Sent in by Madame M

I have been a member here since March ’04. (The board turned over a few times over that year) It probably seems odd to those who know me here, but I never posted my deconversion story. I guess I always felt like it was still in process in many ways. Plus, it is a very hard story to condense, something gets lost, but the whole thing would be a novel. So here is the condensed version. (**capitalizing of God, Jesus, Him, He..etc, is out of respect for Christian readers not out of personal reverence.)

Childhood: I got saved at age 7 without parental influence. My mother had had a schizophrenic breakdown after my parents divorce and I felt Jesus was the anchor I needed. Even at that young age, I read as best I could my little pocket NT. At 9, my dad remarried and my parents began taking us to church, a small community Baptist based missionary church in our tiny town. I rededicated my life and got baptized at 10. I read much of the OT and NT before age 13 and had pushed aside many of the things I didn’t understand or thought were barbaric by believing that God had a plan and would reveal the truth in heaven. I was deeply affected by our pastor’s post-tribulation end time views and descriptions of hell, I think this is important, because it started my feelings of fear at a young age, fearing I would never have a chance to grow up. Still, I prayed often and would never go to sleep before praying to God. I fell asleep many night believing I was nestled safely in His hand. My childhood was defined in many ways by the church, I was very involved and my closest friends were Christians. I was active in youth and then high school groups, I volunteered with Awanas and I was a Christian camp counselor.

Adulthood: After high school graduation, I moved out of my parents house and started attending a large non-denominational (charismatic/Pentecostal based) church. I was confused by the tongues, prophecies and outward emotional displays but drawn in by the music. I had many friends there and met my husband there. Later my husband and I would be involved in a Messianic Jewish Congregation (Jews who believe in Jesus). After that, we moved again (my husband is former military) and while we attended other non-denominational churches, we could never make what we knew about many Christian traditions make sense with what had been revealed about Jewish culture and early Christianity in the Messianic church. I felt out of sorts and had a more difficult time with teachings, but after awhile we settled into yet another non-denom charismatic church that was smaller and seemed to have a special vision. They were not into the falling under the spirit, interpreting tongues..etc. Unfortunately, the pastor seemed to lean more toward shepherding type stuff- discipleship hierarchy.

In 1999, I was 25 years old, I had been married for 5 years and we had a 2 year old daughter. I was pregnant with our 2nd child. Midway through the pregnancy, my baby was diagnosed with a fatal birth defect and the doctor counseled us to do an early induction (not the same as a 1st trimester abortion) at 20 weeks. We decided instead to carry to term and pray in faith for healing. We had many people praying for us. I was told by a woman in the church that if I thought even one thought of doubt, I would curse my baby to die. I spent the next 5 months (baby came late due to defect) praying, claiming her healing, worshipping the Lord, studying the Bible intently, seeking out any unconfessed sins and forgiving anyone I was hurt by. The church had a healing service just for us and we were considered to be “Jobs”. It became very important to me that I not let my church down by losing faith. I even told our doctors that God had healed the baby, bought baby clothes and shamefully, told our daughter she was getting a sibling. Alas, our daughter was born and died just minutes later; as the doctor had predicted. I continued to put on a brave face for the church, even speaking at a women’s retreat about our experience. Everyone thought I was a testament to God’s grace and love, and I just couldn’t let them down. Inside the grief and turmoil over why God had ignored us turned into anger. I was so filled with anger that sometimes I couldn’t stand being in my own skin. I had put everything I had, every ounce of faith and trust in God into getting my baby healed, and I had almost nothing left inside to pull myself back. It seemed like all I heard was that God needed me to be more faithful and be an example of His love. Instead, I was also severely depressed and in denial about it, so I did not seek treatment.

Six months after our baby died, our only living child was diagnosed with autism just a week after we found out we were expecting our 3rd child. Once again, we were “going through a Job time”, but I couldn’t understand why God was testing us by punishing our children. I was now overwhelmed having to deal with autism, pregnancy fears and I could no longer talk honestly to anyone in church as they could not handle it. If I said I was angry, they would rebuke me, order me to ask Jesus for forgiveness and once, the pastor’s wife lashed out at me, accusing me of being jealous of her “four, beautiful and healthy children.” Later I found out that she had lied to me about her 1st baby dying and instead had placed him for adoption. She was the one person I knew who I thought understood losing a baby to death, instead she had lied, when she confessed to me she did it in front of all the women in our church and I was so stunned I nearly fainted. Summer of 2000 we moved back to my home state, my husband’s last ditch effort to pull me out of my depression and imposed reclusiveness.

In our new state, things got better. I had long standing friends. My baby was born fine even though I had not prayed for her to be healthy, fearing God would take my prayers as another chance to test me through one of our children. We started attending the church led by the pastor who married us. I still didn’t understand why God had let me down. The depression combined with charismatic teachings turned into anxiety attacks that I would have whenever hell was mentioned, or other negative symbols of the Christian faith. I no longer could trust that there was any prayer God would answer 100% and I started wondering if He had answered my salvation prayer. My anxiety attacks now became coupled with mentally repeating “Please Jesus forgive me for my sins and save me.” This was the only way I could get the anxiety attack to go away. Then the pastor of our church started a “faith series”. When he would do things like drag the newly paralyzed man to the front of the church to pray in faith over him, I would leave the sanctuary and go cry in a bathroom stall. The straw that finally broke my back, was during a sermon on faith. I will never forget what he said as long as I live, he said, “If you have ever been disappointed by faith, it is not because God was not willing to do it, it is because you did not have real faith, you only had hope… AND HOPE DOES NOT PLEASE GOD!!!” I think this would have hurt less if he had taken a baseball bat and beaten me, I felt like the sermon was for me (though it was probably directed at that poor paralyzed man), telling me I had killed my baby. I sat like a stone in that pew, crying and taking the mental whipping. After that my husband declared we were done with that church and the charismatic movement. I felt fear and relief.

