That Time the Church Locked Us Inside

 

From childhood, I was afraid of being stuck. I always cringed and felt nauseous watching Alice in Wonderland where Alice shrank and then grew tall inside that house until it exploded. I felt that my emotions and fears could be similar. There were actual instances that contributed to this fear and ones that I’m not yet ready to share with others outside of my close family and therapist. However, some instances include being locked in a room with abusive people or being tied up by those same abusers just for their entertainment. My wrists still sting as I remember the struggle and my chest burns at the memory of the panic. Just writing this, I broke out in a sweat. (PTSD is fun. Sarcasm, obviously.) The point is, being stuck has been a terrifying trigger for me created by traumatic events that caused it.

It’s difficult to have complex trauma that contributed to my chronic Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. As my therapist told me a few months into our sessions over a year ago, not many people have to contend with all the trauma I did (I argued that, well, all the kids in the IFB do). Most have one or two traumatic events. I had years of it. My childhood was trauma from birth to an adult. If I wasn’t experiencing actual physical or sexual violence, I was experiencing verbal and spiritual abuse. There is a part of me that is dumbfounded if I look back at it all. Especially, since I’ve grown so much and am in a much healthier place in my life, blessedly free of abuse. I only have the memories to contend with now.

And those memories of being stuck also include the church house.

During the last few years while in the IFB, I remember a mutiny starting to churn just beneath the surface of the congregation. It was in the young people… well, some of us. I had only witnessed one or two church splits (meaning members would leave and some would follow) during my 15 years in that single church. The mutiny originated by the leadership’s pushback on some of us young people’s changing behavior. We had begun exploring in things like music and style and were no longer uniformed IFB. We started to try and express ourselves. 

I know that at least, for me, the mutiny really was because of all the years of abuse I had put up with by the church who claimed to love me and my family. I also remember distinctively when the betrayal by my pastor occurred when he started seeing me as wicked and rebellious and the hurt that betrayal caused me. He was my hero, this pastor that was closer than my own granddad. I looked up to him and believed that he loved me because God had called him to do so. I didn’t understand how he could be such a different person towards me just because I tried a different style of dress, music or spoke up more. I think now it was likely my demand to support a rape victim in a personal pastoral session and my insistence do to so that really broke that Santa Clause belief in the man of God.

Since us young people had sometimes started escaping for minutes at time in the service to catch our breath, calm our undiagnosed PTSD symptoms coming to the forefront, and in my case, my chronic illness flares, we suddenly had an announcement one Sunday morning: none of the congregation was allowed to leave the auditorium during the preaching hour. I was instantly terrified. No bathroom breaks allowed. No water breaks. And those in the nursery were down to only one nursery worker and the speaker installed in there had to remain on so the sermon by the preacher would drown out the gossip. No one was allowed to walk on the church grounds while services were in progress. Men in the church would stand and watch the exits, acting more like guards in a prison. Yes, all of these things were said by the pastor and said in a very scary way. They also were put into action.

I remember my first service when this all occurred. I was scanning the crowd, the bold EXIT sign in red letters screamed at me and I wanted to run out. I would glance over my shoulder constantly towards the closed doors in the auditorium behind me and two men of the church that stood or sat nearby them. The doors that led into the church were even locked. I became so terrified that I felt like fainting and vomiting. I was suffocating all over again. I was being abused once again.

Deep within me, I knew this was wrong. I knew that it was a bully tactic. I knew that it was not love. The man of God had taken this way too far. It was wrong to people in the congregation that battled health issues. It was wrong to the young moms who had to grab their baby and put them on their hip and make sure they cried loud enough so they could get a break. And then, they were judged for gossiping in the nursery. It was wrong to the ARMY vet that had expressed he had diagnosed PTSD and had been stuck in a firefight in a foxhole in Afghanistan. We witnessed more than one of his attacks. One in particular occurred after the rules were in place. A thunderstorm hit the small town and the rural backroad that the church was located often lost electricity when one of these Virginian storms would roll in. That vet trampled a folding chair in order to get free of the building, pushing pass two men in the church in the process.

The point was, we were stuck in a church house that was supposed to be a haven and instead, it became a prison for us.

The panic I had felt welling up inside of me soon transitioned into anger after numerous services like this. I remember getting up and walking out and ignoring the pastor when he called me out. “Hey, you, you. What did I say about getting up and disturbing the service?” I eyed him and walked out, adding an additional loud cough in the process. I smiled just soon as I got past the door out of the auditorium. Can’t lie, that asthma attack is the quickest one I have ever had. I didn’t need my inhaler after all. But the fresh air helped. I spent that service standing just beneath the awning of the church’s roof as it poured down rain that Sunday morning. Outside. I never sat through a service again.

I was recently reminded of this occurrence by a loved one that shared their nightmares had returned about it. I had them too for years. I still sometimes do. The situation contributed to flashbacks I still have. It’s why I so often feel pastors are abusers who claim a holy calling that somehow justifies abusive behaviors towards others. I know not all are, but I’ve certainly seen my fair share of them. It’s also part of the reason I need to know I can always exit a situation, that I’m safe, that I’m no longer at risk for being locked inside a church ever again. It’s part of what I’m still trying to heal from today, seven years after leaving a cult that created compounds in our minds.

I’m so glad I got free.

Photos courtesy: Unsplash