Spiritual Abuse From Within The Family

I’m back after a long break! I’m writing a book and so I’ve been putting much of my focus there. There are some things happening within the UPC Wisconsin District and hopefully soon I will have an update for you all.

The reason I’m here today has to do with some fresh spiritual abuse coming from my family. I do not have a ton of extended family and I’ve mostly put space between them and myself due to how judgmental they can be. I know that my mother’s fear of the rapture and hell came directly from her parents and then she passed it on down to me. When she decided to attend a church that her parents disapproved of it created a ton of drama in the family. Their brand of Christianity comes with a heavy dose of fear and standing in judgement of others. My uncle Mike is an assistant pastor in Florida. He posts the services from his church onto Youtube. A family member made me aware of some things that my uncle Mike first said about me and then about my brother. This all came about because my uncle has had some really unkind things to say about my brother and his sexuality and lack of church attendance. I stayed out of it until I felt I had to step in as a shield for my little brother. Then my uncle Mike turned his venom onto me. After I asked him to stop talking about my brother and I in his sermons and also to stop harassing my brother I blocked him from my social media. After this he went in front of his church and told them that he had been to the gates of hell because of the conversations my brother and I had with him. He has gone on to lie further about his communications with my brother. I just don’t understand how you can get up in front of your church and lie about your family. Both my brother and I have been nothing but respectful toward him in these conversations. I did tell him to remove the beam from his own eye before trying to remove it from my brother and I. I tried to explain to him in language that he could understand that he should focus on his own salvation.

My brother and I have suffered a lot because of our family. Many of them have held a zero tolerance policy towards homosexuality but also just towards churches that are not exactly like theirs. Every time they attempt to speak with us about God it always comes with a fear chaser. They dangle hell over our heads and then wonder why we want nothing to do with them. Here on earth they have not been kind, loving, or nurturing. Instead they have been judgmental, intolerant, and cold. They speak about the love of Christ but that is not what they are projecting out into the world. They only have love for those who are exactly like them or believe close enough to what they believe. Over and over I have heard how much they miss me and yet whenever I interact with them I’m told that hell is waiting for me. My uncle Mike even alluded to wanting to be present when we are standing before God so he could bare witness to what happens to us. Maybe if they approached us with love, acceptance, and care we wouldn’t feel the need to run away from them. Maybe if they presented God as love instead of a wrathful judge we would be more inclined to want to be a part of their faith. I have presented my uncle Mike with this perspective but he doesn’t want to hear it. Instead he uses his interactions with my brother and I to talk about how there isn’t much time and you never know when you’re going to die. He talks about us making his life so hard when we didn’t go looking for a fight with him, we are just living our lives. He attacked and then is hurt that he didn’t get the response that he wanted. I feel that even if we agreed with him and came back to church we wouldn’t ever be good enough. We would never be right. We only serve as a way for him to toot his own horn and celebrate his ability to scare us back into the fold.

I wish I could say that I’m beyond being hurt by them. Whenever something like this happens it triggers that part of me that has suffered so much at the hands of the church. It reminds me of my mother and all that she suffered because of her family. I think of her praying night after night begging God for help and never feeling rapture ready. I was the only witness to that pain and I lay the blame firmly at the feet of our family. In this moment as I feel the tightness in my chest that comes when my C-PTSD is triggered, I’m trying to remember to be grateful. I’m so grateful to be free from the fear virus that my family line carries. I may not always feel free and so I have to remind myself. I’m surrounded by my children and grandchildren who love me and a supportive community of friends. Lastly I’m free from the scary, always constant monster of a God that was introduced to me in my childhood.

Lonliness and Punishment

Part 4

Violence was not uncommon in our home. It wasn’t just the big altercations between my parents but all of the little everyday things that happened. The worst spanking I ever received was when my father spotted me standing close to a man outside. He was standing near the fence that divided our yard from the grassy field above. He was watching a softball game. I was outside and when I saw him I went to say hello. What my parents did not know is I had been talking to this man for a long time. He lived down the hall from us. One day I spotted his open apartment door when I was exiting out the back door of our complex. He had just moved in and so I stopped by to say hello. Yes, my parents had taught me not to talk to strangers but I was desperately lonely. He chatted with me and was always friendly. I know I was actually in his apartment at least once. I have no idea what this man was actually like. I do not have much memory of him but I remember his apartment and I remember his figure standing by the fence watching the game. My father spotted me outside with this man he did not know and he came out to fetch me. Once in our apartment, his anger boiled over and he started to interrogate me about the neighbor. He yelled about talking to strangers and I remember crying very hard. I don’t remember what I said to him but I know that I attempted to explain and that only made him angrier. I was in elementary school at this point, maybe 7 or 8 years old. My mother seemed unconcerned until he reached for the dog collar to spank me. He was not wearing a belt and the dog collar was the closest thing within reach. I lurched to get away and my mother yelled at him. The collar had metal notches in it and a metal clasp and she thought it was too dangerous to spank me with it. He did not listen to her and started swinging at me hitting whatever he could, mostly my legs. It was expected that I would sit still when being spanked, if I moved they would hit whatever was where my butt was supposed to be including my hands. In this case, I tried to get away because I could sense the fear in my mother’s anger. He grabbed my arm and let me have it. After he was done my mother and father argued about what he had done and I cried alone in my room away from their fighting. I believe the big concern to be whether or not someone might notice and call social services. Eventually, they tried to make peace with me by giving me a flour tortilla. As weird as this might sound, they often tried to comfort me by handing me a tortilla or banana. They explained why talking to strangers was dangerous and life went on. As angry as my mother was with my father she was often the more violent of the two of them. She spanked me but she also pinched me and twisted my ear when she wanted my attention. She would pull my hair when she was really angry and that hurt the most. It amazes me that they would believe that a child left alone for 10-12 hours a day would have the self-control to not talk to strangers given how lonely I would naturally be. My mother cried over her loneliness all the time and my father sought out other women to keep him from being lonely. I feel like they did not see me as a real person. They seemed unaware that I was a human and not a doll. I had needs and emotions. I felt all the same things they did. To this day I wonder if they did not understand or did they just push away that understanding because had they acknowledged it they would have had to change how they were interacting with me. 

When you are a kid there is so much to worry about. I worried about losing my keys and being locked out of our apartment. I worried about people breaking into the house and strangers. It was the 70’s and stranger danger was a big deal. Then there was the alarm clock! I was always concerned with being late for school or oversleeping. So I developed little rituals around checking the clock and checking the locks on the doors. I looked over my shoulder when walking down the street alone and always checked the back seat of the car when I got in. The keys around my neck were like a security blanket. At various times during the school day I would feel for them just in case they might have fallen off of me at some point. I learned all of this from my mother. She was never diagnosed with OCD but she definitely displayed some of the behaviors. She drove me nuts checking the knobs on the stove and having to go back and check to be sure the door was really locked. She planted this worry into me. No amount of checking and rechecking life was enough for her. She was always preparing for doom. I would stare off into space as I waited for her to check and recheck. I was trying  desperately to be somewhere else. 

