Contorting over my shoulder, I viewed the massive purple-blue-black-green bruise that stretched over my rear from back to calf. “Two weeks later, this bruise is still fantastic. Or should I say fan-ass-tic? From this angle it appears I got paddled by Zeus himself.”
Trent raised his head from his law books. “It looks like someone tie-dyed your backside.”
I kissed him. “I’m going to my first church this morning,” I announced.
Yuck. The words tasted like fiberglass insulation.
“Are you sure you want to do that?” Trent asked, his tone doubtful.
My husband’s theology revolved around the Eagle Scout Oath, morning workouts, the dean’s list, Ohio State Football, and the Ten Commandments—in that order. His main memory of church was playing a shepherd in the First Lutheran Christmas pageant. He carried zero spiritual baggage, which was a good thing since I had enough to sink the Queen Mary 2.
From spousal telepathy, I knew Trent was thinking about a similar churchy announcement I’d made five years prior, back when we were still dating. After that church visit, he’d found me passed out on my couch, covered in Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome–induced hives, mumbling Benadryl-induced incoherencies about hating praise bands and preachers.
The Pentecostals of my childhood would have called my reaction to church demonic possession. I called it being allergic to God.
“Want isn’t the right word,” I sighed, walking into the closet to get ready.
I actively didn’t want to go. Ever since the Breaking—the years in my early twenties when my faith and life had simultaneously shattered (unavoidable since faith was my life)—going to church reminded me of everything that had been broken: my calling to ministry, worldview, identity. Family. Friends. The meaning of life. The person who had been so sure of herself, so connected with God, was gone—as surely as if I had lowered her into the ground myself. And when I went to church, all I felt was loss.
“Okay,” Trent prompted from the bedroom. “If you don’t want to go, why are you going?”
A valid question from a pragmatic man.
“Be back in a sec,” I said, giving myself time to think.
How to explain something I hardly understood myself?
The flip answer was that the Sickness had shown me how spiritually broken I was, and the project seemed as good an idea as any to root out the PTCS—like a sort of exposure therapy. I pictured the thirty religions as rungs on a ladder, something tangible to hold on to. This seemed like a way to take back some power where I felt totally powerless. (And, bonus: I suspected I might gather some great stories to tell at cocktail parties!)
But the much tougher, much more real answer, the one I was still wrestling with as I looked for a church-appropriate dress, was that whatever had spoken to me in the closet, the Something Bigger compelling me to believe again, was still there, whispering: You can be whole again. Healing is within reach.
Armed with two outfit choices, I came out and flopped on the bed. “I think this is something I have to do to get over Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome,” I said. “Kind of like how when you have a badly broken arm it has to be rebroken to heal properly.”
“Sounds . . . painful?” Trent answered with an eyebrow raise.
“Tell me about it. But it’s not like they have AA to recover from PTCS.”
“Hi, I’m Reba, and I’m a church-a-holic,” Trent quipped.
I rolled my eyes. “Hardly. But I did make this . . .” I reached to the nightstand and grabbed a torn notebook page scrawled with every religion I could think of and some I’d found online. I’d made the list a few days after my party, overcoming my own objections by telling myself I could quit the potential thirty religions project anytime. (It wasn’t like I was going to turn into Indiana Jones, raiding my way to the lost ark or something.)
He looked at my list. “So you’re going to find a new religion?”
“Ugh, no. I’ve already been there, done that, and burned the church T-shirts. I’m not going to find a new religion. I’m going to find myself. You know, like when people backpack Europe or quest across India?” With a courage I did not feel, I added, “And today I’m starting with Word Alive, the church I grew up in.”
I’d decided on this plan, reasoning that sometimes to move forward you have to find yourself backward. But it wasn’t feeling like such a hot idea anymore.
Trent sensed my discomfort. “Do you want me to go with you?”
I smiled. I’d already considered inviting Trent. I knew he would come if I asked, but where I needed answers, he didn’t even have questions.
Not to be outdone by Trent’s offer, Oxley bounded into the room, a blur of black and tan puppy fur. “I volunteer as tribute!” he barked.
“You boys are sweet,” I answered, rubbing my puppy’s ears. “But I have to do this on my own.”
In protest, or maybe to punctuate my point, Oxley swiftly peed on my church shoes.
I STOPPED AT A traffic light on the hill overlooking Word Alive. The car behind me honked. I glanced in the rearview and saw the honker in his minivan. For a moment it seemed like my dad, motioning that I needed to hurry up, my mom in the passenger seat applying lipstick, me and my two younger sisters in the back seats poking one another’s curls and patent leather shoes.
