I left Calvary Chapel church on Mother’s Day. Before that, over a span of several months I was dealing with a lot of weird stuff with some of the pastors and female counselor. The concerns I had were nagging.
When I first started attending there, I remember not feeling too welcome by the senior pastor, but figured he was either shy, paranoid, or just didn’t like me for whatever reason. The other leaders were quite standoffish as well. The women were friendly and some of the men, but regardless the ambience felt overly ‘us and them’ hierarchical.
My last church wasn’t that way. In my last church the pastors were more cordial and respectful. But in this church it was like I was automatically a second class Christian and would always be even if I served there. I figured the leaders interpreted the Bible a little off balance. That brought me to start emailing the church. That’s when the weirder stuff started happening.
That’s why I hide here in the dark So no one has to see my pain… But can You bring the keys to my heart And help me find the way? – TFK, In My Room
My growing independence unsettled my parents.
The fear crept in subtly.
I buried myself in 15 credits fall 2011. Several nights of the week, I stayed in the Math Center on campus doing calculus homework with tutors.
But Dad freaked if I didn’t respond to his texts or calls right away, threatening to call campus police to check on me. I explained I got absorbed in study and didn’t check my phone often.
He taped an index card that said “Campus Police: 719-255-3111” to the kitchen microwave.
The landslide started. I was 22 years old.
December 2011: I started seeing a Christian counselor because Mom took my sister.
I told him how controlling my parents were, and he encouraged me to set boundaries. I wrote in my journal that he told me to stop thinking in terms of “shoulds” and “musts” and more in terms of “wants” and “your reasonable heart’s desires,” because the former is living under the law, and the latter is “where freedom is and where Christ wants you to be.”
We met regularly until his retirement in April.
After finals, my parents raided my room, confiscating all Harry Potter books I owned and other fantasy they found objectionable. And two Harry Potter DVDs I’d checked out of the library.
Mom opened my bank statements. Said I spent too much money at Christmas. Opening any mail or packages addressed to me became a requirement for living in their house. I objected. They grounded me from attending a white elephant gift exchange party with my online writers’ group. Dad drove my sister instead.
January 2012: Dad said my hair had to be cut off because women with longer hair are more likely to get raped according to a book Mom read on self defense. I fought him for three weeks, gave in and donated 14 inches to Locks of Love.
My parents took away internet and cellphone access and driving privileges the last two weeks of winter break. I chatted with my friend Anna G. in Dallas on my mom’s iPad in the morning and on the landline with Cynthia B. so I didn’t hurt myself. I felt so trapped.
They threatened to prevent me from driving to campus for classes and work unless I signed a written contract. I didn’t like being manipulated, so I agreed to the chore list and asked them not to pay me.
My curfew was 7:30 p.m.
February 2012: I discovered my study buddy Racquel and Cynthia B.’s numbers were blocked on my cellphone. My mom said Dad told her to block them on our family plan since they’d encouraged me to move out. So I called them using campus phones.
March 2012: Dad and I fought at midterms because he wouldn’t let me study. I was enrolled in 17 credits (Organic Chemistry 2, Chaucer, Bacteriology, an English senior seminar, and a Merck honors research lab class) and tutoring on campus part-time.
I told him I wanted to move out after finals. He cried and told me he wanted to be a hedge of protection around me as long as possible.
April 2012: I bought tickets to go to New Life Church’s Easter production, the Thorn, for the first time. My dad said he didn’t approve, I went anyway.
May 2012: After finals, we took our last family vacation together to Camden, Maine. Mom and Dad said they had an idea. They would send me to Bob Jones University.
I didn’t want to leave UCCS after three years and attend an unaccredited school. I read the 2012 BJU student handbook and told my parents I wasn’t comfortable with rules like “on and off campus, physical contact between unmarried men and women is not allowed” and “Headphones may be used for educational purposes only and may not be used to listen to music” because it sounded Orwellian.
I didn’t want to leave one box for another.
They allowed me one phone call to Nia, a writing mentor. She said prepare to move out ASAP.
June 2012: Mom and Dad laid hands and prayed over me, saying I had been given to them as a loan when I was born and they were giving me back to God. They said determining God’s will for my life was up to me now.