When I left for school in the morning my dog Muffy was the only one there to see me off. She was also the only one there waiting for me when I returned. She would be watching at the window when I left for school and waiting for me there when I came home. Every day I would run home after school and feel for the key around my neck. Sliding it in the lock I would fight to turn the stiff deadbolt. Immediately a walking cloud would come bounding towards me. Her fluffy white tail curled over her back and I would bury my face in her neck. The apartment was always silent. After putting my things down and taking off my coat anxiety would wash over me. With Muffy by my side, I would wander through each room checking for who might be hiding and waiting for me to come home. I checked every closet, under the beds, and behind the shower curtain. There was never anyone physically there, just me and fear. Dread would wash over me and I would remind myself that you can’t see the devil. 

The devil or Satan as he was sometimes called was a part of my daily life. He was as present as any person I could see with my eyes. God felt like light years away but Satan felt as close as the breath in my lungs. All of the adults in my family seemed to be very concerned about him. I knew one thing, he was tricky. I was taught that he and God had some kind of falling out and now he was the enemy of God. Because God created me the devil wanted to steal me away and take me to hell with him. Some day the devil was going to burn for all eternity and if I chose him over God I would burn too. In Sunday school we learned a lot about how the devil might try to trick us. He might tell me lies and I had to question every thought, action, and emotion, to see if they were of God or of Satan. This was tough because the devil was so manipulative and how would I know if I was right? The adults in my life made it sound like Satan was always lurking around every corner, under every bed, and in every closet just waiting for a chance to deceive me or worse yet drag me to hell. Later in life, I would learn about the AntiChrist and in many ways, he was even scarier than Satan. He would be in human form and as the church and my family would often say, “He might be alive right now!” There was much speculation about who he might be. The Pope was always a popular candidate but some people said that Ronald Reagan might be as well after all his name added up to 666 just like the Bible said to look out for. As an adult, I look back on those teachings with disgust. I have raised four children and thankfully none of them have had to deal with fear the way I did, I am 50 years old and it has taken me decades to let go of that fear. I cannot remember any time in my childhood or up through my 40’s when I have not been afraid. My childhood was soaked in teachings about an angry God and so much of what I endured during childhood is wrapped up in those teachings. Fringe religiosity and mental illness do not go well together and my family had equal amounts of both. I am descended from a long line of very religious people. My mother’s roots pass through both the Assemblies of God and the Church of God organizations. Eventually, she ended up attending a United Pentecostal Church. It was this church, Calvary Gospel United Pentecostal, that had the biggest impact on my life. The combination of the end-times theology of the 1970s and on through the ’80s and untreated severe mental illness created a childhood full of uncertainty, worries about abandonment, and child neglect. I did not come through this childhood unscathed but I have managed to survive and I keep leaning into the hope that I can continue to get closer to being whole and healthy. Most people who know me see me as a driven and fairly successful person. I have a devoted partner and I’ve raised 4 children. I am politically active, and I participate in volunteer initiatives within my community. Some might tell you that I am creative, a lover of furry creatures big and small, a collector of books, and driven by a desire for transformation. If they know me well they might tell you that I never sleep, have to be reminded to eat, and that at times my anxiety is crippling, and sometimes depression follows me around like a fog threatening to swallow me whole. If they know me even better they might tell you that when I do sleep I tend to be plagued by nightmares complete with guillotines and often involving me running from some sort of One World Government authority figure. Writing this book is one way I am trying to heal myself. As you continue on this journey with me, I will tell you about the other ways I am working on healing and helping others to heal. None of this is easy but it feels necessary. 

Childhood and Adventure

Part 3

Both of my parents were checked out much of the time. I was raised by television. Many of us who grew up in the ’70s had this experience. I lived my day according to what show was on next. The people on television were my friends and they kept me company while my mother was away. I would build tents out of the dining room chairs and blankets from my bed.. My dog Muffy and I would hunker down inside and eat snacks while watching Gilligan’s Island. I loved building those tents. Once inside it felt like I was in a different world. Under my blankets with my furry companion felt safe and warm. I can still feel the softness of Muffy’s fur and the way she smelled. Muffy was my only company when my mother was away. She was a beautiful white Samoyed dog with happy brown eyes. She was very easy going and always willing to play tea party with me or even dress up. To this day I love dogs and I feel I owe a debt of gratitude to Muffy for taking care of me. For the first ten years of my life, she was there. There were times when she was the only being around to comfort me and she was often the only really dependable thing in my life. She was like a second mother to me and many of the good memories I have from the first 10 years feature her. 

In the morning my alarm clock would go off and I would hear Bugs Bunny say “Eh What’s Up Dock?” I loved my Bugs clock! Alone I would get up, eat, and get myself ready for school. I knew when “Leave It To Beaver” came on it was time to go. At the end of the day when I returned home, I would watch “Bugs Bunny” and “Gilligan’s Island”. Most of the time the television was just on as background noise to keep me from feeling alone. I would bring art projects out into the living room and work on them in front of the television. When there was nothing on tv I wanted to watch I would go play in my room or I would play outside. Sometimes I would play with friends but I felt guilty about leaving Muffy alone if she had been alone all day. I wonder if she saw my being out of the house as a break, much like a young mother might relish nap time. For a little bit she would not have to be my Dressy Bessie. 

In the evenings my mother and I would watch “Sonny and Cher”, “The Love Boat”, “Fantasy Island”, and “Charlie’s Angels”. I enjoyed all of these shows. When my mother was home we would often sit on the floor, in the dark, and she would bring out a big bag of nuts from the kitchen. It was like being in a movie theater. She would crack the nuts open for me and we would have them as a treat. Sometimes we would have a generic soda too. My mother loved orange, grape, and root beer flavors so that is what we had to choose from. When I think of these times with my mother it warms my heart. It calls to mind the physical closeness I so needed and that could be hard to come by. I lived for these moments. The person I loved best in the world was finally there beside me and she wasn’t crying or screaming, she was laughing. In the dark it did not matter that we had no sofa to cuddle on or that the devil might be hiding in the closet, all that mattered was that we were together. 

I really loved Cher! She was one of the only people on television who looked like me. Certainly, she was the only woman I was aware of. She had long black hair and olive skin just like mine. I loved seeing all of her glamorous Bob Maki dresses. She was both beautiful and talented. She gave me the impression that she ran her own life and maybe Sonny’s too. She was confident and I wanted to be like her. Another woman I admired from television was Lucille Ball. I thought she was beautiful as well and so funny. Lastly, there was Carol Burnett. I did not see her as a great beauty but as the funniest woman ever! I loved her show and couldn’t wait for it every week. When it went into syndication, I could watch it in the afternoon. I never missed a show. These women helped me to develop my sense of humor. Cher was sharp and kind of dry, Carol and Lucy perfected physical comedy. When my mother would go into one of her depressive moods I would act out scenes from these shows to try to make her laugh. If that didn’t work I would dig into my candy stash to find something to make her smile. My mother loved candy so the combination of my best Carol Burnett impersonation and a Snickers bar could go a long long way. 

On the action side, I could not get enough of “Charlie’s Angels”, “The Bionic Woman”, and “Wonder Woman”! These women inspired me to be strong and athletic. I would run through the woods pretending to be Wonder Woman! I love those memories. I had a fort in the trees and I would perch on a branch and pretend to be in my invisible plane. I saw myself in these characters. They were tough, confident, and dependable, all things I hoped to be. I tried and tried to make my hair do the 70’s flip or feather, no matter what I did it never worked. 