I took a deep breath, realizing this was decision time: I could drive forward and face my past or pull a U-turn and forfeit my spiritual future. The minivan honked again and I lurched straight ahead, pulled by an unseen string.
Circling the parking lot, I was puzzled to find it almost empty. It used to be so full that elders had to double as parking attendants, wearing reflective vests over their suits and ties and waving in people to park on the grass. It was a megachurch, before being a megachurch was a thing.
Now the few cars present were a study in bumper stickers. After seeing MARRIAGE = 1 MAN + 1 WOMAN (NO EXCEPTIONS) and PRO-CHOICE = MURDER, I decided I didn’t care for this parking lot’s math. Pulling in next to DON’T KNOW JESUS? YOU’RE GOING TO HELL! the PTCS symptoms started in earnest: blurred vision, sweaty palms, upset stomach.
Approaching Word Alive’s doors, my panic level rose. A greeter grasped my hand firmly. “Welcome! We sure are glad you’re here.” I smiled through gritted teeth. “I hope you enjoy services here at The Palms.”
I did a double take. “The Palms?” Like Vegas? “I thought this was Word Alive.”
“It used to be,” the greeter rocked back on his heels. “Pastor Tom changed it a few years back. Said we needed a new name for a new era of revival!”
The gray-carpeted lobby smelled exactly the same: ink toner and paint crossed with old lady perfume. Directly in front of me was a table covered with books for sale, the same table before which I once begged my mom to purchase a T-shirt featuring cartoons of Jesus beating up Satan. The shirt was an extra-large size and far too mature for a nine-year-old, yet I bargained away six weeks of my allowance to make it mine. What kind of child bargains her allowance for a Christian T-shirt with bad graphics? a reasonable reader might wonder, if they were not acquainted with a child who believed Jesus was coming back very soon, possibly tomorrow at lunchtime. While we’re on the subject, I was also this child:
1. Listed church as a hobby on her student-of-the-week poster
2. Made her Barbies speak in tongues
3. Convinced friends that it was more fun to pray than play at recess
4. Informed her first-grade class that Santa, rearranged, was Satan.
At Word Alive Church and at home, God was Everything. Anyone who thinks I’m exaggerating did not have the pleasure of growing up alongside inspirational paper products. To fully grasp the origin of my Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome, you need to understand my family’s collection of “I will bless the Lord at all times” paper napkins, which helped even our humble trashcan hum God’s praises on Sloppy Joe night. We used these napkins off and on for years. I know not from whence they came, but I assume their family of origin is the same as Christian toilet paper. (My friend Janice had Christian toilet paper at her house, and it always gave me stage fright during sleepovers.) Thankfully, my own parents abstained from Christian toilet paper. To be clear, the tissue itself was not personalized—just the wrapper. Still. The more closely a Christian denomination ties God to the bathroom, the more likely its adherents are to experience PTCS. (Janice, if you’re reading this, I started a Facebook support group. XOXO.)
My family may not have gone in for Jesus-themed toilet paper, but we had our own unusual traditions, like the Sunday afternoons of my childhood when my dad would swing a yellow baseball bat at Satan. The Bat was a plastic jobbie with Post-it Notes taped to it. On the Post-it Notes were Bible verses (handwritten by my mother because Dad had awful penmanship) urging all members of our household to “take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day.”
My dad would find the Bat and stalk about the house, reading the Bible verses and praying loudly as he went. In Pentecostal circles, this practice of exorcising the devil from your house is known as spiritual warfare. As a child, I found the idea of Dad rebuking the devil simultaneously comforting and pee-your-pants frightening. On one hand there was a real, live Satan and he, the source of all evil, was lurking in our living room or possibly hiding directly under my bed waiting to snatch me in my sleep. On the other hand, my daddy was the boss of him.
A troop of kids ran through the Word Alive lobby, breaking my reverie about my childhood. I could hear the band warming up as I reached the sanctuary doors, and my hands went numb as I opened them. It looked so . . . dark. It was creepy—a 3,000-seat church so dimly lit I wasn’t sure if this was a worship service or a Halloween hide-and-seek. Only a hundred or so folks sat in the pews. Were the lights this dim for ambiance or because Word Alive—excuse me, “The Palms”—could no longer afford the electric bill? I walked to my family’s former pew and realized the darkness had calmed me a bit, as if I were a church cockroach.
