WEBVTT
1
00:00:00.280 --> 00:00:02.560
Before we start the show. This week's episode feature some
2
00:00:02.600 --> 00:00:05.960
heavy conversations regarding sexual assault. Please keep this in mind
3
00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:08.960
before listening as a reminder. While this podcast is hopefully
4
00:00:08.960 --> 00:00:11.560
a great place to hear honest, encouraging stories to let
5
00:00:11.599 --> 00:00:13.320
you know you're not alone, it's not men as a
6
00:00:13.359 --> 00:00:15.919
replacement for therapy or for telling someone if you need help.
7
00:00:16.120 --> 00:00:24.280
Thanks for listening and understanding. Okay, here's the show. Welcome
8
00:00:24.280 --> 00:00:26.399
to Breakfast in Hell. This week is part two of
9
00:00:26.440 --> 00:00:29.320
my interview with Sarah Davis. Where we last left Sarah,
10
00:00:29.440 --> 00:00:31.559
she wanted to break free from the cults she had
11
00:00:31.559 --> 00:00:34.159
found herself a part of since she was born. Let's
12
00:00:34.240 --> 00:00:36.079
die back in as Sarah tells us about the next
13
00:00:36.159 --> 00:00:37.880
twenty years and what it actually takes for her to
14
00:00:37.880 --> 00:00:38.920
accomplish that feat.
15
00:00:45.200 --> 00:00:48.600
So, I think I must have been dissociating a lot. Yeah,
16
00:00:48.719 --> 00:00:52.600
I'm sure that august. I get called into John's office
17
00:00:52.640 --> 00:00:56.479
with him, just him, and he says to me, I
18
00:00:56.560 --> 00:01:01.119
think that what the reason that what happened between us
19
00:01:01.159 --> 00:01:04.480
happened is because I'm supposed to marry you and not
20
00:01:04.640 --> 00:01:05.400
this other girl.
21
00:01:06.159 --> 00:01:09.799
I had a feeling that was coming in that moment.
22
00:01:10.000 --> 00:01:12.280
I said, absolutely not good.
23
00:01:12.319 --> 00:01:13.079
For you.
24
00:01:13.120 --> 00:01:17.359
No. Yeah, that night was a night from the bowels
25
00:01:17.400 --> 00:01:20.599
of hell, and that had nothing to do with it.
26
00:01:21.840 --> 00:01:24.400
I also very much felt like I was putting that
27
00:01:24.439 --> 00:01:28.239
girl like on a silver plattern, saying take her, not me. Yeah,
28
00:01:28.280 --> 00:01:29.560
and that felt bad.
29
00:01:29.760 --> 00:01:31.879
I can see how you would feel that, but that's odd,
30
00:01:32.040 --> 00:01:35.319
Like you're not wrong here. You should hold no guilt
31
00:01:35.359 --> 00:01:35.560
for that.
32
00:01:35.840 --> 00:01:38.439
I mean, like, yeah, saying no to him, And it
33
00:01:38.560 --> 00:01:41.400
was one of those moments where I realized all you
34
00:01:41.439 --> 00:01:44.879
had to do was say no and he'd stop. He
35
00:01:44.959 --> 00:01:48.840
never mentioned that again, he is. The only thing was
36
00:01:49.359 --> 00:01:53.519
don't tell the other elder. I said this, yeah, and
37
00:01:53.560 --> 00:01:56.799
I was like, okay, but you know, it's like in
38
00:01:56.879 --> 00:01:59.920
the meantime, we're sneaking the other girl into the house
39
00:02:00.400 --> 00:02:03.280
after his wife goes to bed at seven, and she's
40
00:02:03.319 --> 00:02:06.280
going into the office with him, and I can only
41
00:02:06.319 --> 00:02:07.959
imagine what they're doing in there.
42
00:02:08.639 --> 00:02:11.879
You know, they this guy needs to like rot in
43
00:02:11.960 --> 00:02:14.639
prison in the hell that doesn't exist. That's what he
44
00:02:14.719 --> 00:02:15.080
used to do.
45
00:02:16.280 --> 00:02:17.360
I'm okay with hell for that.
46
00:02:18.400 --> 00:02:20.439
Yeah, there's some times where it would be I don't
47
00:02:20.479 --> 00:02:24.120
think I'm I'm confident there's no hell, but there'd be
48
00:02:24.120 --> 00:02:25.719
tians ray be convenient.
49
00:02:25.560 --> 00:02:28.360
It'd be nice, wouldn't Yeah. At the same time that
50
00:02:28.400 --> 00:02:32.000
this is happening, I was doing homeschool teaching. So when
51
00:02:32.039 --> 00:02:35.280
I was like twenty two, I started tutoring a girl
52
00:02:35.759 --> 00:02:38.199
from the church when I was still living in the
53
00:02:38.199 --> 00:02:40.840
other town with my mom and dad. I'd travel at
54
00:02:40.919 --> 00:02:44.800
hour at six am to do algebra one with her,
55
00:02:46.520 --> 00:02:49.560
which is wild, that's crazy, and yeah it was wild,
56
00:02:50.479 --> 00:02:54.039
but I loved it. I loved teaching good and so
57
00:02:55.120 --> 00:02:58.120
while all of that stuff was happening, I had students.
58
00:02:58.360 --> 00:02:59.800
There were only like two or three of them at
59
00:02:59.840 --> 00:03:04.319
the and I think, what I have done some therapy,
60
00:03:04.400 --> 00:03:06.120
And one of the things I realized is that I
61
00:03:06.159 --> 00:03:10.840
took that feeling of being alone and I try to
62
00:03:10.919 --> 00:03:13.159
flip it on its head and make sure these kids
63
00:03:13.199 --> 00:03:14.039
would never be alone.
64
00:03:14.879 --> 00:03:15.159
Nice.
65
00:03:15.199 --> 00:03:19.319
So they they I would go to their house initially,
66
00:03:19.400 --> 00:03:21.360
and then John was like, no, they have to come here,
67
00:03:21.439 --> 00:03:25.879
So they came to my house. And I remember like
68
00:03:26.120 --> 00:03:29.080
working hard with some of these kids to build a
69
00:03:29.120 --> 00:03:32.280
refresh just a relationship, because I mean, I'm twenty three,
70
00:03:32.360 --> 00:03:34.919
twenty four years old and I'm teaching fourteen year olds. Well,
71
00:03:35.000 --> 00:03:37.960
that means you go to the same church, at some point,
72
00:03:38.400 --> 00:03:40.759
we're just going to be friends, right, Like if I
73
00:03:40.800 --> 00:03:43.879
don't approach this as at some point we're going to
74
00:03:43.919 --> 00:03:47.879
be friends, and I just say with a student teacher relationship,
75
00:03:47.919 --> 00:03:50.360
then what are we doing? Like why are we here?
76
00:03:51.199 --> 00:03:56.400
And I remember really having to work against the ways
77
00:03:56.400 --> 00:04:00.840
I've been taught to communicate with people, so like growing up,
78
00:04:01.319 --> 00:04:04.759
you know, if you say something that's wrong and wrong
79
00:04:04.840 --> 00:04:08.800
being like, God, I'm just feeling really depressed. I feel
80
00:04:08.800 --> 00:04:12.080
like nobody loves me, you know, your normal teenage angsty thing.
81
00:04:12.719 --> 00:04:15.400
My mom would come back with what's the truth? No,
82
00:04:15.520 --> 00:04:18.000
you tell me some truth? What's real? That's not real?
83
00:04:18.040 --> 00:04:21.319
What's you tell me what's real? I couldn't do that
84
00:04:21.360 --> 00:04:24.519
to these kids because I wanted them to talk to me,
85
00:04:25.199 --> 00:04:28.000
And if I come back with shut down, then they're
86
00:04:28.040 --> 00:04:31.879
not going to talk to me them, right, And I
87
00:04:32.000 --> 00:04:34.639
remember it felt like at the time, like God is
88
00:04:34.680 --> 00:04:38.120
sitting there going, don't you dare say that to them?
89
00:04:38.160 --> 00:04:42.279
You ask them how that made them feel, and then
90
00:04:42.319 --> 00:04:44.560
you sit there and say, I can understand why you
91
00:04:44.560 --> 00:04:47.680
would feel that way. And then you know if if
92
00:04:47.720 --> 00:04:50.879
they're having a hard time explaining it, you know, like
93
00:04:50.879 --> 00:04:52.959
like what made you feel that way, I could, and
94
00:04:53.040 --> 00:04:55.759
I would. I would also follow it up with I
95
00:04:55.800 --> 00:04:59.639
can imagine why I would feel that way. I'm curious
96
00:04:59.680 --> 00:05:02.519
why you did, you know, instead of trying to put
97
00:05:02.560 --> 00:05:04.600
words in their mouth, but also giving them a space
98
00:05:04.680 --> 00:05:09.360
to just say things. And I remember having to learn.
99
00:05:09.399 --> 00:05:13.240
I had a group of kids from one family who
100
00:05:13.800 --> 00:05:17.560
I found out later well later, like their siblings, ended
101
00:05:17.639 --> 00:05:23.000
up talking about it deeply abusive, physically, emotionally, just just
102
00:05:23.240 --> 00:05:28.519
horribly abusive. And I remember quickly learning that if I
103
00:05:28.519 --> 00:05:31.439
can't just say, well, go talk to your dad about that, Yeah,
104
00:05:31.519 --> 00:05:34.680
your dad cares, I had I like, you don't say that.
105
00:05:35.639 --> 00:05:39.879
Can you talk to your dad about that? No? Okay? Fair,
106
00:05:40.079 --> 00:05:42.199
like I'm not going to tell you to. You know,
107
00:05:42.279 --> 00:05:46.439
these things that had been the correct responses weren't the
108
00:05:46.480 --> 00:05:51.319
correct responses. And over the course of twenty years of
109
00:05:51.759 --> 00:05:56.639
homeschool teaching, I taught twenty kids and they were my world.
110
00:05:56.920 --> 00:05:57.560
That's awesome.
111
00:05:57.839 --> 00:06:01.120
I poured everything into them. I had schedule, had I
112
00:06:01.160 --> 00:06:04.160
created my own history and English curriculum because there was
113
00:06:04.160 --> 00:06:06.160
no way at hell I was going to use the
114
00:06:06.240 --> 00:06:08.759
Christian curriculum because y'all.
115
00:06:09.079 --> 00:06:11.720
But also you're and I want to get this straight.
116
00:06:11.959 --> 00:06:15.839
You are creating your own curriculum. You didn't go to college,
117
00:06:16.160 --> 00:06:19.160
You're creating your own curriculum, your homeschooling kids. You don't
118
00:06:19.160 --> 00:06:21.600
want to use the Christian curriculum because it's so bad.
119
00:06:21.879 --> 00:06:24.240
But you're still in this dude's house.
120
00:06:24.920 --> 00:06:28.160
Yes, and I just didn't talk to him about.
121
00:06:27.879 --> 00:06:30.720
Them, that's crazy, man.
122
00:06:30.839 --> 00:06:33.839
Yeah, I didn't, Like, I didn't go to him with
123
00:06:34.040 --> 00:06:37.279
any questions. I didn't go to him with any concerns
124
00:06:37.759 --> 00:06:41.720
because I knew that if he got involved, it wouldn't
125
00:06:41.920 --> 00:06:46.000
be bad. Yeah, you know, I knew if he touched
126
00:06:46.000 --> 00:06:48.199
it that it would hurt them, and they did and
127
00:06:48.240 --> 00:06:52.279
he did. So there was like three or four years
128
00:06:52.319 --> 00:06:56.079
in there where he wasn't in ministry, Like he wasn't
129
00:06:56.120 --> 00:06:58.720
reaching on Sundays the other elders were and there was
130
00:06:58.759 --> 00:07:00.839
nothing said about why. But it was because of what
131
00:07:00.839 --> 00:07:05.160
had happened. Yeah, Like, there was never anything publicly said
132
00:07:05.199 --> 00:07:05.560
about it.
133
00:07:05.439 --> 00:07:09.439
It was church discipline. It's classic behind closed doors. The
134
00:07:09.560 --> 00:07:12.360
church disciplines them in a spiritual way so they don't
135
00:07:12.399 --> 00:07:15.519
get any actual repercussions. And this is normal in almost
136
00:07:15.600 --> 00:07:18.600
every denomination and it's so terrible.
137
00:07:19.120 --> 00:07:22.879
Yeah, well it got weirder because it's us. Why wouldn't
138
00:07:22.879 --> 00:07:27.040
we be weirder. So in nineteen ninety seven ninety eight,
139
00:07:27.240 --> 00:07:31.399
the church actually bought a piece of property twenty miles
140
00:07:31.439 --> 00:07:35.920
outside of town, and it's three hundred acres and we
141
00:07:36.040 --> 00:07:39.920
start building buildings and we're going to have us a
142
00:07:39.959 --> 00:07:42.560
little retreat out there. We're going to We went camping
143
00:07:42.600 --> 00:07:43.279
there for ourself.
144
00:07:43.399 --> 00:07:46.240
It's the sister cult is what you hear you're gonna
145
00:07:46.240 --> 00:07:48.240
call you. Have you read Bethany joy Lynd's book.
146
00:07:48.399 --> 00:07:50.600
Oh God? I sat there and I was like, did
147
00:07:50.600 --> 00:07:51.399
you live in Vermont?
148
00:07:51.600 --> 00:07:54.879
There's so many beats to this story that are like,
149
00:07:55.399 --> 00:07:57.920
it's crazy, it's wild. Sorry.
150
00:07:58.120 --> 00:08:00.959
I literally was like, Anthony, you and I went to
151
00:08:01.000 --> 00:08:03.000
the same church. The guy was just as weird.
152
00:08:03.040 --> 00:08:06.079
But it's like, that's when we jumped from high control
153
00:08:06.120 --> 00:08:10.600
religion to cult. Is these beats are are that it's
154
00:08:10.720 --> 00:08:13.839
just full cult that's just disguised as religion. Yeah. Right,
155
00:08:13.959 --> 00:08:15.839
So they bought three hundre acres. I'm sorry, I mean
156
00:08:16.319 --> 00:08:19.079
that's okay. They bought three camp out there the whole dew.
157
00:08:19.480 --> 00:08:24.920
Yeah, built buildings, built structures. Y two k happened and
158
00:08:25.000 --> 00:08:29.120
it was a terrifying time. Mass We were prepping, we
159
00:08:29.160 --> 00:08:31.160
had blankets, we had all you.
160
00:08:31.120 --> 00:08:34.120
Believe the thousand years about to start.
161
00:08:34.240 --> 00:08:37.159
Well, this is it. And I don't even know that
162
00:08:37.200 --> 00:08:39.559
we ever talked about the thousand years. We were just
163
00:08:39.600 --> 00:08:40.320
all going to die.
164
00:08:40.720 --> 00:08:45.080
I had someone that I knew very well who believed
165
00:08:45.240 --> 00:08:51.320
that the year two thousand represented six thousand years since
166
00:08:51.399 --> 00:08:55.879
the creation of the world. Sure, and so God created
167
00:08:56.080 --> 00:08:58.840
in six days, He created the world and on the
168
00:08:58.879 --> 00:09:02.200
seventh day he rests did and so every day is
169
00:09:02.240 --> 00:09:04.240
like a thousand years in the Bible. You with me,
170
00:09:04.360 --> 00:09:07.840
you see what's coming now, So six thousand years is
171
00:09:07.919 --> 00:09:12.399
six days. So in the seven thousandth year seven days,
172
00:09:12.759 --> 00:09:15.919
there will be no God. That's the thousand years. And
173
00:09:15.960 --> 00:09:20.240
they prepped like nobody's business. And they were wrong.
174
00:09:22.559 --> 00:09:27.000
Yeah, yeah, yeah, So y two k happened. We had
175
00:09:28.440 --> 00:09:30.039
you know, New Year's Day.
176
00:09:30.080 --> 00:09:33.080
We're fine, Yeah, everything's good. Come back to your house's gang,
177
00:09:33.279 --> 00:09:33.879
We're good to go.
178
00:09:35.240 --> 00:09:39.399
But in two thousand and one, John bought a set
179
00:09:39.399 --> 00:09:42.480
of forums. They were preparedness survivalist forums.
180
00:09:42.600 --> 00:09:44.679
Okay, on right, So.
181
00:09:44.840 --> 00:09:47.480
He it comes with a little store and he starts
182
00:09:47.480 --> 00:09:50.919
selling the stuff out of the house survival manuals, all
183
00:09:51.000 --> 00:09:57.399
kinds of stuff, British brickfield water filters, yep, canning like
184
00:09:57.960 --> 00:10:02.440
all American canners, living grain mills. Those were the first
185
00:10:02.440 --> 00:10:09.519
few products. I bought, a water filter and a toilet, right.
186
00:10:09.519 --> 00:10:11.480
I forgot about the toilets because we were out camping
187
00:10:11.480 --> 00:10:12.799
in the middle of nowhere, so you had to bring
188
00:10:12.799 --> 00:10:13.399
your own toilet.
189
00:10:13.480 --> 00:10:16.000
Oh my god, this is wild.
190
00:10:16.840 --> 00:10:21.720
And in two thousand and four he got a gun shop.
191
00:10:22.720 --> 00:10:25.759
He was best friends with some multi millionaire who was
192
00:10:25.799 --> 00:10:29.879
a gun enthusiast who gave him basically was going to
193
00:10:29.879 --> 00:10:32.000
give him his stock of guns and he could open
194
00:10:32.000 --> 00:10:34.440
a gun store, which he did in the living room
195
00:10:34.440 --> 00:10:39.159
of our house. So they I came through and put
196
00:10:39.159 --> 00:10:41.120
in the doors and put in all the things in
197
00:10:41.159 --> 00:10:44.120
the security system, and we had a gun shop at
198
00:10:44.120 --> 00:10:47.440
our house from two thousand and five to twenty ten.
199
00:10:49.720 --> 00:10:52.639
Like, there's so much in this story that we're glossing over.
200
00:10:52.879 --> 00:10:54.919
That's just nuts.
201
00:10:55.600 --> 00:10:58.799
Well, because you see all those people, they're unchurched. Yeah,
202
00:10:59.200 --> 00:11:06.039
one community or not really needs a mission, So I
203
00:11:06.320 --> 00:11:10.360
was not. I can't emphasize enough how much he didn't
204
00:11:10.399 --> 00:11:15.080
pay people to work in the shop. There was one
205
00:11:15.120 --> 00:11:19.440
employee and this poor man came to work every day
206
00:11:19.600 --> 00:11:26.480
faithfully and just got yelled at every day. The culture John,
207
00:11:26.639 --> 00:11:31.000
the way John was with people, the way we were
208
00:11:31.120 --> 00:11:33.919
encouraged to talk to one another and be in each
209
00:11:33.919 --> 00:11:38.080
other's lives, It just appealed to the worst parts of yourself.
