear started to creep back in. Did you know that you can backslide and lose your salvation? Just because you are saved today doesn’t mean you are saved tomorrow. God doesn’t send you official warnings that you are about to go too far or that he is coming today, so you never know for sure, not really. Believing this started a near-constant cycle of repenting and chasing salvation, never feeling clean enough and always worried about slipping up. I had to be vigilant. The rapture could happen at any time and almost any infraction could cause you to be left behind to suffer the tribulation.
“For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.” 1 Thessalonians 5:2.
The fear of this event and going to hell stalked me like a hungry lion. My childhood was marinated in this fear. My mother passed her terror onto me like a virus. The church injected me with weekly and then daily doses. I would not find the antidote until well into adulthood. The idea of a wrathful god slithered through my veins winding its way into every nook and cranny. Of all the awful things that happened to me during childhood, being exposed to this idea had the most devastating effect. Starting when I was a toddler my parents exposed me to the Mark IV film series starting with “A Thief In The Night.” It made such a huge impact laying the groundwork for years of fear. I cannot remember a time in my childhood when I did not worry about my mother disappearing into thin air and me being left to face the guillotine alone. To make matters worse I was about to experience something that I thought might be an unforgivable sin.
I think of getting saved as being like your wedding day. Your wedding day is usually filled with wonderful memories of people wishing you well. You are the center of attention and love fills the air. There is music and dancing and hope for the future. You are wearing a dress you will probably never wear again and life feels fresh and new. You might even gain a new name. Marriage is long and often hard and it is unreasonable to expect that every day will feel like your wedding day. Now imagine if all the people in your life were constantly reminding you that you might lose your husband or wife. You better cook the right meals and earn enough money. Make sure even your thoughts are always in line with your partner’s thoughts or they might know and leave you. This is how salvation can be expressed within the UPC. You will probably never feel as good as the day when you get baptized. So you chase that feeling of freshness. You can get close if there is a rip-roaring service or a hellfire sermon that breaks you down into tears, but you will never duplicate that first high.
I was an early bloomer and people often assumed I was older. This is kind of funny because now people often assume I am younger. I found out recently that my pastor is telling people that I was “always was a loose child.” I do not believe that children are capable of consent or being “loose.” It shows the lengths they will go to protect themselves from accountability. Starting at an early age most of my friends were adults. At church, I hung out with kids close to my age but I also spent a lot of time with twenty-somethings. Once baptized I threw myself into service for God. I was a very devoted child, devoted to God and devoted to my church. I never experienced the love of God. I only saw him as a scorekeeper and a wrathful judge. I feared God, my pastor, the government and the devil all in the same way. Salvation did not lessen these fears because I had been taught that I could lose it.
I was a weird kid. I took the Bible very seriously and I also took my responsibility to share the gospel very seriously. I wanted to please and know God. My grandma would always say that when you stand before Jesus on judgement day you will be held accountable for all of the people you encountered on earth. Jesus would ask if you shared the gospel with them. Things would not go well for you if your answer was no. After going through my salvation experience I decided that I needed to get to work. I asked my pastor if there were any ministries I could get involved with. He recommended I start working on the Sunday school bus route. On both Saturday and Sunday, my day would start early. Rain, shine, snow, or freezing cold would not keep me from doing God’s work. On Saturday we would visit kids in impoverished neighborhoods and invite them to Sunday school, on Sunday we would start early and pick them up on the Sunday school bus. Almost always without fail I was around men. Men were the bus captains and so that’s who I worked with. The same would go for all of the ministries I became involved in. Men lead the nursing home ministry, campus ministry, and the Bible quiz team I would become captain of. They would give me rides to church and to other activities. It was normal for me and no one around me seemed to bat an eye. I don’t think they saw me as a child. I don’t believe they saw any of us as children. When I look back on it now it seems so inappropriate. I am a mother of four and I would have not wanted my children to spend so much time alone with adult men who were not members of their family. It isn’t like I was alone with them at church either, I was alone with them in cars and buses. Anything could have happened and eventually something did.
Being responsible for staying on God’s good side was a monumental task for a 10-year-old child. I had to be sure I stayed within the dress code at all times. I had to be sure to never cut my hair, listen to the radio or watch television. I could really only read the Bible because I was too young to discern other content. I had to be watchful of every thought, action, and emotion. A minor slip up in any of these areas could give the devil an open door. We were taught that there was a war going on.
“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” Ephesians 6:12
While engaged in this war we also had to be seeking souls we could win for Christ. I was taught that when I stood before Jesus at the end of my life I would have to account for every soul I ever came in contact with. Did I share the gospel with them? This is a heavy load for a child. It is hard enough to be ten and have to deal with school and growing up. Add on my parent’s divorce, our poverty, and my mother’s depression and you can start to see how overwhelmed I was. I was a bright child, very thoughtful and sensitive. This made me fertile ground for all of the church’s teachings. I took my responsibilities very seriously. I took everything very seriously. This led to depression, insomnia, and pretty severe stomach issues for much of my childhood.
I wanted to serve God because I wanted to follow his word and I wanted to win his love. I was unsure if winning his love was possible. Another big part of my motivation towards service had to do with just loving to be of service and help to those in need. I would wash the hands and faces of the kids riding the Sunday school bus because I cared deeply about them. I understood being poor and not properly tended to. My heart broke for some of those children.
One message that came through loud in clear is that every part of me was sinful. I have always felt wrong in the world. I have never felt a sense of belonging or of fitting in. Unconsciously as a child, I believed that every part of me was infected and broken. The devil was always lurking and trying to trip me up and deceive me. This led me to believe that I could not trust my own mind.
“And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” Genesis 6:5.
I became rather neurotic and filled with worry about whether my good works were even good. What if I was an awful evil person but so deceived that I was not aware of it? In my child’s mind, I had so much evidence to back this fear up. If not a sparrow falls without God knowing and caring then why did he seem to not care at all about me?
My heart was no better. A line from “A Distant Thunder” , one of the Mark IV films comes to mind. “Well just because you have an understanding of the Bible in your head, doesn’t mean you have Jesus in your heart.” Maybe this was my problem? Within a childhood filled with hunger, poverty, mental illness, and trauma I looked to myself to create change. When I could not move mountains or pray solutions into existence I began to question whether Jesus was in my heart and whether he accepted me. Does faith grow from the mind or the heart? Where do good works and compassion grow from? Again it was Pastor Grant who gave me insight into my unworthy condition. Often when he spoke during a sermon it felt like time stopped.
Almost like an in-between space, everything slipped away and all that existed was his voice and the pounding of my heart. His voice boomed out, “Your righteousness is as filthy rags!” In my mind’s eye, he is like a dog foaming at the mouth, snarling out a message meant to shame and remind me of how unworthy I am. All at once it hit home that no matter what I did, good works coming from my heart, it was all filth, none of it was worthy of goodness or God. My heart was garbage unless Jesus shined it up, and Jesus seemed to be absent. I never felt like I was created in his image. I always questioned how it could be so because I am a female and God is male. Eve brought sin into the world and I felt more in touch with her than with Christ.
Part 7 ***Trigger Warning*** Some discussion of end times material and suicidal tendencies.
