In a previous chapter I spoke about how there was an uncurrent of sexual tension within the church. Along with that there was an emphasis on money. I can remember many times hearing about how it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. I heard that message over the pulpit and in Sunday School class. It was a popular message so you might be inclined to believe that money was not important within the church but you would be wrong. Wealth was often on display and as a kid I knew that I was poor in comparison to others. I do not blame anyone for having more money than we did but I have to question how those with more treated those with less. Calvary Gospel did not teach prosperity gospel in the way that we think of it now but the seeds of that teaching could be seen. The message my mother and others received was that if you had your life right with God you would be blessed and if you did not have enough resources to survive you should look toward your relationship with God. This was a tough pill for me to swallow. I prayed all the time in order to fix our poverty problem. I repented constantly and asked God to bless my faith and nothing really changed much for us. Even during the good times we lived in conditions most people would not tolerate. I also observed my mother’s incredible work ethic. She worked hard until her body couldn’t do it anymore. Her jobs were physical and then she would come home and work to try to make our home more liveable. For many years she prayed and prayed and I have to wonder if she just gave up and maybe that is why she stopped attending church.
I know my mother felt like she never had clothing good enough for that church. Growing up she always told me to wear my best for church because in doing so I was showing God respect. Once we started attending Calvary Gospel there was the added pressure to wear clothing that fit within their holiness standards. When my mother started to get sick she started to gain weight. She was on a lot of steroids. This made finding the right clothing even harder. There were not many shops where she could find affordable items that fit and also were in line with holiness standards. This became even harder once she became pregnant with my brother. She would tell me that she felt dumpy and embarrassed when she went to services. As far as class goes our family was at the very bottom. My mother had married a Mexican, my father, and they looked down on her for that. Then she divorced so that was another strike. She worked a job that required her to wear pants and then just because she decided to cut her hair. The fact that we were poor and it showed only pushed us farther down the ladder. Before I was making a little money babysitting my clothing was really awful. My mother pretty much only bought me clothing second hand. During one of our toughest times financially I only had three acceptable outfits and I wore them in rotation. My pantyhose, a requirement, often had runs and I was constantly trying to fix them with clear nail polish and hairspray. I almost missed out on a field trip for the honor roll because my school shoes had a hole in them. These shoes had been leaking water in making my pantyhose wet for weeks but now the hole was so bad I could no longer hide it.
When I was a young adult I attended a Southern Baptist church. One of the things they did really well was giving to those in need. They had a fund set aside in case a member lost their job or fell on hard times in some other way. I was so surprised to see the way they gave to and supported one another. It was not at all like what I grew up with. My memory of Calvary Gospel is of a congregation devoid of compassion. Sure there were flickers now and then but as a whole if you were struggling you were on your own. They were surely not going to sell their possessions and take up their crosses.
Earlier I wrote about how those with money did not treat those without money very well. If you did not have money you might be perceived as not having your house in order and so people might not include you in social gatherings. You would probably only have friends who were of the same class as you. My mother sat in a section of the church where many socially disadvantaged families sat. As I’m writing this it has come to me how most of the poor families and people of color sat on one side and then those who had higher status tended to sit on the other side. Many of the unpopular would sit near the back and then many of the people of color sat towards the front but on the same side.
In order to be truly close to God you needed to have high hair, nice clothing, and drive a nice car. It helped if you were white and attractive. Giving large sums of money to the church was also important. Tithing was important but then there was giving to missionaries, building funds, and paying for your child to attend the church’s school. It seemed never ending, they were always asking for something. My parents just did not have the money to fit in. Even if everything else about us had been different it would not have mattered because of the money.
When I started making a little money from babysitting and my father was doing well enough to give me a little money I started to buy clothing. Having nice dresses was all that mattered to me. It made it so much easier for me to fit in and at least feel like I looked like everyone else. I could pretend for a little while that I was just like them and then I’d have to go home to my mother’s house and it did not take long before I was reminded of who I really was.