210
00:11:38.799 --> 00:11:41.759
If you didn't like somebody, you could speak the truth
211
00:11:41.799 --> 00:11:47.759
and love in just the harshest terms, say the meanest
212
00:11:47.799 --> 00:11:52.080
things that you know, if somebody annoyed you. It the
213
00:11:52.080 --> 00:11:55.480
amount of times that it was the Jezebel spirit. You
214
00:11:55.519 --> 00:11:58.399
mean this the man that was working there, It was
215
00:11:58.399 --> 00:12:01.559
like his family just became the whipping boy for no
216
00:12:01.919 --> 00:12:04.759
good reason that I could tell. They Maybe they just
217
00:12:04.799 --> 00:12:07.039
didn't have personalities. I think it was just that they
218
00:12:07.320 --> 00:12:12.720
just drove John Nutts his the wife. This man's wife
219
00:12:12.879 --> 00:12:16.440
had undiagnosed ADHD. She didn't get diagnosed until she was
220
00:12:16.440 --> 00:12:21.240
in her sixties, and like going grocery shopping was un like,
221
00:12:21.320 --> 00:12:23.320
it was just unbearable for her. It was there was
222
00:12:23.320 --> 00:12:25.320
so much going on, she couldn't keep it great, and
223
00:12:25.399 --> 00:12:27.919
so the women would try to help her, and it
224
00:12:28.039 --> 00:12:31.159
was ultimately she just had some sort of spiritual issue,
225
00:12:31.600 --> 00:12:33.840
some open door to the you know, satan. It was
226
00:12:33.919 --> 00:12:36.600
just it was awful and it was hard, and it
227
00:12:36.639 --> 00:12:41.799
was also like I value deeply the friends I have
228
00:12:42.559 --> 00:12:46.039
that came from that because we learned to not talk
229
00:12:46.080 --> 00:12:47.120
to one another that way.
230
00:12:47.240 --> 00:12:48.960
But you also, if you got out, if you all
231
00:12:49.000 --> 00:12:50.240
got out of it, you got out of it together,
232
00:12:50.480 --> 00:12:50.679
you know.
233
00:12:50.759 --> 00:12:52.759
And so there's well we didn't we didn't get out
234
00:12:52.840 --> 00:12:53.919
so much as the church died.
235
00:12:54.440 --> 00:12:56.559
Oh wow, so you'd still be in it, you think
236
00:12:56.559 --> 00:12:57.639
if the church didn't.
237
00:12:57.399 --> 00:13:01.159
Die, I don't know how much longer I was going
238
00:13:01.200 --> 00:13:02.559
to be able to make it.
239
00:13:02.679 --> 00:13:05.200
Yeah, I mean it's clear you're near your end right,
240
00:13:05.399 --> 00:13:08.440
like as far as just being able to healthily without
241
00:13:08.919 --> 00:13:12.279
literally you're I'm not a big huge believer in this
242
00:13:12.480 --> 00:13:16.360
like some of this holistic stuff, but the next thing
243
00:13:16.399 --> 00:13:19.600
to go for you is your actual physical healths.
244
00:13:19.639 --> 00:13:22.840
Oh it does. So I have withis.
245
00:13:22.080 --> 00:13:24.200
Okay, there you go. I know it was coming like.
246
00:13:24.200 --> 00:13:27.120
It had to. I have colitis. I have colitis for
247
00:13:27.200 --> 00:13:32.360
seven years. I was in absolute pain and then got
248
00:13:32.399 --> 00:13:35.120
on medication, adjusted my diet. I lived on a pure
249
00:13:35.279 --> 00:13:37.519
diet for six weeks when we were trying to figure
250
00:13:37.559 --> 00:13:42.679
things out, like I went through that. I yeah, I
251
00:13:42.679 --> 00:13:45.720
mean this stress was intense, and at some point, I
252
00:13:45.759 --> 00:13:51.240
can't remember what year, I was invited in quotation marks
253
00:13:51.399 --> 00:13:57.320
to join the leadership team, okay, And there wasn't a
254
00:13:57.360 --> 00:14:01.759
way of saying no to that, so I and that
255
00:14:02.080 --> 00:14:05.200
was a weekly meeting. So we had a weekly meeting
256
00:14:05.279 --> 00:14:09.279
for the leadership team on Wednesdays, Wednesday afternoons. That happened
257
00:14:09.720 --> 00:14:13.559
at the property which was twenty miles away, which was
258
00:14:13.600 --> 00:14:17.440
on three miles of a bad dirt road. So this
259
00:14:17.559 --> 00:14:23.279
property had a about forty I think sheep, maybe fifteen
260
00:14:23.360 --> 00:14:28.039
or twenty goats, this is ridiculous, three horses, a whole
261
00:14:28.120 --> 00:14:33.360
pile of chickens, ducks, and geese. And John lived there
262
00:14:33.840 --> 00:14:40.000
permanently with the girl he had told some people he
263
00:14:40.080 --> 00:14:45.600
was going to marry. I lived in town with his wife, daughter,
264
00:14:45.799 --> 00:14:46.720
and my roommate.
265
00:14:47.320 --> 00:14:48.679
They were divorced though.
266
00:14:49.200 --> 00:14:55.360
No, okay, And what everybody basically thought was that this
267
00:14:55.440 --> 00:14:59.559
young woman was kind of the caregiver for John, that
268
00:14:59.600 --> 00:15:01.600
it was too much for him to be living in town.
269
00:15:01.919 --> 00:15:03.960
And I wasn't going to argue with that, like I
270
00:15:04.000 --> 00:15:07.840
did not he was living with him, were fine, I
271
00:15:08.080 --> 00:15:10.600
would By that point, I think his wife was kind
272
00:15:10.639 --> 00:15:16.919
of feeling the same way but it was it was
273
00:15:17.600 --> 00:15:20.519
they they physically, neither one of them could deal with
274
00:15:20.559 --> 00:15:23.759
the animals up there. So they had people coming in
275
00:15:23.840 --> 00:15:28.240
and out to do chores. And the people coming in
276
00:15:28.279 --> 00:15:31.440
and out are driving or walking in depending on the
277
00:15:31.480 --> 00:15:33.759
time of year. So three months, like I'd say two
278
00:15:33.799 --> 00:15:37.080
months a year at least, their mud season is so
279
00:15:37.200 --> 00:15:40.039
bad you cannot drive on that road, so you're walking
280
00:15:40.120 --> 00:15:45.799
in three miles chores. That's insane, and nobody's getting compensated
281
00:15:45.840 --> 00:15:49.240
for anything like at all, like the wear and tear
282
00:15:49.240 --> 00:15:54.279
on vehicles. We were Saturdays were spent up there working.
283
00:15:55.120 --> 00:15:58.600
There was no and and no guy like, no man
284
00:15:59.519 --> 00:16:03.159
is saying noted that. So there is no one that's
285
00:16:03.240 --> 00:16:06.039
getting a day off. If you have a day off,
286
00:16:06.639 --> 00:16:09.559
well there's some there's some stumps that need to get
287
00:16:09.559 --> 00:16:12.919
removed up in the land. And you know, why didn't
288
00:16:12.960 --> 00:16:14.639
you tell John you had the day off. He had
289
00:16:14.639 --> 00:16:19.320
some things that needed to be done around It was wild.
290
00:16:19.919 --> 00:16:25.919
It was wild, and people were tithing. People were giving.
291
00:16:26.519 --> 00:16:31.000
You know, a parent would die, you know, and they're old,
292
00:16:31.000 --> 00:16:35.320
they leave an inheritance to their kid, and that the kids.
293
00:16:35.440 --> 00:16:38.600
Like the amount of folks my mom's age who gave
294
00:16:38.639 --> 00:16:44.080
their inheritance to the church and literally just saw it. Yeah,
295
00:16:44.120 --> 00:16:48.600
it was that was that was, It was wild. So
296
00:16:48.720 --> 00:16:52.519
that is happening constantly. You know, they're doing lambing and
297
00:16:52.639 --> 00:16:56.440
kidding season where young women are spending twenty four hours
298
00:16:56.480 --> 00:16:59.320
a day, seven days a week taking care of lambs
299
00:16:59.320 --> 00:17:04.000
and kids, goats and all this stuff. And they women,
300
00:17:04.240 --> 00:17:08.599
like young women aren't really encouraged or allowed in that
301
00:17:08.720 --> 00:17:12.240
sense to have full time jobs. Part time jobs are
302
00:17:12.319 --> 00:17:14.119
kind of frowned upon. We need you to serve in
303
00:17:14.160 --> 00:17:16.359
the church. We need you to come up and do
304
00:17:16.400 --> 00:17:19.000
all this stuff. We're not paying you for your gas money,
305
00:17:19.000 --> 00:17:22.759
we're not paying for any food. So literally, these girls
306
00:17:22.839 --> 00:17:27.039
are asking their siblings for donations for food to take
307
00:17:27.119 --> 00:17:29.759
up to so they can do this thing. You know,
308
00:17:29.799 --> 00:17:30.720
it was, it was.
309
00:17:31.200 --> 00:17:35.440
And literally this there's no permanent repercussions for this, aside
310
00:17:35.480 --> 00:17:39.079
from the church is no longer here. Like nobody got arrested, nobody,
311
00:17:39.079 --> 00:17:41.279
there was no big news story like this.
312
00:17:41.400 --> 00:17:43.720
Just died out the first time. I'm talking about a
313
00:17:43.720 --> 00:17:46.759
public like anybody's talked about it publicly and.
314
00:17:47.000 --> 00:17:51.079
Anyone that was a part of it. Yeah, holy shit, what.
315
00:17:52.960 --> 00:17:54.640
I'm really sorry, Dan, love you.
316
00:17:54.680 --> 00:17:57.039
No, No, this is. I mean, I'm happy that you
317
00:17:57.119 --> 00:18:00.400
felt comfortable enough to tell the story, but the front,
318
00:18:00.480 --> 00:18:04.880
the fury of I can't even like I'm I'm I'm pissed. Yeah,
319
00:18:04.920 --> 00:18:08.559
And it's just I mean, all these people are just
320
00:18:08.599 --> 00:18:17.160
still alive and just roman free.
321
00:18:18.880 --> 00:18:22.759
It just we started finally, so we were meeting on
322
00:18:22.839 --> 00:18:27.279
Sundays up there at this property up there. At some
323
00:18:27.480 --> 00:18:31.799
point between two thousand and about four, two thousand and
324
00:18:31.799 --> 00:18:35.240
five and two thousand and eleven, some point in there,
325
00:18:35.359 --> 00:18:38.640
John comes back, okay, and it's a sort of ministerial role,
326
00:18:38.880 --> 00:18:43.119
and he comes back with a vengeance. He is and
327
00:18:43.559 --> 00:18:46.279
every the elders who were kind of running things while
328
00:18:46.319 --> 00:18:49.119
he was not there. It's like he cut him off
329
00:18:49.119 --> 00:18:54.920
at the kneecaps. They he completely demoralized them. He you know,
330
00:18:55.000 --> 00:18:57.960
chewed him out. They treated him like they were incompetent.
331
00:18:58.519 --> 00:19:02.599
And these are like professionals who who they're not professional
332
00:19:02.640 --> 00:19:04.920
ministers because we don't have enough money for that, but
333
00:19:05.920 --> 00:19:09.440
they're they're professionals in their own right. They run businesses,
334
00:19:09.480 --> 00:19:13.200
they've you know, they've been successful humans. Yes, he's acting
335
00:19:13.240 --> 00:19:16.440
as though they're completely incompetent, don't know, you know anything.
336
00:19:16.480 --> 00:19:19.680
He's the only one who can hear God. So things
337
00:19:19.720 --> 00:19:21.960
took a darker turn after that.
338
00:19:22.319 --> 00:19:25.200
I'm sure somehow meetings.
339
00:19:24.759 --> 00:19:27.519
Right, right, somehow it got worse, so that all of
340
00:19:27.559 --> 00:19:31.720
a sudden, all these midweek meetings that we were having
341
00:19:31.759 --> 00:19:34.720
at other people's houses, they can only start happening at
342
00:19:34.759 --> 00:19:39.680
his house where he's in charge. And then when he
343
00:19:39.880 --> 00:19:42.720
feels that this other, these other elders are ready, he'll
344
00:19:42.799 --> 00:19:46.240
let one go to their kind of a situation. So
345
00:19:46.319 --> 00:19:53.680
these midweek meetings become just torture sessions. Where do you go?
346
00:19:53.839 --> 00:19:58.400
And you, I mean, there was a probably a one
347
00:19:58.440 --> 00:20:01.559
in four chance that it might be an okay meeting
348
00:20:01.559 --> 00:20:05.759
where nobody gets yelled at, But otherwise you you're gonna
349
00:20:05.759 --> 00:20:07.960
get You're gonna sit in a meeting and get yelled
350
00:20:08.000 --> 00:20:12.559
at for two hours, go home and just be like, well,
351
00:20:12.599 --> 00:20:15.799
I'm a piece of shit. And and the reasons for
352
00:20:15.880 --> 00:20:18.720
that could be were a multi.
353
00:20:18.519 --> 00:20:21.319
Variate, like so many. Whatever he decided he's a cult leader,
354
00:20:21.359 --> 00:20:24.359
whatever he decided to keep you in control, was what
355
00:20:24.400 --> 00:20:24.960
he would say.
356
00:20:25.119 --> 00:20:29.240
Right, And and the dehumanization couples who were asked about
357
00:20:29.279 --> 00:20:34.160
sex lives and interrogated on it in the younger group,
358
00:20:34.279 --> 00:20:37.279
where they had teenagers. I mean he went through I
359
00:20:37.559 --> 00:20:41.160
remember hearing about it. He went through each each kid
360
00:20:41.640 --> 00:20:46.480
and asked directly do you masturbate? And it just do you?
361
00:20:46.559 --> 00:20:49.880
Do you watch porn? And I mean, I cannot imagine.
362
00:20:50.279 --> 00:20:52.799
I cannot imagine the torture that these kids went through.
363
00:20:53.519 --> 00:20:56.279
And these are my students that I like, I've tried
364
00:20:56.279 --> 00:21:00.440
to take care of and watching them just get eaten
365
00:21:00.480 --> 00:21:04.880
alive by him was horrifying. That got worse then we
366
00:21:04.920 --> 00:21:09.039
started to actually meet in our town. Okay, we had
367
00:21:09.200 --> 00:21:13.119
started renting a building on Sundays. Obviously, we have the
368
00:21:13.119 --> 00:21:15.680
Word of God, so we need to have a YouTube channel.
369
00:21:15.960 --> 00:21:18.039
Yeah, of course that sounds about.
370
00:21:21.920 --> 00:21:24.200
We have a YouTube channel. We have a sound we
371
00:21:24.599 --> 00:21:27.799
buy the machine, the stuff to do the sound so
372
00:21:27.839 --> 00:21:30.680
that we can stream it. We can, you know, do
373
00:21:30.720 --> 00:21:36.440
all this stuff. John isn't always coming in on Sundays,
374
00:21:36.480 --> 00:21:39.759
but he's always watching the feed. And so then we
375
00:21:39.839 --> 00:21:43.799
start doing this thing called an after action report and
376
00:21:44.000 --> 00:21:49.039
a R and those started happening at some point, I
377
00:21:49.039 --> 00:21:53.200
don't even remember I'm on the leadership team. I'm automatically
378
00:21:53.279 --> 00:21:59.359
I have to do these after every Sunday meeting. You
379
00:21:59.559 --> 00:22:02.960
have to go back through rewatch the service on the
380
00:22:03.039 --> 00:22:09.039
stream and evaluate it. How well did we perform? And
381
00:22:09.160 --> 00:22:14.519
so these this went through every song, every the introduction.
382
00:22:14.759 --> 00:22:16.680
How did that person do? Were they in the Holy
383
00:22:16.720 --> 00:22:19.039
Spirit or were they not? Were they anointed or were
384
00:22:19.039 --> 00:22:19.319
they not?
385
00:22:20.759 --> 00:22:23.920
And then you had to turn into John you and
386
00:22:24.000 --> 00:22:24.279
it was.
387
00:22:24.240 --> 00:22:28.519
A text thread. Okay, so everybody starts, you know, putting
388
00:22:28.519 --> 00:22:32.599
it out there. I have to tell you. I went
389
00:22:32.640 --> 00:22:35.000
back and I looked. I still have a bunch of them.
390
00:22:35.039 --> 00:22:37.519
We we've all kind of kept them because dear Lord
391
00:22:37.559 --> 00:22:42.279
in Heaven, some of them are just wildots.
392
00:22:42.279 --> 00:22:44.839
Before this episode, I didn't know what the hell was.
393
00:22:45.079 --> 00:22:50.400
No. Absolutely, those are about milkshakes. That's completely different. So
394
00:22:50.680 --> 00:23:01.279
this particular aar John says, you know that this particular
395
00:23:01.440 --> 00:23:04.920
late woman that he's been, he's got his little side piece.
396
00:23:05.640 --> 00:23:08.720
She opened the meeting in the manner I believe meetings
397
00:23:08.759 --> 00:23:15.279
should be opened. Good, there we go, We've got the standard.
398
00:23:15.319 --> 00:23:17.759
He comments that somebody does a great job leading, and
399
00:23:17.799 --> 00:23:22.000
then he says, at around the thirty seven forty mark,
400
00:23:22.920 --> 00:23:25.799
when this person was singing the phrase glory to God,
401
00:23:26.039 --> 00:23:29.440
I was being drawn up into the heaven leaves and
402
00:23:29.759 --> 00:23:35.599
was singing with the voice of heaven on the backside
403
00:23:35.720 --> 00:23:39.720
each time she sang glory to God. I've never experienced
404
00:23:39.799 --> 00:23:42.880
anything like the voice that rang through me before. It
405
00:23:42.920 --> 00:23:45.680
was like I was rising heavenward in a spiral and
406
00:23:45.720 --> 00:23:49.680
then everything stopped. Was anyone up front able to hear me?
407
00:23:49.759 --> 00:23:51.319
And then people are like, oh, yes, I heard you.
408
00:23:51.400 --> 00:23:54.480
I heard you. And then someone says I wasn't able
409
00:23:54.480 --> 00:23:57.279
to hear you. That's weird, but it sounds great, and
410
00:23:57.319 --> 00:24:01.920
then fantastic, you can barely hear me, he comments finally
411
00:24:02.400 --> 00:24:04.200
that you can barely hear me at the beginning, and
412
00:24:04.240 --> 00:24:07.119
then silence and then the deadness of worship when it stopped.
413
00:24:07.119 --> 00:24:10.160
It seems pretty clear from the video. And finally a
414
00:24:10.200 --> 00:24:12.759
friend of mine says to chime in and say, well,
415
00:24:12.759 --> 00:24:16.559
that was me. You know, I turned your sound down. Well,
416
00:24:16.640 --> 00:24:18.960
the reason this person had turned the sound down was
417
00:24:19.000 --> 00:24:20.119
because he sounded like.
418
00:24:20.599 --> 00:24:23.519
Rap, yeah, yeah, I didn't want to good.
419
00:24:24.279 --> 00:24:27.200
That was that kind of situation that we were under,
420
00:24:27.359 --> 00:24:30.759
was like I'm singing with the voice of God. How
421
00:24:31.000 --> 00:24:35.119
dare you not turn me up? To which we're all going, well,
422
00:24:35.160 --> 00:24:37.759
I'm so sorry. Apparently you were singing with the voice.
423
00:24:37.519 --> 00:24:41.680
Of God and you did this every week every week
424
00:24:41.960 --> 00:24:43.640
and how long did that last?
425
00:24:43.960 --> 00:24:48.720
For years? Oh my god, those Sundays were AARs. Monday
426
00:24:48.799 --> 00:24:51.839
nights he had a meeting of all of the young
427
00:24:51.880 --> 00:24:54.359
people he was training for leadership. Again, I was part
428
00:24:54.359 --> 00:24:57.319
of that that happened up there. But he wanted to
429
00:24:57.319 --> 00:25:00.039
eat dinner while he did that, so we had to
430
00:25:00.039 --> 00:25:03.839
provide food. So we're bringing up dinner that has to
431
00:25:03.839 --> 00:25:07.640
stay hot, and it has to be something he likes.