One afternoon my mother was standing in the kitchen talking on the phone attached to the wall. She seemed scared. I had no idea what was going on but I understood that it wasn’t good. With tears in her eyes she explained that my father was in the hospital. He had taken some pills and we rushed to be at his side. When we arrived my mother was hysterical with worry. She asked to see him and after a minute they told her she could go in. Because they would not allow children into the emergency psychiatric rooms I waited alone. It was all very institutional looking. Sterile green, hard plastic chairs filled the room. In the ’70s hospitals were not very inviting. No one spoke to me as I waited, it wasn’t very long until I saw my mother. She flew through the doors crying and yelling. My father had asked for his girlfriend and did not want to see my mother. This is where things went very wrong. She grabbed my hand pulling me through the halls of the hospital and out to the car. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she wailed and yanked me into the car. She was in no condition to drive but that didn’t matter. We drove around for what seemed like hours. She cried and recounted the story to me. At times she was driving on the sidewalk. “I have no one who cares about me!” “I’m all alone in the world.” “I wish I were dead,” she said. “But you have me and grandpa and grandma!” I tried to comfort her. Finally, after what seemed like forever I convinced her to go over to a friend’s house. She barreled into his driveway startling him. He was sitting in a lawn chair having a drink. John, a friend of both my parents, would sometimes watch me if they had to go out at night. My dad had done some work for him and through that they became friends. John listened to my mother’s story and did his best to calm her down. I stood at the end of the driveway frozen, not recognizing my mother. She had been upset before but nothing like this. She sat in the chair next to him crying and talking about dying. She wailed and screamed. At some point, he went inside and called an ambulance. When they arrived my mother started to yell. He had betrayed her by calling them and there was no way she was going to get into that ambulance. By this point, random neighbors had stopped to watch and John had to try to explain why there was a crazed woman wailing in his driveway. When the ambulance arrived somehow they convinced her to get in and I rode along clutching her purse in my tiny hands. I felt kind of guilty. I was ashamed of her behavior, scared about what would happen next, and also excited about riding in an ambulance. No one talked to me because they were too busy trying to keep my mother in check. She fought them and refused to lay down, finally they sedated her. She was much quieter by the time we got to the hospital. She told me to hang onto her purse and I immediately spilled it all over the emergency room floor. Tampons and money went flying. I was mortified. I wasn’t sure what tampons were but I knew she wouldn’t want everyone to see hers. That day is one of the saddest of my life. When I left the hospital she was calm and cuffed to the gurney. I went and stayed with John. He brought Muffy over to keep my company. Eventually, my aunt, Wanda, and Uncle Mike came to get me. They tried to comfort me but neither of them knew how. They were childless and everything in their house was white. It was not a kid-friendly environment. For the few weeks my mother was in the hospital they took me to see her and made sure I got to school. The hospital would let my mother out for a couple of hours to have lunch with us. I hated to see her go back. Living with my mother was hard but living with my aunt Wanda was worse. My aunt Wanda had money but she was a very cold person. I knew her and my mother did not get along and so I could never really let my guard down around her. I also knew, because my mother had no filter, that my aunt Wanda strongly disliked my father. There were many reasons to dislike my dad but one of hers was his race. Knowing I was half Mexican made me wonder if she hated me too? Soon my mother and I were back in our little apartment but nothing would ever be the same. Abandonment is one of the worst things a kid can experience. I almost lost both my parents on the same day. The dangers of the world became very clear to me. I understood that there are so many ways to lose your parents. You can lose them due to something like the rapture, or suicide, you can lose them through divorce or depression. Loss doesn’t always have to be physical, it can be emotional or mental. To this day I’m not sure which is worse. I felt guilty for being embarrassed by my mother’s behavior. I felt anger towards my father for hurting her so badly but I also wondered why he was so sad he wanted to end his life. Later he would tell me it was an accident. Neither of them ever wanted to talk about it even as the years passed and I could have better understood. All the adults around me, teachers, and neighbors looked at me with pity in their eyes but no one said a word. I could tell things were different now.
Sometime around age 7 or 8, we moved to Vera Count. It was just a couple of blocks away from School Rd. We now had a bigger place but it was definitely a step-down. We lived at the top of a circle and next to our building was a big field and wooded area. There was plenty of room to play outside and the school playground was just behind the building across the street. Just a couple of blocks can make a big difference. I could feel our poverty and the poverty of our neighbors after we moved. My mother would point out to me the good buildings and the bad buildings within our low income block. “At least we don’t live over there” she would say.
The older I got the more scared I became. During this time my mother was also becoming more and more unhinged. After her suicide attempt, she was at least being treated for depression. Later we would find out that she was bi-polar. My dad was in and out of our home, as usual, and stability was nowhere to be found. My mother was upset with her pastor because she felt he did not help her enough when she was in the hospital. She called some other pastors around town and wasn’t happy with their response either. This left us without a church and that was uncomfortable for her. She had gone to church every Sunday for her entire life and she feared for what would happen to her salvation if she wasn’t going somewhere. My aunt and uncle would invite her to go to church with them and we did for a while. That church was tiny and it reminded me of the church in the Thief in the Night series. The one they were taken to when they were about to be executed. Behind that church was a movie theater that my dad would often take me to. The theater let the church members park in its lot. When getting out of our car I always wished we were going to the theater instead. When we returned after the Sunday morning service you could smell the movie popcorn drifting through the air.
My mother used God, the rapture, and hell a lot when she was upset at me. I remember one incident when she turned the shower on for me and I was complaining that it was too hot. “It will be a lot hotter in hell if you don’t get in that shower and start listening to me! Any normal childhood sassiness or conflict could warrant a warning about missing the rapture or burning for eternity. God was her enforcer. She and my grandparents talked often about how he could see and hear everything I did and thought. Not only could my actions send me to hell but my thoughts. It’s weird to grow up having no privacy, not even within your own head. I felt like God and the devil were following me everywhere all the time. God with his book of life ready to scratch me out or write me back in and the devil just seeing if he could trip me up.
When I think of the 4 years we lived on Vera Court what stands out the most to me is how unsafe I felt all the time. The older you get the more you understand why the world is dangerous. My mom would go over the rules with me all the time, don’t answer the door unless you know the person knocking, lock the door, and deadbolt the door whenever you are in the apartment. When you are inside make sure to use the chain lock. My mother had some OCD tendencies so she would have to check the door multiple times, along with the windows, and lights. Bedtime could take awhile. After that man broke into my room she was always worried it would happen again. I was more worried about other monsters. No amount of locking things would keep Satan or God out for that matter.
When I was around 4 years old my father took me to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. We went to see it in the theater near my aunt’s church, the one that always tempted me with the smell of popcorn. It was pretty magical. The old theater had twinkle lights in the ceiling and I was impressed! The seats felt scratchy and heavy curtains hung down in front of the screen. Now that venue is mostly used for music and comedy performances. Whenever I go there I feel the warm memory of that first movie outing with my dad. It is still just as magical as it was in 1974. I loved the movie but the evil queen really terrified me. Soon after someone bought me this lovely gold edged Disney storybook and on the back cover was the old scary witch from Disney’s Snow White. Every night I would have to make sure the back cover was facing away from me so her evil eyes would not stare at me as I slept. Really she was the least of my worries.
