Teens – Debbie McNulty

Calvary Gospel Church, Childhood, Compassion, Depression, Shame, Sin, Uncategorized, United Pentecostal Church

Teen Years

October 5, 2021 Deb M

Part 15

Yes that is me. My face covered in acne and my uncut hair frizzy all over the place. Not exactly the picture of temptation that the church tried to make me feel I was. It was hard to walk the harsh line set in place by the church when all you want to do is get away from all of the adults and explore the world around you. That desire is normal and part of adolescent development. It felt like the harder we tried to be “normal” teens the harder the church tried to bind us closer. Shame was a tactic often used along with the old standby, fear. Pretty much everything that a teen would enjoy doing was off limits to us. This was a very tough time for me. I felt the pull of the “world” and then I felt guilty for desiring what is perfectly normal. Most of the things my friends and I did were so harmless. One thing we enjoyed was going to the movies. Now this was a big no no and so we often felt edgy and like big sinners when we did it. We would have one girl look out for church people and another buy the tickets. All the moves we went to see were G or PG rated. Things like “Pretty in Pink” and Disney movies. At times I would feel so guilty and swear to myself that I would not go again. It really made me feel sinful, but then at the same time the call of teen culture was very hard to resist. It was made harder by the fact that my parents did not see going to the movies as wrong. So I had to be my own spiritual police. I have happy memories of going to these movies with my friends. We would get candy and popcorn and for a little while we could forget the world we lived in. The movie theater was in the mall and one time a woman from the church did see us going in. She kinda waggled her finger at us but she did not tell on us. Interestingly she was also the women who helped my mother pay our light bill that one time. She was always kind to me and I’d like to think that when she saw us her compassion kept her from telling the pastor.

I would often have sleep overs and sometimes I would go to sleep overs. This did not start happening until I was maybe 14 or 15. Some of the more liberal parents would have me over and these same parents would let their daughters sleep over at my house from time to time. It didn’t happen all the time but maybe if one of the girls had a birthday or something like that. My one friend Joann and I would cuddle up on her bed and listen to the radio. Usually to hear this one love song that we liked, “Almost Paradise”. It was 1984 and Footlose was the movie associated with the song. We watched Footlose in the theater and the story resonated with us. We could understand what those kids were going through, a town that outlawed dancing sounded an awful lot like our church. One particular weekend her parents let us go down to the local county fair and we walked around trying to look like everyone else in our skirts and uncut hair. We talked to boys our age, worldly boys, and for one night I felt kinda normal. These boys were not bad boys, they did not try to get us drunk or get us into bed, they just wanted to talk with girls their own age. Looking back I can’t help but comment on the difference between “worldly boys” and church boys/men. I can only speak from my experience, whenever I interacted with boys outside the church they were very sweet to me. They did not try to get into my skirts or lead me down a path away from the church. Usually they just wanted to talk on the phone or watch tv with me. Without exception, every boy I dated within the church tried to be sexual with me in some way. You might say that maybe they thought I was easy because they knew about SD and what happened when I was younger, but it wasn’t just boys from my own church. It also happened with boys I met at church camp and other youth activities. They all wanted one thing, physical intimacy. Some were sweet and innocent in their approach and others were downright grabby. I suspect that this is because of the churches attitude regarding sexuality. You are not supposed to think about it, talk about it, or act on any desires unless you are married. I am not advocating that teens be allowed to run out and have sex, but I do think that pretending that teens are not overrun with hormones and questions about sex is just ignorant. Creating an enviroment where just thinking about it and having questions is frowmed upon causes curiosity to bubble over. I’m about to make a rather blunt statement that could be viewed as controversial, but by now I think if you’re still reading you’re expecting my opinions to be this way. I think the church watched young teen (and in some cases pre-teen)girls being courted by adult men way too old to be trying to gain the attention of these teens. I believe many in leadership thought it better that these teens be courted by adult men than boys their own age outside the church. The boys outside the UPC were seen as bad influences but the adult men trying to sleep with teen girls were seen as safe choices. When I was a teen I had five or so dating options within my church. You are not supposed to date outside the UPC and long distance dating often did not last. If you did not like the boys in your immediate area you would just have to pray God would bring the right boy at the right age into your church. When I say 5 or so options that was including at least one boy who some would argue was too old for me. I was attracted to older guys, like in their 20s but luckily for me none of them bothered me too much. That being said it is normal for teen girls to get crushes on guys who are too old for them. These church guys are dressed nice, they smell better than teen boys, and they are just more mature. The trouble comes in when the adult men are paying too much attention to these girls. What teen girl within the church would want to date an akward teen boy vs a handsome man who is also manipulating her? You watch them in church, these men, and they are all putting on a godly show, and so you think you will be safe with them. Then when they get you alone it is another story. This is complicated by the fact that females are expected to guard everyone’s purity. It doesn’t matter if you’re 11 and he is 29. Even though these men are fully grown adults they are often seen as the victims.

