CHAPTER 10 ~LEAVING~

My eyes opened to bright streaks of sunshine pouring in through the windows. The air felt cleaner and fresher, even as I watched tiny dust particles dance in the beams of early morning sun. The curtains were new…white sheer flowing ones that we had pulled out of a box in an attempt to make the room feel like we lived there. I looked around and took in this new house. This beautiful new house. I thought of our Leah, now 2 years old, upstairs in her new bedroom with our infant baby Noah across the hall in his new nursery. So much had changed in such a short time. My entire life as I knew it was over and today was the first of so many things. I was nervous, uncertain, and exhausted. I can still recall with such clarity, though, a sense of complete peace wash over me. 
It felt right. 
It felt like the beginning.
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I’m sorry if that was a bit cheesy, but I’ve really been loving writing again and I’ve felt the stirrings of wanting to try my hand at some more novel-like storytelling. That was true though. I distinctly remember the first morning that I woke up after it was all over and we were gone. More on that later, but I’m going to be all dramatic and take you backwards like we’re in some kind of cinematic thriller.
We left off with Mike and I adjusting to life as parents and the ever-growing demands of this ministry. I was teaching full time in their school, while still touring with the singing group…now solo without Mike. I knew it was time to stop. Sadly, that could not be an option for me. It felt like it took me longer than most to adjust to motherhood. Being comfortable around babies and kids never came naturally to me and even though I did feel a connection with Leah, I was in over my head. I was exhausted all the time as most young moms are. I rarely saw Mike since his dorms shifts seemed endless. Something had to give.
I’m going to pause here and say a few things that I actually wished I would have put into my last chapter. A fascinating thing that has come from me writing these chapters is hearing from the many, many people who lived in this place. I’ve been mind-blown from seeing comments left by ex-staff members or program kids that I knew personally over my 24 years there. Bringing my experiences from there out of the back of my mind (where they’ve been pushed to for 7 years) has been a very wild ride. It’s certainly brought old scars out in the open, but it’s opened the door for healing in my family. Many have asked me if I blame or hold resentment towards my parents for raising us there and not standing up to our pastor when he meddled in our family. Through writing my story from my own personal perspective, I have somehow also gained the perspective of so many others. One thing I never anticipated learning was that people who stayed there stayed for different reasons.
It was only while writing my most recent chapter, Chapter 9, that I realized I was never called to that ministry. I’ve heard countless staff people, including my own parents, say over and over, “We stayed for the kids.”—Meaning, the program kids. Probably all of the first generation staffers of that ministry were in fact called by God to be a part of those teenagers’ lives. God used them greatly. My parents have individually and together reached so many lives through God working on their behalf. It is obviously also true that without my family being there, each of my siblings and I would never have met our spouses. No, it was not a mistake that we were all there. What was a mistake was a man manipulating people’s hearts and desires to do good. Even worse, he manipulated weak, unstable teenagers who had experienced the life-changing grace of God and wanted to serve Him. Lucky for us all, God is a master at reshaping and retelling our stories. He blends an ugly stain into new, vibrant and even more beautiful colors into the lives of those who truly love Him and will cling to Him even when nothing makes sense.
My parents clung to Him. Despite bad teaching and misshapen doctrine. They knew their calling and they stayed. Yes, they should have put our family first. They made mistakes. Show me a family that doesn’t have crap. But God still had a fantastic story to tell.
Mike and I should have left. For me, I did not stay for the kids in the program. I, like many program kids who remained as staff, stayed because I was afraid of what would happen if I left. I had no real sense of calling holding me there…only fear. I do believe that I was meant to stay after graduating high school, but not necessarily in regards to the ministry to teens on campus. I would not trade my years of travel, singing and ministry for anything. Even in the last days when I was stretched so thin, I knew I was meant to talk to those church kids in schools. God used my personal story of pain to heal kids out there, and I’ll never forget or regret any of it. But I never felt called into ministry for the program or its kids. Once my life began to change and I had my own children, though, my calling shifted. As it should. I’m not saying at all that my parents completely neglected raising us, or that they put their calling to the ministry ahead of their kids. I’m not telling their story.  I do know that the environment I found myself in at 22 years old had caused me to believe that being a stay at home mom was selfish and wrong. It meant that I wanted to “be taken off the front lines of ministry.” My parents poured their all into that ministry, even at the expense of their own family. I would have no doubt gone down the same path. I was also really unsure of what it would look like for us to live somewhere else. It’s not as if I was raised in the woods or some kind of crazy compound, but I had no clue of how the world really worked.
The end began around the Spring of 2011. My own nightmare came true one day when I came home from work. I came in the house to find Mike ironing a collared shirt, which was strange because his dorm shift didn’t start for another two hours. And he never usually dressed up for dorm. He also looked kind of panicked. I asked what was going on and Mike proceeded to tell me that he had gotten fired. Here’s what happened:
Kids in the program would often receive financial support from home or supporters. They had accounts that they could draw on to spend on campus or if they went off property for a special occasion. As a dean, Mike would handle their money and deposit it into their accounts. He had taken a kid off property one day and brought home an envelope of change and receipts that needed to be deposited in the boys’ account the next day. Mike accidentally forgot and left the money home that day. He was on dorm duty that night and the program boy asked Mike if he had deposited his money back into his account and Mike jokingly responded with, “No…my wife and I spent it on groceries.”