In the darkness, I could never be certain that the devil would not grab me. He could be anywhere. Under my bed, in the closet, or under a pile of clothing. I would worry about men coming to get me and chop off my head or make me take the mark of the beast. I always slept with my face and right hand covered in hopes of keeping someone from giving me the mark when I wasn’t awake. Silly really but it was kid logic. All these fears fed into other unrelated fears, or maybe regular childhood fears. I was afraid of this character on Sesame Street and to a greater level Mr. Yuck. Whenever the character came on or the Mr. Yuck commercial came on PBS I would hide under our coffee table until it was over. All kids go through these things but I had no adult around to talk me through it so the fears got bigger and stronger. I can still remember how my heart pounded. My mother was oblivious to it all until she was home on vacation one week and witnessed me cowering under the coffee table. We talked about it but I don’t know if it made me feel any better. I was very fearful of UPC symbols on products because I had been taught that the mark of the beast would be just like those symbols. Each UPC symbol already had 666 embedded in it just waiting to be activated when the Antichrist came into power. Add to that all of the things that had Mr. Yuck stickers on them and even things like cleaning products under the sink became diabolical. I would turn the labels in the refrigerator and cupboards so the UPC symbol was facing away and if I was in the bathtub or shower I would do the same. As I write this my thoughts are that I sound nuts, and then I remember that I need to show compassion to myself. Children should be taught healthy fear of some things because otherwise, they may not survive childhood. The problem is my childhood was awash in all sorts of unhealthy fears.
Not long after we moved to Vera Ct we were invited to ride the Sunday school bus to a new Church. At first, when the Sunday school folks would knock on the door my mother would hide. She did this whenever someone came to the door unexpectedly. She hated when people would try to sell her something or the Jehovah’s Witnesses would stop by to chat. She would pull the shades and put her finger to her lips to signal to me to be quiet. She would peek through the shades in order to judge when they had left the building. Only then would she tell me it was clear. These new unexpected guests were from the United Pentecostal Church. At first, my mother was reluctant. She did not agree with how they baptized people, but after a while, she gave in. She was a church hopper and I think she was tired of trying to find the right place. She also really enjoyed their worship style and I think that kind of grabbed her. My mother loved music more than almost anything and if there was one thing she hated it was dry worship services. Calvary Gospel United Pentecostal Church did not have dry worship services, in fact, it was quite the opposite. It was not unusual to see people loudly speaking in tongues, dancing in the spirit, or running through the aisles. It could be pretty entertaining for a kid to watch, it certainly wasn’t dull. It seemed a lot like the Jimmy Swaggart services my mother would watch on television. He would sing and speak in tongues. He sometimes danced on stage a little. It wasn’t that foreign. I liked the church at first. The people seemed friendly and the church itself was a nice facility. As an adult, I can look back and see there was a fair amount of love bombing going on. These people appeared friendly on the surface but there was an edge there. I enjoyed the worship services along with my mother. The clapping and upbeat music were fun to sing along to. At this point, I was too young to really understand what we were becoming involved with. There is no way I could have known that there was no room for childhood within this church just like there was no room for childhood in my regular day to day life. I was a stressed-out kid and this was about to get much worse. They say His burden is light but the burden of his church almost killed me.
Before I go any further I feel I should say that I believe The United Pentecostal Church to be a cult. I believe that they engage in brainwashing and use cultish means to keep people in line. I know that not everyone who reads this will agree with me. I can only speak from my experience and from what I hear from fellow survivors.
I liked riding the Sunday school bus! We would sing and when they dropped us at home I would get to pick a piece of candy. Sometimes my mom did not want to go and she would force me to hide with her. It never mattered if I wanted to go or not. My grandparents were very unhappy to hear she was attending a “Jesus Only” church. They gave her a lot of grief about it. They did not live in town and the church people saw her more, I think in the end the church won due to proximity and persistence. My aunt Wanda did not approve either. She would tell my mother any chance she got which drove them further apart.
In reality skipping church was not that bad. The Sunday school bus was fun but my Sunday School class was another story. When we skipped church my mother would make homemade cinnamon rolls with me and she would watch some television preacher while I did whatever I wanted. I thought she was an amazing baker, she wasn’t, but she could turn that dough into something so delicious!.
My parents and my grandparents taught me from the cradle that giving money to the church was very important. My mom would press coins into my hand before leaving me at Sunday school so I would always have something for the offering plate. Weirdly my mother did not feel that tithing was important, she would always say God understands and so we give what we can. Calvary Gospel Church did not agree with that. God may understand but Pastor Grant did not. Sunday school was ok. I really did not enjoy being around other kids that much so I just tried to get through it mostly for the cookie and juice. I’d much rather be upstairs where the action was happening. We would hear the same stories over and over again all told with little felt people on a felt board. We had two older ladies who taught our class of 7 and 8-year-olds. One would tell the stories and the other would glare at us so we would not get too squirrely. Whenever we were allowed to be in the adult service, usually during the holidays, it was so interesting. All of those ladies in their fancy dresses and big hair. Part of me wanted to be just like them and another part of me wanted to be like the pastor. Whenever I played church at home I was always the pastor and I didn’t know yet that women couldn’t be pastors. I wondered how they chose which verses to read? Do they practice a lot? Maybe when I was a grown-up it would all come to me. I made little hymnals out of paper and handed them out to all of my stuffies. When I got older I would have my Barbies dress up in their best dresses and there might even be someone dancing in the aisle. I created a little church using books and blocks. Lots of Barbie weddings happened there. I believe what drew me to the idea of being a pastor was a desire to care for others. I knew that the adults in my life placed great importance on the church and so if I wanted to impress them, and I did, the church would be the best way to accomplish that.
I made a few friends when we started to go to more than just the Sunday morning service. I always felt a little on the outside of things because we were attending but not officially “saved” and therefore not totally in. My mother eventually gave in and got rebaptized so she would be considered saved by their standards. This only made the pressure on me greater. Adults would always ask, “When are you going to get the Holy Ghost?” The United Pentecostal Church only believes you have the Holy Ghost if you speak in tongues. I have spoken to many adults who grew up within the UPC church who fully admit to faking speaking in tongues just to get the pressure off. Of course, this doesn’t remove the pressure of worrying about going to hell. The UPC believes that you must repent, be baptized in Jesus’s name by immersion, and then speak in tongues to be saved. If any part of this formula is missing you will not be allowed into heaven. It can be heartbreaking to watch people struggle through waiting to be filled with the Holy Ghost. They would often repent and get baptized and then not speak in tongues for a long time all the while their salvation hangs in the balance. Our pastor taught a hell where you would burn forever but never die. It is a terrible idea for most adults to grapple with and for children it is the stuff of nightmares. Being separated from God is sad but for a child to be separated from every adult in your life is even scarier. Abandonment is a huge worry for all children. They ask the question, “Am I safe?” “Can I depend on the adults in my life to be there?” The church I grew up in would answer, maybe not. Children are exposed to these messages long before they can handle the content and are expected to make decisions about faith long before they can really comprehend the message. My childhood understanding of salvation went something like…I’m bad, Jesus is the only one who can save me so I have to do what he says, or His father will send me to hell if I don’t comply. Not really much of a salvation message.