A while back a fellow survivor said something to me that I cannot stop thinking about. She described the church we grew up in as having a caste system. A caste system is a cultural structure where your class is determined by birth. So if you’re born a certain race or in a certain social economic class you cannot escape it. I believe this is true for people within Calvary Gospel. I think I was keenly aware of it during my childhood. No matter what I did right I would never rise above the poverty and race of my family. Plus I had this sin stain on me like a scarlet letter. They would really never let you forget who you were in their eyes. Small daily occurrences would remind you of your place. If you were born into the right family you could get away with almost anything. If you were not then the hot spotlight of shame and humiliation would be shone on you. I was never spanked at school but many others were. The “right” kids never got spanked, but if you were a poor child or a child of color your chances of being whacked went up considerably. One little girl comes to mind. She was a beautiful child and very high strung. She was not a child of color but came from an economically disadvantaged family with an unpopular mother. She was spanked a lot. She was not the kind of child you would expect to sit in a tiny office all day staring at the wall but that did not matter. She was bright and full of energy! I got the feeling that most of the adults working within the church and school did not like her and I always felt sadness for her. I babysat for her and her siblings and never really had any issues. I think she just needed to burn off steam, she may have been hyperactive, for sure she was not getting what she needed from the school. Hers is a common story. The perceived sins of the parents rolled down unto the children and for those of us at the bottom of the food chain things could feel pretty cold at times. At least I was old enough to understand in some ways why things were happening to me but I feel for the little ones who had no clue.
Sometimes I felt like a workhorse. I was a smart kid and driven by ambition. We never associated with other schools even within the UPC. There were no plays to try out for or academic meets to compete in. If you were into sports you were out of luck because the church wasn’t big on sports. Don’t cheer for a team, cheer for Jesus! We did not have band or music lessons outside of singing in the youth choir. Then came Bible Quizzing. I do not remember how quizzing was introduced to our congregation but I joined up right away. I was the captain of our Senior Bible quiz team the entire time I was on the team. The UPC had two levels of quizzing back then, junior and senior. Elementary kids would be on the junior team and then the older kids would compete on the senior level. I never quizzed as a junior because we did not have teams when I was at that age. The UPC is pretty picky about what translation of the Bible you can use. The church of my childhood only read and studied from the King James Version. To this day any other version just doesn’t sound like the Bible to me. Before we ever had a quiz team I knew that I was special because I could read the King James version better than other kids my age. I had been reading above grade level since I started to read. I won big parts in the Christmas programs because I could read the text better. In some ways this raised my status. Normally being brown and poor would have kept me out of the spotlight. At times I would be disappointed because I wanted to be a shepherd or angel, but instead I had to stand at the podium and read. One year for Easter I was allowed to play the part of a Pharisee. I got some laughs from the congregation and it was really fun. When we started quiz teams I quickly rose to the top because of my strong reading and the fact that I could memorize scripture very easily. I worked hard at whatever I did. That hard work and dedication made me the best candidate for captain.
I have many happy memories of quizzing. I won trophy after trophy and that really built up my confidence. I felt needed and enjoyed the experience of being part of a team, that was the good part. There was a dark side, because of course there was. My coach Perry drove me very hard. He put expectations on me that he did not come close to putting on the other kids. I feel he liked all of the attention we were receiving from the church leadership as we traveled around the state racking up wins. Soon winning became everything and the pressure on me as captain of the team was very high. I feel Perry knew that I was pretty much a free range child and no one was going to complain if I was driven to exhaustion. He was completely without empathy or compassion. As time went on I became more aware of his attitude towards me and it was heartbreaking. In the beginning I felt very accepted by him and his wife Connie. We traveled the state together and it felt good to get praise and a sense of belonging from adults. By the time it was over I felt like a tool that had outlived its usefulness.
I was really struggling with algebra during this time. I went to Perry and told him I needed help. I could not manage all of the verses he wanted me to memorize and get through the math homework I was saddled with. I would cry alone in my room trying to get the story problems right knowing that I had hours of memorization to complete. Not to mention all of the scripture memorization that had to happen for my school work. Something had to give and school always came first. At this point he was having me memorize all of my chapters and when that was complete circle around and memorize everyone else’s material. He told me as captain I had to be able to answer every question that might come up, I mean what if someone gets sick? He did not have much confidence in my teammates and so the pressure all fell on me. Each team had three main players at the table and could have two substitutes waiting behind them. One season we memorized Paul’s epistles and each of us had an “equal” number of chapters to memorize. At one time I had most of them committed to memory. You were required to answer the questions verbatim and any wrong word would mean not getting points. It amazes me to think of it now! What if I had been encouraged to use that power to learn and memorize more useful things? What could I have done?
