Belief Part 2
Welcome to Part 2 of my post series where I am sharing about my experiences with belief and faith starting when I was young and ending with where I am today.
If you missed Part 1, you can read it here.
Thank you for coming along for the journey.
CW: If you have church, faith, or any kind of relationship trauma or abuse, please approach with caution, take breaks, or don’t read my posts at all. There is also mention of abortion in this post with a CW before that section so you can skip just that section.
Sometimes reading other people’s stories can help us heal and feel not-so-alone in our experiences, and other times we need to take a break from all the things that open us back up and bring the feeling back to the surface. Check in with yourself as you read. <3
I didn’t know what to think about it all at first. I had gone to Methodist church services here and there throughout my 26 years, but I quickly found out that charismatic evangelical church culture is very different from anything I had heard of or experienced before.
The first time I went to church with my brother, who had just begun his career as a youth pastor, was years before I would eventually become a bonafide church person.
He brought me to a non-denominational church in our hometown that he went to during college.
He tried to prepare me ahead of time knowing I hadn’t experienced a charismatic church service before; telling me what to expect and also assuring me there was no pressure to participate or even stay if I was uncomfortable.
And I was uncomfortable.
Yet at the same time, I was fascinated. I had never seen people sing their church songs with their hands up in the air; not to mention jumping up and down or waving flags. And I certainly had never seen anyone running around the congregation at church before. But there he was, a man that reminded me of Santa Claus (if Santa were a farmer) running around in his denim overalls with his hands raised in the air making laps around the perimeter of the church while the worship band played.
I’ll be honest, part of me wanted to laugh hysterically at all of it. It felt like I was in a movie where they were showing crazy church people being crazy in church.
How ridiculous all these people looked flailing and lurching about so awkwardly; doing whatever they wanted to do without care. And if my brother hadn’t been there and I hadn’t been determined to respect his beliefs, I am sure I would have roll my eyes and left.
But as time went on and I continued to observe, I realized something.
These people were free.
Free from societal expectations.
Free from their own expectations.
Free from worrying what anyone thought but God.
Then I realized another feeling was taking shape inside me.
Jealousy.
I was feeling jealous of their freedom.
I’d spent my whole life locked up; worrying about every move I made and every word I uttered lest I would out myself as different or do something to get rejected. And here these people were- out here acting a fool without a care in the world- their only fear being rejected by God, not by man.
I had been looking all my life for this kind of freedom and here these people were living in it.
But my time had yet to come.
Not too long after that first wild church service, I started to quietly become a believer. I read books by apologists, read The Message Bible so I could understand it easier, and asked my brother a million questions about his faith any time I could. When I got back together with my abusive ex, K, I thought having faith in God this time around would be the key to us finally being the happy couple I just knew we were destined to be.
I would try and share with him what I was learning about God in the hopes he would start to believe too and then we could live the lives I had always hoped for us.
But…
The day I kicked my abusive ex boyfriend out of my life forever after almost 2 years of trying to rescue him from himself, the first thing I did was call my brother who lived a few minutes down the road from me in MD and tell him I needed to stay with him for a few days or else risk going back to K. The abuse was worse than it had ever been and I knew I needed to get out and never go back.
I didn’t even pack a bag or bring a change of clothes. I grabbed my purse and ran to my car hoping K wasn’t waiting there to beg his way back in.
I spent the whole weekend with my brother and on Sunday morning he invited me to go to church with him - no pressure. Despite only having the same clothes I had been wearing for 3 days I felt like it was something I needed to do.
So I went as I was.
And from that day forward, and for next decade, you could find me in a pew just about every Sunday.
The first thing I experienced when I arrived at church with my brother that Sunday many years ago, was being utterly surrounded by the people of his small country church.
Every where I turned was another person who wanted to hug me, pray for me, or offer some encouraging words. Like they knew I was hurting without me having to say it. To be honest, I felt a little bit famous. I was KM’s sister. Everyone loved my brother and by extension loved and welcomed me like they had known me all my life.
I was family from day One.
This is where it all began for me. I went from feeling like a broken person who couldn’t get anything right to a person with a purpose, God-given gifts, and a Holy mission all within a manner of weeks.
It was like having an instant group of friends. All I had to do was show up at church and the connections and friendships abounded. I could come just as I was and everyone was just happy to have me there. I could leave the pressures to fit in and keep myself together at the door. When I came into the church I could throw my hands up in worship and jump around to the beat as my sister in law lead us in worship and no one cared because they were doing the same.
To me, after the life I had lived, it was a true miracle.
I didn’t just kinda believe that God might be real anymore.
God was real.
The truth had alluded me all those years prior because I just hadn’t found the people who knew the real God.
I finally found the truth.
I reached out to God in faith and had been saved.
I remember coming to my first camp meeting, which is like a church service on steroids. We met together as a church night after night for days. It was a whole event where people from the community were invited to come experience God alongside us.
