As I’ve stated before, I was raised in the church. What does
that mean? For me, it meant that I attended Sunday school and the church
service every Sunday morning. It meant that we said prayer together as a family
before eating supper. It meant that my mom went to a women’s Bible study, my
dad went to a men’s Bible study, and when I got older, I started attending
youth group once a week. There were times that my parents would do daily
devotionals, but this was not a constant in our lives. In these few sentences,
I have basically summed up what I mean by being “raised in the church”. Now I
will go a step further, which some may not want to hear or to acknowledge.
Being a female and being raised in the church meant that I learned early on
that there were certain expectations put upon me, as well as certain
limitations put upon me because I was a female.

I was raised in a very traditional Methodist church. All of
the church leaders were men – or at least all of the ones that I recall as
church leaders. (Women usually taught the children, but not always.) Women were
expected to take care of the children, they were expected to do the cleaning, to
be presentable (preferably in a dress if it was Sunday), to remain quiet,
mild-mannered at all times – essentially, I had to “know my place” as a female.
A lot of what I learned was really “head knowledge”, not actually having a
relationship with Jesus. I didn’t really “look” at myself as a child of God’s,
because that is not how it was presented to me. It was mostly about my gender
and the expectations that “the church” had on me, which thereby meant God had
those same expectations of me as well.

I saw a lot of hypocrisy in the church at a young age. I
didn’t understand a lot of it, and as a child, it came across as, “Do as I say,
not as I do”. When I started to attend youth group, that’s when my eyes were
opened even more. One evening at youth group, I had gone into the women’s
bathroom and while I was in there, some of the other girls came in and were having
a conversation. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. For a moment, it seemed
like I was in the girl’s bathroom at the public school I attended! They were swearing,
talking about having sex, getting drunk. I was absolutely shocked! I guess I
was very naïve to think that if you were at church then that meant that you
were saved and you didn’t do those type of things or talked the way they were
talking. I went to a youth group leader and explained to her what just happened,
expressing my concern about what was being talked about. She reprimanded me for
judging them! I was quite confused by her reaction. I had no bad intentions on
my part to get any of them in trouble, I thought they needed prayer and help –
guidance. Another time at youth group, one of the leaders gave us an assignment
for the following week. He said if your house was on fire and you could only grab
one thing from your house before evacuating, what would it be and to bring it
to youth group next week. When the following week happened, we all sat in
chairs in a circle. One by one our leader asked each one of us to show what we
would grab and explain why we would grab that item over anything else. I don’t
recall much of what the other teens had brought, I do remember one brought a tv
remote, saying that he would grab the tv if there was a fire, but for this
assignment, he just brought the tv remote. When it was my turn to speak, I
showed my Bible and said that I would grab it because it has helped me through
a lot of rough times in my life. I was sincere in what I said, I was not trying
to “show anyone up” or have the “right answer”, yet I was met with snickering,
eye rolling, whispers from people that weren’t really that quiet (of course, I
don’t think that they were meant to be quiet). The leader “praised” me – ish,
which didn’t help the situation at all. I meant exactly what I had said about
the Bible, I knew that all of the other things could get replaced if there was
a fire. Of course, I wasn’t thinking about the fact that I could get a new
Bible if that one was destroyed. I was sad that I was the only one who brought
a Bible, but I never looked at myself as better than, I pretty much always
looked at myself as less than.

Another time, I was struggling with the question, “Was God
real or not?” One day I went to the reverend’s office to ask him. I figured he
would have the right answer, right? I sat down in a chair in front of his desk,
he was standing between me and his desk. I asked him, “How do I know that God
is real?” He leaned back on his desk, so that he was partially sitting on the
edge, he reached over on his desk and grabbed his Bible with one hand. With his
other hand, he pointed at the Bible and tapped the cover of it and said, “Because
of this…because of this, we know He’s real.” I waited after he said this,
waiting for more, waiting for some sort of epiphany, I don’t know, I was
waiting for just more of an answer to my question, but there wasn’t any more.
He had a smile on his face and that was it – conversation over. I didn’t have
any more questions and he certainly wasn’t going to elaborate on the question
that weighed so heavy in my spirit, so I thanked him (because that was the
polite thing to do) and got up and left his office. My question continued to
linger within me and when I would say my nightly prayers, they would go
something like this, “God, I’m sorry but right now I can’t pray to you, because
I don’t know if you’re real or not. If you are, then I’ll be back praying more
often. Amen”. I’d like to say that after praying that prayer once that the
light bulb went off for me, but nope. Many nights later of saying this prayer,
I realized that if God wasn’t real, then why did I keep feeling this need, this
longing inside of me to keep praying to Him? It was at this revelation that I
came to the conclusion that God is definitely real and I’ve never questioned
that again. Perhaps that isn’t very theological, but I was about 12 years old
at the time and that satisfied my question, much more than the reverends Bible
tapping statement did.

Being in the environment of the church weighed on me a lot. At
about 14 years old I left the Methodist church. Unfortunately, I slowly left
God too. I didn’t stop believing in Him, but I was most definitely not serving Him.
At 21 years of age, I started getting back into religion. I word it that way,
because “religion” was all I knew – “relationship” with the one true God, that
was not something I learned about yet. From age 21-36 I was in religion, out in
the world, then back in religion – I was a hot mess spiritually, or at least I
felt that way. Then one day in the autumn of 2008, I said a prayer to God that
I would later realize was a prayer of submission onto Him. I had been doing the
“religious roller coaster” and was going nowhere fast. I had been reminded of my
early years with God before I got turned off by people in the church. I felt
like God brought to mind all the times I spent with Him reading the Bible,
reminding me of every Christmas as a child I would take a moment and go into my
bedroom, sit on my bed, and sing “Happy Birthday” to Jesus. (A memory that
still brings tears to my eyes.) In that autumn of ’08, I opened my mouth and
just started telling God that I wanted to have what I had with Him back then. I
wanted Him to be real to me like He was back then. I didn’t realize it at the
time but I turned to the Heavenly Father, with childlike faith, and I have
never been the same! However, that is not to imply that I am still the same
right now as I was in ’08, no, I keep learning and growing. I feel like I am
not the same person I was just a few weeks ago, and it’s not me, seriously! It
is God, it is Him in me, it is the love of Jesus Christ, it is the workings of the
Holy Spirit in me that keeps molding and shaping me into the new creation. (2
Corinthians 5:17)

This is just a part of my story, but it’s a very important
part. None of what I’m writing is to bash a religious denomination or any one
person or group of people. I honestly don’t even recall the names of most of
the church leaders who were “over me” during my young years in the church. This
is just my story about what happened in my life and how it has impacted me. While
my testimony of growing up in the church doesn’t include much of what some
people have gone through as is evidenced by many “church leaders” moral
failures over many decades, I do want to try to encourage anyone who can relate
to my story or who can relate to others story’s that have been circulating
lately on the internet and in the news, your story isn’t over.
Whatever you have been through, it is just a part of your story, but it’s not
the whole story. Don’t let moral failures of any church leader or leaders speak
louder to you than the words of the Great Shepherd who willingly laid down His
life for you. Yes, for you.

Psalms 139:13-14 “For You formed my inward parts; you wove
me in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and
wonderfully made…” (NASB)

Galatians 5:1 “It was for freedom that Christ set us free:
therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.”
(NASB)

John 8:36 “So if the Son makes you free, you will be free
indeed.” (NASB)