A chain of events happened next that is another perfect example of how disordered and toxic that ministry’s environment was. The boy went to the head dean at the time. Instead of going to Mike with this, the head dean went to the program director. Instead of going to Mike, the program director went to the school’s principle. Instead of going to Mike, all three of those people went to the pastor directly and told him that Mike was stealing money from kids’ accounts. And instead of going to Mike, our pastor fired us. He told them to have Mike come in to his office. That was the story I got after coming home to find my husband, who literally always does right by people…who works his hardest 24/7 without needing anyone’s validation…who has ridden through the craziest days of my life right by my side…I found him panicking and ironing a shirt so he could look decent in a meeting to try to save his job. I felt the sting of betrayal like never before from people who said they were our friends. I was no better than them though. I had thrown my fair share of people under the bus. I had turned ice cold toward dear friends that left the ministry because I believed lies about them. I looked down on people who used to work in our ministry that now worked regular jobs. Our pastor would often say things like, ” I saw so-and-so the other day. They work at McDonalds now. They used to serve God and now they flip burgers.” No, I was no better than these fellow staff friends. No one really had anyone else’s backs there. Everyone was concerned with keeping their pastor happy with them. We were allowed to stay, but Mike was taken out of his position as a dean and “demoted” to work maintenance. Turns out he had the best time working in that position because it was gloriously low profile.
My spirit was breaking, though. I found out I was pregnant with our second child three days before Christmas in 2010. Second babies are a little different than firsts and I kept the secret from Mike so that I could tell him on Christmas Eve. We were excited, but we were BUSY. Those days are kind of a blur to remember because it felt like I was drowning. I was still battling horrible anxiety, I was overworked, and I was feeling more bitter by the day. It was strange how the demands from the ministry increased the more we built our family…almost as if it was designed to be that way. If you weren’t prepared to sacrifice anything or anyone for this place, you wouldn’t last long.
We all started noticing that our pastor’s wife was missing early that spring. I had heard rumors that their marriage was struggling. My parents were probably the closest people to the pastor and his wife so I had always known that they had problems. It wasn’t my business. He made it all our business though when on one Monday morning staff meeting, our pastor told us what was really going on…according to him. He told us all (this is in a meeting that included young staff and junior staff kids who were recently promoted from the program) that his wife had left him. He had hired private investigators to follow her and he suspected her of being a lesbian. He showed us pictures, phone call records and emails that suggested she was meeting some woman at a nearby town. He played the part of a broken man who had lost his wife. We were all completely forbidden to keep in touch or reach out to her. It all felt very, very strange. What felt downright wrong, though, was when he suddenly had a girlfriend a couple of weeks later. She was nearly half his age, and we were all supposed to accept her without question.
Now, this was all going on right at the end of my pregnancy. I always went into hiding at the end of my pregnancies because I couldn’t stand being told I was huge or deal with people’s good natured, “When are you going to have that baby????” So I actually missed most of what went on in the ministry in our very last days. I did know that something BIG was happening. My father was on the ministry board and was trying everything he could to get our pastor to see truth. Not everyone would accept and move on as easily as the last time this happened. (Chapter 4) More people were questioning him at once than ever before. In one desperate last attempt at salvaging the ministry as we knew it, my father and the rest of the board approached him to tell him they were essentially voting him out. They told him if he continued to keep this woman around while he avoided addressing what was really going on, he was about to lose nearly all of his staff. His response was something along the lines of, “Let them leave.” Maybe that was when everyone started to realize that he truly didn’t  care a single bit for anyone but himself.  I really don’t think he expected that so many would leave. The days were very tense. I was about to pop with our baby, so I was just hearing things from Mike and my dad. Once the first family and good friends of ours resigned, something shifted in me. I felt a huge wave of hope. I remember Mike and I having our first conversation of “What If.” What if we left? Where would we go? What work could he get? What would happen to my family? Mike told me later on that he hadn’t known what to expect when he brought it up to me. I could have felt terrified once the opportunity actually came to leave. It was the only place I’d ever lived, it was the only environment I’d ever lived in. All I felt was hope. I thought about silly things, like how nice it would be to wear clothes I wanted to wear. To listen to music I like, or sleep in on a Sunday and skip church if we wanted to. I would now be allowed to have a Facebook account. Maybe I would even taste wine or wear a tight shirt!! We knew that we couldn’t make a huge life decision like this unless we felt God telling us to leave. Every time I opened my Bible or sought God in prayer, I knew. I knew it was time and I felt perfect peace about it. Even beyond peace, I was excited! It was like the slaves being led out of Egypt! Staff families began to resign daily. Right in the middle of it all, I went into labor. We welcomed our baby Noah into our very uncertain world on August 25th, 2011. The next day, my parents, sister and her husband resigned from the ministry. I think we had known for a while before that, but it was official. We were all leaving. You would think with all my vivid memories in my life, that I would remember every detail of those days with perfect clarity. I don’t know if it was the shock of such a huge life change, or the hormones and mental state that come when you’ve just had a baby, but I don’t have very many clear memories from when we actually left. I do remember bringing Noah home from the hospital and knowing that this was not our home anymore. We were homeless. We were jobless. The chords that connected me to this place that I had known forever were severed. Mike resigned on our behalf along with more staff. When it was all said and done, the pastor lost nearly 80% of his staff. I wish the climax to this story could be better from my own perspective, but the people who really fought for the ministry were few, my dad being among them. I can’t tell anyone else’s story. But I do know that my father loved our pastor, in spite of  everything. He tried to help him see what he was doing. When it came down to it, he had manipulated even the foundations of the ministry, so that the board actually had no power to do anything. He was going to run his ministry on his terms, no matter the losses. Even losses like my father, who I still say was his one and only actual friend. Our pastor let so many people go, just so he wouldn’t have to look at his own sin. In the end though, it was his stubbornness that paved our way out.