432
00:25:07.640 --> 00:25:10.000
But he's super picky and if it doesn't taste good,
433
00:25:10.039 --> 00:25:14.279
you're going to hear about it. So Sunday's absolute torture.
434
00:25:14.400 --> 00:25:17.319
Monday nights absolute torture because we're probably going to talk
435
00:25:17.319 --> 00:25:20.319
about Sunday and how all the things we screwed up.
436
00:25:21.119 --> 00:25:24.799
Tuesdays were a prayer meeting that happened where everybody's praying.
437
00:25:25.279 --> 00:25:28.400
Wednesdays we're a leadership team meeting with John again, where
438
00:25:28.440 --> 00:25:32.400
I was absolutely wracked with anxiety. Yeah, Thursdays I had
439
00:25:32.440 --> 00:25:33.960
a day off. I didn't have any.
440
00:25:34.759 --> 00:25:35.599
Man big day.
441
00:25:36.279 --> 00:25:40.240
But then it was again all weekend, you know, prepping
442
00:25:40.319 --> 00:25:43.039
for the meeting on Sunday, having to figure that out.
443
00:25:43.240 --> 00:25:45.200
How many people are coming on Sunday at this point.
444
00:25:47.119 --> 00:25:50.400
We never I that at our most we had like
445
00:25:50.440 --> 00:25:51.480
one hundred people.
446
00:25:51.880 --> 00:25:56.079
And then at your least as an adult, and we.
447
00:25:56.079 --> 00:25:58.599
Always had a lot of kids. There was always a
448
00:25:58.599 --> 00:26:02.799
lot of kids, but it was it was never that big.
449
00:26:03.119 --> 00:26:04.559
Yeah can be.
450
00:26:04.759 --> 00:26:06.359
There's no way to control it if you get.
451
00:26:06.559 --> 00:26:11.400
If you can't. So when twenty twenty hit, like I know,
452
00:26:11.960 --> 00:26:15.799
pandemic bad, Yeah, twenty twenty was so good.
453
00:26:16.240 --> 00:26:18.359
Yeah, you were in this at twenty twenty.
454
00:26:18.759 --> 00:26:22.920
Yes, And it was the first time we stopped having
455
00:26:22.920 --> 00:26:28.799
contact with John because we were shut down. We met
456
00:26:29.359 --> 00:26:31.599
as much as we could until the State of Vermont
457
00:26:31.640 --> 00:26:33.319
said no more meeting in person.
458
00:26:33.599 --> 00:26:36.640
Literally, the State of Vermont is responsible for you escaping
459
00:26:36.680 --> 00:26:41.720
a cult. Yeah, and listen to our podcast. And now
460
00:26:41.759 --> 00:26:42.720
I'm just curious.
461
00:26:42.960 --> 00:26:46.400
Yes, so this March twenty twenty, we have the shutdown.
462
00:26:46.480 --> 00:26:46.759
Okay.
463
00:26:46.799 --> 00:26:50.119
I started listening to Deck the Hallmark in October.
464
00:26:49.839 --> 00:26:52.680
Of twenty twenty of twenty two. Okay, okay, great, back
465
00:26:52.759 --> 00:26:55.480
to your not about me. I just was curious as
466
00:26:55.519 --> 00:26:56.480
to well.
467
00:26:56.319 --> 00:27:00.119
It plays a part in it actually? Oh okay, Yeah, y'all,
468
00:27:00.160 --> 00:27:01.000
y'all were amazing.
469
00:27:03.480 --> 00:27:04.960
I'll take it.
470
00:27:05.720 --> 00:27:10.559
Mark. We shut we start shutting down by May. We're
471
00:27:10.680 --> 00:27:15.079
doing really limited services like we're doing a little worship
472
00:27:15.440 --> 00:27:17.799
thing that's happening in our living room, that's being streamed,
473
00:27:17.839 --> 00:27:21.759
that's being recorded two days early. John's giving a message
474
00:27:22.079 --> 00:27:24.640
up in his place that's being recorded a day early.
475
00:27:24.839 --> 00:27:29.079
It's streaming on Sundays, and people for the first time
476
00:27:29.880 --> 00:27:34.200
are either not going to a Sunday service or spending
477
00:27:34.240 --> 00:27:37.759
time with their family, like literally, for the first time,
478
00:27:38.519 --> 00:27:39.519
they're not.
479
00:27:39.599 --> 00:27:40.440
Having to do.
480
00:27:42.319 --> 00:27:46.240
Yeah, And and it suddenly became like it became the
481
00:27:46.240 --> 00:27:48.880
first time we started doing things like you know, you
482
00:27:48.920 --> 00:27:52.839
had your little pod of people. And by this point,
483
00:27:52.880 --> 00:27:55.000
so to get back, my parents have not died yet.
484
00:27:55.359 --> 00:27:58.960
They're still around. They're still kicking. They in two thousand
485
00:27:59.000 --> 00:28:01.640
and two they had gone through a bankruptcy and they
486
00:28:01.759 --> 00:28:04.680
moved to the town where the church was. Hey, my
487
00:28:04.759 --> 00:28:07.079
dad was going to church by then. He'd gotten saved.
488
00:28:07.079 --> 00:28:10.880
When I was nineteen years old, he's in not going
489
00:28:10.920 --> 00:28:11.319
to help.
490
00:28:12.000 --> 00:28:13.759
Hey, yay.
491
00:28:14.400 --> 00:28:17.240
But over the years, like I just hadn't had a
492
00:28:17.279 --> 00:28:20.079
relationship really with him when I was a kid, obviously
493
00:28:20.160 --> 00:28:22.640
he wasn't around. It was it was good, it was
494
00:28:22.680 --> 00:28:27.319
like a positive. I got older. He ended up working
495
00:28:27.440 --> 00:28:32.720
and running a banquet center and needed some help and
496
00:28:32.759 --> 00:28:35.200
I was like, hey, I know waitressing, and I went
497
00:28:35.240 --> 00:28:37.799
to work with him. And though that started this like
498
00:28:38.039 --> 00:28:42.079
beautiful relationship for me of just getting to know my
499
00:28:42.160 --> 00:28:46.519
dad and just like in that wonderful way that you
500
00:28:46.519 --> 00:28:49.720
can just fall in love with your parents. And that
501
00:28:49.880 --> 00:28:52.880
happened for sure where I would walk in and he'd
502
00:28:52.880 --> 00:28:55.720
just be like, oh, honey, oh you're here, and that
503
00:28:55.920 --> 00:28:58.799
wonderful delight you get me that, you know, it just
504
00:28:59.200 --> 00:29:04.279
was fantastic. So twenty twenty, he had he'd been diagnosed
505
00:29:04.319 --> 00:29:09.480
with congestive heart failure fifteen years twenty years before, so
506
00:29:09.920 --> 00:29:13.599
he's very careful during COVID. And it was me, my
507
00:29:13.759 --> 00:29:17.119
unmarried brother, my mom, and my dad and we would
508
00:29:17.160 --> 00:29:20.920
go on drives and Sunday afternoons, we're just driving around,
509
00:29:21.119 --> 00:29:25.599
having a good time, enjoying each other's company. And about
510
00:29:25.640 --> 00:29:28.160
that time I start having aphib.
511
00:29:29.359 --> 00:29:33.359
Yeah, I wonder why crazy My heart would go.
512
00:29:33.880 --> 00:29:35.720
My heart rate would go up to like one ninety
513
00:29:35.799 --> 00:29:40.880
one seventy in aphib. I couldn't breathe a difficulty, went
514
00:29:40.920 --> 00:29:45.000
to the doctor a lot, and I think it was
515
00:29:45.160 --> 00:29:50.200
right about that time I remember distinctly praying God. It
516
00:29:50.240 --> 00:29:53.119
was after a really bad meeting where we had gotten
517
00:29:53.200 --> 00:29:57.599
reamed out and I finally went, God, I I cannot
518
00:29:58.039 --> 00:30:02.599
go to another bad meeting. I need you to do something.
519
00:30:03.839 --> 00:30:07.880
And from that point on, every time I would go
520
00:30:07.920 --> 00:30:10.920
into aphib and have to go to the hospital, it
521
00:30:11.000 --> 00:30:13.599
was I missed a really bad meeting.
522
00:30:15.119 --> 00:30:19.119
And until COVID stopped them from happening all together.
523
00:30:19.480 --> 00:30:22.839
Well, no COVID, they still happened very much, but it
524
00:30:22.880 --> 00:30:28.240
happened less, and so over the course of twenty twenty,
525
00:30:28.920 --> 00:30:32.319
we finally figured out that I'm having for no and
526
00:30:32.759 --> 00:30:36.759
no idea why I'm having electoral issues, and I ended
527
00:30:36.799 --> 00:30:43.240
up having an ablation in September. So I had started
528
00:30:43.279 --> 00:30:46.480
subbing at the public high school about six years prior,
529
00:30:47.920 --> 00:30:50.160
and which I loved. I loved it. I loved being
530
00:30:50.200 --> 00:30:52.480
able to work with the kids. I loved. I'd gone
531
00:30:52.519 --> 00:30:54.359
to a private high school. So I'm walking into this
532
00:30:54.400 --> 00:30:56.640
public high school and going, wait, what people just have
533
00:30:56.839 --> 00:30:59.319
just for colored hair? What? What are these kids doing
534
00:30:59.319 --> 00:31:04.640
with facial what are we doing? But I really liked
535
00:31:05.359 --> 00:31:08.000
I liked being with them, I liked getting to know them,
536
00:31:08.079 --> 00:31:11.720
I liked getting to love them. And you know, see
537
00:31:12.480 --> 00:31:18.240
kind words do wonders on heartsah, and but I hadn't
538
00:31:18.279 --> 00:31:20.640
been working long enough to be able to collect a
539
00:31:20.680 --> 00:31:23.880
lot of unemployment, so I had when everything shut down,
540
00:31:23.920 --> 00:31:27.759
I started collecting unemployment. I got the oblation in September.
541
00:31:27.759 --> 00:31:30.480
But then I was running out of money. Yeah, and
542
00:31:31.640 --> 00:31:34.920
my roommate worked at a company, a factory, and she said,
543
00:31:35.000 --> 00:31:38.440
we need help. Would you like to come work for us?
544
00:31:38.920 --> 00:31:44.599
Because she was the favored child basically, and she and
545
00:31:44.680 --> 00:31:47.960
I need to say this, and like the she knew
546
00:31:48.000 --> 00:31:51.599
she had that power, and she used it as best
547
00:31:51.680 --> 00:31:56.160
she could to help her friends, and so like I
548
00:31:56.240 --> 00:31:58.680
mean that, like, so she knew she could do stuff
549
00:31:58.680 --> 00:32:02.319
that the others would be looked frowned on. So she knew.
550
00:32:02.319 --> 00:32:03.960
Coming to me and saying, hey, would you like to
551
00:32:03.960 --> 00:32:07.440
work for my company? It gave the blessing that I
552
00:32:07.480 --> 00:32:11.880
could do that without coming under fire. So I did.
553
00:32:12.119 --> 00:32:14.519
I went to work for her company for part time,
554
00:32:14.640 --> 00:32:18.359
twenty hours a week. I was still to tutoring. And
555
00:32:18.799 --> 00:32:20.759
it was in October of that year that I stumbled
556
00:32:20.799 --> 00:32:26.400
upon your podcast with the wonderful jingle bell Bride.
557
00:32:26.599 --> 00:32:29.319
Oh yeah, oh yeah, that was a premiere episode I
558
00:32:29.319 --> 00:32:31.839
think from one year that's right with Alonso yep.
559
00:32:32.079 --> 00:32:33.279
Well no, it was with Chris.
560
00:32:33.440 --> 00:32:35.960
With Chris, yeah.
561
00:32:35.200 --> 00:32:41.319
It was great. But anyway, so I ended up becoming
562
00:32:41.359 --> 00:32:45.279
a member of the Facebook group and that was the
563
00:32:45.319 --> 00:32:48.000
first time I'd been a member of any community that
564
00:32:48.079 --> 00:32:52.759
was diverse. Wow, like outside of the Christian sphere, because
565
00:32:52.759 --> 00:32:55.440
we were isolated within the Christians.
566
00:32:55.519 --> 00:32:58.880
Yeah, you weren't even a part of a diverse Christian community,
567
00:32:58.960 --> 00:33:01.480
much less a diverse the first community.
568
00:33:02.680 --> 00:33:06.680
And you know, I'm I'm reading all these comments and
569
00:33:06.720 --> 00:33:08.839
getting to know all these people and going, well, they're
570
00:33:08.880 --> 00:33:11.400
different than me. I also really we all have the
571
00:33:11.440 --> 00:33:14.400
same sense of humor, Like this is really great, Like
572
00:33:14.519 --> 00:33:17.079
this is a safe place for me to just sit
573
00:33:17.119 --> 00:33:19.160
back and watch and not feel like I have to
574
00:33:19.160 --> 00:33:21.680
have an opinion about anything. I've always had to have
575
00:33:21.720 --> 00:33:23.359
an opinion about something, and we didn't.
576
00:33:23.480 --> 00:33:26.079
We didn't yell at you a single time until movie
577
00:33:26.160 --> 00:33:27.400
drafts last.
578
00:33:27.160 --> 00:33:35.400
Month, and by then I was yelling back. So so
579
00:33:35.480 --> 00:33:39.880
that kind of starts happening. But it's also the election, right,
580
00:33:41.240 --> 00:33:46.000
So this election, we we had started coming out of
581
00:33:46.079 --> 00:33:50.000
our isolation a bit. Are you familiar with Morning Star?
582
00:33:50.519 --> 00:33:52.079
Are you familiar with Joiner?
583
00:33:52.400 --> 00:33:52.720
Yes?
584
00:33:54.200 --> 00:33:59.359
The Joiner was really integral of our church stuff. I've
585
00:33:59.359 --> 00:34:03.319
always thought he was horrible writer, so I couldn't stand
586
00:34:03.359 --> 00:34:06.799
his books. Yeah, but we read like The Final Quest.
587
00:34:06.920 --> 00:34:09.559
We Final Question the trilogy, wasn't there, Yeah.
588
00:34:09.440 --> 00:34:12.800
Oh yeah, yeah, but we read The Final Quest multiple times.
589
00:34:14.079 --> 00:34:18.079
The closest that John got to admiring anybody was Rick Joyner.
590
00:34:19.360 --> 00:34:23.880
So he Rick went full on like right wing conspiracy
591
00:34:23.920 --> 00:34:28.639
theory with David Barton, and he went right and we
592
00:34:28.719 --> 00:34:29.679
followed him right into it.
593
00:34:29.800 --> 00:34:32.480
Yeah that's out in North Carolina, that's really close to us.
594
00:34:32.840 --> 00:34:36.639
Yeah, so we went right into it. We were watching
595
00:34:36.719 --> 00:34:40.079
all of the David Barton videos. We were dude, yes,
596
00:34:40.599 --> 00:34:43.760
and all of the prophets are saying Donald Trump is
597
00:34:43.800 --> 00:34:46.039
going to win this election. That this is I mean,
598
00:34:46.360 --> 00:34:50.239
and I'm in it. That summer of twenty twenty, we
599
00:34:50.320 --> 00:34:53.400
had a BLM parade come by our house and I
600
00:34:53.559 --> 00:34:56.920
was pissed, like, I can't believe we're doing this. Yeah,
601
00:34:56.960 --> 00:35:00.760
And that was the first time I think I went, wait,
602
00:35:00.800 --> 00:35:07.440
I don't like the person I'm turning into. Because it
603
00:35:07.480 --> 00:35:11.039
had been a couple of years like that, The unveiling
604
00:35:11.079 --> 00:35:14.199
of it for me had started over the course of
605
00:35:14.239 --> 00:35:17.360
several years with like books like Pete s. Gazerro wrote
606
00:35:17.719 --> 00:35:23.679
the emotionally mature Christian or something spiritually whatever, emotionally mature
607
00:35:23.719 --> 00:35:26.880
spirituality or something where I read the book and I went,
608
00:35:27.119 --> 00:35:33.159
Johnson infant. Yeah, it has no emotional maturity. I take
609
00:35:33.159 --> 00:35:36.760
the test. I'm a teenager. If he took, I'm answering
610
00:35:36.760 --> 00:35:41.000
from his perspective, and he's an infant. Sheila Gregwah had
611
00:35:41.000 --> 00:35:43.920
written The Bear Marriage and I was listening to The
612
00:35:43.960 --> 00:35:47.159
Bear Marriage podcast some and I'm going, wait, I grew
613
00:35:47.239 --> 00:35:49.119
up this way, this is you know. So it was
614
00:35:49.199 --> 00:35:51.320
just this kind of rethinking of basics.
615
00:35:52.000 --> 00:35:56.639
Yeah, chance to get out and hear other voices, right, yeah.
616
00:35:56.079 --> 00:36:00.880
And then recognizing I'm listening to Canvas owns Ben Shapiro
617
00:36:01.360 --> 00:36:02.559
like all of the worst.
618
00:36:02.320 --> 00:36:05.280
Of the worst, I'm sorry.
619
00:36:05.360 --> 00:36:09.159
And realizing that all you're doing is giving me permission
620
00:36:10.079 --> 00:36:14.159
to be a horrible human, Like if I read the Bible,
621
00:36:14.199 --> 00:36:17.559
and trust me, I've read the Bible, Jesus is super
622
00:36:17.679 --> 00:36:19.920
clear on don't be a bad person.
623
00:36:19.960 --> 00:36:24.199
That's right. Yeah. Yeah, the twenty twenty it just so happened.
624
00:36:24.199 --> 00:36:27.559
It catches you at quite a point in your life.
625
00:36:27.599 --> 00:36:31.079
But never was the quiet part set out loud more
626
00:36:31.119 --> 00:36:32.519
than in twenty twenty.
627
00:36:32.440 --> 00:36:36.079
Right, and that's where I started seeing it myself and
628
00:36:36.199 --> 00:36:39.960
go and recognizing, to a certain extent it had been
629
00:36:39.960 --> 00:36:42.960
primed in me from the church culture, because the church
630
00:36:43.039 --> 00:36:46.760
culture had been to appeal to your worst nature. So
631
00:36:47.159 --> 00:36:48.880
of course I was going to end up in this
632
00:36:49.079 --> 00:36:53.639
area where everybody's saying, well, yes, this horrible human is
633
00:36:53.719 --> 00:36:57.559
God's answer, because we have a horrible human who's God's answer.
634
00:36:59.360 --> 00:37:00.360
Don't they looks similar?
635
00:37:01.199 --> 00:37:03.119
Yeah? Self fulfilling prophecy.
636
00:37:03.639 --> 00:37:08.159
Yeah. So but anyway, you know twenty twenty hits, I
637
00:37:08.280 --> 00:37:11.440
voted for Trump, I praying for him to be elected.
638
00:37:11.559 --> 00:37:13.719
I he's not. That's weird.
639
00:37:13.840 --> 00:37:16.400
You started listening to us the month beforehand too, so man,
640
00:37:16.480 --> 00:37:17.480
good for you.
641
00:37:17.599 --> 00:37:21.639
Yeah. Well, and he's not elected and the profits are wrong.