I was a little afraid to talk to Perry about my problems but I made myself do it. At this point I was 15 and I was trying to handle things in an adult manner. I figured I just need to have an adult heart to heart with him. He would see how much I had thought about it and how troubled I was and surely help me out. I told him I needed a lighter load because I really needed to focus on my school issues. As you might expect I did not get any help or permission to rest from him. Scowling at me he reminded me of how important my role was and told me I just needed to dig deep and work harder. At first I did not push back and walking away my load felt even heavier than when I first sat down with him.
As time marched on, the stress of a number of things started to add up. Perry was not a very nice guy and over time this became very apparent. He was controlling and could really behave like a brute. He was ex-military and it showed. He treated his wife like a servant and would berate her in front of us. She was a gentle soul, the perfect submissive wife. By this time there was a tiny flame of anger always burning within me. I would watch how he behaved and it made me want to lose the quiz meets. I did not want to win for him. Two things happened that I believed pushed me to the edge. One was I got sick. I mean really sick the night before an out of town quiz meet. I was running a high fever and I had a very painful sore throat. It came out of nowhere. My mother had bundled me up in front of the t.v. and told me there was no way I could compete the next day. I cried, sobbed, all of the pressure running out of me. I was falling apart and this meant she had to act. She called Perry and told him I was really sick and couldn’t compete. He asked to speak to me. I’m sure just to verify that I sounded sick. He told me he would have the whole church pray and he was sure I would be fine the next day. At that moment I didn’t care. My head was so hot and my whole body ached. I was healed! Well kinda, the next day my fever broke and my sore throat was much better. I was still running a low grade fever and coughing, my body hurt everywhere and I was exhausted but my recovery was good enough to call it a miracle for the team. I won that day and it was all due to the power of prayer. Perry saw it as another sign that my being on the team was God’s will.
Next came my worst day as the team captain. We went to Sturtevant Wisconsin for an important competition and I almost refused to show up to play. I was getting towards the end of my ability to be around him. He had yelled at his wife the night before for something that was clearly his fault. I was so embarrassed for her and I told him he was being a jerk. This kind of behavior was unheard of for a young woman of my age, and he yelled at me and told me I was being rebellious. That was a serious accusation in my church. Witches were rebellious and we all know what the Bible says about witches.
“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” Exodus 22:18
I ran up to the room I was staying in and sobbed with hot anger. I turned on my little radio to the most sinful music I could find, Rock You Like A Hurricane by Scorpions. I could not play it loudly so I had to press my ear to the speaker. I had so much pent up rage. Being angry was just not done by women and I had been storing mine for a long long time. A couple of my teammates came in and talked me down. They convinced me to play the next day. They all witnessed how Perry behaved and they agreed with me even if they did not have the courage to speak up. We all sat there in silence. The room filled with tension and a sense of hopelessness. I went to the meet the next day but my heart wasn’t in it. I was a zombie. I recognize this feeling even now. I get very still and expressionless. It’s like I just shut down. I did not answer many questions that day and many adults asked me if I was ok. It was obvious I was not, Perry was livid, and I just wanted to run away. Little did I know that was one of my last games. Soon after I quit. Perry was not ok with my choice but had little power to stop me. After that he turned most of his focus to the junior team and I started to fade away. I’m proud of my young self for setting boundaries. This brave action set my feet on the path of leaving.