My favorite part of church was the worship portion. I loved to sing and when I sang I felt close to God. If the worship service was really hot we might not even have a preaching portion. It all depended on how the “spirit moved.” I loved those services, all-singing, and no scary parts. Once the preaching started, who knew what you might get.
My mother had a hard time making friends even after they considered her saved. She never thought she was good enough and always thought people were gossiping about her. She just seemed to lack the ability to trust. In the end, there were a few kind souls who tried to be friends with her and for a while, this church looked like it might be a good thing in our lives. She still had her good pal Gail and my mother even invited her to church. Gail did not seem as impressed as my mother was but she would still come from time to time. She always came if they were showing the “Thief in the Night” films. Yep, this church showed them too. No matter where we went I couldn’t get away from them. Strangely, my mother never had trouble making friends outside the church. It is only within the church that she struggled.
As a side note, it turns out there was a lot of gossip going on within the church so my mother wasn’t totally off in her concern. She would have never fit in there for the long haul. She was too working-class poor and eventually divorced. Plus they considered her marriage to my father to be interracial and that was a big no-no. The church taught that if you were in an interracial marriage when you became saved you should stay in that marriage. Over the years I watched how people in interracial marriages were treated and it was racist. My mother can be difficult to understand. As much as she was worried about missing the rapture she was also a bit of a free spirit. I think those parts of her core personality were always at odds with each other. She never gave up her pants or stopped cutting her hair even though the church taught strongly against these things. Compliance was not strictly necessary for salvation but then it kind of was. If you sinned by not following God’s word about your hair then you might miss the rapture or lose your salvation. Salvation was something we were always fighting for and it could slip through your fingers in a moment. I felt like I was always one mistake away from being lost. As a teen, I would envision what it would be like to be in heaven if my mother ended up in hell. I could never figure out how I could be happy knowing she was suffering forever, how could that be heaven? The church would say that God and heaven would be so wonderful and pure and therefore you would have no concern for such things.
My parents were married around 1968. They appear miserable in all of the photos from their wedding day. In each one, they stare back at the camera with somber expressions made all the more depressing by the black and white color. They don’t appear to be at church. It’s just the two of them standing by a Formica table. Some of the photos include a small cake. My father is wearing a suit and my mother is wearing a simple white dress. They both appear to be there against their will as if someone is holding a gun to their backs just outside of the frame. My father, Amando, seems steely and looks to be clenching his jaw tightly. My mother, Marla, seems sad and resigned. Neither of them ever talked about their wedding day or courtship but they did seem to love each other even if that love was toxic and almost killed them. It may have been the time period. There are photos of my aunt from the same time and she appears equally unfriendly and gloomy. My aunt is probably not the best example because she is gloomy and unfriendly by nature. I was born in June of 1970 and luckily there are some photos of my parents smiling with me. My favorite photo from that time period features my mother in a summer dress, hair wrapped in rollers, cradling me in her arms. She looks relaxed and happy. My father remains serious in most of the photos from that year but there are a few from time to time where he looks like his guard might be down, in those moments a smile creeps in. Like many little girls, I adored my father. I think I spent most of my childhood chasing after his love, time, and acceptance. I loved my mother too but I saw her as fragile and in need of someone to look out for her. I could never really be a child around either of them.
I have lived in the Madison Wisconsin area all my life. It hasn’t been until the last couple of years that I could really imagine living anywhere else. Now I dream of Colorado or somewhere in the desert. There is a lot to love about Wisconsin. There are beautiful parks and lakes. I am a nature lover and so I would miss this for sure if I ever relocated. I am an empty nester and it almost feels like I’m starting a new life filled with all sorts of possibilities. I have a love-hate relationship with my home town. While it is a great place to live it also holds some truly awful memories for me. Part of me knows that these memories will follow me wherever I go because they live inside of me, the other part just wishes to not be reminded every day of my past. For now, most of my children are here and so this is where I intend to remain. In the wee hours of the morning when I’m staring at the ceiling, I have to wonder if the ghosts would continue to haunt me if I slipped away in the middle of the night. Madison has and always will be a haunted place for me, filled with the monsters of my childhood.
When I was very little my parents lived on Main St. I can see the street in my mind’s eye but I couldn’t tell you which house we lived in. My earliest memory is from the time when we lived there. I was sitting in a highchair. I’m in the kitchen and people are bustling around me. I am watching the dust fly around in a sunbeam streaming through the window. This memory, although brief, is warm and vivid. When I think of that memory it makes me feel peaceful inside. When I close my eyes I can still see it.
The next memory is shrouded in darkness. My father is quickly carrying me out of the church sanctuary. I’m around toddler age. I am crying hard and he is trying to quiet me. The noise coming from the sanctuary is loud and there is screaming. Our little Assemblies of God church is screening a movie and the congregation is emotional. The screaming could have been from a congregant or from the film. The film was “A Thief in the Night.” I remember looking down through my tears to my black patent leather shoes. That church had a soundproof glass viewing window and a speaker out in the vestibule. This way parents could take their children out if they needed to without missing any of the services. So even though my father took me out I could still hear the scary sounds coming from the sanctuary. To this day whenever I think of that church it sends chills down my spine. Now, as far as I know, I have no other reason to be scared by that church other than the spanking I might get if I wasn’t quiet during the services. Even now when I drive by the building something in the pit of my stomach clenches. In my mind, it represents the rapture, being left behind, and everything that comes with that. My parents thought the whole incident was humorous. They liked to brag about how I never cried or misbehaved in church. My father would brag about spanking me until I learned to be quiet. “We never put our child in the nursery”, they would boast. That one night was seen as an oddity when I cried so hard they had to take me out. Thankfully they did not spank me for being scared. My parents loved that church but before long they felt they had to leave. Their beloved pastor left and they did not like the new pastor.
In 1972 A Thief In The Night was released. It is the granddaddy of many of my childhood nightmares. It is also the first in a long line of rapture themed films. I see it as the scarier, more traumatizing version of the Left Behind films. It has not waned in popularity over time probably due to how effectively it delivers its message. A Thief In The Night was never shown in theaters but it was passed around from church to church. This made it possible for the film to skirt the rating system. It has been shown all over the world but it is best known in the American south and midwest. You could find it at Sunday night church services, youth groups, Bible camps, and Sunday school classes. Because it was shown in churches parents could expose their children to it’s dangerous message with no oversight. From what I’ve heard it seems that many churches used these films to target teens in particular. I am so glad streaming from the internet was not a thing when I was a child. Now parents do not have to wait for their church to gain access to this series, they can stream it from the internet for free and bring its horrors right into their living rooms. I have C-PTSD for multiple reasons but I believe the seeds of it all lie within this series of films.
This film series was written by Russell S. Doughten Jr. and directed by Donald W. Thompson. Russell S. Doughten also worked on “The Blob” in the 1950s and has a producer credit. The original film was made in Des Moines Iowa and snaked its way through the Bible belt. The imagery and the theme song created an unforgettable experience. To this day the theme song of that film lives in my head. All I need to do is read a snippet of the lyrics or hear a tiny part of the melody to have it stuck in my head for days. Even as I’m writing this it is playing in my mind and I will have to try to do something to dig it out so that I’m not riddled with anxiety later. My mother liked the theme song, “I Wish We’d All Been Ready” and would play it on her accordion. She would sing it over and over. I was surprised to learn that song was really popular at the time and a big part of the Jesus movement. For me, it is like hearing the chimes of hell.