I went with my writer’s group buddies to a 10:30 pm showing of Snow White and the Huntsman. I texted my parents before going. I came home, everyone was asleep. I woke up and the car keys were gone for a week as punishment.
July 4, 2012: I visited the Bob Jones campus with my family. I wasn’t allowed my laptop or cellphone so friends couldn’t sway me. I still didn’t want to transfer, even though Dad said I didn’t have to be a dentist if I went.
July 22, 2012: Met with my parents and my pastor after church. My pastor asked if I was being physically or sexually abused. I said no, my dad was just controlling and I wanted freedom to follow God on my own. He said the only way to honor my parents was to transfer to BJU.
July 23, 2012: I told an English professor and my chemistry research professor, Dr. Owens, what was happening. They listened to me, helped me sort my thoughts. Told me independence was part of growing up, that virtue in a closet is not virtue. Said to listen to my heart.
I told my parents to give me another week to decide. The next day, I got an email from BJU saying my registration fee had been paid. I called my mother and asked her to explain. She said they figured I’d go.
My parents tracked my location using the GPS on T-Mobile’s Family Anywhere feature. They checked multiple times a day and knew from the satellite map of the building if I was working in the research lab or standing in my professor’s office. So I was scolded for driving to a mentor’s house for advice.
July 27, 2012: I walked to investigate apartments near campus since my parents took the car. My mom told me they’d emptied my savings account of nearly $10,000. The funding I was using to leave. Money I earned working for Dad and money they gave me as my college savings.
July 29, 2012: Another meeting with the pastor. I said God’s will seemed muddled. He said I was letting Satan confuse me. He said BJU was the only Scriptural way to honor my parents. I twisted my hands in my lap, said I couldn’t do it. He said, “Then I’ve got nothing more to say to you,” and walked out.
I sat in the pew sobbing. My mom came in.
I said, “Do you realize I can never come back here for church now?”
July 30, 2012: Dr. Owens picked me up and took me to the bank so I could remove my parents from my checking account, which only had $200. I drove her car from campus to a downtown branch, but the bank couldn’t transfer the money back to my account.
I signed up for my own cellphone plan. And my friend Mary W. and her mom gave me one of their bikes, a helmet, and gloves for transportation.
August 1, 2012: I signed a lease for an apartment with my roommate. Dr. Owens gave me $500 towards the deposit.
Mom and Dad said my possessions must be out of the house by 5 p.m. Around 3 p.m., I texted friends for help. I dragged furniture and boxes out onto the front porch in pouring rain.
Five carloads of friends came, carrying my punk pink-haired friend Kat, Ivy, Adaeze, Elsie, the Peveto twins, and Kristi and John.
Mom took my house key, but she couldn’t kick me out in front of all my friends. We pulled up at the apartment complex around 7 p.m.
They make me feel so empty Their words, they cut like knives You tell me to forgive them, But I’m not sure I’ll survive… – TFK, In My Room
“The way you talk about English, you really don’t seem like a dentist to me. You talk about it like you really love it,” Cynthia B. said, shifting in her electric wheelchair.
Cynthia B. was my first friend outside the box. We met in a British literature survey class fall semester 2010.
“I get that the practice is your dad’s gift to you, but maybe there is another way to honor him. Maybe you could take the practice, keep it for a few years, then pass it on to safe hands. And do something with English.”
But I didn’t see how I could be my real self and not disappoint my parents. Since I couldn’t have both, I was sacrificing myself in an attempt to please my parents and protect my siblings.
But my creative soul was reawakening.
My dad said leisure activities were a waste of time since it wasn’t school or work for his office. He said rest was for the dead.
I taught myself to sightread music using a hymnal when a family friend gave us her old piano right after moving to Colorado Springs. Mom had wanted a piano ever since she first married. Dad said I didn’t have time for lessons, but later allowed my sister to learn from our pastor’s wife.
But if Mom or I sat down to play, my dad would call us away within minutes and give us a more useful task.
I hid in my room when I read or wrote poetry or waited until I was alone in the house to play a musical instrument.
