Part 13
I attended an Accelerated Christian Education school or A.C.E. If I could change one thing about my childhood after taking SD out of the picture I would change my educational experience. It would have been better to stay at my public middle school and get beaten up every day rather than spend one day at Calvary Christian Academy. Going to school there has impacted my life in nothing but negative ways. A.C.E. was big on being in the world but not of the world and so they tended towards isolationism. We never socialized with people who were not in the UPC church, so I believe it made sense to them that they should have their own school to further ensure isolation. I was really excited to start school there. My mother’s friend Juanita went to work making my uniforms which was a relief because we did not have much money for school clothing. This was supposed to make things easier. In one way wearing a uniform made it less obvious that we did not have money, in another way it created an additional stressor each fall. We had to find someone to make me a uniform and over time more and more that responsibility fell on me. I hated those uniforms. They were ugly polyester and uncomfortable. The worst part is they made us stick out like a sore thumb. I’m sure we looked like a crazy cult whenever we went out in public for a field trip. They were supposed to equalize the students. Wearing the uniform was supposed to take away competition over clothing and put the focus onto learning. It did not really work that way. Kids know which families have money and which ones do not, a uniform is not going to change that.
I entered Calvary Christian Academy with so much hope and soon discovered that I was wrong. It was nothing like I was expecting. While in public school I excelled at pretty much everything and always received good grades. Teachers liked me and told my mother that I was very bright. I never had any behavioral issues and I enjoyed learning. When I left Calvary Christian Academy my spirit was crushed and I believed I was incapable and unintelligent. As a side note, these schools have a pretty bad track record for traumatizing kids. There are support groups and FB pages where you can go to get support if you attended one of these awful schools. I cannot overstate how bad this educational choice was for my mental health. Whatever was started when I went through my salvation experience combined with being molested by SD was finished by the school. It was a completely joyless experience.
If I had to use one word to describe my time at Calvary Christian Academy it would be loneliness. We were required to spend most of our day sitting in a tiny office with slats on either side. We had very little human contact, it was a bit like solitary confinement. My mind would drift to just about anything to take me away from my lonely situation. Oftentimes this meant my mind went to SD, my parents, and other problems. Alone I would contemplate my life and in these lonely hours, my depression became like a roaring lion, loud and hard to escape. Maybe had I been in public school someone might have caught my depression and offered a helping hand. This kind of thing did not happen at the church school. Within the church school there was only right and wrong, black and white. If a student was struggling they never asked why. You either completed your work or you did not. Punishment or avoiding punishment was the name of the game. In the early days I was so thin and rarely ate much at lunch. I would go sit in the church parking lot and wait for the others to come out for recess. No one ever asked why I didn’t eat or if we had enough food for lunch. Our emotional wellbeing never mattered, what mattered was were we following the rules and were we completing our goals for the day. I would argue that even our physical wellbeing wasn’t much of a concern. I would go to gym class and we often held that class outside. We would go to a neighborhood park. They would stick me somewhere in the outfield amongst the dandelions and grass. My eyes would be watering and I would be sneezing and no one really cared. I would wheeze when I ran and I think they just thought I wasn’t athletic. What was actually going on was that I had bad allergies and playing in a field was just not a good idea for me. The allergies led to asthma and that caused my shortness of breath. I know I keep beating this drum but I feel it is necessary. I cannot overstate how I felt like no one at school or church, speaking of the adults in charge, ever cared about my emotional, mental, or physical wellbeing. Instead they judged me and others and kept score of our shortcomings. I was at church more than I was at home, in some ways the church raised me, and yet to this day they refuse to take any responsibility for the ways in which they harmed and neglected myself and many others.
