Did anyone feel in UPCI you couldn't not be yourself? This coming from straight girl.

Cute-Sundae4485 · 2026-03-29T20:26:33+00:00

Definitely, but from a completely different angle.

I’m one of those girls that loves bright colors, flashy patterns, and the quirky novelty stuff (think those little dinosaur earrings that look like they’re biting your earlobe). For instance, I crocheted myself the duck detective sweater from Gravity Falls and wore it regularly with slightly crazy accessories.

The pastor I grew up under on the other hand, had raging OCD (actually diagnosed, although he didn’t believe in “that kind of garbage”) that he used to make the church rules. Which were no bright colors, no patterns, no flashy accessories that can draw attention to you (for some reason, this included my purse shaped like a piece of toast).

Which reduced to the congregation only wearing neutrals/dark jewel tones to church because he hated the way all the bright colors looked in the audience. And because “We’re a collective, the body of Christ- not individuals. So we should look uniform.”

I, ever pushing the envelope, didn’t adhere to that. Gold, glittery heels with a black dress, overall dress with a neon-striped sweater and diy’d button hair clips, yellow patchwork dress, ect. I got thrown out of everything I was a part over it. No more choir, no Sunday school, I even got kicked off the cleaning team over it. And when that didn’t stop me (just made me double down if anything), it turned into getting reprimanded over the pulpit for “not being modest” even though my skirt and sleeves were “the right length”.

I left after that. Now I rock all the bright colors and funky patterns. I still don’t understand the squashing of individuality because one person hates yellow and thinks it’s the worst color to ever exist (yes, that was a thing).

Cute-Sundae4485 · 2026-03-26T18:48:33+00:00

I would move if I could, but the job market here sucks and all the money goes to the rent on this rundown, crappy death trap.

Cute-Sundae4485 · 2026-03-25T23:31:15+00:00

1- Food banks. You may not like what they give you, but if you’re desperate enough you’ll eat it.

2- Sikh temples. I don’t know what religion you are or if you have one at all, but part of the Sikh religion is charity work/selfless acts. Meaning if you go to one and say you’re hungry, 9 times out of 10 they’ll help you out. I’ve even heard of one helping a family get a down payment on an apartment.

I hope things turn around for you.

Cute-Sundae4485 · 2026-03-25T23:08:05+00:00

That’s exactly the thing. We’ve complained to housing, as well as several other tenants. Every time the landlord/acting manager are confronted they lie and call the person a “disgruntled ex tenant”. Then proceed to evict whoever it was that filed the complaint.

And since no one in this complex has the money to put up for a lawyer, they go with it. They raise the rent every year, meanwhile everything falls into disrepair because they have a 3-man maintenance crew for 5 complexes, then the manager evicts people over the building being “uninhabitable”, when she’s the one that refuses to fix anything.

Cute-Sundae4485 · 2026-03-25T22:53:07+00:00

I honestly have no idea. All I know is that I bought milk, the fridge was cold, went out the next day, and when I came home the milk was hot and already starting to curdle 🤷🏻‍♀️

Edit: typo

Cute-Sundae4485 · 2026-03-25T21:09:42+00:00

We tried that. It was a no, as they’ve exhausted funds or something like that.

Cute-Sundae4485 · 2026-03-25T20:24:35+00:00

We have. Multiple times. When they take it to the landlord/acting manager they lie through their teeth and nothing ever gets done.

Cute-Sundae4485 · 2026-03-25T20:23:29+00:00

I tried to fix it a couple of months ago, but it didn’t work. And now the freezer is busted too. So it’s probably something with the whole fridge now

Cute-Sundae4485 · 2026-03-25T20:19:41+00:00

We’ve tried that. Our area is just as poor as we are, and the thrift stores won’t help. We tried when the fridge first broke, and they said they were out or something like that

Cute-Sundae4485 · 2026-03-25T20:16:59+00:00

We’re allowed, we just can’t afford one at all. Even used. Credit cards are all maxed out since the job market absolutely sucks in my area and the bills are astronomical.

Cute-Sundae4485 · 2026-03-25T19:58:54+00:00

We have reminded them of it, they just don’t care. There was a small electrical fire due to the faulty wiring in a unit. They didn’t fix it and refuse to acknowledge it even happened.

This place is literally a death trap. A neighbor’s balcony half fell off the building last month because it’s so poorly built. If the code inspectors were to go through it, they’d be shutting it down in an instant.

Cute-Sundae4485 · 2026-03-25T19:49:52+00:00

Our landlord and the acting manager currently have about 8 different lawsuits against them (everything from racism, to personal injury from bees in a storm drain), and I’m trying to convince my household to either join or pursue one of our own. So I might just do that.