Senior year of high school, I took A Beka Academy’s Jaffe Strings orchestra program for the performing arts requirement, using a family heirloom violin from the 1890s.
But Dad didn’t let me play in the orchestra group at church or take private lessons after graduation. He drove me to rehearsals, but had Mom call my mentor and say I couldn’t attend the actual performance. After two times, I gave up.
Later, I drove myself to college, so I paid for violin lessons every other week second semester of freshman year. But June 2010, a week before our group performance in church, Dad told me I couldn’t participate because it was on his birthday.
I called my teacher to back out. She was furious. I hung up, called my mom crying. Mom said I had to obey my dad.
I asked Jesus if I could die now. Breathing hurt.
Trapped at home alone, I dialed Focus on the Family’s number in a panic around 9 a.m., thinking they wouldn’t involve the outside government agencies I feared. I told the elderly lady who answered that I was suicidal and needed to speak to a counselor.
While I waited, I read forum threads online to distract myself and watched the Lifehouse Everything skit on YouTube and sobbed.
A counselor called back around 2 p.m. I told him my dad controlled me and didn’t let me have friends and I was miserable. He said I should join a college Bible study on campus or at church.
I told him Dad didn’t allow that and asked him how I could move out and honor my parents. He said I needed to keep living at home and seek out friends and a mate in Bible study groups. Then he prayed with me and hung up.
Dad relented, I was in the performance. But he said he didn’t see any value in doing special music at church.
I despaired. The one hotline I trusted to keep my anonymity didn’t understand. Maybe I was the problem, maybe I should accept my loneliness and deaden my desires.
In October 2009, first semester of college, another homeschooled friend I met in driving school invited me to CleanPlace, an online Christian writer’s forum for teens run by a handful of women writers in their 30s. They encouraged my poetry and feedbacked my stories. They didn’t dismiss creativity as a waste of time.
Most of the members were homeschooled, and several of them had been crushed and isolated like me. I found community. I wasn’t the only one stuck in the box.
I started making friends at college, too.
First I befriended my professors, since I was a straight A student and I was used to talking to adults, not my peers.
Then I tutored chemistry in the Science Center on campus, my first real job outside my family or my church.
I’d avoided the punk girl with long pink hair and industrial piercings who yelled F*** at her Analytical Chemistry textbook, but then she befriended me. We debated Christianity and philosophy and traded graphic novels.
After sophomore year, I let myself read for fun again.
That summer and fall, after a discussion with one of my writing mentors, I read the Harry Potter books and later wrote a defense of them as being almost Christian fantasy.
I was happier than I’d been in years.
But my parents saw me changing. And they were afraid.
When one leaves an unhealthy church, how they are treated sometimes depends upon how those who remain perceive it.
If you are only seen as struggling in an area or being influenced by someone else, then your exit may be looked at in a more positive light. People may keep in touch, invite you to church services and functions, and the pastor may even encourage this.
If you are viewed as rebellious or no longer believing some of their teachings, you will be seen in a poor light, probably talked about more, and avoided or shunned. Some controlling pastors will tell church members to not have anything to do with you.
I remember leaving my former church for a few months before I left for good. I had been going through a rough time, had returned from being in charge of a church to a huge difference at my home church and had broken things off with my fiancé, which was very hard emotionally. During this time I was contacted by numerous members through mail and phone. this was prior to all the social media we have now.
When I left for good a couple years later, there was very little contact from anyone. Some months after I left, the pastor told everyone to turn off any recording devices during a service and he said some things about me. To this day I do not know what was said. He called other pastors from the same organization to ‘warn’ them about me. Various negative rumors circulated. I was definitely seen as bad and on my way to the hot place.
Yet when I left, I caused no problems and didn’t run around trying to pull anyone out with me. My leaving was done quietly and in a way to not bring unnecessary attention to it. But what triggered them to later turn on me, because the first several months after my exit there were no rumors or warnings?
I had been putting together a paper, mainly for my own studies, refuting their teaching of women not being permitted to cut their hair. A current member, who was a close friend, told the pastor about it after a harsh sermon he gave on hair. Only a very few had seen it and that was by their request after I had left.