642
00:37:22.320 --> 00:37:25.320
But we don't stop praying, we don't stop fasting, We're
643
00:37:25.360 --> 00:37:29.119
listening to Dutch sheets, we're supporting, supporting Sean Foyte, We're
644
00:37:29.159 --> 00:37:32.519
doing all this stuff like we were in it. Yeah,
645
00:37:32.559 --> 00:37:38.079
And when January sixth happened, I cried because I sat
646
00:37:38.079 --> 00:37:42.760
there and went, what the hell have I believe? Because
647
00:37:42.800 --> 00:37:47.960
this is wrong? What? Like, what guys? What just happened?
648
00:37:49.039 --> 00:37:53.719
And I couldn't I couldn't anymore.
649
00:37:53.800 --> 00:37:54.760
You couldn't none see it.
650
00:37:55.280 --> 00:37:57.480
I couldn't, and it was like I didn't know how
651
00:37:57.519 --> 00:38:01.679
to move forward. But like genuinely felt like everything in
652
00:38:01.679 --> 00:38:04.760
my life had fallen apart. So it was like my
653
00:38:04.880 --> 00:38:09.320
politics had always been tied to my Christianity. I was
654
00:38:09.400 --> 00:38:13.000
pro life because I was a Christian. Correct, I was
655
00:38:13.199 --> 00:38:16.440
against all homosexuality. It's a sin. You're going to help
656
00:38:16.559 --> 00:38:20.440
because I'm a Christian and there's no separation. So when
657
00:38:20.480 --> 00:38:23.320
all of a sudden this falls apart, I don't know
658
00:38:23.360 --> 00:38:24.360
what this is anymore.
659
00:38:25.519 --> 00:38:27.960
And for the first time in your life, maybe one
660
00:38:28.000 --> 00:38:29.519
plus one doesn't equal three.
661
00:38:29.800 --> 00:38:31.760
It doesn't make sense. I counted it, and I don't
662
00:38:31.800 --> 00:38:38.280
see it. In our church, the atmosphere was just building tension,
663
00:38:38.679 --> 00:38:42.400
and I remember talking to my friends, my parents, We're
664
00:38:42.480 --> 00:38:46.360
all on the edge. It was like, we're all at
665
00:38:46.360 --> 00:38:48.119
the point where we're going. I don't think I can
666
00:38:48.159 --> 00:38:50.719
take this much longer. I remember my parents saying, if
667
00:38:50.719 --> 00:38:53.239
we go to another meeting or he yells at us,
668
00:38:53.480 --> 00:38:58.000
we're signing off, because they were on zoom, like I
669
00:38:58.079 --> 00:39:01.239
can't do this anymore. Remember sitting there and going, God,
670
00:39:02.199 --> 00:39:05.559
I need you to stop aaars and Monday night meetings,
671
00:39:06.039 --> 00:39:09.039
and literally the next day, John goes, We're going to
672
00:39:09.079 --> 00:39:11.239
stop AARs and Monday night meetings. And I was like,
673
00:39:11.280 --> 00:39:13.119
I don't know what prayer means anymore.
674
00:39:13.840 --> 00:39:15.480
Apparently that word.
675
00:39:17.119 --> 00:39:21.079
I'm not arguing with that. And then in March of
676
00:39:21.159 --> 00:39:25.000
twenty twenty one, John's wife and my roommate came to
677
00:39:25.039 --> 00:39:29.719
me and said, what happened twenty years ago? Why did
678
00:39:29.719 --> 00:39:34.719
you leave? And I was completely cornered, and I.
679
00:39:34.519 --> 00:39:37.199
Told them awesome, and.
680
00:39:38.920 --> 00:39:42.039
I was shaking. I mean, it took me time to
681
00:39:42.039 --> 00:39:45.119
get through the whole story. I left there and I
682
00:39:45.159 --> 00:39:47.840
went to my parents and I told my parents, and
683
00:39:49.280 --> 00:40:00.079
I the way it crushed my father it was I
684
00:40:00.079 --> 00:40:04.639
I told him what had happened, and he just it
685
00:40:04.719 --> 00:40:08.519
was like he had personally been lied to. For his
686
00:40:08.760 --> 00:40:12.880
entire time. He had been best friends with, he'd considered
687
00:40:12.920 --> 00:40:16.159
him his best friend, and to find out John had
688
00:40:16.199 --> 00:40:19.280
done this to his daughter and not and just covered
689
00:40:19.280 --> 00:40:23.880
it up. And my mom told me stuff that had
690
00:40:23.920 --> 00:40:27.880
been said to her when she was pregnant for my brother,
691
00:40:28.559 --> 00:40:30.960
where John was like, you you know you're lusting after me.
692
00:40:31.079 --> 00:40:33.000
John is five foot two and looks like a frog.
693
00:40:33.519 --> 00:40:37.159
My father was a six foot tall, gorgeous Greek man.
694
00:40:37.199 --> 00:40:38.480
My mother's looking at John.
695
00:40:38.400 --> 00:40:43.639
Going okay, all right, come on, have you seen my husband?
696
00:40:43.880 --> 00:40:46.840
That is not a thing. All I can say is
697
00:40:46.880 --> 00:40:50.199
it felt like I'd finally pulled the pin on the grenade.
698
00:40:50.400 --> 00:40:54.519
But I watched the devastation happen, and I tried, and
699
00:40:54.559 --> 00:40:56.280
so I did what I could do, which was throw
700
00:40:56.320 --> 00:41:02.559
myself on top of it, which led to so much there.
701
00:41:02.599 --> 00:41:08.440
It was an absolute nightmare for the next month, and
702
00:41:08.559 --> 00:41:11.159
all I could think was every time was like everybody's
703
00:41:11.239 --> 00:41:16.239
trying to figure out which ways up. Because I told
704
00:41:16.280 --> 00:41:18.960
a few people, some of them went and told other
705
00:41:19.000 --> 00:41:27.079
people there was a massive like it was like an
706
00:41:27.079 --> 00:41:30.280
explosion that happened underground. So some people on up, you know,
707
00:41:30.320 --> 00:41:32.679
on the on the top, knew that there had been
708
00:41:32.679 --> 00:41:35.159
an explosion. For other people didn't know why this is
709
00:41:35.159 --> 00:41:38.360
there an earthquake? They didn't know what was happening. And
710
00:41:38.840 --> 00:41:44.400
I ended up meeting with the other elder and his
711
00:41:44.440 --> 00:41:47.400
wife and they're going, why did you tell anybody? I
712
00:41:47.440 --> 00:41:49.599
can understand you telling your parents, but why did you
713
00:41:49.639 --> 00:41:54.079
tell his wife that wasn't yours? To tell you that
714
00:41:54.199 --> 00:41:58.360
happened years ago? It's over? Why I thought this was done.
715
00:41:58.480 --> 00:42:01.039
I don't know why this is coming up again, and
716
00:42:01.079 --> 00:42:03.000
I'm sitting there like are you are? We? Are we
717
00:42:03.039 --> 00:42:06.000
still here? Like you still don't get it? So I
718
00:42:06.039 --> 00:42:09.199
was sent to go talk to John and apologized to him.
719
00:42:09.280 --> 00:42:11.039
And you murdered him in cold blood.
720
00:42:11.400 --> 00:42:13.400
I wish I could say that, No, I did.
721
00:42:14.199 --> 00:42:16.760
If I'm reading a novel, that's the ending that I'm
722
00:42:16.800 --> 00:42:18.119
looking for, right.
723
00:42:18.599 --> 00:42:21.719
I went and I apologized and I said, I'm so sorry.
724
00:42:21.960 --> 00:42:26.519
God, damn it, I'm really sorry about this. No, no, no,
725
00:42:26.800 --> 00:42:34.400
stop apologizing. This is your story.
726
00:42:36.800 --> 00:42:39.559
Well, so I did. I went and apologized, and the
727
00:42:39.760 --> 00:42:41.800
entire time I'm thinking, why am I here doing this?
728
00:42:41.920 --> 00:42:45.440
But okay, I want to not. I wanted to just
729
00:42:45.480 --> 00:42:48.880
go away. Yes, like this is awful and awful, and
730
00:42:48.920 --> 00:42:51.559
I did this. I did this, I did this right,
731
00:42:52.960 --> 00:42:58.440
and so we got he He texted the whole household.
732
00:42:58.679 --> 00:43:03.800
By that point we had there were one two I
733
00:43:03.880 --> 00:43:06.800
think there were four or five young younger women like
734
00:43:06.840 --> 00:43:10.880
me and others living there, plus his wife. His wife
735
00:43:11.000 --> 00:43:17.679
is just struggling over what to do, and he's demanding
736
00:43:17.679 --> 00:43:20.599
that she move up with him and his side piece
737
00:43:21.480 --> 00:43:25.400
at the land because that's obviously what the problem is
738
00:43:25.400 --> 00:43:29.199
is that, And she's going, I can't do that, and
739
00:43:29.280 --> 00:43:31.559
I'm trying to figure out what the right answer is.
740
00:43:31.599 --> 00:43:34.480
Because I can't figure that out. The other elder isn't
741
00:43:34.559 --> 00:43:38.599
getting involved at all. One thing leads to another, and
742
00:43:39.480 --> 00:43:43.079
we end up it was me and three other roommates
743
00:43:43.119 --> 00:43:49.679
stayed at the house. Well, it turns out, fun fact,
744
00:43:49.719 --> 00:43:52.360
it never was his house. He was renting it and
745
00:43:52.400 --> 00:43:54.679
he wasn't actually the one paying the rent. The church was.
746
00:43:55.880 --> 00:43:59.840
So we went, oh, hell no, you know, price of
747
00:44:00.280 --> 00:44:04.199
being what it is in this this town, we'll take
748
00:44:04.239 --> 00:44:07.880
the rent over. So I went to the rent the
749
00:44:07.960 --> 00:44:12.280
landlord and signed the least in my name. We paid
750
00:44:12.280 --> 00:44:14.679
for it from there on out, because it was like, wait,
751
00:44:14.679 --> 00:44:16.760
you've been holding this over our heads and.
752
00:44:18.280 --> 00:44:18.679
You didn't.
753
00:44:18.920 --> 00:44:20.960
You don't even you don't even pay for it. The
754
00:44:21.039 --> 00:44:23.079
church does, like you don't even have that authority.
755
00:44:23.159 --> 00:44:25.519
This is so you're just taken back. You're taking back
756
00:44:25.559 --> 00:44:26.480
your power and your story.
757
00:44:26.599 --> 00:44:30.119
We started doing that, and what ended up happening. You know,
758
00:44:30.199 --> 00:44:34.480
his wife, God bless her, got out and ended up
759
00:44:34.480 --> 00:44:39.119
filing a separation, ended up you know, her story is
760
00:44:39.159 --> 00:44:42.880
her story, but she got out and his daughter that
761
00:44:42.920 --> 00:44:45.199
was still living there, you know, had fallen in love
762
00:44:45.239 --> 00:44:48.639
with a wonderful man and got married like two months
763
00:44:48.719 --> 00:44:53.440
later because she was done and she got out, so
764
00:44:53.719 --> 00:44:57.880
well done her. And so I'm there with at that
765
00:44:57.960 --> 00:45:00.639
point it was four other roommates and and we all
766
00:45:00.679 --> 00:45:02.519
are looking at each other, going, how do we do this?
767
00:45:03.480 --> 00:45:06.400
Because the way we've been doing it has sucked? Right
768
00:45:07.039 --> 00:45:09.360
there's you know, the way we've been talking to each
769
00:45:09.400 --> 00:45:14.639
other has been awful. And I will say, I mean,
770
00:45:14.800 --> 00:45:18.159
so many people left. My parents left. My dad never
771
00:45:18.199 --> 00:45:21.000
came back to church, He never saw John again, he
772
00:45:21.039 --> 00:45:24.440
never saw anybody. And that was probably the hardest part
773
00:45:24.440 --> 00:45:29.079
for me. Was not that they left, God totally, no,
774
00:45:29.599 --> 00:45:34.480
not that they left, but that nobody knew why they left.
775
00:45:34.679 --> 00:45:39.119
So people stopped talking to them and treated them like
776
00:45:39.239 --> 00:45:42.280
they were the pariah. And they didn't know. They didn't
777
00:45:42.320 --> 00:45:44.280
know why they'd left, and I didn't feel like I
778
00:45:44.280 --> 00:45:46.800
could tell them, So the only thing I could do
779
00:45:46.920 --> 00:45:50.760
was say, you know, they had very good reasons for leaving.
780
00:45:50.840 --> 00:45:55.440
They trust me, No, they knew why, you know, why
781
00:45:55.480 --> 00:46:00.440
they left. And for myself, it felt like I stayed.
782
00:46:00.760 --> 00:46:03.800
I did not stay because of John, but I did
783
00:46:03.840 --> 00:46:08.239
stay because I felt like watching these kids, these younger
784
00:46:08.280 --> 00:46:12.159
folks that I had taught, watching my nieces and nephews
785
00:46:12.840 --> 00:46:16.559
deal with all of this pain, I just didn't feel
786
00:46:16.599 --> 00:46:19.559
like I could leave them because it would cause more pain,
787
00:46:20.360 --> 00:46:23.480
and I didn't want to do that. So I stayed,
788
00:46:23.639 --> 00:46:26.840
and I stayed in contact with my parents. But it
789
00:46:26.880 --> 00:46:29.519
wasn't the same, you know, wasn't the same as it
790
00:46:29.559 --> 00:46:33.000
had been. And we both tried, like we you know,
791
00:46:33.039 --> 00:46:37.440
we put the effort in my roommate that she and
792
00:46:37.519 --> 00:46:39.920
my brother that had been single, had been in love
793
00:46:39.960 --> 00:46:42.800
with each other for years, and because of the culture
794
00:46:42.840 --> 00:46:47.360
of the church, it was so John was so horrible
795
00:46:47.559 --> 00:46:51.519
to couples who wanted to get married, like he demoralized
796
00:46:51.559 --> 00:46:56.320
the man. He just destroyed the relationship until the only
797
00:46:56.360 --> 00:46:59.239
way they could get married was with his permission. It
798
00:46:59.280 --> 00:47:02.440
was just horror. And so they had never pursued, really
799
00:47:02.480 --> 00:47:04.679
seriously pursued each other, but they were They've been in
800
00:47:04.679 --> 00:47:06.800
love for years, and they did. They got married, and
801
00:47:06.840 --> 00:47:12.440
they're happy and wonderful and thank God. But they were
802
00:47:12.480 --> 00:47:16.400
gone and they had left. My parents had left, and
803
00:47:16.639 --> 00:47:20.199
I stayed, and I've got roommates who we are trying
804
00:47:20.239 --> 00:47:23.840
to navigate this new normal, and we I gotta say
805
00:47:23.840 --> 00:47:27.559
we kind of crushed it. We did pretty good because
806
00:47:27.599 --> 00:47:29.599
we are sitting there going, wait, we've all been way
807
00:47:29.599 --> 00:47:32.639
too involved in each other's lives. Yeah, there's been a
808
00:47:33.519 --> 00:47:35.519
did you get counsel for that? Are you sure that's
809
00:47:35.559 --> 00:47:37.760
what you should do? Yeah, And now we're backing off
810
00:47:37.800 --> 00:47:39.360
each other going good for you.
811
00:47:39.599 --> 00:47:41.920
Yeah, good that.
812
00:47:42.159 --> 00:47:44.800
Happy for you, learning how to talk to one another
813
00:47:45.199 --> 00:47:48.559
in a way that was kind and not judgmental, having
814
00:47:49.280 --> 00:47:53.760
you know, conversations about the past twenty years, and letting
815
00:47:53.760 --> 00:47:56.880
each other have space to like, if you're not in
816
00:47:56.920 --> 00:47:59.519
the same space, I am with that, totally fine. You're
817
00:47:59.559 --> 00:48:01.599
not able to talk about that right now. Give you
818
00:48:01.639 --> 00:48:03.960
space to do that and not force you to listen
819
00:48:04.000 --> 00:48:07.800
to a conversation you're having PTSD over. Yeah.
820
00:48:08.000 --> 00:48:09.840
Unpacked your trauma in a healthy way.
821
00:48:10.360 --> 00:48:14.039
Yeah, and that was I'm really grateful that I stayed
822
00:48:14.039 --> 00:48:18.039
for that because it did help enormously. But I was
823
00:48:18.079 --> 00:48:21.480
deconstructing while I was still going to church to a
824
00:48:21.519 --> 00:48:22.360
large degree.
825
00:48:22.639 --> 00:48:25.440
Yeah, I think that anytime that you've got the trauma
826
00:48:25.480 --> 00:48:29.559
that you've experienced, as soon as that wool gets or
827
00:48:29.639 --> 00:48:32.239
that wool gets pulled off of your eyes. You can
828
00:48:32.280 --> 00:48:35.679
still go through the motions, but you're already processing. Yeah,
829
00:48:35.719 --> 00:48:37.119
and so when do you leave entirely?
830
00:48:38.039 --> 00:48:42.159
So like my dad. So, my dad got sick, he
831
00:48:42.199 --> 00:48:44.920
was he'd already had congestive heart failure. I'm pretty sure
832
00:48:44.960 --> 00:48:46.960
that that was the final straw for him in a
833
00:48:46.960 --> 00:48:50.719
lot of ways. He started to feel poorly in October
834
00:48:51.559 --> 00:48:57.360
of twenty twenty one. Okay, and I looked at my
835
00:48:57.400 --> 00:49:00.039
mom and I said, look, I know my brother and
836
00:49:00.079 --> 00:49:03.199
his new wife, my former roommate, we haven't had contact.
837
00:49:04.400 --> 00:49:07.519
I need you to know that there's like on my side,
838
00:49:07.599 --> 00:49:10.360
I genuinely believe we were all doing our best. Like
839
00:49:10.519 --> 00:49:13.159
nothing they did, they did like, but I don't know
840
00:49:13.199 --> 00:49:15.320
if I can contact them. I don't know if they
841
00:49:15.360 --> 00:49:17.519
want to hear from me. Yeah, that I would really
842
00:49:17.599 --> 00:49:19.239
like not the first time I see them to be
843
00:49:19.280 --> 00:49:22.719
in a hospital, Like, can we have a connection where
844
00:49:23.360 --> 00:49:26.199
you know, something bad happens. So my brother, you know,
845
00:49:26.320 --> 00:49:30.280
contacted me and we talked and a little bit, not
846
00:49:30.400 --> 00:49:33.039
about everything, but a little bit, and then just kept
847
00:49:33.039 --> 00:49:37.000
the connection going. And my dad finally was told I
848
00:49:37.039 --> 00:49:39.920
think in December of that year of twenty twenty one,
849
00:49:40.280 --> 00:49:43.719
that he needed a heart transplant. He went down to
850
00:49:44.880 --> 00:49:48.199
Boston Medical or a bunch of tests, stayed there for
851
00:49:48.239 --> 00:49:52.039
two weeks, which was awful because my mom didn't go
852
00:49:52.119 --> 00:49:54.519
with him, so she wanted she needed a ride. I
853
00:49:54.599 --> 00:49:56.639
was supposed to take her, but everybody in my house
854
00:49:56.719 --> 00:50:00.079
ended up with COVID and it was like, oh so,
855
00:50:00.280 --> 00:50:02.440
But in the process of that, he he just wasn't.
856
00:50:02.519 --> 00:50:04.960
He was like, I can't, I can't go through this anymore.
