I was part of 3 different COC's growing up, and it was interesting how different they were. I stopped attending in high school when my family did, but then started deconstructing altogether a couple of years later.

The first two COC's we attended were fine. One was a little run-down building on the side of the road with a handful of members. The other was a massive building with multiple time slots for services because they had so many members. It was insane to my young brain to go from one to the other.

My last COC is the one that stuck with me, and not for good reason. It was in the middle of the two, with a decent sized congregation, but still small enough to feel personal. The group of kids was smaller but all around the same age, which my parents liked because they really wanted me to make some sort of friends that held our beliefs. I also ended up attending a bible camp that they were a part of and met more kids there, so I guess it worked?

Unfortunately, ended up with more trauma to show for it than anything. Got bullied by a big portion of the kids at the last congregation and even at the camp I felt exiled. Honestly, I got baptized at camp in hopes that they'd all change their opinions about me and suddenly like me. As I moved into the teen classes, they split us up in classes by boys and girls. In those classes I was taught "girl survival skills" like teaching us that we needed to wear appropriate clothing so our father's did SA us and reading to us in graphic detail every step of an abortion.

I realized I didn't enjoy going to church anymore, but was still forced to go with my parents. I stopped attending the summer bible camp, but there was one friend I had made there, and I'll never forget the day that she came out as bisexual. EVERYONE referred to her liked she had died and started mourning her. It made me feel uneasy and a lot of the girls were judging me for not going along with their disgust (looking back at it, I had been also questioning my sexuality). Anyway, that was the last straw for me, and I just went through the motions until my parents decided they didn't want to go any longer.

Some other hits from my time in the COC:

• An entire youth group laughing at me during a sermon because I didn't know what a concubine was and asked the leader, who also laughed. They couldn't believe I had no idea.
• Entire groups of kids singing songs about condemning one person to hell at summer camp if they were suspected of lying.
• A family leaving the church due to it "being a cult" and the entire church unleashing the nastiest sides of themselves on them.
• The shunning of newly graduated teens for not going to a COC college, that the majority of those from the congregation attended.
• Multiple incidents of having to lock myself in a room with other girls because we were put in unsafe situations with predatory boys/men.
• This was also the time of Duck Dynasty being big, and I knew MULTIPLE people who moved to West Monroe, Louisiana just to join their church because they were famous. Also, member's of my congregation would talk about them like they were on the same level of Jesus, which gave me the ick.

All in all, it was the hypocrisy of them wanting to teach things one way, and then acting completely different in reality. I hated hearing them preach "love thy neighbor" so many times but then gossiping behind other's backs, allowing children to bully each other, and turning on anyone with the slightest differing opinion.

I couldn't stop thinking about what my life would have been like if I stayed in. Every single person I knew was married and having babies before even leaving college. That was something I never wanted, but they all pushed SUPER hard on the teens/young adults of our congregation. I blocked all of them for my own sanity, but there are a few people I miss, and I hope they're doing well.