To this day I love female comedians, especially if they embrace physical comedy. I enjoy female cop shows and superhero characters. When I get lost and I can’t find my way they help me to get back to myself. They remind me of who I was at the beginning, who I am at my core. They remind me of my mother, which can be both good and bad. They remind me of how far I’ve traveled to get to where I am now. They continue to provide comfort and inspiration! 

Television offered me predictability and comfort. Shows were almost always on when you thought they would be. I could see this extended family whenever I wanted and they would always be the same. The sounds of their voices coming down the hall from the living room made our apartment feel like it was full and not so empty. I feel the shows helped me to become more socially confident. My mother and father were socially awkward and so they did not provide good examples of how to fit in. I have always felt odd in the world but it could have been much worse. I watched these shows and learned how to interact with people and it showed me how adults should be with kids. Television helped me see the inappropriateness of my parent’s behavior. Television also helped to keep the things I was afraid of at bay. 

When I wasn’t watching television I played outside. We had a small wooded area next to our apartment along with a large hill and field. On the other side of the field was my elementary school and playground. When the weather was nice I would play in my “fort”. Wonder Woman was my favorite scenario. Those woods had the potential to be so much. They could be my invisible plane when I climbed the tree and sat on a branch that overlooked our street and the low brush was my fort or secret lair. The large rocks made great chairs and an easy to move low hanging tree branch served as a secret invisible door. In the summer it wasn’t 

unusual for me to waste the afternoon running through the tall grass having spectacular adventures. Even in these happy times fear followed me around lurking behind every tree and waiting for me at home. When I think of that fear now I can feel it in my chest. I can imagine it is not unlike what a rabbit feels when it senses danger. You become still and hope you can’t be seen. 

My dog Muffy liked to be outside when it wasn’t too hot. She made a pretty good playmate. Even though she was a big dog I managed her fine. She never ran away even when I dropped her leash. Even though I don’t think she enjoyed it much, she would climb in the sled with me and go down the hill. Well, truth be told she only made it half way down the hill before jumping out of the sled and running to the bottom to meet me. Once at the bottom of the hill she would chase after me to get to the top and do it all over again. When the weather was warmer she would play kickball with me. Which meant I would kick my small red rubber ball and she would chase after me as I pretended to run the bases. When we grew tired we would plop down in the grassy field and I would make dandelion jewelry and crowns. I was very allergic to both the grass and the dandelions so it didn’t take long for us to be driven back into the apartment to cool off. Once inside I would grab a popsicle and arrange my dandelion creations so that I could show my mother when she returned home. Often by the time my mother arrived they were very wilted. It made me sad that I could not figure out how to keep them pretty for her. 

On other days I would slip through a small trail in the treeline behind our apartment that opened onto some railroad tracks. I would follow those tracks all the way to the beach. When I think about it now it seems so dangerous. I would bring a towel, some beach toys, and whatever change I could gather so that I could buy some ice cream once I got there. I would play in the sand and water all day without any adult supervision. To this day I am not the strongest swimmer and I recognize how lucky I am that I never got hurt. Even though it was dangerous I can’t help but think of these days warmly. My childhood was not safe by any stretch of the imagination but it was filled with childish adventure. I had so much unstructured time to explore the world around me and these days at the beach are the best example of this. All I need is to hear the sound of the waves hitting the shore and I’m instantly taken back to those days sitting on the beach eating a popsicle with my toes buried in the wet sand. By the end of the summer, my skin would be a deep brick-brown making me stick out like a sore thumb. Adults and children alike seemed confused and interested in my appearance. They would often ask me about my ethnicity and when I was young I thought it was kind of a game. Later it would make me feel bad about being different. 

When I wasn’t outside I loved to create little art projects. My mother saw early on that I was a blooming artist and so she made sure I always had paint, markers, and clay to play with. My mother was an accomplished artist. Part of my desire to create was driven by wanting to be as skilled as my mother. She liked to draw nature scenes and especially animals. My mother grew up around horses. I could tell by the stories that she told me about her childhood that she loved her horses. I would ask her over and over to tell me about Dolly and the others. She would tell me each horse’s name and then describe what they look like. She would include details like which horse liked to get into mischief and which ones liked apples. I would try my best to draw them as my mother had described. I also drew my dream horse over and over again. He had a black tail and mane and was a deep chocolate color. I could never match my mother’s sketching talent and this distressed me. She bought me this large oversized book about how to draw horses and I spent many hours trying my best to follow the instructions. I became pretty good at it! But sadly never as good as my mother. It really bothered me. It took me until well into adulthood to be able to create art for art’s sake and to not be still comparing myself to my mother in my head. 

After my horse drawing stage I moved onto my fancy lady stage. I was fascinated with dresses from the 1800s and I would draw what I called “fancy ladies”. Some would have parasols and others would have very elaborate hats. I dreamed of being like them. This led me to be obsessed with the “Gibson Girl”. I loved to draw elaborate updos from that trend and I would practice them over and over. I think this phase was more enjoyable to me compared with the horse phase. My mother did not draw these “fancy ladies” and so I was not constantly comparing myself with her. I could just draw for the love of drawing. For a long time Snoopy was a subject I would sketch over and over. I always looked forward to the Charlie Brown specials mostly for the scenes that featured Snoopy. 

I tried many other crafts and it was easy because my mother had a closet full of half-finished projects. I spent hours playing with my spin art toy. It was one of those toys where you put the paper in the tray and then drop bits of paint onto it while it spins. I also learned to finger crochet and latch hook. I was not a big fan of finger crocheting but I loved to latch hook. I would sit side by side with my mother and we would make latch hook projects together. She also taught me to make little potholders with a plastic loom. When she was creating she was smiling. Right from the start, it was clear to me that she became bored much faster than I did. She would start a project and then get bored, it would go to live in her bedroom closet and maybe one day I would pick it up and finish it. This is one way in which my mother and I are very different. I hate having unfinished projects laying around. This goes for books too. I will finish the most boring books just because I can’t seem to allow myself to just not like something and then put it down. I really have no idea where this comes from. 

I possessed a big imagination and it showed through in my playtime and art. I believe that my imagination is what got me through all of those long hours of being alone. When I think of this time it brings a smile to my face. I was a vibrant child so full of promise. When I think about it a little longer my smile turns to sadness for all of the hours I spent alone. It wasn’t safe and I never felt safe. 

Boundaries

Part 2

As I comb through the first 18 years of my life it can be hard to find anything worth preserving. My home did not provide comfort, instead the air was thick with unease. When I drift through the memories of childhood there is a gray wash over everything. The memories that make me smile are not associated with people so much as activities and things, like the orange push-up ice cream treats I would buy on hot summer days or my neon green and yellow bike. Solitude brought intense loneliness but also some of my most joyful moments. When I was alone I was free and could often breathe more easily but sometimes when I was alone I would be stalked by the things I feared most.

My mother worked long hours and sometimes two jobs. She had a very physically demanding job working at a laundry where they washed and pressed uniforms and other things. F&W Means was the name of the company. The laundry was hot and working there did some damage to her hands. In the summer she would be forced to work overtime often being gone from morning until after dark. She never minded the overtime because we always needed the extra money. Sometimes, not very often, I would go to work with her. The air in the laundry was humid and it burned the back of my throat. There were huge baskets on wheels being pushed from one station to the other and music blasting through speakers. Sometimes I would go sit outside, just to get some fresh air and my mother would buy me a soda. Those days seemed so long but she did not seem to mind. The laundry was filled with mostly women employees and they smiled and joked with each other in spite of the terrible conditions. 