There are four films in the series, A Thief In The Night, A Distant Thunder, Image of the Beast, and The Prodigal Planet. The first was released in 1972 and the last in 1983. I saw the first one when I was a toddler, probably around age 3. All of the churches we attended following that first church showed these films. My mother would sit on the bed and sing that song not understanding the trauma she was causing in my young mind. Every year following our viewing of these films I would go through a period of time when I could not sleep alone. I would have nightmares about government officials coming to get me to be beheaded. I would go through periods when I was afraid to be alone and that was a problem because I was almost always alone. If you watch the films now having had no experience with them they might seem dated, campy, and just plain weird. If you see them as a young child and all of the people in your life believe that these things are actually going to happen you will most likely be traumatized. The internet is full of people who were traumatized during childhood because they were made to watch these films in school, church, camp, or at home on video. Many horror fans embrace them as true horror films and consider them to be classic B movies. I have also seen people write about them being a gateway to their love of the horror genre. I experienced them as truth and a certain future.
As horror films, they might be fine but as tools to scare children into salvation, they become something much more sinister. As a side note, these films are often still used for evangelism but I feel their true purpose is to keep people who are already Christians in line. Patty the main character is a Christian throughout the whole film but she isn’t the right kind of Christian. She believes in god’s love but not all of the rapture theology people keep trying to tell her about. Its message doesn’t focus on God’s love, it focuses on fear and keeping yourself on the right side of an angry vengeful god. Being a Christian is not enough. That lesson followed me through my whole childhood. The reach of these films is greater than you might think. It has been estimated that over 300,000,000 people have viewed these films. It can be a hard thing to get good estimates about because they are not shown in theaters but in church basements. One thing is for sure the memory of this series haunts the dreams of many adults who grew up in the ’70s and ’80s to this day.
My mother believed the message introduced in these films wholeheartedly. It bled into every part of my life. Believing her heart was never quite right with god she would spend hours shut away in her bedroom crying and speaking in tongues. I would stand by the door and worry about whether or not she was going to be ok. She didn’t want me to make a lot of noise while she was praying so I couldn’t even use the television to drown out her wailing. I recall those nights as being very lonely. If she came home and couldn’t immediately locate me she would worry that I had been raptured leaving her behind. One day I was playing with my plastic sled and I fell asleep under it. She came home and searched the apartment high and low for me and when she couldn’t find me at home or at the neighbors she started screaming and that woke me up. I jumped up from under the sled and saw our neighbors and my mother standing there looking down at me. She grabbed me and held me tight to her chest. I could feel her heart racing and her face was wet with tears. On that day I got a very clear idea of how real all of this was to her, and it became even more real for me. From that day on the thought of being left behind haunted my dreams and my waking hours. I worried about what small sin or act of childhood would keep me from flying up to heaven with my mother. I constantly asked Jesus to forgive my sins even asking him to forgive sins I might have forgotten about. In my mind, Jesus was a scorekeeper. He was keeping track of every thought and action, and he had no problem at all with sending a little girl to the guillotine.
Even after my parents moved on to other churches we lived within eyesight of the little Assemblies of God Church until about 1979. For much of my early childhood, I could see it from our front picture window. We had neighbors who attended there and my mother was close with them. Whenever they showed the “Thief in the Night” film my mother and I would go to service with them. My mother had a weird fascination or maybe obsession with the film. She and her best friend Gail were always excited to see that it would be showing again and they would pack up us kids and drag us to it. Afterward, we would all enjoy a meal together and my mother and her friend would recount everything that happened in the movie and talk about how close to the end times we were. I have never been able to understand how someone who feared the rapture so much would want to torture themselves by volunteering to watch that movie. As sequels came out we went to see all of those as well. My mother would complain about my fears, my fear of the dark, of being alone, and especially of sleeping alone but she never seemed to really get what she and my father had done by exposing me to that series of films. There were so many nights when I would lay awake worried about missing the rapture. I would dream about being chased by soldiers and being beheaded. I would flee to my mother’s bed and she would let me sleep with her but not without being pretty grumpy about it. Over the years these fears grew. I feared loud noises, especially anything that sounded like it might be a horn, white vans (because of the movie), bar codes, and men in uniforms. Later when I was older that fear would spread to credit cards, computers, and anything automated. I even grew to fear the television. My mother and her family would talk about how someday the government would be able to watch us through our television set and even see-through walls. They would talk about how after the rapture there would be no place to hide. Even as a very young child, I took their words very seriously. I would lay awake at night making sure that my right hand and forehead were covered by the blankets at all times.
Revelation 13:16-17 King James Version (KJV)
16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
I am sure this all sounds very strange to you if you have never encountered these beliefs before. I am also sure that some of you have shivers running down your spine right now because you know exactly what I’m talking about. The fears caused by all of this would only get louder as I got older. It wasn’t until I was in my 40’s that I figured out how to deal with them. Even then I can only deal with them, the CPTSD makes sure they are never far away.
Hi everyone! I have been in a writing slump for a long time. I am back on the horse for the time being and I intend to share some of my pages here. I’m open to feedback either in the comments or better yet at my email survivingchurchandchildhood@gmail.com Please be kind, memoir is really hard.
This morning I find myself sitting with my coffee at my lonely laptop. I am banging away at the keys trying to pound my story out onto the page. This feels like just another new start. It is filled with hope, maybe this time will be the time when everything gels together. Fall always feels like the right time to write. There is something about the cool mornings that drives me to try again. I have been away from this work for a long time and then suddenly there it is in my face beckoning me back to this lonely task. On days like this the words burn through my fingertips, they cannot escape my brain fast enough. Being a Gemini part of my brain just wants to put words to page and part of my brain wants to craft the perfect memoir. These two parts are always at odds and through this struggle, I push this work into existence.
I have been seeking to make sense of my childhood for as long as I can remember. Even though I recognize that there are some things I will never understand I feel compelled to keep searching for truth. Truth is wobbly when you are talking about others’ motivations and when they are no longer around to ask your questions to. I am a quintessential gen-Xer born in 1970. I was a latch-key kid with my house keys always around my neck. I grew up in Madison Wisconsin and I’m still in the area. I wonder how many others are out there like me. Wounded souls trying to make sense of their childhoods through writing memoirs. Looking back all I see is trauma, fear, and sadness. When I look a little harder I can see moments of creativity, freedom, and joy. Those moments are much harder to reach for. I can guarantee that there will be times when my story overwhelms you, just know as you continue on with me that I am okay now, I’m a survivor.
Throughout my childhood fear was my constant companion. It hung in the air like a thick cloud around me and its friend sadness clung to me like an old thread worn sweater. Fear was brewed first at home followed by my church and school. My mother was a very fearful woman and she passed her fear onto me the same way she gave me my freckles and my smile. She was tough but at the same time, it seemed like she was always scanning the landscape looking for danger. On the other side of the coin, my father insisted that I be strong and fearless. He has zero tolerance for weakness unless he was the one being weak. He and my mother were like the sun and the moon. How they ever got together is beyond me. At this moment I cannot think of one way in which they were alike other than their tendency towards being fixed on themselves. My mother suffered from severe depression and her childhood was pretty dysfunctional. My grandmother was a severe parent and my mother always felt like an outsider within her family. My father has always been a mystery to me. His accounts of his origin story seemed to vary and there were many topics he had no interest in talking about. My parents never seemed happy although they did seem to really love each other. They certainly were ill-suited for the long haul and could barely take care of themselves let alone each other. Looking back on it now, I think they loved each other more than they loved me.