857
00:50:05.360 --> 00:50:09.320
So he came home and he died March eighth, twenty
858
00:50:09.360 --> 00:50:09.840
twenty two.
859
00:50:10.119 --> 00:50:11.840
Okay, I'm sorry, and.
860
00:50:12.719 --> 00:50:15.719
You know I was able to see him and we talked.
861
00:50:16.000 --> 00:50:18.559
You know, it was good and reconcile. Yeah, you had
862
00:50:18.599 --> 00:50:20.960
reconciled your relationship with him and you were your friends.
863
00:50:21.199 --> 00:50:23.280
It was still you know, that's still pain I carry,
864
00:50:23.559 --> 00:50:27.000
of course last year, you know. But so he died
865
00:50:27.039 --> 00:50:30.639
in twenty twenty two, and I think it might have
866
00:50:30.760 --> 00:50:36.960
been that summer that I realized I'd been sexually assaulted. Yeah, like,
867
00:50:37.239 --> 00:50:39.039
it took that long for me. And it was something
868
00:50:39.119 --> 00:50:41.679
Diane Langberg had said because I listened, so I'm you know,
869
00:50:41.719 --> 00:50:44.599
I started listening to the Roys Report. I started listening
870
00:50:44.599 --> 00:50:47.440
to all of these podcasts that I'm like, y'all, this
871
00:50:47.599 --> 00:50:48.760
is a problem.
872
00:50:48.400 --> 00:50:49.960
Across the board, it is.
873
00:50:50.280 --> 00:50:54.480
Yeah, and then as far as the deck, the Hallmark crew,
874
00:50:55.840 --> 00:51:01.760
like Justin Kirkland wrote this beautiful peace for Esquire about
875
00:51:01.760 --> 00:51:03.199
his own testimony.
876
00:51:02.840 --> 00:51:05.519
One of my favorite. Yeah, it is phenomenal.
877
00:51:05.639 --> 00:51:09.880
I cried. Yeah, I read that and I cried, And
878
00:51:10.280 --> 00:51:13.280
without question, that was what was the final straw. And
879
00:51:13.360 --> 00:51:17.519
the homosexuality is the sin crab. Yeah, because I sat
880
00:51:17.519 --> 00:51:22.400
there looking at this beautiful human who if I if
881
00:51:22.440 --> 00:51:26.639
you're telling me, I like, I just was like, nope,
882
00:51:27.599 --> 00:51:29.840
you've changed. You've not just changed my mind, like my
883
00:51:29.960 --> 00:51:33.880
heart is completely different on and like it was just
884
00:51:33.960 --> 00:51:37.679
this beautiful I just nothing but respect.
885
00:51:37.840 --> 00:51:39.280
You're going to try to remember to put that in
886
00:51:39.320 --> 00:51:41.199
that link in the show notes. If you're listening, would
887
00:51:41.199 --> 00:51:43.360
like to check out that article. It's Justin Kirklan, the
888
00:51:43.400 --> 00:51:45.480
first guest on this podcast. You can listen to this episode.
889
00:51:45.480 --> 00:51:49.679
But that article is absolutely beautifully written and well done.
890
00:51:50.159 --> 00:51:53.760
Yeah, and I just I wept, and you know, all
891
00:51:53.760 --> 00:51:55.840
of a sudden, it's like all of these things I've
892
00:51:55.840 --> 00:52:00.880
been raised one way, you know, just was bullshit and
893
00:52:01.639 --> 00:52:05.079
in so many ways, and so like we had we
894
00:52:05.119 --> 00:52:08.199
had been we had had the Bible drilled into us.
895
00:52:08.280 --> 00:52:10.079
We I've read the Bible cover to cover, you know,
896
00:52:10.159 --> 00:52:12.679
three times, and you know, read the Book of John
897
00:52:12.840 --> 00:52:17.239
fifteen times in one week. And I'm going looking at it, going,
898
00:52:17.519 --> 00:52:24.559
nowhere is Jesus espousing all this stuff you say, thanking
899
00:52:24.639 --> 00:52:26.280
John would sit there and say, look at the fruit
900
00:52:26.320 --> 00:52:27.920
of my life and say it as though it was
901
00:52:27.960 --> 00:52:30.199
all the accomplishments. And I'm going, Jesus was really clear
902
00:52:30.239 --> 00:52:33.039
on fruit, like Paul says, fruit, and it's gentleness and
903
00:52:33.159 --> 00:52:35.239
humility and love and kindness.
904
00:52:34.800 --> 00:52:37.039
And these patients, that's all the good stuff.
905
00:52:37.400 --> 00:52:38.480
You're not showing any of them.
906
00:52:39.119 --> 00:52:42.719
But also, like I think the like you know, we tried.
907
00:52:42.880 --> 00:52:44.840
All we can do is human beings is fine beauty
908
00:52:44.840 --> 00:52:47.880
in the ashes, And yeah, I want to fix all
909
00:52:47.880 --> 00:52:49.840
of this for you, and I can't, and I shouldn't
910
00:52:50.199 --> 00:52:54.840
because it's your story and your journey. But you've, you know,
911
00:52:55.199 --> 00:52:57.679
in the last I thought you had been out of
912
00:52:57.719 --> 00:53:00.320
this longer, and literally in the last three years i've
913
00:53:00.320 --> 00:53:04.400
known you, You've gone back to school, you've gotten gotten married,
914
00:53:05.559 --> 00:53:09.440
You're you're really grabbing life by the horns, like you're
915
00:53:09.480 --> 00:53:15.719
really finding a way to acknowledge, speak in existence your trauma,
916
00:53:15.880 --> 00:53:21.119
and and understand that that doesn't control you anymore. And
917
00:53:21.159 --> 00:53:24.719
that's I wish that would have been you from the beginning.
918
00:53:25.119 --> 00:53:28.840
But I'm so thrilled that it's you now, you know.
919
00:53:29.039 --> 00:53:31.920
Yeah, I mean I had been subbing one day. That's
920
00:53:31.920 --> 00:53:33.800
what had happened is I subbed one day in an
921
00:53:33.840 --> 00:53:36.000
English class and it was like this little voice inside
922
00:53:36.039 --> 00:53:38.800
me went, you can do this. You could go back
923
00:53:38.840 --> 00:53:39.599
to school and do this.
924
00:53:40.079 --> 00:53:40.360
You can't.
925
00:53:40.559 --> 00:53:42.840
I brought that to the leadership and they said, no,
926
00:53:43.800 --> 00:53:45.960
you've you're anointed by God. You know what's funny, as
927
00:53:46.000 --> 00:53:49.280
schools don't hire people who are anointed by God. That's
928
00:53:49.360 --> 00:53:54.519
not as certificate you can get. I was told I
929
00:53:54.719 --> 00:53:58.079
was already. I was always told I was humanistic, and
930
00:53:58.159 --> 00:54:01.639
I think that was just code for nice, of course,
931
00:54:02.880 --> 00:54:06.280
but trying to see the best in people, which I
932
00:54:06.320 --> 00:54:07.960
think any good teacher should be.
933
00:54:08.199 --> 00:54:09.079
Yes, a good.
934
00:54:08.920 --> 00:54:11.079
Teacher should try to see the best in people.
935
00:54:11.159 --> 00:54:12.480
Yeah, yeah, it's a teacher.
936
00:54:13.119 --> 00:54:14.199
That's the point.
937
00:54:14.440 --> 00:54:18.440
A good teacher isn't there to leave you with rudimentary knowledge,
938
00:54:18.480 --> 00:54:20.920
nor is it there are they there to fix problems.
939
00:54:20.960 --> 00:54:23.760
It's to see where someone is and meet them there
940
00:54:24.559 --> 00:54:29.360
and hopefully move them. That's it. That's it. If I
941
00:54:29.400 --> 00:54:31.960
could go back and speak to teachers, which is something
942
00:54:32.039 --> 00:54:33.559
I want to do, but no one would hire me
943
00:54:33.599 --> 00:54:36.199
to do it because I literally left education. But that
944
00:54:36.239 --> 00:54:39.360
would be what I would say, is like, sometimes that
945
00:54:39.519 --> 00:54:42.920
happens through the books and the numbers and the history.
946
00:54:43.199 --> 00:54:47.199
Sometimes it happens through relational rigor and accountability, and sometimes
947
00:54:47.280 --> 00:54:51.719
it happens with just presence just being there. But I
948
00:54:51.760 --> 00:54:56.519
can't imagine anyone being able to have a better, more understanding,
949
00:54:56.519 --> 00:55:00.719
compassionate teacher than Sarah because of your experience, Like if
950
00:55:00.760 --> 00:55:02.199
anybody needs to be a teacher.
951
00:55:01.920 --> 00:55:05.559
At you, yes, well, and that's so I wanted to
952
00:55:05.599 --> 00:55:08.559
go back. I was told it was you know too much,
953
00:55:08.559 --> 00:55:12.559
I shouldn't do it. In twenty twenty one, my parents,
954
00:55:12.639 --> 00:55:14.719
my dad's still alive, I told them I want to
955
00:55:14.760 --> 00:55:18.239
go do this, and my dad was like, absolutely, that's right,
956
00:55:18.760 --> 00:55:21.480
you should do that for sure. And I went and
957
00:55:21.519 --> 00:55:24.719
talked to the other elder and he said no or no.
958
00:55:24.760 --> 00:55:27.559
He didn't say no. What he said was you'd really
959
00:55:27.639 --> 00:55:30.079
have to hear from God, which is kind of a
960
00:55:30.159 --> 00:55:34.320
veiled no. And I just I was pretty shook. Up
961
00:55:34.320 --> 00:55:37.719
by that, but I decided, with my dad's health at
962
00:55:37.719 --> 00:55:41.239
any rate, I could probably wait. Yeah, And so I did.
963
00:55:42.639 --> 00:55:45.480
I waited. My dad died in March of twenty twenty two,
964
00:55:45.599 --> 00:55:48.519
and that summer I started the process to go to
965
00:55:48.559 --> 00:55:53.000
our community college in Vermont, and I took the Assessment
966
00:55:53.000 --> 00:55:55.280
of prior Learning, which is a course that goes through
967
00:55:55.280 --> 00:55:59.039
your entire life. You pull credit, you pull out learning,
968
00:55:59.239 --> 00:56:02.760
you form them into like courses. You ask experts in
969
00:56:02.800 --> 00:56:06.280
their field if they could write a letter saying, yes,
970
00:56:06.599 --> 00:56:10.239
you have accomplished credit college level credit. Yes, So I
971
00:56:10.239 --> 00:56:10.639
did that.
972
00:56:10.840 --> 00:56:13.119
How many questions about the Book of John World There?
973
00:56:14.119 --> 00:56:19.000
No, none, not It's weird. It's so weird, it's so crazy.
974
00:56:20.440 --> 00:56:23.719
I got eleven courses of history through that. I got
975
00:56:23.880 --> 00:56:29.960
forty eight credits total. And I started the journey. So
976
00:56:30.960 --> 00:56:33.920
I am now in my senior year of college. I'm
977
00:56:33.960 --> 00:56:38.880
doing my student teaching right now with my practicums part
978
00:56:38.920 --> 00:56:41.880
two with stuff. Then I'll do my student my full
979
00:56:41.920 --> 00:56:43.000
student teaching in the spring.
980
00:56:43.159 --> 00:56:43.800
That's awesome.
981
00:56:45.360 --> 00:56:49.880
And over the course of twenty twenty two, like I can't,
982
00:56:50.199 --> 00:56:56.239
the disillusionment happening in the church was amazing. It was amazing,
983
00:56:56.679 --> 00:56:59.840
like all of the meetings were literally like there was
984
00:56:59.840 --> 00:57:03.119
an older group that was my parents' age, and they
985
00:57:03.119 --> 00:57:05.800
would have meetings where they just basically sat around and
986
00:57:05.800 --> 00:57:08.599
put this this is shitty and I hate it. And
987
00:57:09.039 --> 00:57:12.119
I was like it was amazing. There were young girls
988
00:57:12.199 --> 00:57:17.239
and you know, and then over the so everybody's trying
989
00:57:17.280 --> 00:57:20.199
to figure out what's happened to John's wife, like she
990
00:57:20.320 --> 00:57:25.719
literally dropped off the map. Nobody knows why John divorced
991
00:57:25.760 --> 00:57:31.199
her in twenty twenty two. Okay, but he doesn't tell anybody.
992
00:57:30.760 --> 00:57:32.440
That NAHN, that'd be a big deal.
993
00:57:32.559 --> 00:57:36.920
So but he decides he's going to marry this girl
994
00:57:37.320 --> 00:57:40.199
that is now she's forty something years old. She's the
995
00:57:40.280 --> 00:57:42.679
longer age girl, but she's been under his influence for
996
00:57:42.760 --> 00:57:45.639
well over twenty years. Yeah, he's going to marry her.
997
00:57:46.079 --> 00:57:47.920
And the other elder finally looks at him and says,
998
00:57:47.960 --> 00:57:50.440
and you fucking tell people, Yeah, I'm not doing it
999
00:57:50.480 --> 00:57:52.800
for you. You go around and you tell everybody you're
1000
00:57:52.800 --> 00:57:56.280
doing this right like they've been. They they started standing
1001
00:57:56.360 --> 00:57:58.760
up to him. So he starts with the older group
1002
00:57:58.880 --> 00:58:01.280
and I can't tell you the joy in my heart
1003
00:58:01.480 --> 00:58:04.960
when they let him have it with both barrels of
1004
00:58:05.280 --> 00:58:09.239
like you have treated us like crap forty years and
1005
00:58:09.320 --> 00:58:13.440
you've been doing what you know, they just it was
1006
00:58:13.559 --> 00:58:14.599
a three hour meeting.
1007
00:58:14.719 --> 00:58:16.360
I mean he should be in jail. I don't want
1008
00:58:16.360 --> 00:58:18.480
to be clear. And if you're up there and have
1009
00:58:18.599 --> 00:58:20.280
pieced any of this together and like to call the
1010
00:58:20.320 --> 00:58:22.599
cops anybody listening, I'd love for you too. I don't
1011
00:58:22.599 --> 00:58:24.880
really care what the statute of limitations are, but this
1012
00:58:24.960 --> 00:58:26.679
is nice too. This is nice too.
1013
00:58:27.079 --> 00:58:32.039
That yes, so people stopped paying tithes. Yeah, people stopped
1014
00:58:32.039 --> 00:58:35.000
pay and like the leadership at the time because so
1015
00:58:35.079 --> 00:58:37.639
John was no longer as much involved, and they were
1016
00:58:37.639 --> 00:58:39.400
looking at people and going, if you don't want to pay,
1017
00:58:39.440 --> 00:58:42.400
don't pay. Yeah, you don't want to be like literally
1018
00:58:43.000 --> 00:58:47.280
use your pocketbook. And so they stopped. And it finally
1019
00:58:47.360 --> 00:58:49.960
got to the point where the church couldn't function because
1020
00:58:49.960 --> 00:58:52.360
of course they didn't have the money to pay for
1021
00:58:52.400 --> 00:58:56.119
the farm on that property because the church had been
1022
00:58:56.119 --> 00:58:59.639
paying for it. And they finally got the new leadership
1023
00:58:59.639 --> 00:59:02.519
that had would kind of started moving in, got ahold
1024
00:59:02.559 --> 00:59:07.119
of the books and went, wait a second, John's literally
1025
00:59:07.199 --> 00:59:10.320
been the one calling all the shots. Financially, that's illegal.
1026
00:59:11.440 --> 00:59:13.559
It turns out this has all been bad.
1027
00:59:13.880 --> 00:59:16.920
Yeah and yeah, it turns out and turns.
1028
00:59:16.679 --> 00:59:21.239
Out, and that I think the end of January we
1029
00:59:21.360 --> 00:59:27.119
probably had our first like meeting where every the chairs
1030
00:59:27.119 --> 00:59:30.559
were all in a circle, there was one or two
1031
00:59:30.599 --> 00:59:35.239
microphones and they were passed around and people finally, for
1032
00:59:35.280 --> 00:59:39.960
the first time in forty some odd years, said things
1033
00:59:40.000 --> 00:59:42.280
and what they were feeling, what they were angry about,
1034
00:59:42.280 --> 00:59:46.440
what they had questions about. John was not there, but
1035
00:59:46.559 --> 00:59:49.880
it was. We had three of those. They lasted hours
1036
00:59:50.239 --> 00:59:54.920
and people just finally said things, and the final conclusion
1037
00:59:55.119 --> 01:00:00.960
was everybody resigned and the church folded good. And it
1038
01:00:01.000 --> 01:00:05.280
was hard on the younger kids, the younger folks, because
1039
01:00:06.079 --> 01:00:09.519
they had invested so much time and energy up to
1040
01:00:09.559 --> 01:00:12.920
the farm that they had they were the ones that
1041
01:00:13.079 --> 01:00:15.360
they had been told their whole lives this is for
1042
01:00:15.400 --> 01:00:19.199
you day, and so for some of them it really
1043
01:00:19.280 --> 01:00:24.159
was heartbreaking. I'm sure myself I was deeply relieved because
1044
01:00:24.159 --> 01:00:25.119
I was like this, of course.
1045
01:00:25.880 --> 01:00:28.440
Yeah, well it is. But you know, when the emperor
1046
01:00:28.480 --> 01:00:31.599
has no clothes, you know, the the more invested you
1047
01:00:31.599 --> 01:00:33.039
are in the younger you are, you're probably going to
1048
01:00:33.079 --> 01:00:34.920
try to be like, no, there's clothes we promise you
1049
01:00:34.920 --> 01:00:37.239
know what I mean, Like, you don't have the experience
1050
01:00:37.320 --> 01:00:38.599
to know, well, you.
1051
01:00:38.559 --> 01:00:41.760
Know what I mean, right, And they didn't, like they
1052
01:00:41.760 --> 01:00:44.559
were terrified of John. They couldn't stand John, but they
1053
01:00:44.599 --> 01:00:47.960
were they were hopeful because he's old, he's in his
1054
01:00:48.320 --> 01:00:52.360
seventy truly, he'll die. But they were hopeful that somehow
1055
01:00:52.760 --> 01:00:54.119
something you know.
1056
01:00:56.039 --> 01:00:59.800
Yeah, So the church disbanded.
1057
01:00:59.679 --> 01:01:04.440
Just stopped in February of twenty two. And that was
1058
01:01:04.480 --> 01:01:08.400
the same month that my husband now husband, got hired
1059
01:01:08.719 --> 01:01:11.000
at the company where I worked. Oh wow, in this
1060
01:01:11.239 --> 01:01:14.679
tiny little department of three people, and he walks in
1061
01:01:15.039 --> 01:01:16.800
and I was like, oh, you're very handsome.
1062
01:01:18.320 --> 01:01:22.000
That's nice, which is it's allowed for you to be
1063
01:01:22.000 --> 01:01:23.719
attracted to your husband. I don't know if you know this.
1064
01:01:24.239 --> 01:01:25.119
I know it's crazy.
1065
01:01:25.280 --> 01:01:26.199
Well is crass?
1066
01:01:26.320 --> 01:01:28.800
Spoiler Larry Christensen missed the vote on.
1067
01:01:28.760 --> 01:01:36.000
That one, didn't He. Yeah, he just put up a
1068
01:01:36.039 --> 01:01:37.480
shirt and was like, look at me. So a dragged.
