walking it back.
notes on church group beliefs.
There weren’t many of us in youth group at Grace Bible Church when I was in seventh grade. Our neighborhood church had mostly homeschooler kids and a few of us that went to public school. There was no in-between—no private school kids. Either way, we were going to school for “free.” There was only one boy in youth group for this Wednesday night—Jonathan. (not Jon, no Jonathan.) There were four other girls in the group.
And Matt was there—our youth pastor. Matt was a dark-haired, short guy with glasses. He was a student at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas—so we did have one private schooler who paid a ton for school. What I remember most about Matt is that in the hey day of Napster and Limewire, he berated anyone for downloading any music, because it was “stealing and ‘Thou Shalt Not Steal’ is one of the 10 Commandments.”
“It’s not even okay if I download DC Talk songs?” I asked.
“ESPECIALLY NOT CHRISTIAN BANDS!” Matt snapped back.
Matt was real popular among his peers, I’m sure. But in all reality, he was SO cool to us. He was our leader! He let us eat junk food and listen to his legit purchased DC Talk CDs.
For this Wednesday, we went to the main church area and found that Matt had put a large rope ladder on the floor and had taped numbers written on a pieces of paper along the ladder—1 to 10. He then told us that he was going to say a topic and then we had to quickly run to the number that correlated to how much we agreed with the topic. So if we were absolutely against it, we would go stand in the 1 square. If we were absolutely for it, we would go stand in the 10 square. It felt like a pop-quiz and all five of us were scared of failing.
“Adultery,” Matt said loudly, as it echoed through the church halls.
Easy. We were all pre-teens with braces who had never been kissed. We were never gonna get married let alone be in a position where a person who wasn’t legally bound to us would want us: 1.
“Okay, now everyone back to the side. Next: Murder.”
Easy: We all darted to 1.
“Stealing.”
Even though I definitely still used Limewire, I was trying to stop. Regardless, I knew the answer Matt wanted: 1.
“Homosexuality.”
Unfortunately, this was so easy for me: 1. All five of us youth groupers went to 1. The homophobia in the church, in the 90s, in me was REAL. I thought we could all collectively pray away any gay that came our way. In reality, I just hadn’t met a queer person yet—or not one that was out. Turns out I loved a lot of queers, I just didn’t know it yet. It would be years before my cousin Michael would come visit us in Texas during the Super Bowl and sat uninterested until the Shania Twain half-time show. He knew every word and sang along, excitedly. In the kitchen, with my mom, I said, “I’m pretty sure Mike is gay” to which she told me in a stern whisper, “Rachel! Do not say that EVER again.” (spoiler: he is gay.)
“Sex before marriage.”
We all trusted that Matt and all our other elders knew what was in the Bible and was teaching us. “Premarital sex” was one of those topics that I would’ve guessed was in every other chapter of the Bible the way grownups told us not to do it. We all went to 1. True love waits.
“Abortion.”
I could feel in my fragile, scrawny bones that this one was coming. This is the one that separated friends, separated churches, separated votes, separated families. This was Texas. This was church. I was 12. The other three girls and I darted to 1. We knew our place. Shockingly, Jonathan went to 2.
“Jonathan, why 2?” Matt asked.
“Rape,” Jonathan confidently said.
I hadn’t even ever thought of rape and pregnancy and abortion together. Rape was something terrifying that only lived in lore. Pregnancy was something only moms in heterosexual, married relationships engaged in. Abortion was—in my eyes, then—the worst sin that could be committed. Worse than rape, somehow.
“It’s not the baby’s fault,” Matt said. A heated discussion about abortion happened between this man in college and this boy in junior high while four girls watched on.
When it settled down, Matt said, “Okay, last one. Women’s suffrage.”
He was so proud of himself. You could tell by the grin on his face. I didn’t know what the fuck “women’s suffrage” meant. I went to Texas public school. At this point, I still thought we had one the Alamo! (why would you wanna remember so hard something you lost so badly?? that is NOT what I know about Texans.) The girls all milled around, confused. Ultimately, we scattered around 1, 2, and 3. (to be fair, it seems like the church kind of wants women to suffer? and we were trying to answer correctly.) Jonathan went straight to 10. Matt looked at the girls and laughed.
“Women’s suffrage is the right for women to vote! Ha, I love that it’s called that,” he said.