My mother was pretty in a tomboy sort of way. She was dark-haired and covered from head to toe in freckles. Her green eyes were the prettiest eyes I’ve ever seen. She was not the most domestic woman in the world. She viewed housekeeping as a chore and not something to be enjoyed. She wasn’t much of a cook and had no interest in learning to be better at it. She was all about comfort food and she did that well. She felt the most at ease in nature and preferred the company of dogs and horses to being around people. When my mother was around people she could be very charming and those who knew her liked her more than she could ever acknowledge to herself. She was an artist and could draw almost anything. Her family valued music and so she learned multiple instruments and she was a gifted singer. Marla, my mother, loved to laugh and her playfulness created some of the only happy memories of my childhood. When I was in elementary school we did not have much furniture in our living room but it did not matter. She and I would snuggle on the floor, backs against the wall, and enjoy one of our favorite shows. No TV night would be complete without a bowl of hazelnuts, a nutcracker, and generic grape soda. Those nights were my favorite. In those moments we laughed together and I could breathe a sigh of relief.
My father was short and his skin a chocolate brown color. He always seemed to have something to prove. He was a boxer and fairly ambitious. Armando, my father had a boyish smile and an impish sense of humor. He was a whistler and sang along to the radio even if he often got the lyrics wrong. People liked him and he liked them back. Depression could come knocking at his door if he spent too much time alone. My athleticism and tenaciousness come from him. He was a wanderer and philanderer and often these tendencies took him away from me. I chased his affection long after it became clear to me that he only wanted mine when he could not get it other places. I was a consolation prize, a toaster when what he really wanted was a boat.
I loved my parents fiercely! My love for them was strong but this does not mean they were good parents. They were flawed as all of us are and they were tortured by personal demons. My mother came from a strict religious home and her upbringing informed much of her parenting style. Growing up outside of her family’s love and acceptance made it so she never felt accepted or loved. I believe this crippled her and made it hard for her to give love and acceptance. She was deeply lonely even when friends tried to be there for her. It was never enough or she just couldn’t believe that they “really” liked her. She had a dark deep hole inside and it seemed it could never be filled. Her sadness and fear permeated every part of our lives. Even the material objects within our home seemed to take on her personality. Heavy and oppressive miasma clung to everything. She could go from being jovial and childlike one minute to screaming and violent the next. I learned very early on to be careful what I said to her. If something was going to get me into trouble it would most likely be my mouth. Often her anger came from unexpected places. She always seemed to believe I understood why she was raging even when I often did not. When in a loving mood she would pour out affection on me and when in an angry mood she could be petty and mean. She would spank me but also pinch me, pull my hair, and twist my wrists. It was as if all of these little acts of violence lanced some painful wound within her. People who cut themselves sometimes say that when you do it it releases some of your pain, I think her hurting me did the same thing. It’s like it kept her from doing something worse.
My father often spoke of being emotionally and physically abused as a child. He was generally mellow in personality but at times his anger would flare. Both my parents spanked me with a belt but my father was the one most likely to take it too far. If I did not meet his high expectations he could be cruel with his words. Weakness seemed to send him into anger faster than anything else. My mother played by God’s rules as she understood them and my father played by no one’s rules but his own. He was very unconventional and independent. At times I miss them and my inner child longs for my mother. At other times the flames of anger burn within me so brightly I could set the world ablaze. It is all very complicated and I have had to come to terms with many truths about my childhood. If this book were about my parents it might be written from a place of more understanding and questioning what led them to be who they were, but this story is not their story it is mine. There was a time when I went through my life seeking to make excuses for their choices but I can no longer do that. I have to put myself first in a way that neither of them ever could. I find myself shouting to them from across the years, “Can’t you see how your choices are affecting me? Please get some help for yourself and for me!”
During the process of writing about my childhood I’m finding more questions than answers. Opening the door to my past has caused me to remember things I have not thought about for a long time. Many of these events seemed weird at the time and now through my adult eyes they seem inappropriate. As these memories bubble up into the now I have asked people if they remember and if it all seems odd to them as well. In a recent conversation a friend and I discussed how we remember two things from our childhood growing up in the church, fear and sex.
For the lips of a strange woman drop as a honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil. Proverbs 5:3
I started attending Calvary Christian Academy when I was 11 years old and in the 6th grade. We started attending the church when I was about 8. I was excited about starting a new school and finally being a part of the in-group. The principal at that point was Brother Rutherford. He seemed nice enough but had some strange quirks about him. Every morning we would read a passage together as a group. The goal was to memorize the verses and be able to repeat them back by the end of the month. If you wanted any extra freedoms or honor roll you had to have those verses memorized and signed off on. The thing is the verses we studied seem really strange when I look back on them now. The Bible is a long book and full of topics to focus on so why these verses were chosen is beyond me.
Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well.
Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad, and rivers of waters in the streets.
Let them be only thine own, and not strangers’ with thee.
Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. Proverbs 5:15-18
Every morning we would stand and say the pledge and then read our verses. We read them as a mixed group out loud. I can remember being pretty embarrassed to read these things in front of the boys. It did not help that the older boys would tell bawdy jokes about them and snicker and laugh at my discomfort.
Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love.
And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger? Proverbs 5:19-20
I have to ask if the men working in the school got some kind of perverse pleasure from watching teen girls recite these verses both as a group and then one on one. When we reached the end of the month either our supervisor Roy Grant or Brother Rutherford would come to our little office and listen to us recite the verses back to them. I can remember being really uncomfortable. I was very good at memorization so that wasn’t the issue, it was all of those breasts and lips.
O that thou wert as my brother, that sucked the breasts of my mother! when I should find thee without, I would kiss thee; yea, I should not be despised.
I would lead thee, and bring thee into my mother’s house, who would instruct me: I would cause thee to drink of spiced wine of the juice of my pomegranate. Song of Solomon 8:1-2
We would have a sort of chapel time and Brother Rutherford or Roy Grant would preach a mini sermon or teach a lesson. Often the subject matter would have something to do with the verses we were working on. So it isn’t that the verses were not explained, they were but I still have to ask, why was this something I needed to read/know at age 11? Why so much focus on cheating spouses and sexual love? Wouldn’t it be more beneficial for us to be studying the fruits of the spirit or maybe the sermon on the mount?
We have a little sister, and she hath no breasts: what shall we do for our sister in the day when she shall be spoken for?
If she be a wall, we will build upon her a palace of silver: and if she be a door, we will inclose her with boards of cedar.
I am a wall, and my breasts like towers: then was I in his eyes as one that found favour. Song of Solomon 8: 8-10
I have turned this over in my head time and again and I just don’t get it. Why all the verses about breasts? Of all of the topics available why this kind of thing over and over? If there is one thing I have learned in my life it is that where there is smoke there is fire. If it makes you feel uncomfortable there is a reason for that and you should listen to that inner voice. I do not know who picked those verses. It could have been Brother Rutherford or Pastor Grant but either way I think it was inappropriate. I could understand if we were older like 17 or so or if it was a class for people about to be married.