1069
01:01:40.039 --> 01:01:44.880
So yeah. I remember coming home from work and telling
1070
01:01:44.920 --> 01:01:48.039
my roommates, so, there's this guy. I really like him. Yeah,
1071
01:01:48.079 --> 01:01:52.079
And you know it was like I'd been thinking about
1072
01:01:52.079 --> 01:01:55.760
my sexual ethic and how I don't see I'm Sorry,
1073
01:01:55.800 --> 01:01:58.320
I read the Bible a lot. I don't see where
1074
01:01:58.320 --> 01:02:02.320
God's like, don't have sex before marriage where he says,
1075
01:02:02.519 --> 01:02:04.199
you know, maybe don't sleep around.
1076
01:02:04.360 --> 01:02:06.880
Yeah you could, you could get there, but you could
1077
01:02:06.880 --> 01:02:09.679
not get to don't have sex before marriage, because because I'm.
1078
01:02:09.559 --> 01:02:11.960
Trying to figure out where when Adam and Eve's wedding
1079
01:02:12.000 --> 01:02:12.360
day was.
1080
01:02:12.559 --> 01:02:15.960
But also, yeah, there's that. There's also all of them,
1081
01:02:16.159 --> 01:02:18.639
all of the men in the Bible who were God's
1082
01:02:18.719 --> 01:02:22.119
chosen men that all didn't do that. And then there's
1083
01:02:22.159 --> 01:02:26.679
also people groups that don't have marriage Sarah, Like you know,
1084
01:02:26.800 --> 01:02:30.119
I used to ask this to kids in history class, Like,
1085
01:02:30.199 --> 01:02:32.119
you know, white people didn't let slaves in our country
1086
01:02:32.119 --> 01:02:34.199
get married. They didn't let him get they let him
1087
01:02:34.199 --> 01:02:38.239
do it. So were they all just sinning? Like is
1088
01:02:38.239 --> 01:02:41.639
that like how dumb an American and just modern? Is
1089
01:02:41.679 --> 01:02:42.719
it to think that? Anyway?
1090
01:02:42.800 --> 01:02:45.239
Sorry, go back to you, But I remember, I mean,
1091
01:02:45.800 --> 01:02:48.000
and I was wrestling through it and what is my
1092
01:02:48.159 --> 01:02:51.199
sexual ethic that's right I believe and and and I'm
1093
01:02:51.199 --> 01:02:53.159
not even talking about what I believe that should be
1094
01:02:53.159 --> 01:02:58.800
imposted on anyone else? Yeah, for you, and you know,
1095
01:02:59.079 --> 01:03:02.280
it became a case of like commitment matters. Commitment for
1096
01:03:02.440 --> 01:03:06.320
me is important and I'm not even going to impose
1097
01:03:06.360 --> 01:03:09.159
that on my nieces and nephews, but for me, this
1098
01:03:09.320 --> 01:03:13.920
is important. And I mean Roger and I we talked
1099
01:03:13.960 --> 01:03:16.360
and talked, and I tell him now, he was like,
1100
01:03:16.920 --> 01:03:19.599
if you go into a shelter and animal shelter. He
1101
01:03:19.719 --> 01:03:22.760
was like, I was like a little shelter pup. He
1102
01:03:22.920 --> 01:03:27.199
just was quiet and calm, and I could just approach
1103
01:03:27.280 --> 01:03:31.480
him quietly, and he just it was He was so wonderful.
1104
01:03:31.599 --> 01:03:34.280
And we you know, we fell in love and got
1105
01:03:34.320 --> 01:03:37.760
together and it was amazing and wonderful. And I moved
1106
01:03:37.760 --> 01:03:43.599
in with him in December, and.
1107
01:03:41.320 --> 01:03:43.400
And you got married. All that happened in a whirlwind.
1108
01:03:43.880 --> 01:03:46.119
It did, I mean it did. And at the same time,
1109
01:03:46.159 --> 01:03:48.599
it was like, oh my god, you're the one. Like
1110
01:03:48.719 --> 01:03:51.400
I used to imagine what you would be like I
1111
01:03:51.440 --> 01:03:53.079
couldn't like.
1112
01:03:53.440 --> 01:03:55.159
But you know, it's it's.
1113
01:03:58.400 --> 01:04:00.559
For the first time in my life, I felt safe.
1114
01:04:02.000 --> 01:04:05.079
I felt safe to be me. I can be loud,
1115
01:04:05.199 --> 01:04:08.360
I can laugh, I can be goofy, I can feel sad,
1116
01:04:08.800 --> 01:04:10.840
I can feel whatever I'm feeling. He'll tell me all
1117
01:04:10.880 --> 01:04:13.559
the time, like, feel what you're feeling. Just know that
1118
01:04:13.639 --> 01:04:16.079
I still love you, that's right, And it's like, oh,
1119
01:04:16.119 --> 01:04:18.599
thank God. You know, he's the one that pushes me
1120
01:04:18.639 --> 01:04:20.880
to go like, do you actually like that person? Though?
1121
01:04:22.320 --> 01:04:24.960
Well I can get along, yeah, but do you like
1122
01:04:25.039 --> 01:04:25.639
that person?
1123
01:04:25.840 --> 01:04:27.440
Roger sounds like a great dude.
1124
01:04:30.239 --> 01:04:35.440
Genuinely like he and he you know, it's like he's
1125
01:04:35.519 --> 01:04:39.519
so like he's not a Christian in that sense, you know,
1126
01:04:39.599 --> 01:04:41.360
he sits there and goes I wish I could know
1127
01:04:41.480 --> 01:04:44.719
for sure God is real, And I'm like, so do Why.
1128
01:04:44.440 --> 01:04:47.599
Would you call yourself? Would you? What would you say
1129
01:04:47.679 --> 01:04:50.519
right now? Like as we actually have to wrap this up,
1130
01:04:50.519 --> 01:04:52.079
although I could talk to you all day, like, what
1131
01:04:52.079 --> 01:04:55.079
would you say right now? Like you've been so scarred
1132
01:04:55.199 --> 01:04:58.519
by a cult? How has that affected you spiritually? Like
1133
01:04:58.559 --> 01:05:01.119
you're deciding things for you now? I think that's healthy.
1134
01:05:01.440 --> 01:05:03.320
What does that look like for you? Ex essentially?
1135
01:05:03.760 --> 01:05:06.800
So it's come to the point where I really still
1136
01:05:06.880 --> 01:05:14.280
like Jesus. I think I can't seem to get away
1137
01:05:14.280 --> 01:05:18.559
from the idea of that there's a God, and but
1138
01:05:18.719 --> 01:05:22.440
love seems to be the thing that that one, like
1139
01:05:22.679 --> 01:05:25.679
God is love. I can stick with that one that
1140
01:05:25.679 --> 01:05:28.920
that and what that looks like. And I can and
1141
01:05:28.960 --> 01:05:32.719
I say that because I even looking around like nature
1142
01:05:33.360 --> 01:05:37.079
that like the way you know, mother birds are with
1143
01:05:37.199 --> 01:05:41.360
their heads chick all of that like love seems that
1144
01:05:41.480 --> 01:05:45.280
I can get with that. But yeah, I think I
1145
01:05:45.400 --> 01:05:50.599
found that. It turned out I'm not spiritually inquisitive, Like
1146
01:05:50.719 --> 01:05:53.920
I'm just not a Christon who wants like I've got
1147
01:05:53.960 --> 01:05:56.280
friends who are exploring all kinds of stuff, you know,
1148
01:05:56.320 --> 01:05:58.559
I've got one that was like, let me try witchcraft.
1149
01:05:58.639 --> 01:05:59.039
How was that?
1150
01:05:59.079 --> 01:06:02.440
Oh that's scary, you know, Like I'm just not someone
1151
01:06:02.480 --> 01:06:06.800
who is wants to go out and have a religious experience.
1152
01:06:07.840 --> 01:06:10.400
And that was where I realized that my mom chose
1153
01:06:10.719 --> 01:06:14.960
charismatic Christianity. Correct, I did not, you did not, And
1154
01:06:15.119 --> 01:06:18.880
I don't like nothing about it attracts me. I'm not
1155
01:06:19.000 --> 01:06:23.360
attracted to that kind of an experience. It turns out
1156
01:06:23.400 --> 01:06:26.360
I'm pretty heady as far as like academic literature. Like
1157
01:06:26.400 --> 01:06:29.960
I like that part. But I still listen to some
1158
01:06:30.000 --> 01:06:33.360
of those podcasts like you know, Sheila Greguara or The
1159
01:06:33.440 --> 01:06:36.159
Roy's Report. I still listen to them sometimes and I
1160
01:06:36.199 --> 01:06:40.159
get like amped up, Like I like, there's a William
1161
01:06:40.480 --> 01:06:46.679
Brandham research podcast that is fantastic for tracing, like the
1162
01:06:46.719 --> 01:06:50.039
New Apostolic Reformation all the way to William Brown. Wow,
1163
01:06:50.079 --> 01:06:54.119
and it's wild. I love that podcast. But again it's like,
1164
01:06:54.599 --> 01:06:56.840
I'm not I'm never going to go to church again.
1165
01:06:57.400 --> 01:06:59.320
I can't imagine sitting under store.
1166
01:06:59.320 --> 01:07:01.519
I can't imagine I would tell you not to like
1167
01:07:01.800 --> 01:07:05.159
I would legitimately be like, you know, it's almost like
1168
01:07:05.239 --> 01:07:08.360
talking to an alcoholic. It literally would be like Sarah,
1169
01:07:08.519 --> 01:07:10.639
you don't go through those doors, don't do it.
1170
01:07:11.960 --> 01:07:14.119
And the thing, you know what, so I and part
1171
01:07:14.159 --> 01:07:16.880
of the deconstruction was recognizing that what had appealed to
1172
01:07:16.920 --> 01:07:20.760
me was the certainty. Yeah, I liked the certainty of
1173
01:07:20.880 --> 01:07:25.159
knowing right and wrong coming to I still think right
1174
01:07:25.199 --> 01:07:27.599
and wrong. You know, there's there's things that are right
1175
01:07:27.639 --> 01:07:33.519
and wrong. But I've had to resist that temptation to
1176
01:07:33.599 --> 01:07:36.280
swing the other way, of course, and be just as
1177
01:07:36.440 --> 01:07:38.679
extreme and fundamentalist on the other side.
1178
01:07:38.719 --> 01:07:40.440
I think we all have to do. I think, guys,
1179
01:07:40.440 --> 01:07:42.679
it's a battle every day when you know someone The
1180
01:07:42.719 --> 01:07:44.280
hardest people to love are the people that you know
1181
01:07:44.320 --> 01:07:45.639
are wrong right.
1182
01:07:45.679 --> 01:07:49.760
And also because I've had to learn to be comfortable
1183
01:07:49.800 --> 01:07:53.159
with uncertainty. Yeah, when my dad died, it was the
1184
01:07:53.199 --> 01:07:55.079
first time I went wait, I don't even know if
1185
01:07:55.079 --> 01:07:58.079
I believe. I don't like, where is he? Yeah, I mean,
1186
01:07:58.119 --> 01:08:00.280
I'm forty something years old, going, I don't know where
1187
01:08:00.320 --> 01:08:02.679
my dad is. You've been telling me my whole life
1188
01:08:02.679 --> 01:08:05.239
he's in heaven, and when I read the Bible, I
1189
01:08:05.239 --> 01:08:08.440
don't know where that is. I don't know what's there.
1190
01:08:08.559 --> 01:08:14.199
Jesus says it'll be great, sort of like he's no clarification.
1191
01:08:14.920 --> 01:08:17.800
And so I don't know where my dad is. Like
1192
01:08:17.880 --> 01:08:19.760
that that was a big thing you have.
1193
01:08:19.720 --> 01:08:22.640
To like, Yeah, I think not knowing is the first step,
1194
01:08:22.680 --> 01:08:26.159
but living in that and finding peace and grace in
1195
01:08:26.239 --> 01:08:28.239
that is a second step. That takes time.
1196
01:08:29.039 --> 01:08:30.920
Yeah, And so that's kind of where I'm at right now,
1197
01:08:31.039 --> 01:08:33.680
is just kind of feeling like, and I think that
1198
01:08:33.720 --> 01:08:36.439
bothers my mom, you know, She's like, are you praying?
1199
01:08:36.479 --> 01:08:39.319
Do you pray? You know? And so because because again
1200
01:08:39.439 --> 01:08:42.279
she chose charismatic christanity, he hasn't left that.
1201
01:08:42.520 --> 01:08:45.359
Yeah, she left the church, but she didn't leave the
1202
01:08:45.479 --> 01:08:46.600
She left the cult, but not.
1203
01:08:46.520 --> 01:08:50.880
The exactly exactly. And that's kind of ultimately been what
1204
01:08:51.079 --> 01:08:53.439
I think a lot of folks that age in our
1205
01:08:53.479 --> 01:08:56.720
group did, was they left the cult, but they didn't
1206
01:08:56.800 --> 01:09:01.159
leave that, whereas people my age and younger, Hell yeah,
1207
01:09:01.279 --> 01:09:04.960
most of us are like, yeah, we're done done, like literally,
1208
01:09:05.039 --> 01:09:07.840
like we can't. I can't go to church. There's that's
1209
01:09:07.880 --> 01:09:11.319
not an option. And yeah, it's been a journey, but.
1210
01:09:12.079 --> 01:09:14.640
This is as good as based. I don't know, but
1211
01:09:15.239 --> 01:09:18.199
this sounds to me as though this is as good
1212
01:09:18.239 --> 01:09:19.960
and as healthy as you've been as an adult.
1213
01:09:20.000 --> 01:09:24.119
Oh my god, yes, absolutely absolutely, And and like you know,
1214
01:09:24.119 --> 01:09:26.439
I'm still in contact with so many of my friends
1215
01:09:26.439 --> 01:09:28.840
there because we all we were all there at the
1216
01:09:28.920 --> 01:09:31.760
whole time. And I'm watching them, you know, they they're
1217
01:09:31.760 --> 01:09:35.359
getting married, they're having babies, they're living their best lives
1218
01:09:35.720 --> 01:09:39.920
without judgment, without you know, somebody grilling them and being
1219
01:09:39.920 --> 01:09:42.319
told they have to spank their six month old. And
1220
01:09:42.319 --> 01:09:44.800
they're sitting there going, hey, you know child development means
1221
01:09:45.279 --> 01:09:47.479
and they're learning and they're sitting there go I'm never
1222
01:09:47.760 --> 01:09:50.960
touching my child like that. I'm you know, learning new ways.
1223
01:09:51.199 --> 01:09:54.720
And I think that has been probably the most healing
1224
01:09:54.760 --> 01:09:56.920
for me, is watching this and going, I think this
1225
01:09:57.000 --> 01:10:01.199
is the best revenge, you know, yea, the always yeah,
1226
01:10:01.560 --> 01:10:03.560
but this family, like that I had mentioned before that
1227
01:10:03.600 --> 01:10:06.680
was the whipping boy like they had like three marriages
1228
01:10:06.720 --> 01:10:10.600
in a year and their kids get married with babies,
1229
01:10:10.680 --> 01:10:13.039
and you know, I'm just looking at it going thank
1230
01:10:13.079 --> 01:10:17.600
God like this is the best yeah, justice to live
1231
01:10:17.640 --> 01:10:18.359
your best life.
1232
01:10:18.560 --> 01:10:22.920
Sarah, what a journey. You are just an inspiration. And
1233
01:10:22.960 --> 01:10:25.960
I thanks for feeling comfortable sharing your story here, and
1234
01:10:26.039 --> 01:10:29.640
thanks for for just being with me and sitting with
1235
01:10:29.680 --> 01:10:31.960
it for over two hours and some really tough stuff.
1236
01:10:32.960 --> 01:10:35.920
But man, if we can't go out and love others
1237
01:10:36.760 --> 01:10:39.600
and you can, then we all have a problem. So
1238
01:10:39.800 --> 01:10:42.399
I appreciate you being here. I appreciate you doing this well.
1239
01:10:42.439 --> 01:10:43.359
Thanks for letting me.
1240
01:10:43.600 --> 01:10:48.840
Oh absolutely, I can't thank Sarah enough for joining me
1241
01:10:48.880 --> 01:10:51.520
this week. The courage and fortitude to share this story
1242
01:10:51.760 --> 01:10:54.920
is not just admirable, it's a herculean feet the likes
1243
01:10:54.920 --> 01:10:57.039
of which I don't know if I could manage myself.
1244
01:10:57.239 --> 01:10:59.119
Sarah has every reason to be mad at the world.
1245
01:10:59.399 --> 01:11:02.239
She could just fly live an angry existence. She was
1246
01:11:02.279 --> 01:11:05.199
pretty much born into this situation. Her agency was taken
1247
01:11:05.199 --> 01:11:07.119
from her, and she was trapped in a world of
1248
01:11:07.199 --> 01:11:10.359
high patriarchal control that demeaned the idea of learning new
1249
01:11:10.359 --> 01:11:13.319
things and experiencing a life outside of the belief system
1250
01:11:13.319 --> 01:11:16.159
that was established for her. It led to gas lighting,
1251
01:11:16.560 --> 01:11:20.399
verbal abuse, and sexual assault. Sarah could lose to this anger,
1252
01:11:20.560 --> 01:11:23.800
but she refuses to. She's speaking her truth. She's living
1253
01:11:23.800 --> 01:11:26.479
her life to the fullest. She's utilizing her new found
1254
01:11:26.520 --> 01:11:28.600
freedom to do all the things she wanted to do
1255
01:11:28.920 --> 01:11:32.000
but wasn't able to earlier in life. Even more amazing,
1256
01:11:32.159 --> 01:11:34.680
Sarah finds power in the unknown, beauty in a world
1257
01:11:34.720 --> 01:11:36.960
around her that she can't control, even when it was
1258
01:11:37.000 --> 01:11:40.399
controlled for her for so many years. She's learning, growing,
1259
01:11:40.479 --> 01:11:44.079
and loving along the way. If Sarah can be this example,
1260
01:11:44.399 --> 01:11:46.840
then most of the rest of us are just without excuse.
1261
01:11:47.279 --> 01:11:50.560
I found myself becoming so angry at those that hurt Sarah,
1262
01:11:50.760 --> 01:11:52.800
and I think we should all work as hard as
1263
01:11:52.840 --> 01:11:55.680
humanly possible to end hurt like that for others. But
1264
01:11:55.720 --> 01:11:58.600
I was also uplifted by Sarah's demeanor and her willingness
1265
01:11:58.640 --> 01:12:01.720
to do the next right thing. Thanks for listening. Breakfast
1266
01:12:01.720 --> 01:12:03.479
in Hell is produced by Will Cown and written and
1267
01:12:03.520 --> 01:12:06.239
hosted by Daniel Thompson. If you enjoy the pod, please
1268
01:12:06.279 --> 01:12:07.880
do us a favor with a rating and review on
1269
01:12:07.920 --> 01:12:10.760
Apple Podcasts and follow us on Instagram at Breakfast in
1270
01:12:10.840 --> 01:12:14.000
Hell Pod. You can also join the discussion group on Facebook.
1271
01:12:14.119 --> 01:12:15.800
It's free and the link is in the show notes.
1272
01:12:15.960 --> 01:12:17.880
If you've got questions, comments, or would like to be
1273
01:12:17.920 --> 01:12:20.159
on the show, dm us on Instagram or send us
1274
01:12:20.159 --> 01:12:26.920
an email to Breakfast in Hell Pod at gmail dot com.