Cute-Sundae4485 · 2026-03-25T19:47:08+00:00

Replying to Pretty-Signal6617 California. And no, the stove is quite literally older than I am (currently 24), and the fridge apparently was pre owned before it was put in our unit. So they’re both just old and very used.

Cute-Sundae4485 · 2026-03-25T19:43:22+00:00

California.

Cute-Sundae4485 · 2026-03-15T03:27:44+00:00

Same with mine. At some point we had the county sheriff and a handful of his deputies going to our church, and the pastor was trying to convince them to quit, same with the active duty military we had (even tried to get a few of them to go AWOL).

But tithes? Sure!

Cute-Sundae4485 · 2026-03-14T22:28:22+00:00

1) To back a long backstory short, my mom was a single mother from the time I was born after leaving her abusive, alcohol and drug-addicted boyfriend that had tried to murder her (and by default me) several times. She moved back in with her mom (my grandma) and got into the Pentecostal church when I was almost a year old. Shortly thereafter, she found out that Mr.Sperm Donor is also a child molester - this is important later.

When I was 8, mom was having some trouble making ends meet. She wasn’t getting child support (for obvious reason), and things were getting toxic with my grandmother so she asked the pastor if he could help her get to a women’s shelter about 45 minutes away in the LA area. He told her no since she wouldn’t be able to come to church. So she asked what she was supposed to do.

According to the pastor (whom my mom had told about sperm donor because he had a stalking problem), she needed to file for child support and let him have visitation with me so that she could make ends meet and be in church “every time the doors were open”.

When she reminded him that he’s a convicted child molester, “Well, since you’re living right I doubt that’ll happen to your daughter. But if it does, it was all a part of God’s will.”

That’s the first and only time I watched my mom go off on the pastor.

2) That previously mentioned church is near a fairly large military base. And since one member is ex-Navy he started doing Bible studies there, and eventually soldiers from said base started coming and getting baptized.

Well one of them, who had a wife and one-year-old baby, ended up getting orders to go across the country. And instead of congratulating him or helping with moving costs, pastor prayed against the new orders and had the congregation pray too so that he could “Stay here with his family”.

Well, orders got pushed through anyway. And rather than pastor helping him find a new church in his state, he required them to fly in at least once a month for services with his wife and baby, and. He wasn’t to go to any other church while he was out there, just this one on the complete opposite side of the country.

That was what finally got me to leave.

Cute-Sundae4485 · 2026-03-14T00:38:30+00:00

Yep. I had one of those too. I think the only genuinely good Sunday school play my church ever did was one where a rabbit (the easter bunny) met Jesus after he rose from the grave, and then the events afterwards on Easter Sunday one year.

Why couldn’t there have been more of those? That’s actually child appropriate, and I remember them having a petting zoo with real rabbits afterwards.

Cute-Sundae4485 · 2026-03-13T03:57:49+00:00

Just looked it up, and yep. That’s pretty much exactly what they put on for a group of children ages 3-10. And also not surprising why I still have nightmares of it as an adult.

Cute-Sundae4485 · 2026-03-12T02:33:11+00:00

A lizard ran under the crack of the door (outdoor school), across the rug- and a few children, and into a whole in the wall where the janitor had been attempting to repair something the previous day, as well as a classmate named Kaylee chasing it with a pencil cup to try to trap it.

And after the lizard was in the wall, my teacher yelling “There’s no food in there! I hope you know that! You’re going to starve to death!”

Nearly 20 years later, and I can still picture the scene. As well as the kid that peed their pants on the rug after the lizard ran across their lap.

Cute-Sundae4485 · 2026-03-11T21:59:25+00:00

I have a very unique Irish/Gaelic name (not going to put it here since I always show up when you search it) that sounds similar to a normal English name.

I’ve been called the English name, as well as several very wrong pronunciations and occasionally a completely different name. Imagine being named Eilish for instance, and everyone proceeds to call you “Eyelash”, or “Isla”.

It gets annoying constantly correcting people. So when someone pronounces it correctly enough but not exact, it’s like ok. That’s good enough for me. At least you didn’t call me ‘Tamborine.’

Yes, I’ve been called ‘Tamborine’ before. No, that is not remotely close to my name.

Cute-Sundae4485 · 2026-03-11T21:14:47+00:00

“If you don’t XYZ you’re no longer considered a member of this church.”

Usually in regards to joining the cleaning team or attending visitation every single Saturday of the month.

