And Melissa, what a journey we have had and how proud I am of you and us. Best plane ticket I ever bought!

When I read the comments in this website, I felt really badly. Looking back, I was apparently painfully naive about, or else awfully unaware of, what went on in other homes, or both, maybe. I didn’t have parents who beat me. They had read the child-rearing book and, yes we got spanked (my brothers more than my sister and me), mostly by mom because she was home with us and never one to say “wait til your dad gets home.” But, they didn’t agree with the need to “beat the devil” out of us and they were never physically abusive. Emotional abuse is something else, though, and with a cult you will always have it even if you don’t want it or think you have it, although I don’t think mom and dad would never have been abusive if they’d known they were doing it. But, when a little girl comes home on the schoolbus to an empty house, and none of her siblings were on the bus with her, so she hides under the dining room table, terrified and crying because she has been “left behind,” that is abuse. (Mom had picked us up at school and for some reason let her go on home on the bus alone, thinking we’d get there first, but for some reason we didn’t.) This actually happened to my sister. Since the changes, mom has read books about cults and she and daddy realize what they did and have apologized to us. We were pretty poor, also, but we lived on a farm and had animals to butcher for meat, and milk cows, and raised a big garden and canned alot of vegies, so we never went hungry, as some have said they did, we even had food to give away to the really poor and/or out of work. I can still remember the year we had $1000 Feast money, as a family. I was in high school and that Feast money included the 2nd tithe from my and my younger brothers’ summer jobs. I can also remember that my parents took out loans to pay bills during 3rd tithe years, which they just managed to get paid back before the next one, as well as loans for all those special emergency offerings HWA was always begging. And then my grandparents would have to buy our shoes or school clothes.

I was the “rebellious” child and mom has told me she often dispaired of my “making it.” There was a lot of hypocrisy and I knew it. I had had just enough church teaching before “the truth” came into our lives to have questions “the church” didn’t and couldn’t answer, which is part of the reason I left AC after 2 years. But, the sad truth is that when it came down to it — I stayed — because I didn’t have anywhere else to go. All my friends and family were in “the” church. I didn’t know anyone “outside” or how to live out there on my own. My kids were born into it and had their share of “cultly” abuse before I did finally leave and began to work on undoing the damage. Fortunately, I had grown up to become a “rebellious” adult who did not use the child rearing booklet as my guide and managed to teach my kids an inner strength I hadn’t had, so it didn’t sink in so deep and didn’t do nearly as much damage. We still have discussions about what they went through and what I went through and how could we ever have stood for it and wasn’t it stupid of us to let them do that to us. Someone mentioned in these pages still wanting to meet up with some of the “leaders” and give them “what-for” or maybe just stomp their faces and after all these years that yearning comes over me occasionally, too, especially when I think about what I did to my kids that shouldn’t have been done and certainly didn’t need to be.

When I left I tried going other churches. The problem was, that in finding my way out of WGC, I had learned to think for myself and figure out what I believed in and there just wasn’t anything out there that matched. Nor was I ever again going to allow anyone or any entity tell me what to think. (Such as, I eliminated any church that believes in an ever-burning hell, because I don’t.) Then I figured that if somebody like HWA, and the dozens or hundreds just like him, could found religions based on what they wanted to proclaim as “truth” and they weren’t any smarter or better than I, then I can believe whatever I think is right for me (the religion of Sue!). My dad (a local elder who was given a church after the changes) retired from the ministry and he and mom go to a local Christian church in their home town with my brothers and their families. My sister and I are non-church-goers, as are our kids, except for one of mine who goes occasionally with his wife. We’ve been lucky, apparently. We were an exceptionally close family while in “the church” and have managed to maintain it. Our kids, “the cousins,” are best friends. We try to remember the good things. The Feast could be and was usually a lot of fun. Our kids have great memories of Feasts together. None of us would be married to the spouses we have and have the kids we have without it. Maybe we would have more money in the bank, but then again maybe not. There is still some occasional bitterness about what we didn’t have or get to do, but it gets less all the time.

I guess what I’m saying is I am who I am and what I am today as much because of “the church” as in spite of it. Pulling away at a time when none of my family and friends were doing so taught me I had an inner strength I would never have believed I had. Knowing what to look for taught me not to get caught up in the same thing again. I learned how to teach my kids what to look for, how to be strong, and how to think for themselves and know what they believe. I know what I believe. I know what makes me spiritual. I know I will never try to make anyone think or believe the same way I do. I know I am at peace.