By Janey --
I was raised no religion - mom's family being church of Christ, and dad's being Lutheran. We never went to church, but my parents both had been hard hit with it to the point I think when they married they ran away from it. My mother would read to me from a bible when I was little -- bedtime stories straight from the Old Testament.
Image by jabberwock via FlickrBut during the 70's there was an explosion of new information - numerology, Zodiac, horoscopes and witches - Wicca and information not previously so readily available to the general public. Mom got hold of it, and as she has since put it, it made sense. Especially after she found out confirming facts such as she is a triple Scorpio, and odd things that occurred in her childhood (shunned as evil by her Christian fanatic family) now made perfect sense and she had answers. I mean a triple Scorpio with only one more life to live -- hence an old soul -- has some ingrained inherent powers. So as my mother studied and slowly became a Wiccan, she taught me. However, I was already a teen by then. I knew some things, basics - if you will. Knew my crystals, knew and memorized Numerology so well that to this day I can rattle it off and know numbers in my head and their meanings. It's like reading a person's life story and they don't even know I'm coming. I can clean houses and recognize negativity, but my mother could find the holes, the doorways, and her strength attracted some heavily evil crap - it scared me. i am not that strong. And it was hard to be around, yet strangely attractive. I never said i was a witch, or Wiccan. I was just raised by, and with one.
Then, suddenly, my parents divorced. And all hell broke loose for me - in my own world, I was rejected by both parents as they went through their life change - dad told me I was disinherited. According to him it was my fault they were divorcing. Mom told me I was to consider myself a friend, not her daughter, and she started dating an old ex-boyfriend of mine, which she felt my presence threatened her happiness and I was kicked out. I went through some crazy years, did a lot of drugs, mainly and married stupidly. I ended up leaving him.
I met my current husband who helped me to clean up, sober up and we are together to this day. When I met him he had 2 things, a suitcase and a bible. And this was the beginning of my Christian years. I'll leave out where we lived and jump to the fact we had two kids in the next 4 years, and I repeated history I believe. I had no family willing to help me, I felt alone and scared- am I going to be a good mom? How do I do this to raise my children right and good? I did what my mother did when I was ages 0-5 years old. I used my husband's bible and read them stories. We found a church and I became over time a good little Christian. Ironically it was my husband who rejected the church first -- still believing, just not accepting the authority of the church itself.
I didn't give in. I soon got promoted to a Sunday school teacher and over years was handed the entire children's ministry. The higher in ranks I became the more my husband rejected it. To some, I was known as the lady who came without her husband. My boys grew strong in the church right along with me. I was doing right! I was succeeding. But then, with title in hand, I wanted more! I have questions, I want more.
I had fights with the pastors occasionally. Once over tattoos, as another member scared my children to death over their mom having a tattoo and that was the sign of the devil, she'd burn in hell etc., etc., blah, blah, blah. It ended with me fighting to have that person removed from the children's ministry altogether. How? I dropped the edge of my drawers and showed them my own tattoo that I'd kept hidden from sight all the years, and I was director! The questions in my heart started growing louder. Example: the earth isn't 6000 years old, and hey, we were ironically living near the Grand Canyon. Do the math when proof is right in the kids’ backyard. HAha. I refused to teach the creation evolution story dryly - another battle I had with the pastors and won.
Questions. I love how honest kids are; they ask the right questions. If heaven's so perfect why was there a war in heaven and Satan and angels kicked out? “Wars in heaven” is not a perfect heaven. I agreed with him... questions... I joined prayer groups, and nothing was answered. I watched members battle cancer and nothing happened. I started to have ominous negative intuitive feelings when self proclaimed prophetic words were spoken. One man came & was proclaimed as the highest authoritative prophet in the four square church - and he spoke an touched peoples heads and they fell and collapsed on the floor in rushes of Pentecostal holy spirit dribblings. I waited. He went through the crowd and I begged for him to tell me a new -- anything that may renew my faith that was slowly dwindling to mere drivel questions... and he avoided me. Finally he looked at me and said... “you'll touch children's lives?” like a question. I looked down and realized he was reading off my name tag -- children's ministry director -- I laughed. Burn one… baby.