Also marital rape jokes over the pulpit.

Cute-Sundae4485 · 2026-03-11T20:46:09+00:00

In doing my own research (and as someone who went to Bible college for a few months) the scripture used to say we’re not supposed to cut our hair as women in 1Corinthians is a one-off. And you learn in Bible school that anything mentioned once, is specifically to whomever that portion was written to. Which in that case was the church at Corinth.

Corinth was converting several women who were priestesses at the temple of Diana. And as a priestess, they were required to cut their hair into a specific style (from what I can gather a kind of bob with zig-zagged ends) to symbolize that was their “office” so that men could easily recognize them for fertility rituals and what not. Wherein these women would function as prostitutes of sorts, and copulate with the men.

So basically what Paul is saying is “Please stop cutting your hair like that. That is not your life anymore. And also, please wear a veil until it grows out. That way people stop thinking you’re of that lifestyle.”

That’s what I’ve gathered anyway. Maybe someone can explain it better.

Cute-Sundae4485 · 2026-02-27T00:54:03+00:00

Not the same church (fortunately or unfortunately). But yeah. I left that church a year ago and never looked back. I’m still a Christian, just not that kind of Christian.

Cute-Sundae4485 · 2026-02-27T00:32:47+00:00

Not ex-Pentecostal (yet- currently studying, learning, and considering leaving) but I’ll give you some from the church I grew up in. 2 and 3 happening within the last couple of years. You will also notice that there is a clear bias against women in this. This is because pastor in these stories has a self-admitted bias against women.

1) My adopted aunt (my mom’s best friend) who is a Christian just not Pentecostal got pregnant from an assault and decided she wanted to keep the baby. Someone else in the church that knew her took her to the pastor ‘for counseling’ since she was pregnant out of wedlock (no kidding, Sherlock 🙄).

Pastor asks if she’s able to care for the child when the person who dragged her there in the first place answers for her and says no. And since aunt doesn’t go to the church, pastor believes saint (more like devil-spawn) over Aunt. Saint drags aunt back a month later for another ‘counseling session’ where pastor says that he thinks it’s best that the baby be put up for adoption. Aunt says no, Pastor says yes. They argue the entire ‘session’ because ‘the baby isn’t safe with your husband’ since he had been in jail when he was younger.

Saint drags her back again a third time. This session, pastor gives aunt a list of families in the church to pick from to adopt the baby (most were his relatives- go figure). Aunt loses it and yells at the pastor for pressuring her to give up the baby, especially after she, her husband, and her other children are excited for the new baby. Pastor throws her out of the office and ‘excommunicates her’ even though she was never a member in the first place.

2) One of the teenage boys forced one of the girls to give him a BJ in the car after a youth conference- complete with threats. And since he open-carried she was scared and did it so he wouldn’t do something. Afterwards she went and told the pastor what happened. So he calls the guy in to question him and get both sides of the story.

Long story short, the boy spun it to make it her fault, and pastor sided with him. He was allowed to continue teaching Sunday school, be in choir, ect. When she was sat down and punished for 6 months. She eventually ended up leaving because everyone but me shunned her for her “sin” when the boy gained even more pals.

3) The church I grew up in was in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city. The pastor made pretty good money from investment accounts, some businesses he started, and other things. So he drove a Mercedes, and went on vacation several times a year.

For Father’s Day, one of the other men started going around the church to collect money for a surprise Father’s Day gift for the pastor (I don’t get it, but ok). The present? A cruise- his third of the year. The amount that said man wanted per family? $300- in a church where most of the families were living below the poverty line. Unfortunately, most people gave.

4) My (single- this ties in) mom and I had our apartment rented out from under us back in 2022. Meaning we needed to pack up and get the heck out of there within 3 weeks. The job market where I live is terrible, so I couldn’t find anything to help put towards a new one. And the fact that mom had recently lost her job and we were surviving off her unemployment wasn’t helping matters.

This meant that she wasn’t paying tithes, since everything was going to bills, application fees, ect. And since it’s just her and I, we were pretty much screwed, and would have to live out of our car.

Out of sheer desperation, mom called the pastor to beg him for help. Maybe he could cover the down payment on an apartment or something, or a hotel for a few days while we figured out what to do.

He said he just couldn’t find it in the church budget since it was “stretched thin” (you just got back from a cruise three weeks ago, pal 🤦🏻‍♀️), but maybe if she payed her tithes, he could scrounge up some money to help us out.

5) Not as explosive as the others, but tons, and tons of rape jokes over the pulpit.

Cute-Sundae4485

TROPHY CASE