1275
01:12:28.439 --> 01:12:31.039
You're about to hear some ads that helped keep the
1276
01:12:31.079 --> 01:12:35.600
lights on here in the old studio. Thanks for listening
1277
01:12:35.760 --> 01:12:38.600
or don't listen. It's really up to you at this point.
1278
01:12:38.760 --> 01:12:40.279
It is at the end of the show. I mean,
1279
01:12:40.560 --> 01:12:43.439
you're listening to me Hi. But here they come. I
1280
01:12:43.520 --> 01:12:59.760
promised our coming. Yep, here they are. Happy Day.
1
00:00:00.280 --> 00:00:02.560
Before we start the show. This week's episode feature some
2
00:00:02.600 --> 00:00:05.960
heavy conversations regarding sexual assault. Please keep this in mind
3
00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:08.960
before listening as a reminder. While this podcast is hopefully
4
00:00:08.960 --> 00:00:11.560
a great place to hear honest, encouraging stories to let
5
00:00:11.599 --> 00:00:13.320
you know you're not alone, it's not men as a
6
00:00:13.359 --> 00:00:15.919
replacement for therapy or for telling someone if you need help.
7
00:00:16.120 --> 00:00:24.280
Thanks for listening and understanding. Okay, here's the show. Welcome
8
00:00:24.280 --> 00:00:26.399
to Breakfast in Hell. This week is part two of
9
00:00:26.440 --> 00:00:29.320
my interview with Sarah Davis. Where we last left Sarah,
10
00:00:29.440 --> 00:00:31.559
she wanted to break free from the cults she had
11
00:00:31.559 --> 00:00:34.159
found herself a part of since she was born. Let's
12
00:00:34.240 --> 00:00:36.079
die back in as Sarah tells us about the next
13
00:00:36.159 --> 00:00:37.880
twenty years and what it actually takes for her to
14
00:00:37.880 --> 00:00:38.920
accomplish that feat.
15
00:00:45.200 --> 00:00:48.600
So, I think I must have been dissociating a lot. Yeah,
16
00:00:48.719 --> 00:00:52.600
I'm sure that august. I get called into John's office
17
00:00:52.640 --> 00:00:56.479
with him, just him, and he says to me, I
18
00:00:56.560 --> 00:01:01.119
think that what the reason that what happened between us
19
00:01:01.159 --> 00:01:04.480
happened is because I'm supposed to marry you and not
20
00:01:04.640 --> 00:01:05.400
this other girl.
21
00:01:06.159 --> 00:01:09.799
I had a feeling that was coming in that moment.
22
00:01:10.000 --> 00:01:12.280
I said, absolutely not good.
23
00:01:12.319 --> 00:01:13.079
For you.
24
00:01:13.120 --> 00:01:17.359
No. Yeah, that night was a night from the bowels
25
00:01:17.400 --> 00:01:20.599
of hell, and that had nothing to do with it.
26
00:01:21.840 --> 00:01:24.400
I also very much felt like I was putting that
27
00:01:24.439 --> 00:01:28.239
girl like on a silver plattern, saying take her, not me. Yeah,
28
00:01:28.280 --> 00:01:29.560
and that felt bad.
29
00:01:29.760 --> 00:01:31.879
I can see how you would feel that, but that's odd,
30
00:01:32.040 --> 00:01:35.319
Like you're not wrong here. You should hold no guilt
31
00:01:35.359 --> 00:01:35.560
for that.
32
00:01:35.840 --> 00:01:38.439
I mean, like, yeah, saying no to him, And it
33
00:01:38.560 --> 00:01:41.400
was one of those moments where I realized all you
34
00:01:41.439 --> 00:01:44.879
had to do was say no and he'd stop. He
35
00:01:44.959 --> 00:01:48.840
never mentioned that again, he is. The only thing was
36
00:01:49.359 --> 00:01:53.519
don't tell the other elder. I said this, yeah, and
37
00:01:53.560 --> 00:01:56.799
I was like, okay, but you know, it's like in
38
00:01:56.879 --> 00:01:59.920
the meantime, we're sneaking the other girl into the house
39
00:02:00.400 --> 00:02:03.280
after his wife goes to bed at seven, and she's
40
00:02:03.319 --> 00:02:06.280
going into the office with him, and I can only
41
00:02:06.319 --> 00:02:07.959
imagine what they're doing in there.
42
00:02:08.639 --> 00:02:11.879
You know, they this guy needs to like rot in
43
00:02:11.960 --> 00:02:14.639
prison in the hell that doesn't exist. That's what he
44
00:02:14.719 --> 00:02:15.080
used to do.
45
00:02:16.280 --> 00:02:17.360
I'm okay with hell for that.
46
00:02:18.400 --> 00:02:20.439
Yeah, there's some times where it would be I don't
47
00:02:20.479 --> 00:02:24.120
think I'm I'm confident there's no hell, but there'd be
48
00:02:24.120 --> 00:02:25.719
tians ray be convenient.
49
00:02:25.560 --> 00:02:28.360
It'd be nice, wouldn't Yeah. At the same time that
50
00:02:28.400 --> 00:02:32.000
this is happening, I was doing homeschool teaching. So when
51
00:02:32.039 --> 00:02:35.280
I was like twenty two, I started tutoring a girl
52
00:02:35.759 --> 00:02:38.199
from the church when I was still living in the
53
00:02:38.199 --> 00:02:40.840
other town with my mom and dad. I'd travel at
54
00:02:40.919 --> 00:02:44.800
hour at six am to do algebra one with her,
55
00:02:46.520 --> 00:02:49.560
which is wild, that's crazy, and yeah it was wild,
56
00:02:50.479 --> 00:02:54.039
but I loved it. I loved teaching good and so
57
00:02:55.120 --> 00:02:58.120
while all of that stuff was happening, I had students.
58
00:02:58.360 --> 00:02:59.800
There were only like two or three of them at
59
00:02:59.840 --> 00:03:04.319
the and I think, what I have done some therapy,
60
00:03:04.400 --> 00:03:06.120
And one of the things I realized is that I
61
00:03:06.159 --> 00:03:10.840
took that feeling of being alone and I try to
62
00:03:10.919 --> 00:03:13.159
flip it on its head and make sure these kids
63
00:03:13.199 --> 00:03:14.039
would never be alone.
64
00:03:14.879 --> 00:03:15.159
Nice.
65
00:03:15.199 --> 00:03:19.319
So they they I would go to their house initially,
66
00:03:19.400 --> 00:03:21.360
and then John was like, no, they have to come here,
67
00:03:21.439 --> 00:03:25.879
So they came to my house. And I remember like
68
00:03:26.120 --> 00:03:29.080
working hard with some of these kids to build a
69
00:03:29.120 --> 00:03:32.280
refresh just a relationship, because I mean, I'm twenty three,
70
00:03:32.360 --> 00:03:34.919
twenty four years old and I'm teaching fourteen year olds. Well,
71
00:03:35.000 --> 00:03:37.960
that means you go to the same church, at some point,
72
00:03:38.400 --> 00:03:40.759
we're just going to be friends, right, Like if I
73
00:03:40.800 --> 00:03:43.879
don't approach this as at some point we're going to
74
00:03:43.919 --> 00:03:47.879
be friends, and I just say with a student teacher relationship,
75
00:03:47.919 --> 00:03:50.360
then what are we doing? Like why are we here?
76
00:03:51.199 --> 00:03:56.400
And I remember really having to work against the ways
77
00:03:56.400 --> 00:04:00.840
I've been taught to communicate with people, so like growing up,
78
00:04:01.319 --> 00:04:04.759
you know, if you say something that's wrong and wrong
79
00:04:04.840 --> 00:04:08.800
being like, God, I'm just feeling really depressed. I feel
80
00:04:08.800 --> 00:04:12.080
like nobody loves me, you know, your normal teenage angsty thing.
81
00:04:12.719 --> 00:04:15.400
My mom would come back with what's the truth? No,
82
00:04:15.520 --> 00:04:18.000
you tell me some truth? What's real? That's not real?
83
00:04:18.040 --> 00:04:21.319
What's you tell me what's real? I couldn't do that
84
00:04:21.360 --> 00:04:24.519
to these kids because I wanted them to talk to me,
85
00:04:25.199 --> 00:04:28.000
And if I come back with shut down, then they're
86
00:04:28.040 --> 00:04:31.879
not going to talk to me them, right, And I
87
00:04:32.000 --> 00:04:34.639
remember it felt like at the time, like God is
88
00:04:34.680 --> 00:04:38.120
sitting there going, don't you dare say that to them?
89
00:04:38.160 --> 00:04:42.279
You ask them how that made them feel, and then
90
00:04:42.319 --> 00:04:44.560
you sit there and say, I can understand why you
91
00:04:44.560 --> 00:04:47.680
would feel that way. And then you know if if
92
00:04:47.720 --> 00:04:50.879
they're having a hard time explaining it, you know, like
93
00:04:50.879 --> 00:04:52.959
like what made you feel that way, I could, and
94
00:04:53.040 --> 00:04:55.759
I would. I would also follow it up with I
95
00:04:55.800 --> 00:04:59.639
can imagine why I would feel that way. I'm curious
96
00:04:59.680 --> 00:05:02.519
why you did, you know, instead of trying to put
97
00:05:02.560 --> 00:05:04.600
words in their mouth, but also giving them a space
98
00:05:04.680 --> 00:05:09.360
to just say things. And I remember having to learn.
99
00:05:09.399 --> 00:05:13.240
I had a group of kids from one family who
100
00:05:13.800 --> 00:05:17.560
I found out later well later, like their siblings, ended
101
00:05:17.639 --> 00:05:23.000
up talking about it deeply abusive, physically, emotionally, just just
102
00:05:23.240 --> 00:05:28.519
horribly abusive. And I remember quickly learning that if I
103
00:05:28.519 --> 00:05:31.439
can't just say, well, go talk to your dad about that, Yeah,
104
00:05:31.519 --> 00:05:34.680
your dad cares, I had I like, you don't say that.
105
00:05:35.639 --> 00:05:39.879
Can you talk to your dad about that? No? Okay? Fair,
106
00:05:40.079 --> 00:05:42.199
like I'm not going to tell you to. You know,
107
00:05:42.279 --> 00:05:46.439
these things that had been the correct responses weren't the
108
00:05:46.480 --> 00:05:51.319
correct responses. And over the course of twenty years of
109
00:05:51.759 --> 00:05:56.639
homeschool teaching, I taught twenty kids and they were my world.
110
00:05:56.920 --> 00:05:57.560
That's awesome.
111
00:05:57.839 --> 00:06:01.120
I poured everything into them. I had schedule, had I
112
00:06:01.160 --> 00:06:04.160
created my own history and English curriculum because there was
113
00:06:04.160 --> 00:06:06.160
no way at hell I was going to use the
114
00:06:06.240 --> 00:06:08.759
Christian curriculum because y'all.
115
00:06:09.079 --> 00:06:11.720
But also you're and I want to get this straight.
116
00:06:11.959 --> 00:06:15.839
You are creating your own curriculum. You didn't go to college,
117
00:06:16.160 --> 00:06:19.160
You're creating your own curriculum, your homeschooling kids. You don't
118
00:06:19.160 --> 00:06:21.600
want to use the Christian curriculum because it's so bad.
119
00:06:21.879 --> 00:06:24.240
But you're still in this dude's house.
120
00:06:24.920 --> 00:06:28.160
Yes, and I just didn't talk to him about.
121
00:06:27.879 --> 00:06:30.720
Them, that's crazy, man.
122
00:06:30.839 --> 00:06:33.839
Yeah, I didn't, Like, I didn't go to him with
123
00:06:34.040 --> 00:06:37.279
any questions. I didn't go to him with any concerns
124
00:06:37.759 --> 00:06:41.720
because I knew that if he got involved, it wouldn't
125
00:06:41.920 --> 00:06:46.000
be bad. Yeah, you know, I knew if he touched
126
00:06:46.000 --> 00:06:48.199
it that it would hurt them, and they did and
127
00:06:48.240 --> 00:06:52.279
he did. So there was like three or four years
128
00:06:52.319 --> 00:06:56.079
in there where he wasn't in ministry, Like he wasn't
129
00:06:56.120 --> 00:06:58.720
reaching on Sundays the other elders were and there was
130
00:06:58.759 --> 00:07:00.839
nothing said about why. But it was because of what
131
00:07:00.839 --> 00:07:05.160
had happened. Yeah, Like, there was never anything publicly said
132
00:07:05.199 --> 00:07:05.560
about it.
133
00:07:05.439 --> 00:07:09.439
It was church discipline. It's classic behind closed doors. The
134
00:07:09.560 --> 00:07:12.360
church disciplines them in a spiritual way so they don't
135
00:07:12.399 --> 00:07:15.519
get any actual repercussions. And this is normal in almost
136
00:07:15.600 --> 00:07:18.600
every denomination and it's so terrible.
137
00:07:19.120 --> 00:07:22.879
Yeah, well it got weirder because it's us. Why wouldn't
138
00:07:22.879 --> 00:07:27.040
we be weirder. So in nineteen ninety seven ninety eight,
139
00:07:27.240 --> 00:07:31.399
the church actually bought a piece of property twenty miles
140
00:07:31.439 --> 00:07:35.920
outside of town, and it's three hundred acres and we
141
00:07:36.040 --> 00:07:39.920
start building buildings and we're going to have us a
142
00:07:39.959 --> 00:07:42.560
little retreat out there. We're going to We went camping
143
00:07:42.600 --> 00:07:43.279
there for ourself.
144
00:07:43.399 --> 00:07:46.240
It's the sister cult is what you hear you're gonna
145
00:07:46.240 --> 00:07:48.240
call you. Have you read Bethany joy Lynd's book.
146
00:07:48.399 --> 00:07:50.600
Oh God? I sat there and I was like, did
147
00:07:50.600 --> 00:07:51.399
you live in Vermont?
148
00:07:51.600 --> 00:07:54.879
There's so many beats to this story that are like,
149
00:07:55.399 --> 00:07:57.920
it's crazy, it's wild. Sorry.
150
00:07:58.120 --> 00:08:00.959
I literally was like, Anthony, you and I went to
151
00:08:01.000 --> 00:08:03.000
the same church. The guy was just as weird.
152
00:08:03.040 --> 00:08:06.079
But it's like, that's when we jumped from high control
153
00:08:06.120 --> 00:08:10.600
religion to cult. Is these beats are are that it's
154
00:08:10.720 --> 00:08:13.839
just full cult that's just disguised as religion. Yeah. Right,
155
00:08:13.959 --> 00:08:15.839
So they bought three hundre acres. I'm sorry, I mean
156
00:08:16.319 --> 00:08:19.079
that's okay. They bought three camp out there the whole dew.
157
00:08:19.480 --> 00:08:24.920
Yeah, built buildings, built structures. Y two k happened and
158
00:08:25.000 --> 00:08:29.120
it was a terrifying time. Mass We were prepping, we
159
00:08:29.160 --> 00:08:31.160
had blankets, we had all you.
160
00:08:31.120 --> 00:08:34.120
Believe the thousand years about to start.
161
00:08:34.240 --> 00:08:37.159
Well, this is it. And I don't even know that
162
00:08:37.200 --> 00:08:39.559
we ever talked about the thousand years. We were just
163
00:08:39.600 --> 00:08:40.320
all going to die.
164
00:08:40.720 --> 00:08:45.080
I had someone that I knew very well who believed
165
00:08:45.240 --> 00:08:51.320
that the year two thousand represented six thousand years since
166
00:08:51.399 --> 00:08:55.879
the creation of the world. Sure, and so God created
167
00:08:56.080 --> 00:08:58.840
in six days, He created the world and on the
168
00:08:58.879 --> 00:09:02.200
seventh day he rests did and so every day is
169
00:09:02.240 --> 00:09:04.240
like a thousand years in the Bible. You with me,
170
00:09:04.360 --> 00:09:07.840
you see what's coming now, So six thousand years is
171
00:09:07.919 --> 00:09:12.399
six days. So in the seven thousandth year seven days,
172
00:09:12.759 --> 00:09:15.919
there will be no God. That's the thousand years. And
173
00:09:15.960 --> 00:09:20.240
they prepped like nobody's business. And they were wrong.
174
00:09:22.559 --> 00:09:27.000
Yeah, yeah, yeah, So y two k happened. We had
175
00:09:28.440 --> 00:09:30.039
you know, New Year's Day.
176
00:09:30.080 --> 00:09:33.080
We're fine, Yeah, everything's good. Come back to your house's gang,
177
00:09:33.279 --> 00:09:33.879
We're good to go.
178
00:09:35.240 --> 00:09:39.399
But in two thousand and one, John bought a set
179
00:09:39.399 --> 00:09:42.480
of forums. They were preparedness survivalist forums.
180
00:09:42.600 --> 00:09:44.679
Okay, on right, So.
181
00:09:44.840 --> 00:09:47.480
He it comes with a little store and he starts
182
00:09:47.480 --> 00:09:50.919
selling the stuff out of the house survival manuals, all
183
00:09:51.000 --> 00:09:57.399
kinds of stuff, British brickfield water filters, yep, canning like
184
00:09:57.960 --> 00:10:02.440
all American canners, living grain mills. Those were the first
185
00:10:02.440 --> 00:10:09.519
few products. I bought, a water filter and a toilet, right.
186
00:10:09.519 --> 00:10:11.480
I forgot about the toilets because we were out camping
187
00:10:11.480 --> 00:10:12.799
in the middle of nowhere, so you had to bring
188
00:10:12.799 --> 00:10:13.399
your own toilet.
189
00:10:13.480 --> 00:10:16.000
Oh my god, this is wild.
190
00:10:16.840 --> 00:10:21.720
And in two thousand and four he got a gun shop.
191
00:10:22.720 --> 00:10:25.759
He was best friends with some multi millionaire who was
192
00:10:25.799 --> 00:10:29.879
a gun enthusiast who gave him basically was going to
193
00:10:29.879 --> 00:10:32.000
give him his stock of guns and he could open
194
00:10:32.000 --> 00:10:34.440
a gun store, which he did in the living room
195
00:10:34.440 --> 00:10:39.159
of our house. So they I came through and put
196
00:10:39.159 --> 00:10:41.120
in the doors and put in all the things in
197
00:10:41.159 --> 00:10:44.120
the security system, and we had a gun shop at
198
00:10:44.120 --> 00:10:47.440
our house from two thousand and five to twenty ten.
199
00:10:49.720 --> 00:10:52.639
Like, there's so much in this story that we're glossing over.
200
00:10:52.879 --> 00:10:54.919
That's just nuts.
201
00:10:55.600 --> 00:10:58.799
Well, because you see all those people, they're unchurched. Yeah,
202
00:10:59.200 --> 00:11:06.039
one community or not really needs a mission, So I
203
00:11:06.320 --> 00:11:10.360
was not. I can't emphasize enough how much he didn't
204
00:11:10.399 --> 00:11:15.080
pay people to work in the shop. There was one
205
00:11:15.120 --> 00:11:19.440
employee and this poor man came to work every day
206
00:11:19.600 --> 00:11:26.480
faithfully and just got yelled at every day. The culture John,
207
00:11:26.639 --> 00:11:31.000
the way John was with people, the way we were
208
00:11:31.120 --> 00:11:33.919
encouraged to talk to one another and be in each
209
00:11:33.919 --> 00:11:38.080
other's lives, It just appealed to the worst parts of yourself.