I am a kinesthetic learner. Reading all day to learn and never having any experiences or debates/discussions did not work well for me. I was bored stiff and now getting a double dose of indoctrination. Originally I thought this school was going to be perfect for me because I was always ahead in school and bored with the slow pace of things. Accelerated Christian Education is set up so that each student can work at their own speed. All this did for me is provide me with the opportunity to be way ahead in some subjects and terribly behind in others. I did pretty well across the board until I hit Algebra or the dreaded math pace 97. Algebra was pure misery for me. It caused me so much stress and the lack of empathy and real help from the staff lead me to feel stupid and incapable. We had no real teachers, you were expected to figure it out from reading a booklet (PACE) you were given and then work through the problems. Our monitors and supervisors, who passed for teaching staff, were not licensed educators. One of them had a nursing degree, one was the church secretary, many of them were youth leaders, young ministers, and their wives. It seems to me that working in the school was some kind of hazing for young ministers. Put your time in here and then you can do other stuff. Be a youth pastor and if you do a good job there we will give you other responsibilities. They may have passed algebra at some point but that was a long time ago and it did not mean they knew how to teach it. None of it made sense to me. I would call a monitor (adult staff who were supposed to help you) over to my office for help and nine times out of ten they had no idea what to do for me. They would suggest I ask my supervisor who at the time was also my principal, youth leader, and at times Sunday school teacher for help. John Seidl had so much power and influence over my life and empathy and compassion were not his forte. I would wait, sometimes for hours, for him to come over and help me. He would get frustrated that I could not figure things out and I would end up in tears erasing holes into my PACES. My experience was that the adults would get frustrated because they did not know how to teach and that would all roll down onto the students. I hold John Seidl very responsible for all of this. He was the principal for most of the time I was attending. He never once offered to give me any extra tutoring and he never tried to find any other way of helping me learn outside of just telling me to read the PACE. I spent so many nights crying over algebraic story problems. My mother would look on with sympathy but she had no idea how to help me. My mother had been a truly awful student. She got Ds all through school and I think it shocked her to see me struggling. School had always been so easy for me. She did not know what to do or where to go for help. We’d seen a warning this might be coming in the 5th grade when I really struggled with fractions. Luckily my babysitter was able to help me and then everything was fine. I just needed a little extra to get me through.
To pass a class you had to complete 12 PACES (these were little booklets with a test at the end) and take the final test. If you did not pass the final test you had to take the whole unit over, all 12 PACES. You must get 80% to pass. I would often clock in at 76% and be told to start over. I even once had a 78%. It should take you a year to complete algebra and I just kept working through the same PACES and taking the test over and over again. Soon it started to affect my science education. You could not pass through science without algebra so my science education just stopped at physical science. I would be sent home with whatever I could not finish in school, this did not help, no one in my home knew how to work these problems. I would return the next day with unfinished work and then be given demerits. These demerits meant you did something wrong. I would have to stay in my office while everyone else went out for recess. I would be punished for weeks at a time for not understanding what they could not teach. Some of this is my mother’s fault. She should have intervened and found me help or maybe decided this school wasn’t for me. Instead, she left me hanging. The school staff knew I was trying and only one of them ever took compassion on me. One day Kitty, the elementary school supervisor, came to my office, one time, and told me to just go out with the other kids. She also helped me with algebra. She wasn’t a great teacher but she showed me some empathy and for that I am grateful. Those long stretches without even recess to look forward to are really depressing to think about even now. Plus now I was struggling and falling behind in two subjects. On a brighter note, I went back to public school for my last year of high school. I took algebra and passed with a B+. My algebra teacher told me I just needed to be shown a different way to look at it. He was a good teacher and helped to restore some of my confidence. I feel like if I had been attending public school and struggling like this safety nets would have kicked in. My mother would have been pulled into the conversation more. I would have had tutors available and maybe a teacher who would meet with me during off-hours. None of that happened, they just let me twist in the wind.
Because I believed that my supervisor was frustrated with me and because they punished me instead of helping me I felt even more like an outsider. I had no refuge except for maybe the library. Home was awful and school was awful. Because the school was in the church basement and because I would soon be a Bible quizzer I was spending 7 days a week at the church. I was at church as much if not more than I was at home. God and the church had completely swallowed my life. Instead of bringing me joy unspeakable and full of glory all I experienced was being driven to death by my commitments and judgement.