The man who had come to speak was sharing all kinds of stories of supernatural things he had personally experienced or had actually done himself.
Speaking to angels that had appeared in his car while driving down the road?
Miraculous healings of people near death?
I hadn’t heard of this kind of stuff before and it just didn’t seem like it could be true. It seemed like fairy tales you tell little kids to fascinate them.
I saw how these stories had whipped everyone into a frenzied state.
When the speaker asked for everyone to make lines and he would lay his hands on each person and pray for them, I ran to the back of one of the lines so I could watch and see what happened and decide what I was going to do.
One by one each person he prayed for fell right over. Right onto the ground. Some of them looked like they were sleeping, some were laughing like drunk hyenas, and some were crying.
Part of me was terrified. Another part curious.
Was it real or a bunch of bullshit?
When I saw him lay his hands on my brother. I man I had known all my life and trusted with my own life, and my big tall brother fell over, I thought maybe this really was all real.
Well, there was only one way to find out.
As I got closer to the front and was only a few people away from getting prayed for a powerful feeling rose up inside me.
I didn’t want to do it.
I didn’t want to let some man have enough power over to me to make me fall uncontrollably to the ground. I would let him pray, but I wasn’t going to fall. I didn’t care that everyone else had fallen. I wasn’t going to give all my control to any man ever again in my life. Especially some man I didn’t know who had just told fairy tales about talking to real angels.
I stepped up to him with anxiety and the urge to run pulsing through my body. I said nothing as he looked directly in my eyes, leaned towards my ear and whispered, “You aren’t letting a man control you, you are letting GOD have control! Trust in Him.” Then placed hands on my shoulders and started to pray in words I couldn’t understand.
And the next thing I knew, I had fallen right over.
I floated to the ground like a dang feather in the wind.
That night at the camp meeting where that man had seemed to know my inner thoughts and God had taken over my body and caused me to fall over, I was more sure than ever I was part of something miraculous.
I had given God control. And why not, what good had I done in the driver’s seat of my life? Jesus take the wheel, indeed.
After a few months of regular church attendance I was asked if I would do the morning announcements up on the church stage before each of the two Sunday services.
I immediately accepted.
Someone willing to give me a microphone and an audience? Yes please!
If this was a strategic move on their part to ensure I would be at church each Sunday and keep me out of “trouble”, it worked. I was there not just every Sunday, but at any event they had no matter where it was.
Before long my brother and his wife invited me to help as a youth leader in the youth group they pastored.
I felt honored and proud of myself. All those years of letting everyone down and having them worry if I will ever get my life together and here I was, becoming a leader at church where miracles happened.
My parents were worried when I became a church person just like they were worried when my brother did as a teen. They were worried the church would take control of us and turn us into religious zealots who rejected and judged people. They had personally experienced in their lives the darker side of religious groups and didn’t want either of us to lose ourselves just to fit into the church.
I listened to their concerns, but assured them our church was nothing like the churches they had heard of or experienced before.
Our church was different.
From my perspective, I was finally making the right choices. All my doubts about the existence of God since childhood were allayed once I found this church. I just hadn’t found the the people who truly knew God before then. That was why I had always doubted.
My parents and friends didn’t need to worry about me because I had stopped drinking and was either at work or at church. For a little while after K and I were done I tried partying with work friends and dating guys that I had met at bars, but it all felt too much like the life I had just narrowly escaped with K.
I wanted a totally new life. After all, in Christ I was totally made new. I had died to my old life and had risen again, just like Jesus had, into my new life as the hands and feet of God on earth. I had the power of God now.
It made sense that my old life didn’t fit anymore.
I had struggled with anxiety and depression my whole life, but especially during all those years of being abused. One of the immediate draws of evangelicalism for me was the promise of being supernaturally healed by God of any and all manner of diseases, illnesses, issues, brokenness, sins or worries.
I didn’t know I was autistic, but I knew I was broken.
Jesus is the God of the broken.
Jesus heals the broken and makes them whole.
That’s exactly what I had been looking for all my life.
All that worry about sin as a child was so silly to me now that I had a better understanding of sin. Sin wasn’t taking your brother’s toys without asking. Sin was something we were born with, but could be easily rid of. All we had to do was give our sins to God and we would be made clean.
So when a lady I hadn’t met before approached me after church one day and said she had heard from the Lord that she was to pray for me so God could heal my anxiety and depression I almost jumped on top of her with joy.
Yes. Please.
Take it away.
She prayed for me and as I stood there with her hands on my shoulders I felt warm all over. When she was done praying, she looked at me and said, “The Lord said all anxiety and depression in you is healed in the name of Jesus!”
I cried and thanked her.
“Thank the Lord! Not me!” she had said.
And it had worked. I was healed. God had sent that nice lady on a special mission just for me.
Just for me.