I dated, if you can call walking around together at camp dating, a few boys. For the most part they were all preachers kids. All of them were pretty experienced sexually. They all wanted to find a dark corner to kiss and pet in. It almost seemed like they had something to prove. I don’t blame them, they were young like me and trying to figure out the world. They probably suffered being a preacher’s kid, I’m sure that road had to be a tough one. As strict as the church was regarding sexuality, as much as they tried to ignore it and pretend sex wasn’t happening, it was going on all around them. I’ve said this before, I think the UPC has a sex problem. I feel the more you try to ignore something the bigger it becomes. I think that had they just been willing to speak more openly about it that might have acted as a release valve.

I fell in love or what I thought was love. I was 16 and there was a part of me that thought I might marry this boy. What I witnessed within the church is people date and then they get married. We actually dated a couple of times, once when I was about 15 and we got back together when I was 16. We spent a lot of time together and talked on the phone every night. He was the one, I was sure. In the end he broke my heart. This might sound silly and trite but it was awful. I sat by him at school, we had assigned seats, and our world was so small I could not escape him. It did not help that he started dating my nemesis the next day. I want to be clear that we were teens and I’m not trying to drag either of these people for who they are now. When he broke up with me he said this, “I’m breaking up with you because I cannot keep my hands off of you.” I admit we did make out a lot. Up until this point he had never mentioned it being an issue, in fact he was the driver in that part of our relationship. I said yes to his advances because I thought that is was what I had to do to keep a boyfriend. We never had sex, I’m pretty sure I would have said no to that. I wanted to save myself for marriage, but heavy petting I would allow. I can’t say that I blame him now he was a boy trying to figure things out too. His mother, the dreaded church secretary, hated me and I’m sure she reminded him often that she did not approve of our relationship. At least a couple of times I heard her say things that were pretty unkind regarding me, I believe she wanted me to hear. My nemesis was the direct opposite from me. She was white, blondish brown hair, and her dad was an elder. They had money and now he is a minister within the church. She was a golden child. This doesn’t mean she did not do all of the things I did, it meant that people didn’t care. Only the lower classes get held to the strict standards. They can turn a blind eye if you are the right kind of person, much like my abuser SD.

When this relationship ended it broke something inside of me. Seeing him walking around with my oh so perfect nemesis was almost unbearable. It was a final “fuck you” from the church or that is how it felt. This was the start of a long time period of almost constant shut down or dissociation for me. The first thing I did was I found the baddest boy (actually he was a man within the church) I could and I started to date him. His name was Mike and he was a known problematic church member. He was in his early 20’s and I was 16. BTW, no one ever questioned our age difference and no one ever checked in with me or counselled me about it. Mike had been in and out of the church as long as I could remember. I had known him since I was a preteen. He has done time and I think he just recently got out of jail. He was a drug dealer and user and felt like the most dangerous choice on the menu. He would attend church and rededicate his life to God and then backslide. I ran into him on the backslide and we became an item. He started coming to church with me and I reveled in the looks of disapproval. It wasn’t his age that was the issue, it was his sinfulness. Members of his family were part of the “in” circle so that meant they cut him a little slack but I don’t think anyone trusted him or believed his godliness would stick. We would sit together in church and then he would take me back to his place. I would watch him and his friends play guitar and smoke weed. I felt bad like I had switched sides and now I was walking in darkness. He took my virginity and I did not care. It felt like something to be crossed off a list. They think I’m a slut so I will be a slut! It wasn’t about enjoying the sex, I didn’t, it was about giving up and giving into my destiny. I was destined to be rejected by God and hell was all that was awaiting me. I conflated the church’s rejection with God’s.