After resigning, we were given roughly a month to find somewhere to live. Leah was 2 years old and was completely oblivious to what was happening. Noah was a very colicky newborn who cried all day and all night. Despite our joy that we were free from this crazy place, life was happening fast and we needed God to not only point us in the right direction, but to carry us there as well. The whole exodus of staff had happened at such a fast rate that hardly any of us resigned with a backup plan. No jobs or homes were waiting for any of us. So, in addition to my child and nonstop-crying newborn, I also had Mike…who was pacing the house like a caged lion, trying to find some kind of job that could help us get on our feet. In the midst of it all, I felt perfectly calm. With my history of anxiety, depression, and general unstable-ness, I should have been a mess. Instead, those were some of the times where I can recall feeling God closer to me than ever before. When I did start to panic, I felt a sense of peace wash over me and I knew we would be ok. Pieces started to fall into place. My parents were owed more than you can imagine in backpay after working in that ministry for 30 years for virtually no pay. They came to an agreement that they would be allowed to stay in their home permanently in light of how much money they were owed. This was a huge victory for them, because that house is their home. My parents raised my brother, sister and I in that home, and I know it would have killed them to move. Coincidentally, the house across the street from my parents’ house had been vacant for years, so my dad asked around to see if anyone knew who owned it and if they’d consider renting it out to Mike and I. Within a day, Mike and I had a home to rent… and it was like my dream house. A big country home with three bedrooms and plenty of land for just $600 per month (less than the one bedroom apartments we were looking at elsewhere!!) and it was across the street from my own parents…a huge comfort to me after having a new baby! A nearby shed and cabin-making business was hiring at that time and Mike was given a job as a carpenter.
Just like that, my whole life changed. We had done what I had watched so many others do. Granted, we were lucky and the departure was easy because so many people went along with us. My whole life, I assumed that if I were ever to leave, I would feel terror. I had heard other staff people, the ones who sometimes left the ministry and then came back, tell of how they felt God abandon them once they had left His will. In so many minds, that place was intertwined with our conception of “God’s will.” There is something I want to tell you all who have somehow stuck with me up until now. My father once gave me advice that I won’t ever forget, and I’ve shared it with so many people.
He told me that “God’s will” is not a place. It isn’t a job, or a relationship with a spouse or boyfriend. It isn’t a decision you make at a fork in the road. It’s not a sense of protection that God will give you or yank back if you haven’t lived right enough for Him. God’s will is a state of being. His will, quite simply, is that we love Him. It’s why we were made in the first place. He is our Creator, and He put within each and every one of us a desire for Him that only He can satisfy. Sadly, many times we confuse that desire with the desire for happiness. We try anything to find that happiness, but we never get closer to finding something that will last. The one and only thing that has held me together so far in my life has been my relationship with Jesus. His will for me has only ever been that I walk with Him, that I seek Him, that I continue to fall more in love with Him. Whenever I am right in the center  of THAT will, I have nothing to fear. It was in fact, my being in His will that allowed me to leave that place with a perfect sense of peace. I had made it out alive…better than alive! God had clung to me in my most unstable time and kept me in the center of His will just by loving me. I knew this truth my whole life, despite how it was manipulated by my pastor. This is the wonderful thing about God, though. He writes the most amazing stories. He uses our choices and failures, the mistakes of others and their consequences, and He retells the story as if it was always meant to be that way.
As I laid there in bed savoring the first moments of my new life, it felt like a veil had been lifted from my eyes. My vision and perception of the world outside was warped and emotionally I had so many things to work through…but as I opened my eyes that very first morning in our new home where nothing was connected to that place or that man, it felt like opening the first page in a blank book. I could finally see clearly and begin to really live and learn.
This was my beginning.