The exhibition game. When our team first started to compete it became apparent that I was a force to be reckoned with. There was only one person in the state who could beat me and another who was always at my heels. Perry got this idea in his head that it would be good for us to have an exhibition game with some of the ministers from our congregation. At first this idea excited me because I thought it would be a chance for me to compete with people who should know all of this material better than me, a real competition! Sadly it did not turn out that way. They did not require the ministers to follow the rules of how the game was played and they basically rigged it for them to win. I was so angry and I’m sure it showed. I have little ability to hide my true feelings. My face always reveals what is happening inside. It also became clear to me that they did not know the Bible as well as I did. Perry thought that I enjoyed showing them up a little too much and told me to remain humble. At the time it was just another way the church reminded me of my place. Now I know that we really won but they could not allow a female-led teen quiz team to beat the anointed of God. This is just another way they stole my joy and made me feel that any pride that I might have was wrong.
In the end, I was encouraged to win but to not ask questions. I digested the scripture and tried to understand it. I would ask questions and often the answer would be that I could ask Jesus in heaven. My questions only generated more questions in my mind. Scripture just didn’t add up and all of my questioning made me a troublemaker. They couldn’t or were unwilling to see that I wanted to know God, they saw it as questioning God. As I got older I developed the opinion that I knew more about the Bible than many of our ministers did. This did not help me to respect them. They did not see my intellect as a blessing but instead looked down on me because of it. This made me feel really bad about myself. It made me question why God had created me this way. On the other hand, it feels good to know that you are smart and so I was always conflicted.
I see Bible Quizzing as just another way the church sucked all of the joy out of my life. I found this thing that I was really good at and it made me proud of myself. For a moment I felt some self worth. When we would travel the quiz masters would always have kind words for me and they would encourage me to keep going. Because of Perry’s pride and selfishness I was driven too hard and I eventually quit. I lost out on the joy of what I loved to do because Perry could not accept anything less than 110%. By the way, he only demanded that from me. I think the other kids had parents who would have put a stop to that intensity but he knew mine would be hands off. Once I left Perry stopped talking to me. When my usefulness was spent I was invisible to him.
Growing up half Mexican and attending Calvary Gospel was an odd experience at times. There were people who seemed to view me as white and then there were others who made it clear that they saw me as a person of color. The Grant’s real feelings about things were never spoken of over the pulpit and so when I was confronted with them it always surprised me. An adult once told me that the church did not believe in interracial marriage. When I asked about the people who I knew had interracial children I was told that if you were in an interracial marriage before you were saved it was ok. Hmmm ok, even as a kid that seemed off to me. As a person not seen as white or black I lived in this weird out of place world where I felt I did not fit in anywhere. Plus no one would give me straight answers about where I fit in, everything was communicated in looks and second-hand information.
Darlene Grant pastor Grant’s wife never spoke to me, I mean never, unless she was delivering criticism. If she said something to me regarding the school or the youth choir there was always a sharp edge to it even when there was no need for it. She communicated her dislike with every glance and I was left to wonder what I could have done to deserve her attitude. I suspect it had to do with Steve Dahl but who knows it could have been for a multitude of reasons.
Once or twice a year our church would be visited by a very popular evangelist. His name was Brother Hightower. He was very animated and funny and everyone loved it when he would pass through town with his family. He would pack the house and the altar would be filled with people. These revivals would last for up to two weeks and they had the feel of a festival. Less boring than a normal church service because they were more fun and more high energy. This particular event happened when I was about 13 years old. The Hightowers were in town and they brought their son who was the same age as me. The whole family was very sweet to me. It was clear that they did not view me the same way the Grants seemed to. Their son was kind of sweet on me and he would ask to sit by me and my friends during church. His mother was very strict about behavior during church but she didn’t seem to mind him sitting with us. One day he asked me if he could have my phone number and I said sure. We liked each other but it was strictly a very puppy love situation. He was only in town for a couple of weeks and I imagine it was hard to travel with your parents and not have any friends your age around. Somehow the Grants got wind of him asking for my phone number and I bet you can imagine how that went over.
One night after church Sister Grant sat down next to me. She asked if she could speak to me for a moment. This sent my heart up into my chest because she never came bearing good news. She informed me that I was not to sit next to my new friend anymore and if he called me I shouldn’t talk to him. She also forbid me to explain to him why I was no longer speaking to or sitting with him. Better to just cut it all off, because in her words, “We do not believe the way they do.” I couldn’t tell him why because it might offend them and pastor Grant did not want that to happen. So she laid in my lap rejecting the friendship of this sweet boy and forbid me to explain thus making me feel like a monster. She did not care how this action would make me look to him or his family. She was expecting me to be a mean girl in order to save her and pastor Grant from having the adult conversation they should have had with the Hightowers if that was so important to them. I will take this time to remind you that I was 13.