My mother was a very dedicated worker and took pride in providing for our family.  I understood why she had to be away but that understanding did not make the days any easier. After work, she would sometimes deliver pizzas for extra money. This only made my lonely days even longer. My father was often in and out of our home and he could not be counted on to help with the rent or our bills. He made good money but it seemed to slip through his hands easily. My father lived in the moment and never seemed to have a plan or concern for the future. He enjoyed playing cards and I think drinking was sometimes involved. They fought a lot about money and his many affairs. They had epic fights that included objects being hurled across the room and my mother lashing out physically and threatening my father’s life. My father wouldn’t hit my mother but he did try to protect himself. During these fights he always appeared to be the innocent one because he was the one being physically attacked. That being said, he was the reason my mother flew into a rage. He would play the role of “why me?” but even at a young age I knew that he was torturing my mother mentally and emotionally. In reality he was torturing me too but I was too little and too much of a daddy’s girl to understand it. I witnessed my mother cry over our finances again and again. My father was often responsible for the financial issues. He wouldn’t pay his fair share and then he would come around begging her for money. He even went so far as to support another woman with my mother’s money. You can imagine how that went over! 

My mother wouldn’t go to her family for help unless she had no other options. She was close to my grandfather but she did not like asking him for money. I got the message that her family had a pretty strong bootstrap mentality.  My grandmother and my aunt would gossip about my mother and that caused her a lot of distress. She definitely gave me the impression that her mother and sister ganged up on her. My aunt Wanda is a cruel judgemental woman and my grandmother would cover for her nasty tendencies. Even though my aunt lived in the same city as we did she could not be depended on in any way. My mother did not have many friends and the ones she did have were not in any financial shape to help us. On top of that, she was proud and believed that asking for money was a kind of moral weakness. Her family strongly believed it was wrong to go to the government for help so she would not apply for food stamps or welfare checks. She did not want social workers nosing around her business. All of her family was suspicious of the government and concerned about it being connected in some way with the antichrist. They firmly believed that someday a one-world government would come to power and following that Armageddon. All these beliefs did not leave my mother with many options. She would cry and pray for hours. I would sit outside her door wishing God would answer her so she could come out and play with me. I believe this is the age I started swallowing my pain. We couldn’t both be crying. Above all, I wanted to comfort her and fix all of her problems. I prayed to God in hopes that he would answer but for some reason, he always seemed so silent and unreachable. 

My mother was a very talented woman. I looked up to her musical ability. She had this huge accordion and she would often sit on her bed in the evenings and play it. I was fascinated with all of the buttons and the large case with burgundy velvet lining that she kept it in. She only sang gospel songs and when she was singing I could tell she went somewhere else in her mind. She played the piano and organ too but we did not have access to these on a regular basis. We sang together, pretty much everywhere, in the car and the house. She would always give me high praise when we sang together and that praise made me feel warm and loved. By the time I was three years old she was having me perform for strangers in the grocery store. I would be riding in the cart minding my own business singing some happy tune and it wouldn’t be long before a gaggle of older women would be smiling at me and asking me to sing for them. This seemed to really make my mother happy so I sang for them even though I was terribly shy and kind of scared of old people. I would sing tunes from the radio often misunderstanding the lyrics and I would sing Sunday school songs. I can imagine a world in which she could have been happy teaching music or working in a music store. If she had possessed more confidence maybe she would have sang in the church choir or even led a choir. I’m not sure she really grasped how talented she was. Maybe because her family tore her down so much or maybe it was mental illness standing in the way. When I take a minute to allow myself to gaze upon her with my child eyes I see a shining star, capable of anything, and almost goddess like. As a little girl I just knew I would never reach the pinnacle of her perfection. She could do anything. 

At a very young age I was aware that there was something wrong with my mother. She called it depression so I had a word for it even if I had no idea what it really was. During the day I was alone but often in the evenings, I was also alone because she was consumed by whatever financial crisis was upon us. Then there was the question, “Where is your father and what is he up to?” She never had security, not financially or in her relationships.  She would watch Jimmy Swaggert preach on television and then go retreat to her room to cry and pray. When she finally came out her eyes would be very red and she would be silent as a stone. I would attempt to comfort her in any way I could. Often I would try to make her laugh just to see her smile was a comfort to me. Maybe things would be ok? 

Jimmy Swaggert was a big deal in our house. He was a skilled piano player and when we watched him the television camera would often focus in on his hands gliding over the keys. He sang with a tear in his eye. My mother was enthralled. She hung on his every word. I believe she felt very connected to him and watching him on television helped her to feel less alone. She would sing along while watching and her face would soften. Those were the only times I saw that look on her face. 

I can remember so many nights when she would retreat to her room after dinner to pray. Often she would watch Jimmy Swaggert or listen to some music beforehand. I would watch television with the volume down low so I would not disturb her. As the night would wear on I would wander over to the door of her bedroom and slump down to the floor listening to her wail and speak in tongues. I hated to hear her cry and I knew she was waging a battle. She was trying to convince god to help us. She was trying to pray away whatever sin was standing in the way of us being blessed. She was fighting for her salvation because she was always afraid of missing the rapture and going to hell. It was high stakes prayer, that was the only kind of prayer ever said in our home. All of this crying, praying, wailing, and speaking in tongues did nothing to make our little apartment feel like a home. There was an intensity to my mothers religiosity that created an atmosphere of danger and fear. 

Childcare was always a struggle in our home. Working an eight hour day was hard enough but then add in overtime and a second job and finding childcare becomes impossible. I never really cared for any of my babysitters and I suspect that is because my mother did not trust or like many people and she handed that suspicion down to me. My father could not be counted on for more than a couple of hours, maybe once a week. She could never afford to take off work to be with me over Xmas, spring, or summer break. I wanted so desperately to help her so I would tell her that it was ok I didn’t need a babysitter. She would look at me so unsure. She weighed my opinion heavily too much because I was just a small child and had no idea what was appropriate or safe. I wish she hadn’t given in so easily. I wish she hadn’t let me try to solve her problems for her or be her savior. It did not help that my father was always telling me I was smarter and more capable than other children. He thought pretty highly of himself and since I was his child and in his mind an extension of him then I must be above average. 

I remember times when it felt like I held my parents’ fate in my hands. I had to keep them together and I had to help them survive. I was responsible for their emotional well being and safety. When they would have one of their knock down drag out fights my father would cry on my shoulder. After he left our apartment my mother would collapse and it would be her turn to cry. As I’m writing this I remember how small I felt in those moments. How insurmountable the problems of my family seemed to be and how these things happened regularly. In these moments I have to really focus on loving myself and cutting myself some slack. You see, I have complex post traumatic stress disorder. As I document all of this it is like watching the seeds of my condition being put into the ground one after the other. I am aware of how small and defenseless I was to stop any of it, and that realization helps me to breathe through the process of being gentle with myself and remembering that none of this was my fault. Even at 51 I need that reminder sometimes. 