We all darted to 10. You got us there, Matt. You must be so proud.
My little sister got pregnant at 18 and had her first kid at 19. There was no question in my mind that my sister was going to have that baby. Our family was very anti-abortion and I don’t think terminating the pregnancy even crossed my sister’s mind. It was wild to me, though, my sister had a baby before I even had sex.
I moved to Jackson Hole when my sister’s baby daughter was just a few months old. It took a handful of months in Jackson before I knew I was likely going to have sex at some point in my life before I got married. I was 22-years-old and still completely inundated with the doctrine of a Bible church within me. I also really did love Jesus and wanted to do him proud. But I also was a responsible(ish) young woman who knew I might have sex and also knew I definitely didn’t want to get pregnant.
I knew that above all, my family couldn’t handle another young pregnancy out of wedlock. I looked at what my sister’s life was and knew I didn’t want that. And the only thing that would break my family’s heart (and mine, at that point) more than me getting pregnant, was me getting an abortion. So I had to make sure I was never put in that position. I had to make sure that if Matt showed up with the rope ladder and the numbers on the floor, I wouldn’t be the pregnant girl walking to a number I didn’t want to walk to.
I was naive beyond belief. I knew that Pregnancy Help Centers in Texas and California had helped my sister. I thought the one in Jackson Hole might help me. They helped with pregnancies, but I didn’t want to get pregnant, so obviously they’d help with that, right? I found the phone number for “Turning Point” in an actual phone book and called them on a lunch break at work, out in my car.
“Turning Point, how can I help you?” a woman answered.
“Hi, I’m new to town and wanted some birth control. Do you offer that?”
“Uhhhhhh… no.”
“Oh, sorry. I thought you would.”
“You’re not pregnant?”
“No! I’m trying not to get pregnant.”
“Turning Point is for pregnant women only.”
“Oh, sorry. You don’t even have condoms?”
She hung up. In retrospect, she definitely thought she was being punked.
When I lived in Australia at age 24, I was invisible. I was having my own internal crisis. I was still a Christian? I was not a virgin. I was disappointed in myself? I was learning. I think not knowing who I was inside made me more invisible outside.
I lived there for six months—as a nanny for a family that liked to keep me invisible—and a large amount over 99.9% of Australians have no idea I was there. My loneliness was tightly book-ended by the Pacific Ocean and the (even deeper) sea of Sydney residents.
And after attempt after attempt to make friends, I just stopped caring. I would start talking to people like they knew who I was, or they should know who I was. Loneliness is crazy-inducing.
“You should watch your kid, she’s about to run in the street.”
No response.
–––
“I love that dress.”
No response.
–––
And the phenomenon that came from this was that people started to just say things to me. I was the American that obviously did not like it here and was leaving soon and didn’t have any friends to tell anything to anyway.
I became an invisible friend… who you couldn’t make eye contact with because then you would be acknowledging you were talking to someone who didn’t really exist… then who’s the crazy one?
“Sometimes I pocket some of the tip jar for myself just because my boss is such a dick.”
I didn’t respond.
–––
“I really do love my girlfriend, but sometimes to seal the deal, I have to picture my ex.”
“Okay, sure. That’s normal,” I said in a panicked response.
–––
“You wanna get some dinner?”
Okay, that last one was not a secret, just an amazingly blinding invitation from a woman I had met once before. It was a few nights before I left Australia for good and I was just wandering… wandering around Newtown… an overly hip part of Sydney. I was thinking about going to see my second movie of the day at a pub theater and drinking my fourth beer of the day. (it was 5:30.)
I ran into Chloe on the street. She looked upset. We had met at a party I attended on a whim. I had this round-about connection with a friend from America. Chloe was Kyle’s ex. Kyle was friends with my friend from Yosemite.
Chloe was 21 and H-I-P. And gorgeous. And had such a great smile. When her tiny, tan, blue-eyed self flashed you a gorgeous smile, you just couldn’t help but hate her a little bit. She belonged on a movie screen, not next to me—watching the movie. Moments before she asked me to dinner, I saw her in the street.
“Hey, Chloe.”
“Oh, hey……..”
“Rachel.”
“That’s right… sorry.”
“No worries.”
“How are you getting on?”
“Eh, I’ve been better. Going back home in a couple days. How ’bout you? You doin’ alright?”
“Eh, not really.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“You wanna get some dinner?”
