Jesus Loves Me, Part I

I grew up in a Christian household.

A pastor's household. Wait, no. A household of pastors. Yep, plural.

Both of my parents are ordained ministers in a church that I will not name. You may already be grimacing. Don't worry, this story is not about parental abuse in the name of Jesus. My parents are beautiful people who would never hurt anyone.

But it is about how someone I trusted used religion to own me.

I don't get along with most women. I don't really relate to them. My mother and I have had a strained relationship pretty much since the day I turned thirteen, which is a completely different topic for another story. But maybe that's the reason I've always had better connections with men. My dad and I are very close, so I had the opposite of the classic "daddy issues" -- I just tried to replicate the connection I had with my dad in the other men I let into my life.

Music is my first love, so it's no surprise that I was an avid member of my church's worship band. We were actually quite good, and one year we were asked to be the featured band at a youth conference. I lived for these weekends away with my bandmates. Being the only girl on these trips, I was always given separate accommodations, but aside from nighttime, we all hung out together. I should mention -- I was 16 at the time; the bandmate closest to me in age was Colin. He was 25, happily married, with a son. The other guys were older than that, all in (seemingly) happy marriages, each with a various number of kids. (It's worth noting, but I'm not sure why, that Colin's is the only marriage that has survived up to this retelling. The other bandmates have all separated or divorced from their wives.)

I liked Colin. He was smart, funny, and had a way of framing things when I would ask him for advice that just seemed to solve everything. The entire band was sitting around a campfire, chatting about various things. Colin and I were deep in discussion about an issue I was having with a friend at school. When we looked up from our discussion, we noticed the other guys had left. I told him I'd better get to bed, as we had a long drive home the next day. He walked me to my cabin, hugged me goodnight, and disappeared into the darkness. I was bunking with some other girls, so I went in, crawled into bed, and we talked well into the night about all the things 16-year-old girls talk about.

Another bandmate, Danny, dropped me off at my house the next afternoon. I trudged upstairs with my stuff, getting ready to do laundry and bummed that the weekend was over. Unbeknownst to me, Danny asked my parents if he could have a word with them outside. This didn't strike me as odd until I looked out the window thirty minutes later and noticed they were still talking. I suddenly felt this lump in the pit of my stomach that it was me they were talking about, and that this wasn't going to be good. But for the life of me, I couldn't come up with something I had done wrong.

When my parents came back inside and called me downstairs, my mind kept racing. I sat down in the living room. They proceeded to tell me that Danny and the guys had noticed that Colin didn't return to their shared cabin until after 2:00 a.m. the night before. They didn't know where he had been, but they knew that the last person they saw him with was...me. So what did I have to say for myself?

Naturally, I was stunned. Were my own parents really accusing me of sneaking off with a fellow Christian musician...at a Christian youth event? And he's married? Was this really happening?

I vehemently denied it. I said I had no idea where Colin had been, but he wasn't with me. He had dropped me off at 10:30 p.m. I hastily laid out for them the events of the night before, and gave them the names of four girls I was bunking with who could corroborate my story. Not only were these accusations hurtful, but they were insane. In addition to the fact that I would never violate someone's marriage in that way, I was also underage, and subject to the same curfew as the other attendees of the event. Just because I was part of the band didn't mean I was exempt from the rules. I also gave them the name of the female chaperone who had done night check -- she would be able to confirm that I had returned well before curfew.

It could've stopped there, and there would've been no need to write a story about it. My parents weren't there -- they were only going off of the information they were being given. Any parent would be curious, right? Maybe even worried? Once given proof, that would be the end of it, right?

Wrong.

I then had to sit through an hour-long lecture on how I had put myself in this situation by sitting with Colin and talking. That if it had been a group conversation, no one would've had any reason to suspect anything. Now I had tarnished my own reputation, and by extension, my parents' and sister's reputations. How could I be so irresponsible? Maybe I needed to seek counselling. This was becoming a bit too sex-crazed for my mother.

You read that right. Sex-crazed. Sex had only been suspected. Insinuated. Now disproven. In fact, when I confronted Danny about it a week later, he said his reason for telling my parents was that he was worried that Colin had taken me somewhere and forced me to do things I didn't want to. It had never entered his mind that I was a willing participant.

But in my own parents' minds, I was now "the other woman". What was everyone at the church going to think when they inevitably heard the story?

Worse ... what was Colin's wife, Chelsea, going to say?

"You may have ended their marriage!" my mom yelled.

I stared at her, shocked. "Mom, if a non-event that didn't even happen can end their marriage, was it very strong to begin with?"

Silence. Then, "I've seen marriages end over a lot less."

No sympathy for the fact that I had been wrongfully accused. No frustration at Danny for jumping to conclusions. No irritation at Colin for wandering off by himself for four hours in the middle of the night doing God knows what.

Just good old solid blame and shame heaped on yours truly.

My mother scrutinized my comings and goings for my remaining two years as a teenager, before I turned 18 and told her to kindly fuck off and let me live my life. Most, if not all, of my male friendships came under intense observation. If they were married men, the friendship was inappropriate. If they were single men, "either date them or stop talking to them".

But you think that's insufferable?

Part II is a doozy.