I looked around, breathing deeply to steady myself. Memories were everywhere in this building: ghosts of my former self sat in every pew, knelt on the steps to the altar, stood by the baptismal. The girl I was paced the balcony, praying. She sat in the Sunday school classrooms, learning. She was everywhere and nowhere, because I was not her anymore. When my faith broke, I was left staring into a kaleidoscope where there had once hung a mirror reflecting who I was, what I believed, and where I was going. My every memory was recast in fragmented light, the image of my future obscured. I had no sense of self apart from my faith because no part of my life was untouched by it.
The singing began; everyone stood and raised arms to heaven as they sang, “More of you Jesus,” what seemed like fifty times in a row. I refused to stand. I sat with legs and arms crossed, casting a condemning eye toward an older tambourine player who was dancing through the aisles, banging her instrument to warm the crowd up for the Holy Spirit. The singing wore on for forty minutes, fraying my nerves as it worked the crowd into a tearful frenzy. Tears were something I remembered well. They were the vital sign of worship: If the Lord was really, really touching your heart, you’d better believe your eyes would be watering.
If my eyes were watering, it was because I could see my family’s past. In my memories, my dad was sitting next to me while my mother played her violin on the stage—her music so beautiful the angels seemed to sing along—and my twin sisters, Mary and Marcia, younger than me by five years, raised their chubby hands to Jesus.
A woman sporting poufy blonde hair, shoulder pads, and a jean skirt took the microphone and began spouting gibberish. Anywhere else this behavior would be labeled schizophrenic, but not in Pentecostal worship. This was speaking in tongues, the unintelligible words of the Holy Ghost, as though God couldn’t communicate in English if he pleased.
I raged internally against these bumper sticker people who enjoyed such weird displays of anything-goes worship. In my time I have witnessed a man pant like an animal because he was thirstier for God than a dog for water, a woman who faked a seizure because the Lord wanted someone in the audience to be healed of seizures, an entire congregation inspired to dance in the aisles, and, on a separate occasion, the entire congregation overtaken by laughter—a case, Pastor Tom had said, of Holy Laughter.
In the pew, I fantasized about running up to the stage, stealing the microphone, and yelling, “You people are bigots! You think you have the corner on truth! You shun anyone who doesn’t believe what you do and you send them to eternal hell! And, you, sir, are barking like a dog. That’s not the Holy Spirit, that’s delusional!” and then bolting straight out the back door and never looking back.
But this fantasy was exactly why I was there. I had to get rid of this ugly bitterness that made me want to knock the tambourine lady right over. Pulling my project list from my purse, I crossed off Word Alive. Only twenty-nine to go?
Pastor Tom took center stage wearing . . . jeans? When I was growing up, jeans were not something you wore to Sunday church because, well, did we wear anything less than our best to visit Jesus’ house? I think not. Apparently God had changed his mind.
“Do we want gays in our military? No!” shouted Pastor Tom, pacing across the stage. “Do we want gays raising our country’s children? No! Do we want the sacred union of marriage to be compromised? Not unless we want the judgment of God to fall on this land like it did on Sodom and Gomorrah!”
His remarks were punctuated by a chorus of hallelujahs, and I threw up a little in my mouth.
Pastor Tom’s sermon was interspersed with so much Scripture that it was confusing to see where God’s word stopped and his began. Predictably, it morphed into an altar call. This was usually when people started falling down, televangelist-style. The one pointed failure of my young Christian life was always that I just couldn’t fall down. I was willing to fall down. I was waiting to fall down, but despite my best horizontal intentions, I always remained disappointingly vertical when other people became like trees felled by the ax of the Holy Ghost.
“Deliverance is available to all through the blood of the Risen Lord Jesus Christ!” exhorted Pastor Tom. “All who need healing, salvation, and deliverance from all hell’s demons, come to the altar for prayer.”
Soon middle-aged men were prostrate on the ground before the altar and middle-aged ladies were rocking back and forth, hugging themselves and crying. Though I needed deliverance from the Sickness and healing from Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome, all heaven’s angels couldn’t have dragged me to kneel at that altar. Instead, I followed “all hell’s demons” straight out the church’s back doors, barely escaping the claustrophobic closing song.
Pushing open the doors, I breathed warm summer air like a diver coming to the surface. The fact that I had survived three hours at Word Alive without hives might have counted as a victory had I not limped out of there feeling worse than Word Dead.