My mother was more than my mom; she was my best friend and I believed I was her best friend. The healthy boundaries between parent and child would often melt away in the midst of her depression and loneliness. She overshared and because of that, I was also depressed. I worried about money, my parent’s relationship, and God. She was my mother but I was her caretaker. I cannot remember a time when I was allowed to be a child. I carried my parent’s burdens with me everywhere. They went with me to school, the playground, and then at bedtime they followed me there too. My mother’s burdens were scary. I worried for her safety and at a young age I knew that sometimes she wanted to die. 

Because of all of this worry I started to develop some pretty severe stomach issues in early elementary school. I would go to the nurse’s office with stomach cramps and it didn’t take long before the school psychologist became involved. Eventually after talking with me several times he asked my mother to come in. I sat there fearing what he was going to say to her. Had I told him more than I should have? She came into the room and sat in one of the hard plastic chairs across from his desk. They talked and I tried to pretend like I wasn’t there. I felt like I was being a problem. The last thing I ever wanted to do was add another problem to my mother’s plate. If I’m being honest I was probably a little scared of her at that moment. She always told me to never discuss things from our home life with anyone. How was she going to take the fact that I had been talking with another adult about my life?

He said, “Do you have any idea why she might be so stressed?” 

She replied, “Well her father and I are having problems and I’m having money issues.”

They went on to talk for a long time. My mother cried and told this complete stranger all of her whoas. I felt so seen. At school I tried to hide my unhappy life. Now my unhappy life was on display. Eventually towards the end of the conversation he said, “You have to find a way not to share all of your problems with your daughter. She is going to end up with ulcers before she finishes elementary school.” I recognized his tone, he was speaking to her like someone trying to talk someone down from a ledge. Telling her the hard truth but doing it with kid gloves. Soon after we went home but now I was on the school’s radar. I would meet with him from time to time but that was as far as it went. After this I witnessed my mother recount the story to multiple people. She seemed worried and put off by his expectation that she hide her problems from me. She couldn’t imagine how that would work. She hated anyone knowing what went on inside of our lives. I knew I had created a problem for her. I never received any help for my “nervous stomach”. As an adult I have struggled with ulcers, IBS, and GERD. Whenever I experience stress it shows up in my stomach first. Eventually she would have a similar meeting with another school psychologist, this time it would be my senior year of high school. The message was very much the same. Dr. Zuberbear asked for her to come in and he told her I was very depressed. By this point she was physically sick and struggling. She listened and even expressed sympathy after we left but that was all she had to give me. From the earliest of ages my mental health was mine to manage. She just didn’t have the bandwidth. 

My father would tell me that I had a nervous stomach like him. He would tell me not to worry while at the same time laying his worries at my feet. He would also tell me that my depression was a weakness and that it came from my mother’s side. She was “weak minded” and I should endeavor to be strong like him. Anytime I had physical issues it was due to my mother, at least that is what my father said. My allergies and later asthma were a result of her weak genes, he was after all healthy as a horse. I spent my entire childhood and young adulthood being worried about being “crazy”, as my father put it. I worried that I would have my mother’s mental health issues and emotional instability. This concern forced me to always be an “adult”. I strove for emotional balance and I tried to let my intelligence and logic rule. Now I struggle to access my emotional side and often I see any emotional outburst I might have as a moral failing. I’m still striving to always be an “adult.”

Good

“Just because someone isn’t willing or able to love us, it doesn’t mean that we are unlovable.”
― Brené Brown

I have been doing some deep soul searching. When you first leave a toxic church or family it is all about survival. Then as the years peel away deeper issues are revealed. One of my biggest struggles right now is to see myself as good. Now I know that if you are still a Christian you may not agree with this post and if that is the case please feel free to scroll on past. I can’t ever remember a time when I felt that I was good, from a very young age I felt wrong, off, broken, and dangerous. Some of the blame for that I can lay at my parent’s feet and some of that blame belongs to the church. I was a vibrant child with intelligence and ambition. I was artistic, athletic and loving. Somewhere along the way, very early on my light was snuffed out. Some of that was stress and some of it was from constantly being reminded that I was a sinner, and the worst kind of sinner, a woman.

“We live in a world where most people still subscribe to the belief that shame is a good tool for keeping people in line. Not only is this wrong, but it’s dangerous. Shame is highly correlated with addiction, violence, aggression, depression, eating disorders, and bullying.”
― Brené Brown

I’m taking a class right now that requires me to do a lot of journaling and soul searching. As I look back on my child self I find myself struggling to like that little girl. I find myself asking why, why did I always feel rejected by God and why did I always feel like I was somehow the exception to God’s love? It makes me so angry that my light was extinguished so young and that I was taught to hate myself especially my own body. I was taught to see my very existence as sinful and the body that I had no choice but to live in as dangerous and flawed. What awful poison! Now as an adult I try to reach back to my child self and offer her love and understanding but I feel like I’m failing. My only hope is that somewhere in my mind I can find the truth of who I was/am. I realize as I type this how crazy this must all sound. I’ve been out of the church for so long, how can this still be a struggle? It’s a struggle because I am not yet totally healed and may never be, but I strive anyways to heal a little more every day. Part of that process is to grant my child self something she never had, unconditional love and belief in her inherent goodness.

“Shame hates it when we reach out and tell our story. It hates having words wrapped around it- it can’t survive being shared. Shame loves secrecy. When we bury our story, the shame metastasizes.”
― Brené Brown

When I try to hold an image of my child self in my mind all I can see is shame hanging on her like a dirty cloak. Shame because of my parents’ behavior and choices, poverty, shame about what was done to me, and shame about my early blooming body. I knew that I did not come from the right family and yes I felt shame because of my skin color. Shame about my intelligence and shame because I had questions. In the past, I have worked hard to let go of shame but this work is showing me that there is still work to do in that department. I have to remind myself that the shame they heaped on me was not my shame to carry. I need to find a way to see my child self without the gray filter that is always present.

For now, I’m going to keep pulling the past apart and reminding myself how the adults around me were wrong and deceived. I’m going to try to love my child self the way I love my own children. This might be an unpopular opinion but I believe we all come into this world good. I refuse to believe that a child deserves hell or is even capable of sin. I’m also going to remind myself that all of those statements include me. I am not the exception, I am good.

 

The Uncomfortable Confessions of a Preacher’s Kid

Yesterday I finally finished Ronna Russell’s memoir! I posted a review on Goodreads.

“This book was not an easy read. I grew up in a UPC church as well and at times it all hits too close to home. The author is so brave in her telling of her story! This is a wonderful read for anyone who is interested in learning more about the Christian denominations that exist on the fringe. The author’s vulnerability allows us into a world that many people never see filled with rapture anxiety, purity culture, and the pressure to be good enough. Beyond the church and the damage, it caused is a story of hope, self-acceptance, and self-love. She touches on religion, family, love, lost love, and finding and accepting oneself. I’m grateful she shared her happy ending because it gives hope to all of us raised in that atmosphere. I can’t wait to read what she writes next!”

 

I love memoir’s and this one is even more special because I can relate to it so strongly. It is not often that I have the opportunity to read about another woman’s experience within the UPC. When I talk with other survivors their stories always share common threads. For many, the fear of the rapture and hell is very real and then there is the sense of never measuring up. Normal sexual milestones tend to be suppressed and twisted leaving women feeling wrong and dirty. Secrets are everywhere and there is a knowing that comes with that. They are only secrets because they are not openly expressed but that is not the same as no one knowing or suspecting.

