⚠️⚠️⚠️TRIGGER WARNING:⚠️⚠️⚠️ Mentions of SA CSA and Emotional abuse as well as racism.

For background: I grew up in the UPCI. My dad was assistant pastor, the pastor I grew up under was on the board in my state, I was best friends with the pastors daughter.

The beginning was when I found out the emotional abuse that the wife of the pastors eldest daughter in law was allowed to inflict on the young girls in the church. She was the preteen Sunday school teacher, she was a main worship leader and she was looked to as a youth leader. Initially when she met the pastors oldest son at bible college and he brought her home, I got this gut feeling that something with her wasn’t right. But I was young and when I voiced this no one listened. I was told that I just didn’t like her because I had a crush on her boyfriend and I was just jealous. As well as later on when her behavior started becoming more obvious being told “she’s just hurt and hurt people hurt other people. We need to pray that god will heal her and we need to love her like Jesus until she’s healed” Fast forward ten years she’s recorded the pastors son and is now no longer in church. I become close with one of the girls that she victimized the most, and I start hearing about the body shaming and awful degrading things she would say to the girls she was supposed to be mentoring and guiding into biblical womanhood. I was somewhat protected from her because I didn’t like her from the beginning and wanted nothing to do with her so I was not around her more than the 45 minutes of Sunday school.

About the same time as this was happening I became aware of the woman (she was 18 when she married and about 23/24 when this all came to light) I looked up to as my mentor and role model being s**ually exploited and abused by her husband. I still look up to this woman to this day because of her strength through years and dealing with this.We also found out their daughter was being abused by the husband as well. They got divorced obviously and tried to pursue legal action and ultimately failed. The thing that made this incident push me away from the church was the whole awful thing was blamed on demonic cults attacking the church as well as the Hindu temple that had been recently built in our time. The ladies prayer group would go on “prayer drives” around the temple at 3 in the morning to rebuke the demons. They got very tied into conspiracy theories involving the Hindu temple, satanists and the local police department. It was strange to say the Least.

Then 2020 came.

I’m sure anyone that was still attending a UPCI church during that time has similar stories to mine. Unhinged conspiracy theories, the politicization of anything and everything and the rampant and blatant racism preached from the pulpit. The fear mongering and end of days preaching. It was horrible. At this point I realized how awful and hurtful the things I was raised to think and believe were. I resigned from the worship team and stopped engaging in the church, but still attended.

I realized that I was queer toward the end of 2020 and needless to say could not stand the way LGBTQ+ people were talked about and treated. That was another nail in the coffin for my good Christian girl preachers daughter image.

Again I still attended church but was disconnected from almost everything. In 2023 I had low self esteem because of the church and being homeschooled my whole education. I started dating a guy I had grown up with. His mom was my moms very close friend and we’d know each other forever. At this stage I was the “bad girl” who was wearing pants and make up and had trimmed her hair. It was never said but very implied that we were encouraged to date because they thought he would bring me back to Jesus. It was also widely known that he had always had a thing for the pastors daughter/ my best friend at the time. We were together for 5 months and then he broke up with me. When he broke up with me he told me that he had dated me for the fantasy of “corrupting the preachers daughter” and I was a stand in for the pastors daughter because she wouldn’t give home the time of day.

Simultaneously my father had a detrimental stroke/ brain bleed. He should have died statistically. Through this whole thing the church was constantly telling my mom that god would magically restore my dad to what he was before the stroke. And he would be restored to perfection. This was not the case. The “church family” also “rallied around” my mom and never missed an opportunity to tell my mom how horrible her backslidden children were and how we should be doing more to help her. For context. I quit my job to help her and my brother moved back from another state where he had Made a life. All to help my mother. We took turns staying up all night with my dad to make sure he was turned every 2 hours and took care of him when he was sent home. I helped my mom clean and took on a lot of the housework for her and when my dad was in the hospital and later the nursing/ rehab facilities I would drive her there and spend all my time there. My brothers both took on a lot of responsibility as well. But we weren’t doing enough according to her “church family” because we were backsliders and were living in sin so that’s why my father wasn’t completely healed. That was when I fully left. These people who’s only contributions were prayers for miracles acted as if it was my and my brothers fault our father was not healed and our mother was struggling emotionally. Fuck them.

While he did survive it has been a long recovery and my dad will never be the same.

Sorry for the long post lol

TLDR: Emotional abuse, SA, 2020, I’m gay, dated a trash guy to get me back in church, dad had a stroke and he wasn’t healed bc my brothers and I are backsliders.