A side note, we always read from the KJV and we were taught that the Proverbs verses were about staying faithful to ones wife, and the Song of Solomon verses were about marital love. Imagine my surprise when I found that some view the Song of Solomon verses to be about Christ. That is not how it was taught to us.
Brother Rutherford and his family eventually left and I think they moved back to Texas. I do not remember why but I do remember that it seemed kind of sudden and fast. After that we had a new principal and the verses changed to more normal content.
You might ask why I am writing this entry, it is because as I try to figure out the past these things come to mind and then I can’t get them out of my mind. I comb over them over and over again trying to make sense of it all. Why did they focus so much on sexual topics? Why the pervy undertones? They had to have known that a young girl would feel uncomfortable reading those verses out loud, especially given how sheltered we were. If anyone remembers the Rutherfords and knows why they left I would love to know.
Once when I was in therapy the therapist asked me to envision my child self. My mind went to a field we had near my childhood home. I would run around that field playing Wonder Woman. I went sledding with my dog down the hill beside the field and I would make crowns from the dandelions I found in the grass. When envisioning my child self my mind immediately took me to that place and sitting in the grass making crowns and placing dandelions in my hair. That little girl was still pretty carefree but that wouldn’t last for long. By that time I had been exposed to rapture theology and my parents were struggling within their marriage and we were poor. Even with all of that to worry about I was still an adventurous, imaginative, happy-go-lucky little girl.
Little Debbie
We started attending Calvary Gospel on and off in 1978. By 1980 I was becoming pretty entrenched. You might think that Steve Dahl was the first thing to interrupt my girlhood but I don’t think that is true. What came first was fear. Calvary Gospel was awash in it at that point. Sermons like the one that lead to my salvation were not the exception they were common. My world kept getting smaller and smaller. It seemed like everything was a sin and the devil was everywhere just waiting to deceive and maybe gobble up a little girl like me. The seeds to all of my anxiety were planted, watered, and tended there. How can you be a little girl when all you can think about is hell, the rapture, and what sin you might have committed while just going about your day? It didn’t take long before innocent things like watching cartoons on tv or listening to the radio could be enough to damn me for eternity. This is where I learned to make myself small and it has impacted my life in a very negative way. I became super fearful and so I stopped taking chances/risks and instead tried to stay safe. Safety is good but it can go too far. I believe all success requires being willing to take some risks.
Soon I learned that women were supposed to be quiet in church. Women’s role in family life was to be submissive to the husband and to raise the children. I was never asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I think it was assumed I would be a quiet submissive wife. When I was a little girl I wanted to be a minster. I would line up all my dolls on the sofa along with my stuffed animals and Barbies. We would have church and I would lead the worship and preach the message. At about age 10 I stopped dreaming about what I wanted to be when I grew up. Soon my goals shifted to being an evangelists wife and going to a UPC supported music school. I knew that a good ministers wife needed to know how to sing and play an instrument in order to support her husbands work. I went from being the leading lady to being a support player. Wonder Woman was long out of my reach.
A.C.E. did not help. I attended the church school and those old PACES did not show women doing much other than working with kids. We did not have many great electives to take and the work itself was not inspiring. Most of the time I was bored out of my mind. I went in a bright straight A student and left hating school and just wanting it to be over. No one ever talked to me about college or offered to help me with picking a career. The staff seemed just as miserable as the students. It was not an environment that fostered curiosity, questions, or deep thinking. It was learning by memorization, no real thinking required. Things that could not be taught that way, like algebra turned into a nightmare for me. I am a kinesthetic learner and I love a good discussion. There was no place for any of that within my Christian education. In my late high school years, I toyed with the idea of becoming a teacher but nothing ever came of that dream. The idea of college just became too much to try to figure out in the midst of all of the other things going on in my life. Even being a teacher was a downgrade from another childhood dream of being a doctor. Public school in the 70’s taught me I could be anything, the church and Christian school undid all of that.
Steve Dahl took what little bit of self-esteem I had and crushed it. That experience made me feel dirty and sinful. I had a pretty good body image before he came into my life but that all changed. I started to see my body as a sinful trap that kept ensnaring this godly man. I felt betrayed by my body because at times I enjoyed the attention he gave me. I started to see my body as something that needed to be hidden, controlled and prayed for. I certainly did not feel fearfully and wonderfully made. I did not feel created in god’s image. All of the things that made me a woman seemed evil and wrong. Eve was my mother and well we all know how things went for her.
Age 11
Catching a husband seemed important. I worried about being attractive but not too attractive or attractive in the wrong way. I was half Mexican and so that added an extra level of difficulty. I could not get a straight answer about who it was ok for me to marry. At that time interracial marriage was considered wrong and there were no other Mexicans in our congregation. I felt that my being half Mexican meant I needed to find a Mexican husband, and that seemed like a tall order. I dated Caucasians boys but I always felt the undertone of racism that existed there. I would not be anybody’s first choice. I was tainted by my molestation and the color of my skin. I felt lesser. My parents were not part of the in crowd and that also lead to me feeling like a second-class citizen. It made me feel even smaller.
About 15
Yesterday I was talking with some other survivors about who we could have been had we not grown up in the UPC environment. We all feel like girls interrupted. Our childhood interrupted and corrupted by Calvary Gospel church. Our innocence was stolen. We were not allowed to be kids. The adults always seemed to have their minds in the gutter and so every innocent thing became an opportunity for sin and especially sex to invade our lives, and yet no protection was offered to keep us safe from the real dangers. Predators were protected and supported while victims were scorned and not to be trusted. We received a substandard education and the church seemed to care more about whether or not our skirts had slits than whether or not be could go to college. The adults in my life didn’t seem to care about the lack of food in my home or about the devastation that my abuse caused in my life. If they had done that one thing, protected me from my abuser my life could have been so different. If they had offered loving support and reassurance my life could have been so much better. They took beautiful, bright, and hopeful young girls and turned them into anxious, fearful, and damaged women.
Now as we try to raise awareness about what happened to us all the church can do is scorn us. They can’t seem to understand or they don’t care to see what they have done to us. These things are not things you just move on from it takes hard work, support, and a lifetime of striving to overcome. There isn’t a single one of us who hasn’t been striving to be better no matter what our damage is. We don’t desire to be bitter we desire justice and we hope to save other children from the fate we have suffered. We were girls interrupted but now we are women seeking to bring about change.
Last year my word for the year was restoration. I wanted to go back to the time before I was so afraid. I wanted to see my body as a miracle and a blessing and I wanted to say goodbye to shame once and for all. I worked to remember who I was before my worth was called into question. Last year was a big year. My life has totally changed. I feel like my life has been restored. I’m taking chances again and I’m daring to go after what I want. I’ve stepped out of the shadows and I’ve become more engaged in my community and politics. I’ve been reunited with old friends and found many new friends and supporters. I’ve learned I’m not alone thanks to #metoo/#churchtoo. I am not the person the church might like you to think I am. I’m not bitter, I’m strong. I’m not trying to engage them in spiritual warfare, I’m trying to seek justice for my child self. I’m trying to tell the truth and speak for all of those who cannot speak for themselves. Wonder Woman doesn’t seem so out of reach now.