Ronna’s story isn’t just about the bad times it is also about hope, determination, and self-discovery. I owe her a special thanks because she has been an encouragement to me with my own writing. Women supporting women!

D

How Religion Continues To Hurt My Family

This week something really painful happened to me. It felt like being punched in the stomach. It came completely out of left field and so I was not prepared. Earlier I posted on Facebook this cute photo of my dog and myself at the park. One of the comments left by my extended family included condolences for the loss of my grandmother. The thing is I did not know that my grandmother had passed. I was already experiencing a rough week and this was an added hurt that I did not need right now. I quickly went to Google to confirm that my suspicions were correct, and sadly I was right. My grandmother had passed and no one in my family told me. I instinctively knew that my brother had not received a call either.

Both my parents have been gone for a while. I have an aunt and an uncle plus cousins who live in Florida. All of my extended family are Pentecostal even if they are not United Pentecostal. Just like the church I grew up in they all feel they know the truth and are special, even better than other churches. Only they have the real truth! These beliefs have done so much damage to my family.

When my mother had run through all of the “acceptable to her family” churches in Madison we started to attend Calvary Gospel. Calvary Gospel was very similar to the other churches we attended except for one thing, baptism. They baptized in Jesus name and not in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. My mother’s family was so angry when we started to go to that church. They told my mother to never let herself be rebaptized because she would be damned if she did. They also did not believe my baptism was valid. Fast forward a few years and all of our family picked up and moved to Florida leaving my mother, brother, and I alone up here in Wisconsin. We drifted apart. Some because my mother was always the black sheep and some because of the distance. My mom’s family didn’t like who she married the first time and then again the second time. They did not approve of my leaving Pentecostalism and eventually Christianity. They also turned their back on my brother when he came out as gay. They have a very narrow idea of what is acceptable and none of us ever fit into it. Over the years my grandmother would send me letters and cards on the holidays. They were always very surface based and they always ended with a warning about getting my heart right before the rapture. Merry Christmas, watch out the devil is going to get you, was the feeling they always gave me. When my beloved grandpa passed no one in my family told me. When I found out I was heartbroken. He had been sick for a long long time and so I was kind of surprised when he finally passed. Once I found out it was too late to send flowers or fly down for a funeral. I learned of his passing months after the fact. I cried for days right after my third child was born during a time that should have been filled with light and joy. I cried for my lost grandpa and for the cruelty my family delivered.

Fast forward to a couple of months ago, my brother and I had this conversation and I told him I assumed grandma would pass soon and I did not think anyone would tell us. That is exactly what happened. You might wonder why I was shocked, I wondered that myself. I think cruelty always shocks me even when I know it is coming. How could they be so mean and cold? I might be hard for them to find after all of these years but my brother lives in the same area as they do and they could have found him easily. My grandma was not always the easiest person to be around. She never asked about my children her great-grandchildren, she really never asked about me. It was like in her world I did not exist unless I was saved and in the manner she expected. I was not fully human in my lost state. She always cared about my salvation but I know that is because she felt she would be held to account by God if her family was not “living right.” My mother’s siblings feel the same. They did not tell us about her death because they do not wish to talk to us. We are lost and unclean. They, unlike my grandma, have never cared about our salvation. They have made no attempts to proselytize, they have just turned their backs and wiped us out of existence. It is like annihilation. We don’t exist to them. We have no worth because we are not exactly their brand of Pentecostal. Plus there is some racism mixed in. I am the brown grandchild and that makes me even less acceptable. They have no desire to have the brown granddaughter and gay grandson at the funeral to ruin their day.

My grandma’s passing hurt me more than I could have anticipated. I was bewildered by the pain. It was so deep and there was so much of it. After a few days, I realized what was happening. I was grieving all of the lost years. I was grieving the relationship I always wanted to have with her. I was feeling the rejection and abandonment of all the time without her. I was reminded of how much my mother’s family dislikes and rejects my brother and myself. All because of religion (well and a dash of racism). How sad that they have allowed this to keep us apart. How sad that she never knew her great-grandchildren. How sad that after losing her daughter she let herself lose her grandson and granddaughter, her only remaining link to my mother. How sad that even though I walked away from it all so long ago it can still reach out and hurt me.

In all of this, I am trying to hold onto the good things I feel I got from my grandmother. I’m tough and resilient just like her. I’m physically strong and strong-minded just like her. When I was a little girl she always marveled at my sturdiness and made me feel like I was invincible because of it. I’m sure there is more but that is all I can see right now.

Because of how my mother’s family is I have strived to be more accepting of my own children. They are all adults now and they all believe different things about God and spirituality. I try my best to always let them know that I love them no matter what. Nothing can tear them away from me, least of all religion.

Grandma

 

Daddy Issues

My parents had a rocky relationship. I can’t remember them being happy. My mother came from a small town and moved to Madison after high school. She married the first guy she dated and it did not turn out the way she expected it to. My mother went into the relationship with expectations that my father did not share. She assumed he would follow the rules of the church and those rules were very important to her. My father was a serial cheater, drinker, and poker player. My mother dealt with most of that but the cheating was a deal breaker. They did not immediately divorce because my mother believed that divorce was a sin. So she hung on and they were on and off for much of my young childhood.

Debbie and Armando (4 months old)

I know very little about my dad’s past. I know he was born in Mexico and that he became a citizen of the U.S. I do not know where in Mexico he is from and I know next to nothing about his family. He never shared things like that. It was very rare for him to talk about his past and sometimes his stories did not add up. It is a sad part of my story because not knowing his family or anything about that part of my ancestry has left a hole in my heart. I often wonder who they are and I wish I could ask them my questions. Maybe then I would understand my dad better, maybe if I spoke with them I would know why he seemed so broken.

Daddy

My father was unreliable. He did not pay child support and that kept my mother and me in poverty. He had a habit of disappearing. He often would not show up for visitation. I would wait for him to drive up and many times he just never showed. After hours of waiting my mother would coax me into bed. As I grew older my resentment started to increase. By middle school, I became aware that he only came around when he was between women. I started to feel like a consolation prize. Our relationship became strained. When I was little I was a daddy’s girl. I loved him fiercely and forgave him for every terrible thing he did. As I was approaching my teen years I could see who he really was and it was pretty ugly.

Dad

My dad had high expectations. If I got sick or struggled with anything he would blame it on my mother’s bad genes. I was a reflection of him and therefore I had to be perfect. He was emotionally unavailable. I could get affection but I could not talk anything through with him because everything was always about him. I have come to believe that he had some sociopathic tendencies. Perfection was not about how you treated people it was about what you looked like and how successful you were.

In middle school, my dad started flirting with my friends. By high school, many of my friends did not want to be around if he was around. The church already treated me badly because of Steve Dahl, then on top of that my dad was a creep. In high school, I became aware that he was dating girls my age. At one point when I was around 16, I told him about Steve Dahl. Then the unthinkable happened, he told me that he knew it was happening the whole time. He figured Steve was tired of his wife and would eventually marry me. This crushed me and it changed the way I saw my father forever. I did not cut him off but it was the beginning of the end. My dad never saw an issue with a man having a much younger wife or even multiple wives. I have no idea where this thinking came from. It seemed to grow stronger over time.