It felt like what they were saying is, you are too brown to be white, but too light to be black. They would not have wanted me to marry their son, but they also did not want me to be friends with this black boy who was infatuated with me. Can you see how this was all so confusing to me? I also feel that they thought this black family was good enough to come and minister/entertain them and their congregation but they were not good enough to have an honest conversation with or to “mix” with too much. They did not bring this situation to my parents they plopped it into my lap and left me feeling like I had once again done something really wrong. Over time I would see this kind of attitude play out over and over. Church kids (mostly white) don’t really mix with Sunday school bus kids even if those kids had been attending for years. I would befriend these mostly black kids because I worked the bus route and they were my age. By choosing this action I was ensuring even more side-eyes from the adults around me. Eventually, you get to the point where you recognize that no matter what you do they will look at you that way so you just give up.
I know that the church has changed some over the years. I am only speaking regarding my experience. As a side note, before the Hightowers left Sister Hightower pulled aside and told me that if I was ever in their hometown I was welcome in their home anytime. She smiled sweetly to me and I had the feeling she could see what was really going on. That gave me some relief from the shame I was feeling, shame that did not belong to me but to the adults in this twisted situation.
As my story has become more known I’m hearing many stories from others who attended the church of my childhood. These stories are heartbreaking and have torn me up inside. I have wept tears for all of the girls who have been so hurt by this congregation and Pastor. I am aware that the little flame of my adolescence is still alive and burning within me. I want to do something to stop this from continuing to happen, I just don’t know what to do. Maybe that has always been the issue, I have never known what to do about it. In the end, it is my word against theirs and there are many more of them. For now, I’m going to keep telling my story and I intend to help others who have been hurt by this church. Their stories are not mine to tell, but if they decide to tell their truth I will offer this blog as a space to do that work. I will stand beside them as they tell their stories and help in any way that I can.
I have been trying to understand how this congregation seems to cultivate an atmosphere of older men preying on younger women/girls. It seems to both cultivate that and draw that type of man in. I’m sure that the teachings of women being submissive doesn’t help. If you have read my other entries you know I was molested by a man 20 years my senior. Not only did he molest me but he also molested at least 1 other teen. When I really sit and think about it, I was hit on by older men all the time. They flirted a lot and no one seemed alarmed that 2o something men would be hanging out and flirting with someone between the ages of 11-16. The age gaps were not always 20 years but they were still not appropriate.
When I was very young, again about 11 or 12 (They really started that young) both boys my age and older men started to notice me. I was an early bloomer physically so I could see how a man on the street might misunderstand my age, but these men in the church knew how old I was. I’m not complaining about the innocent attention of the boys my age. I remember having notes passed to me during church telling me how pretty I was, that is a sweet memory of sweet boys. I’m talking about grown men hanging out with young girls, flirting, and sometimes more.
I was 16 when I first had sex. The man I was dating at that point was 25. Let that sink in…he was a regular church attendee and 25 years old. Everyone knew we were dating and they knew I was 16. No one ever said boo to me about it. It was just accepted. This was a man who I had known for most of the time I attended that church. We continued to date after I left the church. He would swing back and forth between being out and being in. When I broke up with him he stalked me for a short time and even told me that I was his virgin in God’s eyes, therefore I could not break up with him. Thankfully I had a manager at the restaurant I was working at who told him to leave alone. He told him not to come in anymore and to stop following me. It worked but the pattern had been set because the next guy I dated was also 25. It seemed normal to me. As I look back on it now I have to wonder how my youth leaders and the pastor did not see the problem with a teenager dating someone who was a legal adult. I always thought I was the exception to the rule, but now after hearing other stories, I find that I am a part of the rule. As a young person, I thought that my pastor and congregation just did not like me enough to protect me. I knew I had faith and so it did not make sense why God did not answer my prayers and why he did not protect me. I thought there was something wrong with me. I wondered if I was being punished for my parents’ sins. I wondered if God just couldn’t forgive me for what Steve did to me. Somewhere in my gut I knew dating a man that age was not acceptable by societies standards, but no one in my life seemed too worried about it.