Someone doing something just for me. It had been so long since I had experienced such extravagant attention.
I felt so special.
Every once in a while over the next year or so I would feel the urge to share the story of my miraculous healing from anxiety and depression with the church. And each time I would share my story, people would come and ask me to pray for them. So they could be healed as well.
“And if God did it for me, He can and WILL do it for you too! AMEN! Just have faith. God is so good.”
And I would pray for them.
And I would declare them healed in the name of God.
Oh, the power of God is intoxicating.
(CW: Abortion. Skip to the next section on the other side of the dividing line below this part if you want to avoid this topic. Check in with yourself. <3)
One day I found out our church was invited to join a protest at an abortion clinic. Not growing up in and around churches, but especially evangelical churches, I hadn’t heard of this phenomenon before. At least not in real life. I had seen it in movies, but I didn’t think it was churches like ours standing out there with signs.
I had always (and still do) believed that women should have the right to choose what happens with their bodies and had grown up in a household where my parents believed the same. Especially coming from a background of abuse I felt very strongly that women should have the right to choose abortion no matter the reason, but, based on what I had personally experienced, especially when they are in abusive situations. I had never had an abortion, but had I gotten pregnant with K, who knows what I would have decided to do to protect myself and my baby from him? Especially considering he told me if I had ever gotten pregnant he would “make sure” I didn’t have a baby.
I know this sounds naive, but I had been so far from conservative circles up to that point in my life that I was truly ignorant of the evangelical churches fervent stance against a woman’s right to choose. They didn’t have brochures or anything when you came through the doors with a list of all their beliefs- you just had to stay in church long enough to learn the truth.
Then they told me one of the women who leads protests at the abortion clinic every week was going to come talk to the church. I was concerned, but also curious. That is until she arrived with posters of aborted fetuses and placed them on the alter for all to see. Including the little kids running around before children’s church.
“It’s important for the kids to see the truth. For everyone to see the truth.”
I was livid. I was offended. I was angry. I was disappointed. I was outraged.
And I wasn’t the only one. There were other members of the church, who felt ambushed by the images and judged by what the woman was saying about abortion and women who have had them.
But our concerns were not taken seriously. It was more important to protest an abortion clinic than it was to listen to women who had a different view or experience.
This was one of the first times the glow of my new life in Christ began to dim.
I was starting to come down from my high.
I had started a blog about a year or so after becoming a Christian and started writing about all manner of things, but mostly my Christian viewpoint on different topics. One day I started a blog series in regards to Ann Rice, the famous author known by most for writing Interview With a Vampire, leaving Christianity at that time because her son came out as gay and she felt there wasn’t room made for him in the church and she didn’t want to have anything to do with an institution that rejected her child.
Or anyone’s child.
Again, I know this sounds naive - and it was - but I didn’t know the extent to which evangelical Christians felt that being gay was a “sin” or against God.
Not that I didn’t know at all.
But I always thought these kinds of ignorant views were “those” kinds of church people. Not “my” kind of church people.
But I was wrong. Most of the people at my church felt that being gay was a sin. And I found this out after some folks go upset about my blog posts in support of Ann Rice and her son.
I had lived my whole life in a family that welcomed people from all orientations, races, cultures, beliefs, and backgrounds. I had been taught to include and love everyone. My parents had always modeled for us the beauty of being inclusive and welcoming.
I had never felt that being LGBTQ was wrong or sinful. I had never read anything in the Bible or experienced anything in my life that lead me to believe that God felt being LGBTQ was wrong or sinful either.
I couldn't understand why so many people in my church felt so differently from me.
I guess this was what my parents were worried about. That church would try to make me change in order to fit in.
And I had changed a lot since joining the church. But in a good way.
Right?
I didn’t feel I had been changing to fit in.
Had I?
I didn’t know what to think of it all, but I did know I was never going to change my views about supporting and advocating for the LGBTQ community, nor on a woman’s right to choose.
Surely this wouldn’t be a problem at my church.
I had always been told church was where you can come as you are and be loved and accepted. They had done that for me when I was so lost and broken years prior.
Then I started to look around me.
At the people in the pews.
I had always thought of my church as diverse. There were people of different ages, races, genders (well, cis-genders), backgrounds and cultures represented in those pews.
And yet.
The longer someone came to our church the less diverse they were as far as beliefs and religious practices were concerned.
You can “come as you are”. I had experience this myself. There were no requirements for entry.
But what I was discovering was the unspoken intention that had been operating in stealth (at least to me) all along: you can come as you are, as long as you eventually “die to yourself” as the Bible so instructs and “become as we are”.
Come broken and lost.
We love the broken and lost.
But then…
Assimilate.
Or risk becoming broken and lost once again…
Stay tuned for Part 3 coming soon!
Oof. Yeah. I’m grateful to be in an affirming community now, but the pain of decades of what you’ve described here has me distant since day one at my current church.
Great series.