When I was in my twenties he was sent to prison. He was convicted of molesting my little step sister. After prison they deported him. He never forgave me for not supporting him in court and I only spoke with him twice after they released him. He has disappeared from my life.

I have daddy issues. I am sure that my father’s bad parenting is partly why I was so vulnerable when Steve Dahl came into my life. Knowing that my dad knew what was going on and did nothing to help me has given me self-worth issues. Men, in general, failed me during my childhood. Whether it was the babysitter’s husband who touched me when I was in elementary school, my pastor who did not report the abuse that happened at his church, my abuser, or countless others. My only real positive male relationship during childhood was with my grandfather. This brings me to God, Yahweh, Jesus, whatever you choose to call him. He really did not show up for me either. He was silent. I felt rejected by him as well.

This story is tragic and so I’m going to try to end it on a happy note. I did get some good things from my dad. I am very tough and strong-minded, I hold myself to high standards and I’m a hard worker. I have some charm and charisma which I’m pretty sure comes from him. I’m also in a much better place spiritually. I have stopped chasing after god. I have embraced a spiritual path that feeds me and where I feel accepted and respected. At times my daddy issues bubble up and then I have to work through some new layers. There is so much more I could share about my dad and maybe I will in a later post. Sometimes writing all of this down drives home how sad it all is and it becomes too much for me to handle all at once. I’m grateful I survived my childhood and I’m grateful I am in a better place now.

Beginning

I guess the best place to start a story is at the beginning. My mother was raised in the Church of God. She came from a small town and her parents were very religious and conservative. The church of her childhood was very charismatic. She told me stories about people dancing in the spirit and speaking in tongues. When she moved to the big city (Madison Wisconsin) it was a pretty big shock. She married young and had me quickly after. My mother was always looking for the “right” church. Her and my father attended an Assemblies of God church close to our home for the first few years of my life. Eventually they left that church, although I’m not sure why. In the corners of my memory I think I remember her saying something about not liking the new pastor. I was dedicated to god in that church and one of my earliest memories is of that church. A Thief In The Night was a movie that played a big part in my childhood. That film came out in 1972, at that time I was 2 years old. It was not released in theaters but instead traveled from church to church like a virus. I don’t know when exactly it was shown at our church but I know I was not much more than a toddler. It is one of my earliest memories. I don’t know what scene it was exactly but it was a scene where someone (probably Patty) screams, at that moment I started to cry, hard, and my dad had to carry me out of the auditorium. At the back of our church there was just glass, you could stand outside the sanctuary and look inside. It was probably like that so that parents could take their kids out and still hear and see what was going on. My dad paced the floor with me and I cried because I was scared. I sometimes wonder if the scream I heard was even in the movie or if it was someone in the congregation who was freaked out by the film. That sort of movie was still pretty new for that time period and I’m sure many people had never seen anything like it. It is now considered the grand daddy of all the end time films.

During my childhood we visited many churches and my mother would only stay in a church for a short time (couple of years) until we started attending the United Pentecostal Church in our city. That was when our whole world changed but that is a story for another day. One thing ties all of the churches we visited together like a sinister cord of fear, and that is those damn Thief In The Night movies. Watching them punctuates all of my church experiences. They were a big deal in the 70’s and I could not escape them no matter how hard I tried.

My mother was a church hopper. She struggled my whole childhood to find just the right place. She was never satisfied. I hope you understand that I am not trying to be critical, I understand her struggle it makes sense to me now that I am an adult. My mother grew up believing that her church was the right church. She was raised that you had to be Church of God to be saved. My grandparents were livid when they found she was attending a “Jesus Only” church. In order for church to feel right for her it had to have charismatic worship, fire and brimstone preaching, and a strong belief in end times prophecy. They also had to baptize in the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit. The UPC had all of those but not the baptism part. She spent the most time at the UPC but never fully embraced it, because of the baptism question. I think she stayed there because it felt the most like home. My mother struggled with depression and I’m sure that is why she struggled to find a church home that fit. Our life was full of drama, her depression, my father’s cheating, poverty, and divorce, I think many pastors just did not know how to deal with all of those issues. They gave her non-answers and non-help.

She was very talented. My mother could sing and traveled from church to church with a gospel singing group as a teen. She played multiple instruments and often played and sang in church. Because of her religious upbringing and depression, plus our often dire straits, she spent a lot of time in prayer. Not bow your head kind of prayer but weeping and speaking in tongues. I would sit outside her bedroom door and wonder if she was ok. She was always worried about hell and the rapture. She heard it her whole life and then passed it down to me. The fear of being left behind punctuated my childhood. I believe it led to the anxiety issues I have today. I no longer worry about the rapture but I do struggle with anxiety and I can trace it directly back to her.

D

Church Too

Over the last few days, I have been taking part in #churchtoo, which is like the #metoo movement, but specifically sheds light on sexual assault in churches. It has brought some dark memories to the front of my mind, things I have not thought about since they happened. I have debated with myself over and over about whether I should tell my story. The thing is, my story is like a poison in my guts that is seeping into everything, and so I am making the choice to talk about what happened to me.

I was an early bloomer. Before I reached age ten, I had already been assaulted twice. The first man was a babysitter’s husband. He groped me while I watched television on his lap, I was eight or nine years old. I told my mother and she confronted his wife. The wife became angry with my mother and I no longer went over there. As a teen when I asked my father why he never told the police about what happened to me his reply was that he did not want to ruin an old man’s life. At that moment I knew my value was not the same as that old man.

The second incident happened when I was around ten years old. I was playing in my favorite arcade at the mall. My dad was sitting just outside talking with some other adults. A man came up behind me and grabbed my breasts while I was playing a game. I shook myself free and the man ran out of the arcade. With my heart in my chest, I ran out and told my father. He went inside the arcade and alerted the manager. I don’t think the guy was ever caught but the damage was done. I paid a price for my early development. I learned that men saw me as prey and I had to be extra careful.

My mother always had trouble finding a church she liked. She finally settled on a United Pentecostal Church, which is like evangelicalism only far more extreme fundamentalist with lots of speaking in tongues. When I was in the sixth grade my parents took me out of public school and put me into the private school our church ran. This meant I was at the church all day every day. It was a very insulated experience. I was a very active young person. I was captain of my Bible quiz team and very involved in various church ministries. My home life was hard, so I tried to stay busy and out of the house as much as I could. As a young girl, my dreams were to go to Bible college and major in music. I loved to sing and took any opportunity I could to learn more about music.

My parents did not attend church regularly. My mother would attend in fits and starts. That being said, they were both in favor of my being there whenever the church doors were open. I would often get rides to and from activities by other adults in the congregation. This is where the trouble began. I was a very bright child and many of the adults treated me like another adult. My parents had always done the same thing. I was accustomed to adults treating me more like an adult than a child. This often left me open to inappropriate situations. I think my parents used my intelligence to discharge them of their parenting responsibilities. One afternoon on a day just like any other day I met Steve Dahl. I was standing amongst a group of adults and I asked if one of them could give me a ride home. I was eleven and in the sixth grade. I knew all of these adults very well except for Steve. He volunteered which seemed totally normal to me.  I knew he had recently joined the church and was married there, I just had not been formally introduced. Once we were in his car he asked me if I needed to be home right away. I said no, my mother was preoccupied most of the time and so my being gone wouldn’t be an issue. We stopped and got ice cream and drove around. We chatted and all seemed fine until it wasn’t. At one point he reached over and grasped my hand and held it like it was the most natural thing in the world. At this point in my life, my father was never around. He would show up when it was convenient for him, mostly when he was between women. I was happy to have a man acting like a father figure and so I said nothing. He was twenty-nine and I was eleven.