Another more mild example of what I’m talking about involves a man who was 19 when I was 11. Again not a 20-year difference but still not ok. He would flirt with me and he tried to give me expensive gifts like a new watch on my birthday. My mother put her foot down about that one, but not because of his age. He was black and my mother was as racist as the rest of them. She would not have a black man giving me gifts or attempting to court me. He never laid a finger on me but he was always around, sitting too close, and trying to give me things and trying to keep my attention. I think he gave me flowers at one point. Now that I have raised 4 children I can say that there is no way I would have let any of my kids date a 19-year-old when they are only 11. Wallace and I never “dated” but I had no doubt about how he felt and if my mother had not scared him away who knows what would have happened.
This one experience has been stuck in my head for days. There was a young woman in my church who was the daughter of one of the elders. She was a few years older than I. She never really dated much and when she got engaged it happened really fast. The guy was older and I think she was a senior in high school, or just graduated. When they announced the engagement during a church service the pastor made a big deal about questioning this guy regarding his intentions. He made this big speech about how she had grown up in the church and how everyone felt responsible for her happiness etc… He jokingly (did not really seem like a joke) told the guy that he had better treat her right because the men in the church would come get him if he did not. I find it weird (or maybe not given what I now understand) that the pastor made a big show of being protective of this young woman but then could care so little about what happened to me and others. I think I know why first off her parents were elders and lifelong friends with the pastor and his wife. She was white and her parents gave the church money for years. Her mother was the church secretary for all of my childhood. She was part of church royalty. It seems to me that if you are related to the pastor, close friends, you give lots of money, or you are an elder you are treated as church royalty. Everyone else is just commoners. As a young person watching the pastor give this speech, I could not help but feel how low I was in importance.
I think that is it for today. I have so much more I want to share with you all and I’m sure I will have another post before the end of the week. Please feel free to ask questions. My thoughts are kind of jumbled and so if I was unclear in any way I am sorry.
Since I started blogging about my experiences within the UPC church people have been asking me how I left. I think of it as death by a million cuts. As my teen years went along things became more and more obvious to me. The hypocrisy and racism were pretty hard to ignore. The only man of color in a real leadership position had that position because he was an amazing worship leader. I felt because he performed for them they honored him with elder status. Most of the people of color in our congregation were poor and ignored or shunned. My pastor taught that interracial marriage was unacceptable unless you came into the church already married that way. My dad was from Mexico which made me only half white in their eyes. When I asked the adults around me who it would be ok for me to marry they mostly shrugged at me. You might think this was signaling that I could date who I wanted but you would be wrong. Some of the boys I dated had parents who did not care that I was half Mexican, others flat-out told their boys to stay away from me for that reason. My pastor never talked about this issue from the pulpit, it was more understood and whispered about. It was assumed. I’ve got many stories about racism within that congregation and I’m sure I will share them with you eventually.
Molestation. My being a molestation victim meant that I was branded as a slut. Remember I said it was treated as adultery. Again carried out mostly in whispers, but every once in a while blurted out and those times were pretty painful. I was a super Christian in those days, trying to be perfect in order to gain God’s acceptance. Some people were kind but for the most part, I had a scarlet letter pinned to my chest and they would never let me take it off. This also impacted my dating experiences. Boys would tell me about the lectures their fathers gave them regarding falling into sin with me.
Being a bright kid and knowing what the Bible said meant that I could see the cracks. I could see that the rich had more of a voice. I could see the lack of forgiveness and compassion. I could see how many of the men in positions of authority treated their wives badly. As time went on I could barely stomach being in church. I went from sitting as close to the front as possible to sitting in the last pew refusing to sing or follow along in my Bible. Weirdly none of the adults in my life seemed to be alarmed by this. No one could see me drifting away, or if they did they did not care.