Burn two came in the form of a messed up confused teenage boy named Owen. Owen had a bad, bad negative spirit -- I will tell you I recognized it from the start. I tried to tell the pastor. I tried. They shoved him on children's ministry like a evil sack he was and I didn't win that battle. It took quite a lot of time, but my first verifiable clue I could use as proof positive came when he had already worked with kids nearly a year and finally the pastor dug out background checks, as headquarters wanted them to do. I filled out mine - having nothing to hide. But as I handed it to him, he looked at it and said, "I won't pass this" yet refused to answer why. My heart sank. I took the news to pastor who said, "well he doesn't have to fill it out, I guess" and dropped the subject refusing to let me question the decision. Then it began. Children started coming to me -- they'd trusted me for nearly 10 years with their confidences. Owen stayed at our house last night and he kissed my little brother while he was asleep. Another girl said he was always mean to her and told her she was too stupid to be in the class. My own son finally was fed up and rattled off a list of offenses I'd never known. I went to the pastors. Nothing. They said I was lying and because I clearly didn't like the kid, I was supporting evidence against him. I went to the church about two weeks later to find my office boxed up and in the trash bin out back- even my personal books and research and records for 10 years. He'd taken over. I was fired.
I tried to go to church after that. The kids in the congregation ironically began refusing to go to Sunday school, and soon after I left the church, unable to stomach what i knew they'd done the Sunday school was closed. The church to this day no longer offers anything more than nursery services for mothers of infants.
I was confronted by the pastor out front of the church on my last day there. It was ugly. She screamed, she pointed fingers in my chest and it was nothing more than a petty cat fight. A lot of “god” there.
It took about a year of mulling all this over afterward. I never went to another church, i slowly couldn't stomach the questions anymore. I started doing research into the books of the bible, the history of the church and the designs of the council of Nicaea, and discovered another truth out there - it was all correlated an collaborated so well. It took nearly two years for me to reach a point and get past the fear of hell and damnation I had had ingrained and shoved into my head to realize I am okay without it. I am not a Christian anymore. I fear no eternal hell. There are no big golden gates up in the clouds...
Within the past few months I have reconnected with a crystal here, a stone there. Hugged a tree or two and found a living breathing spirit that promises nothing more than that it is -and always was -and ever will be.... it doesn't argue against science and facts that are in my face. It's freedom and now I can say without fear...I am an ex-Christian. And that's okay.
I was raised no religion - mom's family being church of Christ, and dad's being Lutheran. We never went to church, but my parents both had been hard hit with it to the point I think when they married they ran away from it. My mother would read to me from a bible when I was little -- bedtime stories straight from the Old Testament.
Image by jabberwock via FlickrThen, suddenly, my parents divorced. And all hell broke loose for me - in my own world, I was rejected by both parents as they went through their life change - dad told me I was disinherited. According to him it was my fault they were divorcing. Mom told me I was to consider myself a friend, not her daughter, and she started dating an old ex-boyfriend of mine, which she felt my presence threatened her happiness and I was kicked out. I went through some crazy years, did a lot of drugs, mainly and married stupidly. I ended up leaving him.
I met my current husband who helped me to clean up, sober up and we are together to this day. When I met him he had 2 things, a suitcase and a bible. And this was the beginning of my Christian years. I'll leave out where we lived and jump to the fact we had two kids in the next 4 years, and I repeated history I believe. I had no family willing to help me, I felt alone and scared- am I going to be a good mom? How do I do this to raise my children right and good? I did what my mother did when I was ages 0-5 years old. I used my husband's bible and read them stories. We found a church and I became over time a good little Christian. Ironically it was my husband who rejected the church first -- still believing, just not accepting the authority of the church itself.
I didn't give in. I soon got promoted to a Sunday school teacher and over years was handed the entire children's ministry. The higher in ranks I became the more my husband rejected it. To some, I was known as the lady who came without her husband. My boys grew strong in the church right along with me. I was doing right! I was succeeding. But then, with title in hand, I wanted more! I have questions, I want more.