Things snowballed from there. His job was selling church pictorial directories for Olan Mills and he was often on the road. I became friends with his wife and she and I hung out often. He asked my parents if he could take me along on his long day trips to keep him company and to get me out of the house. We often did not have electricity and so there wasn’t much for me to do around the house. None of the adults around me thought this arrangement was odd. I mean a better solution would have been for the church to help my mother with our electric bills or for some of the women to mentor me.

Things escalated. He began to tell me how unhappy he was in his marriage and other things. I was ill-equipped to understand or help with. At times he acted like a kind uncle who took me for ice cream and spent time with me. And other times he treated me like a lover. Those were the bad times. He took so much from me. My first kiss, my first almost everything. He tried to have intercourse with me but he could not do it, it was physically not possible. He acted as though I was some experienced woman and would say things to me that I did not understand. He laughed at my inexperience like he could not believe how naive I was. Somehow in his haze, the fact that I was eleven and knew nothing about sex escaped him. At other times he seemed in awe at how mature my body was for my age. He would repent at the altar and then tell me how sorry he was for what he had done and how he would never do it again, but he always came back for more. I became attached to him as other parts of my world fell apart. My parents divorced, my mother struggled to keep us in food, and being in the Christian school turned out to not be what I thought it would be. I started to disassociate and I felt trapped in a life that I did not want and did not know how to escape. Plus there was the all-present worry about hell and the rapture. Yep, I grew up always fearing hell and the wrath of an angry god. After he would touch me I would go home and beg God to forgive me. I felt like my very body was a sin, a trap for men to fall into. I thought that something I was doing or saying must have made him do these things. Usually, when I was with him I would try to make myself small., I liked him and wanted him to want to be my friend, but I knew the other stuff he was doing was wrong.

He was very popular. He played the trumpet in our church band. He was friends with all of the adults in my life. Then his wife’s sister came to live with Steve and his wife. She and I were friends. We would mail each other letters like pen pals and I really liked her. I was eleven and so it was all scented pens and stickers. We were kids. When I found out she was moving here I was super excited! But once she moved to Madison she became cold to me and I did not know why. She was about three years older than me. She was very quiet and shy. She came to Madison so she could attend our church school, or that was what I was told. I have no idea if Steve had a plan bringing her to Madison or if things happened between them only after she came here.

After things had been going on for about two years I finally went and told my pastor. I’m not sure why I was afraid of him. He was a big man and preached fire-and-brimstone so that might have something to do with it. I thought he was imposing. I told him and he recorded it. I did not tell him everything because I could barely speak I was so afraid of what was going to happen to me. So he asked me questions and I answered “yes” or “no.” He knew what happened, just not the details. He said he would get back to me and I left his office.

He never got back to me.

He never said anything at all. I waited for the next shoe to fall. When my mother found out she called me a hussy and was mad at me for a long time. I received no counseling, support, or justice. The police were never called nor were social services. I was told by some adult that we should handle things within the church so that we would not bring shame, reporters, or cops to the church doorstep.

The order of things becomes foggy at this point, probably due to trauma. Within days Steve phoned me and told me he had to leave town and it was not my fault. That was it, that was all he said. Soon after I found out that right after I went to the pastor Steve’s wife came home and found him in bed with her little sister, who was fifteen years old. Steve fled to Vegas and I have no idea where she went. I imagine back with her parents. At the next midweek service, I was confronted by Steve’s wife. She came close to me and said that I had to talk with her after the service. I was scared out of my mind! I went with her into the church basement and into one of the school classrooms. She told me she was so disappointed in me for cheating with her husband. She said she trusted me with him. I said nothing but “I’m sorry.” Then she insisted that we pray together for my soul and repentance. All I remember about that was how she loudly spoke in tongues next to me. She didn’t talk to me much anymore after that.

Here is what I have pieced together since then. Steve was sent to another church for restoration. He and his wife divorced. She was allowed a divorce by the church because of adultery. This is where things get really nuts! He then married his ex-wife’s sister, the one who was fifteen when they were caught together. I was told that her parents let her go out to Vegas to be with him.

They are still married and he is pastoring a church in Wisconsin.

I have spoken to him once. Remember he sold church directories? As an adult, I went to a Southern Baptist church and he came by to sell us a directory. My stepmother was helping with the directory and when she saw who it was she alerted me. I was in my early twenties. I went to my church elder and told him about Steve. He said he thought we should talk so I could get closure. He bullied Steve into talking with me but closure was harder to get than I thought. In the elder’s office, the three of us sat. Steve explained to me that I was a very mature eleven-year-old. He said he thought I wasn’t really angry with him but that I was angry with how the church responded to me. He told me all about how Christ had forgiven him and restored him. He told me how my childhood pastor has embraced him with forgiveness. I don’t remember much about what I said., I think I fell under his spell like I was a kid again. After he left, the elder said that he felt Steve did not take any responsibility. I wish I could have that moment with him back. It took me until I was in my late twenties to discover feminism. At twenty-eight I left the church and blossomed into the woman I am now. If I had that moment back I would call him what he is. He is a pedophile. I would want to rage at him for all he took from me. He is pastoring a church in northern Wisconsin. He has a Facebook page where he posts about his church. His church has a YouTube channel where you can watch him preach. In the bio part of his church’s website, there is no mention of what he did to me or the fact that he married his wife’s sister. He has children and I have to wonder if he ever abused them or anyone else.

I left the UPC church at seventeen. Eventually, I landed in a Southern Baptist church. I left that church when I was twenty-eight. I left because they told me that it would be a sin to divorce my husband. He was physically violent towards me along with being mentally and emotionally abusive. I felt I had to go to protect my kids. They told me that I could separate from him, but not divorce. In order to get the help I needed from the state, like benefits, I needed to be divorced. Plus he was threatening me all the time and I knew he would not just get better. We had been together for twelve years. At this point, I decided that if God was going to send me to hell for protecting myself and my kids, then I would pay that price. Hell seemed better than where I was. I tried other churches and just couldn’t stomach it anymore. I stopped believing. I turned toward history and tried to understand how the Bible came about and how women were treated because of it.

What Steve did to me ruined my adolescence. I think the adults in the church viewed me as a slut and adulteress. Some of them avoided me and others gave me evil looks. People have said to me why not just reveal who all of these people are. My question is who do I include in this crime? My parents, who were too enmeshed in their own crap to look out for me? The man who did it? The pastor who did not call the police? The wife of that perv, or any of the other adults who knew about it?  No one ever checked in with me to see how I was doing. I was met with knowing silence. Later at about fifteen, I would see Steve again, at our church’s family camp. I was sitting in a pew with my puppy-love boyfriend and Steve just shows up like nothing happened. Was he removed? Nope, he was forgiven. He sat in the back but I knew he was there.

I can tell you that The United Pentecostal Church had a sex problem. I know of other cases where older men helped themselves to the young and I know of young people forced to marry at fifteen or sixteen years old due to having sex together. Don’t come at me and say I should forgive and come back to god. I have a god and she doesn’t require that of me.