Mike learned one thing from the church and he learned it well, women are property. Even though he smoked weed and drank he would never let me partake. He said that he had to protect me. This might sound sweet to some people but trust me it was not. He was very critical of everything I did and more than a little jealous. It soon became clear to me that I was his Madonna figure. When he finally got his life straightened out he would marry me and be a good Christian man. He had to preserve me for that moment. Just like SD would rail at me when I was 11 Mike would rail at me about our sinful behavior. When he was backslidden he would want and expect sex but when he was trying to be a Christian he would tell me what an evil temptress I was. He would write me long letters about how bad I was and he would even break things off with me, then a week later he would be begging me to give him another chance. I showed my friends some of his letters and they started to tell me that they thought he was psycho. His letters would sometimes be 7 to 10 pages of handwritten text, double sided, on notebook paper. He was a musician and so he would often include song lyrics. “…American woman, get away from me, American woman, mama let me be. Don’t come knockin around my door, don’t want to see your face no more. Colored lights can hypnotize, sparkle someone else’s eyes…” “Been dazed and confused for so long it’s not true, wanted a woman never bargained for you. Lots of people talk and few of them know, the soul of a woman was created below…” Now I had not been exposed to these kinds of songs. Yes, I did enjoy popular music but it was the 80’s and when I snuck to listen to the radio it was Madonna not Led Zeppelin I was tuning into. I started to become afraid of him. Eventually it was me who ended things. He did not let go easily. In fact he stalked me at my job, and had to be removed by my boss at one point. His excuse was that I was his virgin. He deserved to own me because he took my virginity. I get where this idea came from. In our church if you were single and caught having sex you had to get married. That was the right thing to do. Once he had sex with me it was his duty and right to marry me…eventually. In the meantime I had to wait for him to figure his life out. He would show up at my house and question me about who I had been with and what we had been doing. Eventually he faded away.

Often Mike would not attend church with me and so I would go alone. I still went to everything but I became as silent as the grave. I no longer went out after church with my friends and I no longer sat with anyone. My close friends would look at me with worry, this was a constant after my big relationship ended. My friends, teenage girls, stopped talking to him and even left the room if he entered. At school none of them would sit with him and eventually I got in trouble for it. I was told to call off my dogs more or less. The thing is they did this all on their own, a little rebellion because of the unfairness of everything. My closest friends were girls of color and also poor. They knew the score. I never told them to do anything, I was too broken. I think they were afraid. I was always the strong one and I just checked out. I stopped socializing at school, I stopped eating, and I stopped sitting with them at church. It came as no surprise to me that I was blamed. Eventually our principal called all of us older kids into a room and demanded that everyone be nice to him. We were a family and it was not ok to be angry at him for his choices, he was after all one of the chosen kids.

As you might expect, none of the adults around me, not even my youth pastor asked me if I was ok. I went from sitting in the 3rd row to sitting in the back by the door. I stopped opening my Bible during church and I stopped singing. I was defeated. I was tired and very depressed. I was going through the motions after years of struggle. I dissociated much of the time I was at church and I had become a shell of my former self. I know I have shared with you things that some might see as sinful, I see them as normal teen struggles. During the time I was a teen I also worked hard to serve within the church. I tried hard to be a good kid and I wanted God’s love and mercy, I just never felt like I could attain it. I would go to camp and be so uplifted and then I would come home to my own church and the feelings of depression and defeat would return. I kept pushing on despite my pain until I had to leave out of self preservation. That is a story for another day.

Childhood, Sexual Abuse, United Pentecostal Church

Trying To Understand

January 22, 2018 Deb M

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bible Quizzing, Childhood, United Pentecostal Church

Bible Quizzing

January 4, 2018 Deb M

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

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

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

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

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

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