We stopped attending church altogether at this time. A friend gave me a book “Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse” and I started finding a more grace filled faith. It felt so light and good, so relief filled. It was my first taste of freedom from the shackles of fundamentalism. I joined an online spiritual abuse forum and a forum for people leaving Pentecostalism/charismatic churches. I could have lived as a grace filled Christian and maybe even found a nice, grace filled church. Except, for one line in the spiritual abuse book, that started a domino effect of questioning. The book said something about how important it is to raise children to believe that God loves them so that when they grow up they will have this belief firmly entrenched and will feel God’s love. It harkened back to long ago during premarital counseling when the pastor made a strange comment about how some people are so hurt or abused they can not feel God’s love. I thought, how strange, if God loves us so much then we should be receptive to it. God is not like a person, He dwells in us as the Holy Spirit so that should overcome abuse. I then wondered how God could allow people, such as children, to be abused so badly that they could not feel His love, even after salvation. It seemed some people didn’t have a fighting chance. I began to really feel that the salvation plan was not fair. Christianity says everyone has the same chance to come to Jesus, but truly people don’t. The human mind is a fragile thing, abuse can turn what would have been a normal child into someone who grows into a monster. Some people have long lives and others have short ones, surely a 90 year old had many more chances than a 12 year old who died young.

One day I was on a parenting debate forum and someone posted a link comparing Jesus to other mythological gods from different religions. As I read this list, a literal shock wave ran through my body. I had heard of the pagan influences on Christmas and Easter, and I knew that something stunk in Jesus-land, but this just rocked my world. I couldn’t deny it because I already can see the pagan influences in Christianity. I knew too much. It was an innocence shattered moment.

I had a really good forum at the time for ex Pentecostals, which is no longer the same forum it once was. It had a good mix of Christians and non-Christians. It was a safe place to air any and all questions. I would type out my questions, and I would be so scared of the Holy Spirit fleeing from me or committing the unpardonable sin, that I would literally be having an anxiety attack while I typed. I forced myself to ask the questions, and to think them through. It was a sad, scary, exciting, freeing process. The process was also similar to losing my baby. The first numbness, then denial, then anger, bargaining (trying to find a liberal church)…etc. About a year later, I joined Ex-Christians.

In the summer of 2004 I relapsed back into Christianity. It was very confusing for the members here. I joined an Independent, Fundamentalist KJVO Baptist Church.. that was a lot to say very strict and uptight church. I thought maybe this was the “true Christianity”. I got very caught up in end times stuff, and that caused me to become anxiety filled and depressed. The fear of the end times (I was not pre-trib) got so bad that I started fearing for my children and family. I began to think we should homeschool the kids to get them away from the “witches” in the school. I started to wish I had never been born. When I posted on this board about my deconversion, Brother Jeff said something that I will forever be grateful to him for; he said, “You are floating”. I didn’t want to hear that, but I looked it up. Floating is where a person who has been in a cult can be triggered by back into their cult personality by hearing a word or phrase or seeing religiously significant symbols..etc. For me, the trigger had been while debating on a very fundamentalist site with a couple of agnostic friends, I was called “the spawn of the devil” and accused of being in league with Satan. It seems weird now, but coupled with my daughter’s impending birth/death day and having no hope of going to heaven and seeing her, I just caved like melting jello mold. I couldn’t get the idea that I was floating out of my head. Then during a Sunday service, the pastor preached a hard core sermon. He said that if heaven and hell are not more real to us than this earthly life, he doubts we have been saved to begin with. Even in a “once saved always saved” church, my salvation was once again in doubt. How can a person make places that neither they nor anyone else had ever seen more real than the day to day life they are now leading? That was the last church sermon I have ever attended. That was Oct of 2004. I realized then that no matter what denomination I went to, no matter how much they claimed to have “the real truth”, they were just preaching the same thing in different wrappings from their fellow Christians down the street.

That was over 2 years ago. I am now claiming Agnosticism. I am happy. Once I was freed from the shackles of religious fear, I started getting new goals. My first was to go back to college. My major is nursing and there is a lot of science involved. I enjoy studying science. I was delighted to study evolution in my biology class, a subject that was taboo before. I was delighted to be around people who were intelligent and academically minded and thought about something other than religion. My self esteem and confidence grew in bounds. My marriage has improved as I am not as fearful and uptight as I once was. We are now going on 13 years and have three great children. We have survived things that crumble the majority of marriages that go through them… death of a child, a disabled child and loss of faith in one spouse. We have not been crushed or destroyed due to my loss of faith. I no longer am a recluse in my house, I am free to make friends with people, before I would mostly be friends with people in my home church. I am free and happy, but more important I am at peace. Sure there are times I still wonder about things, but I no longer worry about hell. There is life outside religion.

If you made it this far, I sincerely thank you for sharing in this peek into my life journey. Thanks!

Madame M~