How those at your former church perceive your exit may well influence how you are treated. Don’t expect many friendships to remain if you are seen as questioning or going against any teaching. The campaign against you by unhealthy leadership will intensify in an effort to keep current members in ‘the truth’ and away from you.
I was raised Disciples of Christ (Christian). When I was nine, I repented and asked Jesus into my heart, and my life changed radically, especially in one way. I had been an angry child, so I started praying that Jesus would teach me to love. When I prayed this way, God would “hug me big, inside out”- my heart would be filled with love and joy in those moments of prayer. I kept this time very private. To my knowledge no one knew what had prompted the changes in my life. (They were just very thankful something had changed!)
For the next few years there were times I was closer to God and times I wasn’t, but He was always there. At 15, I was baptized. (Mom didn’t believe in child baptism, so my request had been denied for several years.) At 18, I began attending a Pentecostal church. There, they taught that there was more for me. God has more for everyone, so this was an easy concept to grasp. Soon after starting to attend there, I was baptized in Jesus name and filled with the Holy Ghost. The pastor took us to ecumenical meetings, and I attended Baptist Bible studies and Disciples of Christ youth fellowships. We fellowshipped other churches and called their members Christians. I never heard anyone at church downplay their experiences.
A few years later, a new pastor came into my life. He taught that no one who had not repented, been baptized in Jesus’ name, and received the Holy Ghost was saved. Had the teaching been that a person isn’t saved if they were taught Jesus’ name baptism and rejected it, I could have almost accepted it. But this new teaching was difficult to swallow; my earlier experiences were too real and life changing to doubt. Even more difficult for me to grasp was his teaching that other Pentecostals with fewer standards were also hell bound. Was my former pastor unsaved because he wore a watch, didn’t follow some other standard, or fellowshipped Trinitarians? Was I unsaved because I had skirts with slits in them? I couldn’t accept that, but stayed anyway.
One night, an evangelist came. He preached that night that if a hand is cut off from the body, the hand would die, but the body wouldn’t. Maybe the hand was diseased or injured. Sometimes the body needed to cut a part off to survive. If it did, the part that was cut off would die. There was no way for a hand to live apart from the body- it couldn’t be grafted onto another body, and it couldn’t be grafted back into the body it had been cut off from for very long after the blood supply stopped. Therefore, if the pastor cut a person out of the church, that person would be condemned, cut off from the blood of Jesus.
Very shortly after that disturbing message, my pastor got up and preached that a person was going to leave soon, and would almost immediately cut their hair and wear pants. He said everyone would be surprised who it was, but that it would happen. After church that night, he called me at home and told me to never come back, that I was expelled.
These three events combined disturbed and grieved me deeply, especially in light of the first message about the severed hand. I didn’t backslide, but instead started attending a different church. And I continued to wrestle with the two messages and the expulsion. Though I finally explained my expulsion to my new pastor, I never told anyone about the severed hand sermon.
This summer, an evangelist preached the remedy. He preached about the foundation:
2 Timothy 2:19Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure…
1 Corinthians 3 11For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; 13Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is. 14If any man’s work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. 15If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.
Hebrews 6:1Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God…
The evangelist continued by saying that the foundation of our salvation is Jesus. No one can shake our salvation (foundation) because our foundation was completed by Him, the master builder. We build on this foundation, and others build on it, poorly or well, and it is what we build that will be tried. But the foundation will remain sure. We cannot destroy the foundation by building on it. We cannot so easily lose salvation. The foundation is sure.
And the blood is sure. The blood can’t be stopped. At Calvary, the soldiers didn’t break Jesus’ legs like they did the thieves’. The prophecy was that not one bone of him should be broken. Why? Because the marrow in the bones produces the blood. If a bone is broken, the production of blood might be stopped or hindered in that area. But His bones were not broken. There is not one thing the devil or anyone else can do to stop the blood. We are saved by the blood, and it can’t be stopped. It can’t be hindered in our lives. Our foundation is sure in Him.
Romans 8 38For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, 39Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
We and others build what they will in our lives by our words and deeds. These things will be tried by fire. But the foundation will not be tried- it was built by the master builder. Our foundation, our salvation, is sure in Jesus. There is nothing anyone can do to cut us off from Him.
