This is barely part of a fragment of a whisper of my church story. It’s hardly a blip …

I was confused growing up. My father was an ordained Episcopalian priest. We bopped around for a while when I was little. I remember pre-school with gorgeous black kids and a Pentecostal church and red shoes. Not much else.

We went to a Mennonite church from ages 7-13. From 14-18, non-denominational, but evangelical. My father had prayer meetings at our home, recruited my friends. He prayed in tongues, but women covered heads.

We visited Catholic Church for the sacrament of communion. I was baptized when I was 14 after I became a Christian. From 18-19, I was Southern Baptist because of the love of my life. I only went back to church at 18 because of him. The year before, I was heavily involved in what I can only appreciate now as a cult.

The pastor broke off from the non-denominational church I was at from 14-16. He started a church/coffee house but it was very Appalachian feeling. He was in love with me. He told me so when I was 17, the night before I moved to AZ to learn How to work in church ministry. I figured the worst thing that could happen would be I met my husband, who I wanted to be a pastor. I sang, it seemed natural.

I was homesick in AZ, but I was also deeply shaken. My confidence in God seemed shook because one man told me how he felt about me. I knew he meant it. He used to weep as he held my head and prayed over me.

Looking back, I see him fighting temptation all that time. He told me the night he wouldn’t see me for a year. Temptation must have been too great.

I made it less than a month out in Arizona. I was 17, 3,000 miles from home, and my pastor just told me how he saw us “making love” the first time the night before I left. Talk about being confused!

I drove home using a Cracker Barrel map. I went back to the church but was very much given an odd reception. Within a month of being back, I told a trusted friend what he had done. He made me tell my parents.

Behind closed doors, the pastor was telling the church he had to chastise me for “provocative behavior within the church.” He lied. I’m glad I had told my friend before that as I had given myself credibility far before then. This friend set me up on talk show circuits to talk about forgiving my pedophile of two years.

He believed me. He should have. A meeting was held at the “church.” My folks explained how I had been basically stalked by my molester, my best friend’s father. He had done it before me twice, at least. This was before Megan’s Law. I’m so glad for that law.

Anyway, in the meeting was the pastor’s wife. She was dying of kidney failure so I knew that this pastor meant what he said about being in love with me.

I can’t explain it, but it’s like she wanted to make sure he was taken care of after or if she died. She didn’t, btw.

She hugged me after this meeting. I was so confused. It’s like she both knew and forgave me or was trying to be a bigger person for me crapping on her husband’s dream of being some Pentecostal superhero.

The church folded that month. My friend, the talk show one, he stopped letting The kids he counseled as a psych nurse, he wouldn’t let them go back and that was the whole “coffee house” group. Church died because of me. I’m glad. It was a cult.

So minus being in love and going to a Southern Baptist church for a bit; I never went back to church.

I ♥️ God, however. My faith didn’t change. Only my trust. They aren’t the same thing.