I had fights with the pastors occasionally. Once over tattoos, as another member scared my children to death over their mom having a tattoo and that was the sign of the devil, she'd burn in hell etc., etc., blah, blah, blah. It ended with me fighting to have that person removed from the children's ministry altogether. How? I dropped the edge of my drawers and showed them my own tattoo that I'd kept hidden from sight all the years, and I was director! The questions in my heart started growing louder. Example: the earth isn't 6000 years old, and hey, we were ironically living near the Grand Canyon. Do the math when proof is right in the kids’ backyard. HAha. I refused to teach the creation evolution story dryly - another battle I had with the pastors and won.
Questions. I love how honest kids are; they ask the right questions. If heaven's so perfect why was there a war in heaven and Satan and angels kicked out? “Wars in heaven” is not a perfect heaven. I agreed with him... questions... I joined prayer groups, and nothing was answered. I watched members battle cancer and nothing happened. I started to have ominous negative intuitive feelings when self proclaimed prophetic words were spoken. One man came & was proclaimed as the highest authoritative prophet in the four square church - and he spoke an touched peoples heads and they fell and collapsed on the floor in rushes of Pentecostal holy spirit dribblings. I waited. He went through the crowd and I begged for him to tell me a new -- anything that may renew my faith that was slowly dwindling to mere drivel questions... and he avoided me. Finally he looked at me and said... “you'll touch children's lives?” like a question. I looked down and realized he was reading off my name tag -- children's ministry director -- I laughed. Burn one… baby.
Burn two came in the form of a messed up confused teenage boy named Owen. Owen had a bad, bad negative spirit -- I will tell you I recognized it from the start. I tried to tell the pastor. I tried. They shoved him on children's ministry like a evil sack he was and I didn't win that battle. It took quite a lot of time, but my first verifiable clue I could use as proof positive came when he had already worked with kids nearly a year and finally the pastor dug out background checks, as headquarters wanted them to do. I filled out mine - having nothing to hide. But as I handed it to him, he looked at it and said, "I won't pass this" yet refused to answer why. My heart sank. I took the news to pastor who said, "well he doesn't have to fill it out, I guess" and dropped the subject refusing to let me question the decision. Then it began. Children started coming to me -- they'd trusted me for nearly 10 years with their confidences. Owen stayed at our house last night and he kissed my little brother while he was asleep. Another girl said he was always mean to her and told her she was too stupid to be in the class. My own son finally was fed up and rattled off a list of offenses I'd never known. I went to the pastors. Nothing. They said I was lying and because I clearly didn't like the kid, I was supporting evidence against him. I went to the church about two weeks later to find my office boxed up and in the trash bin out back- even my personal books and research and records for 10 years. He'd taken over. I was fired.
I tried to go to church after that. The kids in the congregation ironically began refusing to go to Sunday school, and soon after I left the church, unable to stomach what i knew they'd done the Sunday school was closed. The church to this day no longer offers anything more than nursery services for mothers of infants.
I was confronted by the pastor out front of the church on my last day there. It was ugly. She screamed, she pointed fingers in my chest and it was nothing more than a petty cat fight. A lot of “god” there.
It took about a year of mulling all this over afterward. I never went to another church, i slowly couldn't stomach the questions anymore. I started doing research into the books of the bible, the history of the church and the designs of the council of Nicaea, and discovered another truth out there - it was all correlated an collaborated so well. It took nearly two years for me to reach a point and get past the fear of hell and damnation I had had ingrained and shoved into my head to realize I am okay without it. I am not a Christian anymore. I fear no eternal hell. There are no big golden gates up in the clouds...
Within the past few months I have reconnected with a crystal here, a stone there. Hugged a tree or two and found a living breathing spirit that promises nothing more than that it is -and always was -and ever will be.... it doesn't argue against science and facts that are in my face. It's freedom and now I can say without fear...I am an ex-Christian. And that's okay.
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