Every part of the school day was highly regimented. There was no time for asking questions or free thinking. The Bible was our main literature book. Why do you need anything else when you have the Bible? We never read any of the classics or really anything except for the dreaded allegory Pilgrim’s Progress. One of my great joys was discovering books, especially classics. This leads us to one of the most subversive things I ever did, I went to the library. We lived just a couple of blocks from our local library and I loved to visit there. I consider myself lucky to have developed an early love for reading and an understanding of how libraries worked thanks to my early public school education. At that time you were not supposed to read things unless the church approved or it was written by a UPC author. Adults could read things by Christian authors who were not UPC if the topics were marriage and raising children. The adults knew how to discern when doctrinal lines were crossed in a way children and adolescents did not. Because my mother was not strict about standards and because no one was ever watching me I would often escape to the library. My heart would leap just approaching the building. Looking through the windows and seeing all of the books was my signal that I could breathe easy. Within these walls were adults who would help you find great reads and not judge you or give you the stink eye for asking. My neighborhood library had a great kids section and young adult area. Later I would bring my own kids there for story time. Once inside, after carefully checking the parking lot to make sure no one would see me, I would make a beeline for the teen area. I always read way above grade level and so even at 11 or 12 I would seek out books meant for a much older audience. Once I found a book I liked I would quickly find my favorite blue cushion to recline on. I always sought out a corner where I could shrink into my cushion and hide from the world. I did not bring the books home so sometimes I would be disappointed when the book I had been reading was checked out. Once I was sunk down into my soft spot I would bring the book to my nose and breathe in the smell. I loved the smell of books, I still do even if it drives my allergies crazy. My happiness could never be complete or free of worry. I worried someone from church would come in or see me coming in or leaving. Now I see how silly that is, they would never be in a library. I think I was always scared. I read lots of Judy Blume who I loved in late elementary school. This led to other things, even romances. I felt guilty but the pull of fresh reading material was too much to resist. I would tell myself later how dumb I had been to risk my salvation for a stupid book, I would promise to resist and make God happy, but I never kept that promise.
I have to stop for a minute here and praise librarians! They were friendly adults in a world where that was hard to come by. They recognized me when I came in and were always ready with fresh suggestions. They made me feel welcome and normal.
I hated Pilgrim’s Progress. It was boring but my hatred of it seemed deeper than just boredom. To this day I do not know why I hated it so much. I asked my principal if I could instead read C.S Lewis. I loved the Chronicles of Narnia and had read them in the 4th grade. That opened a whole unexpected can of worms! “C.S Lewis is not saved? He is not UPC and we do not agree with his theology.” I argued, “It’s an allegory and that is what I’m supposed to be learning about. Isn’t Aslan a picture of Jesus? Isn’t it very clear that Jadis is the bad guy?” But I could not budge him. That was the day that I learned my most beloved books were sinful. They had talking animals and witches in them. How had I not seen it? I thought since I saw them at Zondervan’s (the Christian book store) they would be ok. This was a crisis for me. I loved those books dearly, like an old treasured friend. I never got rid of them, in fact they are in my basement right now. They are super dogeared and well loved. I read them over and over in bed at night for probably three years. Mr. Tumnus was as real to me as anything I ever learned in the Bible. But even the joy of my favorite books was in part ruined by the guilt of knowing I was doing something sinful and rebellious. By the way, Pilgrim’s Progress was not written by someone within the UPC either, but it was a part of the approved curriculum. It seemed like the adults in my life were on a mission to rob me of any little thing that might bring me some comfort.
Zondervan’s Christian book store was another way I sinned or played too close to the danger zone. We had one in our local mall and every so often I would wander in there and look at their books with one eye on the door. I knew people from church bought music there but the books were a no-no. Too much strange theology, too many opposing viewpoints. You might learn about grace or God’s love. The United Pentecostal Church International claims that their mission is “The Whole Gospel To The Whole World.” I do not feel I received the whole gospel, especially not the parts about grace, compassion, and caring for others.
One day when I was at the library and just wandering around and I discovered something wonderful, magazines! My fingers glided through the glossy pages and my eyes drank in all of the brightly colored ads. The librarian saw me and came over to tell me about the teen magazines. She knew me well and would often offer her suggestions. What? You have teen magazines? I knew about these magazines because I would see them at the grocery store but I had never purchased one. This was a whole new world. Even in my extreme joy at my discovery there was a strange knot in my belly. This was wrong. These girls were made up like harlots and the topics within the magazines were sinful. The funny thing is that back in the early 80’s the girls in the teen magazines looked much younger and more innocent than young women in similar magazines today. It was all about fashion, music, boys, and makeup. These publications were like drugs to me, I couldn’t get enough. My mother even started buying them for me from time to time when we had the money. She saw them as harmless but I knew that they were bad news and I should feel bad for having them. I liked fashion and dreamt about makeup, I even liked the heart throbs on the covers but in the innocent way young girls like boys. This is where I learned the tip about clear nail polish. After getting into trouble because of the nail polish these magazines felt even more dangerous. At this point I started to feel like two people. The angel and the devil. I loved God and tried so hard to be good, to act right, to remember to repent everyday and to be of service. The devil side of me wanted all of this contraband, this was my flesh, the part of me that was impossibly sinful. I wondered if all of this was because of SD? Had my sinning with him opened some sort of Pandora’s box of evil within me? Would I ever be right? At this point I could not imagine a life not soaked in fear, guilt, and looking over my shoulder.