At this point, my mother was married to an alcoholic. She met and married a man who had joined the church. As soon as they were married they both stopped attending altogether. Some of this is because my mother’s remarriage caused a big scandal within the church. The pastor gave his blessing because my mother divorced due to adultery on my father’s part. Because this wasn’t a well-known fact a few of the older women in the congregation brought it up at a church business meeting and made a big stink. Also, not everyone agreed on when it was ok to divorce and remarry, they would defer to the pastor but that did not stop them from gossiping. It got ugly and my mother never forgot how they treated her. Because my stepdad was a drinker I ended up moving in with my biodad. My dad was basically never home. He spent most nights with his girlfriend and so I was living alone. Neither of my parents were involved in my church life and they were both too involved with their own lives to parent me. So the decision to leave was all mine.
You might remember that I quit the quiz team and my coach was very unhappy about it. Soon after that, our church built a huge new building and the school moved with the church. This new building was way out in the country where there is no city bus service. For many years I carpooled to school and when I couldn’t do that I took a city bus. Many of the older kids with cars had graduated and the one monitor I could catch a ride with was no longer working at the school. So basically I had no way to get to school. I started to ask around and it became clear that I was not going to be able to ride with anyone. I tried to meet with my school principal and he always seemed too busy to sit down with me. With no parent to help me deal with this, I felt stuck. Finally, on the Sunday night, before school started, I tracked down my principal and told him about my problem. I explained to him that I had no way to get to school. I also told him that because I was living with my dad I had access to a public school within two blocks of my home. He argued with me about what a bad idea going to public school was, but he also offered me no solution or help. I tried to be nice at first and I explained to him my position and argued that all of my Christian education had prepared me to be out in the world. By the way, I only had one year left so I would have been out in the world by the next spring. After going around and around he started to get very heated with me, almost desperate sounding. I was confused, what did he want me to do? He told me that he suspected if I walked out that door to attend public school I would end up in hell. This infuriated me, and I cracked. Remember I wrote before about that little flame that had been kindled in my adolescent heart, well now it was ablaze and threatening to burn the room down.
I did not say another word to him as my heart felt like it might explode out of my chest. I tried to get out of the building as quickly as possible. My dad had agreed to pick me up after church so I knew he was waiting in the parking lot. As a side note, not only could I not get to school but the church was basically out of my reach too unless I rode the Sunday school bus. I lived at the church so this would cut out all of my activities except Sunday morning service. As I was storming out a friend tried to stop me and asked if I was ok. I looked at him and the words “I’m never coming back” slipped out of my mouth. I knew it was true, but I only knew it in that moment. It felt like time stopped. He was my age and we had been close since age 8. He knew what I had been through and just looked at me with very sad eyes.
I never went back. I was done with them but God still haunted me for over a decade. I tried many churches and eventually ended up at a Southern Baptist church. That is a story for another day. What I’m about to say is probably the saddest part of this post. No one ever came looking for me. No one called to see why I disappeared. No one sent me a card or stopped by my home. They did gossip about me. I ran into someone years later who asked about my child. I did not have a child. The story was that I left because I became pregnant and was ashamed. Of course, that is what they thought. The truth is, I gave birth to my first child at 22 after being married for two years. Even in my angry state I was shocked that I did not hear from any of them. I was involved in many ministries, didn’t they wonder what happened? I had many adult friends, to this day none of that makes sense to me.
Thankfully I started my first real job and I met some really friendly kids. I also made friends in public school. I learned that the world was not as scary as they taught me. All the monsters came from the church and my mind. Hell, the rapture and the antichrist lingered on the edges of my mind. I’m 47 years old and have not gone to church since my late 20’s, at least three times a year I have nightmares about the rapture. They show up by surprise and make me feel uneasy for days. I have anxiety issues and all it takes is seeing the wrong image or hearing the wrong thing and I have flashbacks. The seeds planted in my childhood were seeds of abuse. Every time I think I have beaten the monster in my head he finds another way to get to me. The good news is I am free now! I have found a religion that is less toxic and I’m grateful that the Universe guided me out of that pit of vipers.
Debbie McNulty 