It must be time for me to be bold and more public about the reality that my life lived as a member of Christ is King Community Church in Norfolk, Nebraska, was a life lived in an actual cult. It was not lived in a bold, cutting edge evangelical world-changing unique church as I imagined that it was.

The church I devoted my life to, the one I would do anything for and the one I raised my children in was plain and simply an authoritarian entity directed by one man and a small group of those loyal to him. My parents were adamant that if I moved back home and joined his church, I would be joining a cult. I did it anyway. I did it because I loved God and I was so grateful to this man and his wife for having led me into the Evangelical faith. I have no idea how I would have figured life out without the incredible love, patience and overwhelming belief in me that came from these two people. I will always live in the paradox where deep gratitude and deep sorrow co-exist in equal measure.

The Pastor and his wife were genuinely some of the first adults in my life who genuinely paid attention to me, gave me vision for my life and cultivated my genuine faith in God. I was so grateful for them that I slowly became more devoted and loyal to them than I was to anyone else in my life. I was 16.

By the time I left for college (something that would have never been possible had I not met this man and his wife) my mentor had become an associate pastor. As was common in the late 70’s, Evangelicals were keen to study the Bible as it was literally written and many were aversive to any formal theological training. Not having this institutionalized training actually became an anointing of its own among many of us. Institutions were known to have been so influenced by the world and were therefore suspect. For most of us, to be influenced by the teaching of a devoted man who read the Bible as it was and devoted his whole life to it, was to choose the best faith over the nominal one. Like the first hit of heroin to an addict, ingesting the the certainty that the belief that you have found is the one right thing to guide your life, breaking free is almost impossible. I assumed my devotion was wholly to Jesus Christ, the Bible and the Evangelical faith for almost thirty years.

My departure from the church was a slow, painful one. My friends and I grew up as young fresh out of college adults. We became part of a church full of young zealous couples all believing in the certainty of our choices and making our way through life as a unit. As half-truths about us roamed around the small community, they served to empower us to be even more devoted with the firm belief that any opposition was spiritual warfare initiated and carried out by Satan. As our baby boomer parents threatened to disown us, that too worked to fuel our belief that we were indeed in a unique and special place. There was no one who could convince us that we were too loyal and too devoted. No one.

After five years of intense involvement in the church as a result of my teaching position in the small Christian school and our involvement in the children’s ministry, my body became the alarmist as I began to be continually ill with one thing after another. The life of a devoted CKCC’er in the “center of the Body” (referring to the Body of Christ) was one of overwhelming activity, lack of personal care and chuck full of stress, especially for me as an Evangelical female anomaly.

I was a working mother in a world of stay at home mothers. I was the “unique” exception to the rule because the church needed me to be. I was taught and bought into the belief that my children were really not MY children but in truth belonged to the Body. I was encouraged to release them to be cared for by others so I could care for others. It was, of course, utter nonsense but again, the specialness, the uniqueness and the certainty kept me highly invested and obedient.

I loved being a mom more than anything in my life so it was a huge ask for me to let that go but I did because The Body needed me to. I happened to love teaching elementary kids in almost equal proportion to being a mom so it was very fulfilling to go to work and do my job. Working full time brought a routine and order to my scattered brain that I cherished. It made my kids lives better too. Had that been all that was required of me, I would have been able to thrive in that role. But, sadly, it put me in the inner circle at CKCC and that was a place where leaders surrendered their personal lives to the degree that it became a prison of following commands until I entirely lost my ability to choose for myself. It was horrible.

Thankfully there existed within me enough sense of self that I was able to recognize some commands that came down the pike in the years to come as utterly batshit crazy and I found a way to stand up on my own two feet and say no. One of those commands came in a session of marriage counseling when an elder in the church told me that I needed to understand that my body was not my own but belonged to my husband. I left that session a changed woman because there was no way in all of heaven that I was going to buy into that. Thank God, I was also married to a man who wouldn’t buy into it either and the two of us left that place with a new reality under our belt.

I was in a cult. I have been almost silent about it being one for too long. I just wasn’t ready to be that real about it because I had so many close friends either still in it or unwilling to admit to the reality of it being one and I did not want to hurt them. I have since almost completely disconnected from everyone. It’s been an equal challenge to out what was Evangelical and what was Christ is King since leaving the church in 1998 and then leaving the Evangelical faith entirely in 2005.

Landing in Utah, one of the most religious states in the country, turned out to be the perfect place for me to explore my own beliefs and find my genuine self. The Cache Valley, the Wasatch Mountains, the Logan River, Tony Grove, Bear Lake, The Great Salt Lake and the Bear River Bird Refuge awakened my genuine spiritual life in a way no religion could possibly do. Road trips to the red rocks in Southern Utah were just incredible. As I first saw Bryce Canyon I was overwhelmed and put in a state of awe that is with me still. There is just no way to contain the power of the universe in one religion or most important to me, a small church full of its own importance in a small town in Nebraska.

There will be more to come…