Fashion and the letter of the law but not the spirit. There were always certain adults who seemed to disapprove of me and give me the side eye. This is not uncommon in a church that is so legalistic where folks thrive on judging others. They compare themselves to others in order to gauge how close to God they are. I was always careful to follow the church’s holiness standards when it came to how I dressed but I was too young to really understand them. I wore skirts or dresses all the time. I did not public swim because wearing a swimsuit was a no no. My dresses always came to the bottom of my knees or lower and my sleeves were always three quarter length or longer. In gym class the girls had to wear pleated culottes so that is what I wore. Still even with keeping these standards I felt like it wasn’t good enough but I did not understand why. My mother was no help really. Her main concern was whether or not I was wearing a dress to church. She had always required that even before we joined the UPC. She always said you have to wear your best, whatever your best is.
I became an amazing bargain hunter and that super power still serves me today! I started to babysit and so I could make a little money here and there. One day I found the most beautiful fuschia shoes I had ever seen. They were on clearance and in my size! I tried them on in the store and I never felt more fancy than I did at that moment. I was about 12 or 13 at the time. These shoes were ridiculous and if any of my daughters had tried to wear shoes like that at that age I would have said no, wait till you’re about 21. They had a four inch heel and they were a shockingly bright color. They had a fake snake skin pattern on them. I would never attempt to walk in shoes like that now, but to my 13 year old self those shoes were the height of fashion. I wore them to church in the middle of winter. They were a strappy sandal and not good on the ice and certainly could not keep my feet warm. So here I am at church wobbling around on these stupidly high heels feeling like a million bucks! That is when people started staring and even asking questions. Some of the adults laughed when they were asking me about them the way you might laugh at a child who is being silly, but I did not understand at the time and I thought they were making fun of me. It hurt and it took all of the air out of my happy find. “Does your mother know you have those shoes?”, “Where did you find those?”, “Don’t you think those shoes are a little too high for you?” One of the girls close to my age later told me her mother said they looked like hooker shoes. As adult after adult questioned me and smirked I started to feel shame. I’m not even sure if I ever wore them again. What I know now is that shoes like that would have been considered too immodest. They would be seen as trying to draw attention to my legs and therefore cause a man to fall into sin. But at that age my mind did not automatically go to those places. If my legs were mostly covered what difference did it make? The part of this story that makes me laugh is when I went home. An adult couple gave me a ride home and I must’ve fallen four times between their car and my front door. At first I did not find it funny but after the fourth fall I had to join in with their laughter. I must have looked like a baby deer trying to walk up that sidewalk. I was wobbly in those shoes even on carpet so glare ice was near impossible to walk on. I think I left my boots at home because I wanted everyone to see my pretty shoes. I paid for it in bruises to my ego and legs.
In the 80’s textured tights were a big thing. I was very fond of these tights that had tiny hearts on them and I had them in many varieties. Red tights with white hearts, white tights with pink hearts, and more. Soon after that came tights with a seam up the back, tights with flowers snaking up the ankle and tights with polka dots. To me they were so pretty and fashionable but to the adults around me they looked too old for me to wear and drew way too much attention. The thing is this was the early 80’s and it was what young teens were wearing. I did not get it. To me they were pretty and feminine. My young mind could not understand the connection between my polka dotted tights and men’s lust. To me it was about fashion, my tights with the hearts on them matched my purse with tiny hearts on it. It was about looking my best. My mother never complained and so I assumed it was ok. When I think back to that time I was the only teen dressed like that and I am sure it is part of the reason why so many adults gave me the side eye and did not want their kids to have anything to do with me. Especially the boys. This is just an example of how an adult could have come alongside me and explained how it looked to many people. Instead of gossiping and judging they could have simply talked to me.