And in my head, I thought, What? YES! A friend?! Why is this just coming right before I leave?! But I said.
“Uhh… Yeah, sure.”
Chloe was upset about something. She took me to a Greek hole-in-the-wall restaurant and I had to pretend I knew what to order.
We started to eat. Okay, I started to eat. Chloe didn’t eat. She started crying.
“Babe… What’s the matter?”
“Oh, just everything.”
And it really was one of those “just everything” situations.
I had known that she and Kyle had broken up… he was the round-about friend that a friend knew… so, I figured that maybe it was about this boy. And, well, it kind of was.
Chloe proceeded to tell me how her and Kyle were having a rough time. Doing different things. Growing different ways. But they had been together for so long, been each other’s first loves, that it was really hard to face the fact that it maybe wasn’t working. She told me that Kyle decided he wanted to see what else was out there…
“So, we broke up.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry, Chloe.”
“And then I found out I was pregnant.”
My god. It was happening to her. What a horrible thing. I can’t even begin to imagine finding out that I was carrying a human, a life that was from a man that didn’t want to be with me. It felt like Matt was sneaking into this dark Greek restaurant and was setting up the rating system for me to go and stand by soon, in front of Chloe. It felt like he was there, in the corner of the room, but I didn’t dare look out of the corner of my eye.
I couldn’t believe Chloe was telling me this. But, then again, I was her invisible dinner companion that would be gone from the country in a few days.
“Kyle wanted me to get an abortion. I wanted that too, actually… I can’t say that it was just him, but he was just so quick to say it.”
She told me about how he helped pay for the procedure and how it was such an emotional rollercoaster. She was crying. And then she told me about how Kyle stuck around about a week afterwards and now has gone and found himself a new girlfriend… and won’t even return her calls. She started crying harder.
“It’s just so lonely. Everything just crumbled so fast. And now he won’t even talk to me!”
“Oh, Chloe. Have you told anyone about this?”
“No. You’re the first. We decided it would be best to not tell anyone.”
I couldn’t believe it. Such pain. Such raw sharing. With me… no one. A no one who was unravelling her anti-abortion beliefs little by little over years, slowly looking down that rope ladder from the little numbers to the big numbers. Did she know she chose someone like this to tell?
I told her she HAD to tell someone. Someone else. Loved ones who know her.
We talked for a lot longer, through a bottle of wine and baklava. We even laughed a couple times. Chloe flashed that gorgeous smile and I didn’t hate her at all… my heart swelled at her loveliness.
We walked out of the restaurant and hugged before parting ways.
“Good luck getting back to the States.”
“Thanks. Good luck with all of THIS. You’re strong. You’re going to be great.”
Walking back to the train station, I started to cry a little bit. It was a changing of the guard of my heart. As I walked along the tiles of the train platform, I pictured walking from the 1 to the 2 to the 3 to the 4 to the 5 to the 6 to the 7 to the 8 to the 9 and then to the 10. In ways it felt like I was walking back on that same rope ladder, but in most ways it felt like I was walking towards a mindset and belief system I knew was correct in my heart of hearts. It was cloudy and stormy and not easy, nor without judgement, but beautiful. I stopped and waited for the train, with my feet firmly rooted in that square 10.
Quick Hits:
Jam of the Week: Fousheé – 100 bux.
(this is such a chill jam. Fousheé always makes me think of my love Leah at KEXP. she introduced me to Fousheé’s music and I’m eternally grateful.)
Wow, This Movie Got Me.
(I watched it with family this weekend and definitely cried and kept saying, “I hate how accurate this all is.” but you know I love feeling seen like this.)(filled with beautiful classes. this one is sitting in my cart.)
Fall Coming Makes Me Crave Fashion.
(it’s giving back-to-school. it makes me want to buy my daughter peter-pan collar dresses. it makes me want to wear sweaters that kind of match. it makes me want to buy pencils just to sharpen and fill out half of the crossword.)I Think I’ve Asked This Before…
(but are these shoes cool or weird?)
Me.
(only on mile 12 of my marathon training… how am I gonna do it???)HA.
(it’s perfect, cousin.)
Phew! Okay. This came out later than expected today. I think a big part of me wanted to write about what I wrote about but didn’t want to publish what I just published. Ya know? Life. Amiright? Thank you for being here and knowing that we all know each other to some extent.
xxo,
rachel.