My mother was a very strong woman. She often worked two jobs and still made the time to do things like refinishing the living room floor. We were very poor for most of my childhood but my mother would not consider asking the government for assistance. In the 70’s it was much easier for men to get out of paying child support and my father very rarely paid anything. Because of her stubborn resistance regarding asking for help, we often were on the edge of losing our housing and we often did not have enough to eat. I would walk home from school at lunch and scoop peanut butter out of the jar because that is all we had. I also have memories of my mother fishing for dinner. If she did not catch anything we did not have dinner. At times she would keep a cooler with milk, bologna, and maybe some kind of fruit. When you don’t have electricity it can be impossible to cook or keep food cold. It wasn’t always that bad but it happened pretty regularly.
Where did her resistance regarding asking for help come from? It can be traced back to her parents and religion. My grandparents were rugged people who believed you should help yourself through hard work and determination. They tended to only associate with others from their church because of fear of the world and the devil’s influence on it. They passed that fear down to my mother. They felt that you never ask the government for assistance and you don’t let them into your life if you can help it. This means don’t call the police unless you are dying and never answer the door for social services. You should never apply for things like food stamps because you would have to fill out government forms, thus giving them info about yourself and because you should be able to help yourself through hard work.
All of this kind of thinking tends to lead to isolation. You cannot ask for help without shame, you can only associate with others from your church, and your church is pretty anti-government. On the surface, it might seem like the UPC is patriotic and pro-government, but that isn’t really the truth. My grandparent’s Assemblies of God church was pretty much the same. Once you are isolated from the community around you all you can do is hope your church will help, in our case that help never came.
I have many memories of sitting on the floor at my grandparent’s house listening to the adults talking. They often talked about the end times and the One World Government. They speculated about who the anti-Christ was and how he would take over the U.S. They talked about the government being able to watch us through our televisions and about how someday they would be able to see through the walls of our homes. They felt we were already being watched. I know this may sound crazy to someone who has not grown up around this stuff but I assure you they believed it all. My mother and her family saw the government as evil and this meant you did not go to them unless you had no other option.
This distaste for the government may have led to my molestation not being reported. Sure the church did not want the bad press of having a molestation case coming out of their church, but there is also a distrust of the government happening there. In the end, the pastor is your government. He makes the rules, punishes the sinners, and decided who rises and who falls. You cannot question him because that is taboo.
1 Chronicles 16:22 “Saying, Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm.”
Anyone could be the anti-Christ. It could even be the U.S. president. He might even be serving right now. With that always being the case then how could you trust the government? It will be the government that eventually gives out the mark of the beast so…you can see where all of the fear comes from. The end result makes pastors into kings of their own little kingdoms. They are not to be questioned and if you do you will soon find yourself out in that cruel world they have warned you about. You will be shunned and subject to a different type of isolation.
All of these beliefs kept my family in poverty and kept my mother suffering for much of her life. It makes me sad that she worked herself to death trying to live and pay medical bills. It makes me angry that her mental illness went untreated for so long because she thought it was sin and not illness causing her depression. If she had not been afraid maybe she could have received help from the county with childcare, food stamps, and medical assistance. How could my life have been different if I had better medical care, enough food so that I could concentrate on school, and childcare so I wouldn’t have to be a latchkey kid? If some of these things had been in place maybe I would have not been such a good target for Steve Dahl. Being with him was an escape from a pretty hard life, at least I knew he would feed me.
Now that I have been networking with my little group of survivors I’m aware of the shame and fear installed into us throughout childhood. As we discuss next actions there is a fear and shame that permeates everything. Even now in adulthood, it can be hard to stand up to those who abused us and caused us so much pain. It can be hard to stand up to the Pastor when you are still afraid of him. I did not realize until I started writing my story that I still feel fear about confronting Pastor Grant and Calvary Gospel.
I was raised in a congregation where women are not believed or supported. Your thoughts, dreams, aspirations, interests, and opinions don’t matter. What matters is obedience. Women are treated like wild animals who need to be caged and trained to be docile and voiceless. You are taught from birth that women brought sin into the world. You are also taught that your body is dangerous and shameful. From a very early age, the responsibility for your body and how it affects others is laid in your hands. Men can’t be expected to control their god given urges but a preteen can be expected to have all of the control in the world. They teach young women that god expects them to be submissive to men and then they say you have to say no and safeguard your body until marriage. This can be very hard when you have men thirty years and older constantly flirting with you and trying to seduce you into giving them whatever they can get. These older men are savvy and they know how to groom their victims. Most of the young girls in this situation have no chance of coming out of the situation without shame. This is the price of being female.
Cover yourself completely, keep men safe from the sight of your knees or collarbone, but be pretty or you will not catch a husband. Having a husband and children is really the only path forward. Make yourself attractive but don’t wear makeup or jewelry because that makes you a Jezabel. Always be planning for marriage but don’t think about boys too much because that is sinful.
There is also fear. Fear of being caught, fear of the abuse continuing, being afraid to report, and the worst of all fears, fear of the judgment of an angry god. I know I lived in fear the entire time I was attending Calvary Gospel. I was afraid that someone would find out what Steve was doing to me. Then I was afraid to tell my pastor, and when I did tell I was afraid of the gossip I knew would come. I was afraid of what kind of embarrassing punishment I might have to endure, and I was afraid that maybe god wouldn’t forgive me. After each abuse, I would run to my room and pray beside my bed. I would cry and ask god to forgive me. I never felt clean. I never felt forgiven.
This was my childhood prayer, words attributed to my childhood hero King David from Psalm 51:
Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.
For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me.
Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest.
Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.
Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.
Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.
Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities.
Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me.
Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit.
Then will I teach transgressors thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto thee.
Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation: and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness.
O Lord, open thou my lips; and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise.
For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.
All of that was a big burden on the heart of a child. We who were abused within the church still carry the shame. The echoes of the crimes committed against us vibrate out even now. They have affected my choices in most areas of my life. Shame coupled with fear kept me in my first marriage for way too long. Both of those things have caused me to strive to keep myself small, under the radar, and uncertain of my worth. It has taken me until the age of 47 to really understand all of this. Who would I have been had someone protected me from this predator? What would I have done with my life had the church supported me and helped me to heal from the abuse? Would I have made better relationship choices, instead of choosing the same bad men over and over again? Would I be able to love my body instead of being at war with it for my whole life? I question myself a lot. I think this comes from not being believed. They did not really believe I was molested they believed I was an adulterer. Women who leave the church due to abuse are often characterized as being crazy, and even if you know you are not crazy it can lead you to distrust yourself.
Now I know I have worth and I try to remind the others like me of their worth. We are not forever broken or tarnished. We are not those little girls anymore. We are grown women, strong survivors who have children of our own. I have to keep reminding myself of that last part. I am a grown woman now and there is a reckoning coming, I intend to hold my abuser accountable and also those who covered up his crime. It might make my heart pound in my chest but I refuse to cower anymore. They might hold the power to make me flinch but I will not let them make me back down, I refuse to let fear and shame win!
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.
Debbie McNulty 