My happiness was found in a $72.00 Jessica McClintock Gunne Sax dress. Every Easter my parents would buy me a new Easter dress. Many times my dad would come through for me. He hated being around for the hard stuff but liked to show up and be the hero from time to time. He took me to the mall and we started combing through the racks. My heart leaped when I found my dream dress hanging there. It was a Jessica McClintock and it was on clearance! Even on clearance it was $72.00 and I knew it was nothing more than a dream. These dresses were very easy to spot at this time. They looked vintage and were outside the stream of pop culture fashion. They reminded me of the dresses I would draw for hours as a child. In grade school I became obsessed with the Gibson Girl style of dress and drew those dresses over and over complete with parasols and fancy boots. My father looked at the price and said sure I could have the dress! I stood there frozen in my disbelief, then I grabbed the dress before he could change his mind. It was a tiny bit big on me but who cared? It was perfect and I felt like the richest girl in town for a moment. When I brought the dress home my mother was livid. She was so angry that my father had spent that much money on my dress. I was confused but knew enough to just go to my room. Who could understand my parents’ issues with each other? He bought me a dress and now you don’t have to, was how I saw it. My mother had every right to be upset. He never paid child support and couldn’t be bothered when I was hungry. She saw through him and knew all he wanted was to look good to me. Easter morning was the next day and I put my dress on with some pretty tights with flowers on the ankle. I was a walking flower that morning. When you are poor, and you have body issues, it is a big deal to feel so pretty if even only for one day. This dress was magickal! It had a lace collar that went all the way to my neck and it fell almost to my ankles. The body of the dress was a very pale almost white lavender and it had light green vines with tiny flowers all over it. Covering my chest was a light lace bib, this thing was like something out of a Disney movie. The sleeves came all the way to my wrists and were kind of gausy and ever so slightly see through. A slim panel of lace went down both arms. I was covered and I mean covered from head to toe.
I glided into church that morning feeling like a queen. The church secretary thought it was very important to point out to me that you could see through my sleeves. I have olive tone skin and you could ever so slightly see through my sleeves but you had to be really looking. I went to my seat and started to feel self conscious. Could you see through my sleeves? Did I miscalculate? Was this dress sinful? Once again one of the church harpies had ruined my happiness, but not for long. My friends LOVED the dress and it became a big deal for many years. When we would go to camp we would often trade dresses for the evening service, this dress was always the top request and in heavy rotation. Somehow it never got ripped or too dirty. It was magical. I recognized as I got older that it was edgy because of the sleeves but I wore it anyway. Now those Jessica McClintock Gunne Sax dresses are considered vintage and still go for a ton of money. My early teenage dream was to someday glide down the aisle in a Gunne Sax wedding dress. My first wedding dress looked alot like what Lady Diana wore on her wedding day, not a Gunne Sax but still hyper feminine.
I’ve written all of this to explain not only how the church stole my joy at every turn but to also illustrate how I did not understand the standards. I was following the letter of the law but not the spirit. I think I thought I was following the spirit of the law but my young mind just could not anticipate what would be an issue. My mother did not follow their standards and thought I looked fine. The ladies at church would make snide remarks but no one ever thought to sit me down and explain things. It was more fun to talk about my mother behind her back. About her poor parenting and not following the holiness standards herself than to take pity on a kid who just needed someone to explain things. My friends would tell me how their parents did not approve of my clothing and that hurt. I did not understand. My 13 year old mind would not have expected that a man might get turned on by the sight of my arm or a calf with tiny hearts on it. My world and self esteem could have been so much better had someone just been compassionate and talked to me about the standards, not from a judging place but from a loving place. I was proud of every pretty thing I owned because I bought most of it. I hunted for sales and collected bits of, what I thought were acceptable fashion, and kept them as treasure. But even that pride at having found these beautiful items was sinful.
“Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” Proverbs 16:18
Looking back I have to ask myself, “What is wrong with these men?” First of all, why would they be looking at pre-teen and teenage girls to start with? If they are lusting after children isn’t that their problem? Why does the church ask young girls to protect men from lusting? It seems to me that they may have understood that they had problematic men within the congregation and so instead of removing the men they laid a heavy burden on the girls. Better to keep sleepy men around who pay tithes than to take action to protect children.
Surviving Church and Childhood 