210
00:11:38.799 --> 00:11:41.759
If you didn't like somebody, you could speak the truth
211
00:11:41.799 --> 00:11:47.759
and love in just the harshest terms, say the meanest
212
00:11:47.799 --> 00:11:52.080
things that you know, if somebody annoyed you. It the
213
00:11:52.080 --> 00:11:55.480
amount of times that it was the Jezebel spirit. You
214
00:11:55.519 --> 00:11:58.399
mean this the man that was working there, It was
215
00:11:58.399 --> 00:12:01.559
like his family just became the whipping boy for no
216
00:12:01.919 --> 00:12:04.759
good reason that I could tell. They Maybe they just
217
00:12:04.799 --> 00:12:07.039
didn't have personalities. I think it was just that they
218
00:12:07.320 --> 00:12:12.720
just drove John Nutts his the wife. This man's wife
219
00:12:12.879 --> 00:12:16.440
had undiagnosed ADHD. She didn't get diagnosed until she was
220
00:12:16.440 --> 00:12:21.240
in her sixties, and like going grocery shopping was un like,
221
00:12:21.320 --> 00:12:23.320
it was just unbearable for her. It was there was
222
00:12:23.320 --> 00:12:25.320
so much going on, she couldn't keep it great, and
223
00:12:25.399 --> 00:12:27.919
so the women would try to help her, and it
224
00:12:28.039 --> 00:12:31.159
was ultimately she just had some sort of spiritual issue,
225
00:12:31.600 --> 00:12:33.840
some open door to the you know, satan. It was
226
00:12:33.919 --> 00:12:36.600
just it was awful and it was hard, and it
227
00:12:36.639 --> 00:12:41.799
was also like I value deeply the friends I have
228
00:12:42.559 --> 00:12:46.039
that came from that because we learned to not talk
229
00:12:46.080 --> 00:12:47.120
to one another that way.
230
00:12:47.240 --> 00:12:48.960
But you also, if you got out, if you all
231
00:12:49.000 --> 00:12:50.240
got out of it, you got out of it together,
232
00:12:50.480 --> 00:12:50.679
you know.
233
00:12:50.759 --> 00:12:52.759
And so there's well we didn't we didn't get out
234
00:12:52.840 --> 00:12:53.919
so much as the church died.
235
00:12:54.440 --> 00:12:56.559
Oh wow, so you'd still be in it, you think
236
00:12:56.559 --> 00:12:57.639
if the church didn't.
237
00:12:57.399 --> 00:13:01.159
Die, I don't know how much longer I was going
238
00:13:01.200 --> 00:13:02.559
to be able to make it.
239
00:13:02.679 --> 00:13:05.200
Yeah, I mean it's clear you're near your end right,
240
00:13:05.399 --> 00:13:08.440
like as far as just being able to healthily without
241
00:13:08.919 --> 00:13:12.279
literally you're I'm not a big huge believer in this
242
00:13:12.480 --> 00:13:16.360
like some of this holistic stuff, but the next thing
243
00:13:16.399 --> 00:13:19.600
to go for you is your actual physical healths.
244
00:13:19.639 --> 00:13:22.840
Oh it does. So I have withis.
245
00:13:22.080 --> 00:13:24.200
Okay, there you go. I know it was coming like.
246
00:13:24.200 --> 00:13:27.120
It had to. I have colitis. I have colitis for
247
00:13:27.200 --> 00:13:32.360
seven years. I was in absolute pain and then got
248
00:13:32.399 --> 00:13:35.120
on medication, adjusted my diet. I lived on a pure
249
00:13:35.279 --> 00:13:37.519
diet for six weeks when we were trying to figure
250
00:13:37.559 --> 00:13:42.679
things out, like I went through that. I yeah, I
251
00:13:42.679 --> 00:13:45.720
mean this stress was intense, and at some point, I
252
00:13:45.759 --> 00:13:51.240
can't remember what year, I was invited in quotation marks
253
00:13:51.399 --> 00:13:57.320
to join the leadership team, okay, And there wasn't a
254
00:13:57.360 --> 00:14:01.759
way of saying no to that, so I and that
255
00:14:02.080 --> 00:14:05.200
was a weekly meeting. So we had a weekly meeting
256
00:14:05.279 --> 00:14:09.279
for the leadership team on Wednesdays, Wednesday afternoons. That happened
257
00:14:09.720 --> 00:14:13.559
at the property which was twenty miles away, which was
258
00:14:13.600 --> 00:14:17.440
on three miles of a bad dirt road. So this
259
00:14:17.559 --> 00:14:23.279
property had a about forty I think sheep, maybe fifteen
260
00:14:23.360 --> 00:14:28.039
or twenty goats, this is ridiculous, three horses, a whole
261
00:14:28.120 --> 00:14:33.360
pile of chickens, ducks, and geese. And John lived there
262
00:14:33.840 --> 00:14:40.000
permanently with the girl he had told some people he
263
00:14:40.080 --> 00:14:45.600
was going to marry. I lived in town with his wife, daughter,
264
00:14:45.799 --> 00:14:46.720
and my roommate.
265
00:14:47.320 --> 00:14:48.679
They were divorced though.
266
00:14:49.200 --> 00:14:55.360
No, okay, And what everybody basically thought was that this
267
00:14:55.440 --> 00:14:59.559
young woman was kind of the caregiver for John, that
268
00:14:59.600 --> 00:15:01.600
it was too much for him to be living in town.
269
00:15:01.919 --> 00:15:03.960
And I wasn't going to argue with that, like I
270
00:15:04.000 --> 00:15:07.840
did not he was living with him, were fine, I
271
00:15:08.080 --> 00:15:10.600
would By that point, I think his wife was kind
272
00:15:10.639 --> 00:15:16.919
of feeling the same way but it was it was
273
00:15:17.600 --> 00:15:20.519
they they physically, neither one of them could deal with
274
00:15:20.559 --> 00:15:23.759
the animals up there. So they had people coming in
275
00:15:23.840 --> 00:15:28.240
and out to do chores. And the people coming in
276
00:15:28.279 --> 00:15:31.440
and out are driving or walking in depending on the
277
00:15:31.480 --> 00:15:33.759
time of year. So three months, like I'd say two
278
00:15:33.799 --> 00:15:37.080
months a year at least, their mud season is so
279
00:15:37.200 --> 00:15:40.039
bad you cannot drive on that road, so you're walking
280
00:15:40.120 --> 00:15:45.799
in three miles chores. That's insane, and nobody's getting compensated
281
00:15:45.840 --> 00:15:49.240
for anything like at all, like the wear and tear
282
00:15:49.240 --> 00:15:54.279
on vehicles. We were Saturdays were spent up there working.
283
00:15:55.120 --> 00:15:58.600
There was no and and no guy like, no man
284
00:15:59.519 --> 00:16:03.159
is saying noted that. So there is no one that's
285
00:16:03.240 --> 00:16:06.039
getting a day off. If you have a day off,
286
00:16:06.639 --> 00:16:09.559
well there's some there's some stumps that need to get
287
00:16:09.559 --> 00:16:12.919
removed up in the land. And you know, why didn't
288
00:16:12.960 --> 00:16:14.639
you tell John you had the day off. He had
289
00:16:14.639 --> 00:16:19.320
some things that needed to be done around It was wild.
290
00:16:19.919 --> 00:16:25.919
It was wild, and people were tithing. People were giving.
291
00:16:26.519 --> 00:16:31.000
You know, a parent would die, you know, and they're old,
292
00:16:31.000 --> 00:16:35.320
they leave an inheritance to their kid, and that the kids.
293
00:16:35.440 --> 00:16:38.600
Like the amount of folks my mom's age who gave
294
00:16:38.639 --> 00:16:44.080
their inheritance to the church and literally just saw it. Yeah,
295
00:16:44.120 --> 00:16:48.600
it was that was that was, It was wild. So
296
00:16:48.720 --> 00:16:52.519
that is happening constantly. You know, they're doing lambing and
297
00:16:52.639 --> 00:16:56.440
kidding season where young women are spending twenty four hours
298
00:16:56.480 --> 00:16:59.320
a day, seven days a week taking care of lambs
299
00:16:59.320 --> 00:17:04.000
and kids, goats and all this stuff. And they women,
300
00:17:04.240 --> 00:17:08.599
like young women aren't really encouraged or allowed in that
301
00:17:08.720 --> 00:17:12.240
sense to have full time jobs. Part time jobs are
302
00:17:12.319 --> 00:17:14.119
kind of frowned upon. We need you to serve in
303
00:17:14.160 --> 00:17:16.359
the church. We need you to come up and do
304
00:17:16.400 --> 00:17:19.000
all this stuff. We're not paying you for your gas money,
305
00:17:19.000 --> 00:17:22.759
we're not paying for any food. So literally, these girls
306
00:17:22.839 --> 00:17:27.039
are asking their siblings for donations for food to take
307
00:17:27.119 --> 00:17:29.759
up to so they can do this thing. You know,
308
00:17:29.799 --> 00:17:30.720
it was, it was.
309
00:17:31.200 --> 00:17:35.440
And literally this there's no permanent repercussions for this, aside
310
00:17:35.480 --> 00:17:39.079
from the church is no longer here. Like nobody got arrested, nobody,
311
00:17:39.079 --> 00:17:41.279
there was no big news story like this.
312
00:17:41.400 --> 00:17:43.720
Just died out the first time. I'm talking about a
313
00:17:43.720 --> 00:17:46.759
public like anybody's talked about it publicly and.
314
00:17:47.000 --> 00:17:51.079
Anyone that was a part of it. Yeah, holy shit, what.
315
00:17:52.960 --> 00:17:54.640
I'm really sorry, Dan, love you.
316
00:17:54.680 --> 00:17:57.039
No, No, this is. I mean, I'm happy that you
317
00:17:57.119 --> 00:18:00.400
felt comfortable enough to tell the story, but the front,
318
00:18:00.480 --> 00:18:04.880
the fury of I can't even like I'm I'm I'm pissed. Yeah,
319
00:18:04.920 --> 00:18:08.559
And it's just I mean, all these people are just
320
00:18:08.599 --> 00:18:17.160
still alive and just roman free.
321
00:18:18.880 --> 00:18:22.759
It just we started finally, so we were meeting on
322
00:18:22.839 --> 00:18:27.279
Sundays up there at this property up there. At some
323
00:18:27.480 --> 00:18:31.799
point between two thousand and about four, two thousand and
324
00:18:31.799 --> 00:18:35.240
five and two thousand and eleven, some point in there,
325
00:18:35.359 --> 00:18:38.640
John comes back, okay, and it's a sort of ministerial role,
326
00:18:38.880 --> 00:18:43.119
and he comes back with a vengeance. He is and
327
00:18:43.559 --> 00:18:46.279
every the elders who were kind of running things while
328
00:18:46.319 --> 00:18:49.119
he was not there. It's like he cut him off
329
00:18:49.119 --> 00:18:54.920
at the kneecaps. They he completely demoralized them. He you know,
330
00:18:55.000 --> 00:18:57.960
chewed him out. They treated him like they were incompetent.
331
00:18:58.519 --> 00:19:02.599
And these are like professionals who who they're not professional
332
00:19:02.640 --> 00:19:04.920
ministers because we don't have enough money for that, but
333
00:19:05.920 --> 00:19:09.440
they're they're professionals in their own right. They run businesses,
334
00:19:09.480 --> 00:19:13.200
they've you know, they've been successful humans. Yes, he's acting
335
00:19:13.240 --> 00:19:16.440
as though they're completely incompetent, don't know, you know anything.
336
00:19:16.480 --> 00:19:19.680
He's the only one who can hear God. So things
337
00:19:19.720 --> 00:19:21.960
took a darker turn after that.
338
00:19:22.319 --> 00:19:25.200
I'm sure somehow meetings.
339
00:19:24.759 --> 00:19:27.519
Right, right, somehow it got worse, so that all of
340
00:19:27.559 --> 00:19:31.720
a sudden, all these midweek meetings that we were having
341
00:19:31.759 --> 00:19:34.720
at other people's houses, they can only start happening at
342
00:19:34.759 --> 00:19:39.680
his house where he's in charge. And then when he
343
00:19:39.880 --> 00:19:42.720
feels that this other, these other elders are ready, he'll
344
00:19:42.799 --> 00:19:46.240
let one go to their kind of a situation. So
345
00:19:46.319 --> 00:19:53.680
these midweek meetings become just torture sessions. Where do you go?
346
00:19:53.839 --> 00:19:58.400
And you, I mean, there was a probably a one
347
00:19:58.440 --> 00:20:01.559
in four chance that it might be an okay meeting
348
00:20:01.559 --> 00:20:05.759
where nobody gets yelled at, But otherwise you you're gonna
349
00:20:05.759 --> 00:20:07.960
get You're gonna sit in a meeting and get yelled
350
00:20:08.000 --> 00:20:12.559
at for two hours, go home and just be like, well,
351
00:20:12.599 --> 00:20:15.799
I'm a piece of shit. And and the reasons for
352
00:20:15.880 --> 00:20:18.720
that could be were a multi.
353
00:20:18.519 --> 00:20:21.319
Variate, like so many. Whatever he decided he's a cult leader,
354
00:20:21.359 --> 00:20:24.359
whatever he decided to keep you in control, was what
355
00:20:24.400 --> 00:20:24.960
he would say.
356
00:20:25.119 --> 00:20:29.240
Right, And and the dehumanization couples who were asked about
357
00:20:29.279 --> 00:20:34.160
sex lives and interrogated on it in the younger group,
358
00:20:34.279 --> 00:20:37.279
where they had teenagers. I mean he went through I
359
00:20:37.559 --> 00:20:41.160
remember hearing about it. He went through each each kid
360
00:20:41.640 --> 00:20:46.480
and asked directly do you masturbate? And it just do you?
361
00:20:46.559 --> 00:20:49.880
Do you watch porn? And I mean, I cannot imagine.
362
00:20:50.279 --> 00:20:52.799
I cannot imagine the torture that these kids went through.
363
00:20:53.519 --> 00:20:56.279
And these are my students that I like, I've tried
364
00:20:56.279 --> 00:21:00.440
to take care of and watching them just get eaten
365
00:21:00.480 --> 00:21:04.880
alive by him was horrifying. That got worse then we
366
00:21:04.920 --> 00:21:09.039
started to actually meet in our town. Okay, we had
367
00:21:09.200 --> 00:21:13.119
started renting a building on Sundays. Obviously, we have the
368
00:21:13.119 --> 00:21:15.680
Word of God, so we need to have a YouTube channel.
369
00:21:15.960 --> 00:21:18.039
Yeah, of course that sounds about.
370
00:21:21.920 --> 00:21:24.200
We have a YouTube channel. We have a sound we
371
00:21:24.599 --> 00:21:27.799
buy the machine, the stuff to do the sound so
372
00:21:27.839 --> 00:21:30.680
that we can stream it. We can, you know, do
373
00:21:30.720 --> 00:21:36.440
all this stuff. John isn't always coming in on Sundays,
374
00:21:36.480 --> 00:21:39.759
but he's always watching the feed. And so then we
375
00:21:39.839 --> 00:21:43.799
start doing this thing called an after action report and
376
00:21:44.000 --> 00:21:49.039
a R and those started happening at some point, I
377
00:21:49.039 --> 00:21:53.200
don't even remember I'm on the leadership team. I'm automatically
378
00:21:53.279 --> 00:21:59.359
I have to do these after every Sunday meeting. You
379
00:21:59.559 --> 00:22:02.960
have to go back through rewatch the service on the
380
00:22:03.039 --> 00:22:09.039
stream and evaluate it. How well did we perform? And
381
00:22:09.160 --> 00:22:14.519
so these this went through every song, every the introduction.
382
00:22:14.759 --> 00:22:16.680
How did that person do? Were they in the Holy
383
00:22:16.720 --> 00:22:19.039
Spirit or were they not? Were they anointed or were
384
00:22:19.039 --> 00:22:19.319
they not?
385
00:22:20.759 --> 00:22:23.920
And then you had to turn into John you and
386
00:22:24.000 --> 00:22:24.279
it was.
387
00:22:24.240 --> 00:22:28.519
A text thread. Okay, so everybody starts, you know, putting
388
00:22:28.519 --> 00:22:32.599
it out there. I have to tell you. I went
389
00:22:32.640 --> 00:22:35.000
back and I looked. I still have a bunch of them.
390
00:22:35.039 --> 00:22:37.519
We we've all kind of kept them because dear Lord
391
00:22:37.559 --> 00:22:42.279
in Heaven, some of them are just wildots.
392
00:22:42.279 --> 00:22:44.839
Before this episode, I didn't know what the hell was.
393
00:22:45.079 --> 00:22:50.400
No. Absolutely, those are about milkshakes. That's completely different. So
394
00:22:50.680 --> 00:23:01.279
this particular aar John says, you know that this particular
395
00:23:01.440 --> 00:23:04.920
late woman that he's been, he's got his little side piece.
396
00:23:05.640 --> 00:23:08.720
She opened the meeting in the manner I believe meetings
397
00:23:08.759 --> 00:23:15.279
should be opened. Good, there we go, We've got the standard.
398
00:23:15.319 --> 00:23:17.759
He comments that somebody does a great job leading, and
399
00:23:17.799 --> 00:23:22.000
then he says, at around the thirty seven forty mark,
400
00:23:22.920 --> 00:23:25.799
when this person was singing the phrase glory to God,
401
00:23:26.039 --> 00:23:29.440
I was being drawn up into the heaven leaves and
402
00:23:29.759 --> 00:23:35.599
was singing with the voice of heaven on the backside
403
00:23:35.720 --> 00:23:39.720
each time she sang glory to God. I've never experienced
404
00:23:39.799 --> 00:23:42.880
anything like the voice that rang through me before. It
405
00:23:42.920 --> 00:23:45.680
was like I was rising heavenward in a spiral and
406
00:23:45.720 --> 00:23:49.680
then everything stopped. Was anyone up front able to hear me?
407
00:23:49.759 --> 00:23:51.319
And then people are like, oh, yes, I heard you.
408
00:23:51.400 --> 00:23:54.480
I heard you. And then someone says I wasn't able
409
00:23:54.480 --> 00:23:57.279
to hear you. That's weird, but it sounds great, and
410
00:23:57.319 --> 00:24:01.920
then fantastic, you can barely hear me, he comments finally
411
00:24:02.400 --> 00:24:04.200
that you can barely hear me at the beginning, and
412
00:24:04.240 --> 00:24:07.119
then silence and then the deadness of worship when it stopped.
413
00:24:07.119 --> 00:24:10.160
It seems pretty clear from the video. And finally a
414
00:24:10.200 --> 00:24:12.759
friend of mine says to chime in and say, well,
415
00:24:12.759 --> 00:24:16.559
that was me. You know, I turned your sound down. Well,
416
00:24:16.640 --> 00:24:18.960
the reason this person had turned the sound down was
417
00:24:19.000 --> 00:24:20.119
because he sounded like.
418
00:24:20.599 --> 00:24:23.519
Rap, yeah, yeah, I didn't want to good.
419
00:24:24.279 --> 00:24:27.200
That was that kind of situation that we were under,
420
00:24:27.359 --> 00:24:30.759
was like I'm singing with the voice of God. How
421
00:24:31.000 --> 00:24:35.119
dare you not turn me up? To which we're all going, well,
422
00:24:35.160 --> 00:24:37.759
I'm so sorry. Apparently you were singing with the voice.
423
00:24:37.519 --> 00:24:41.680
Of God and you did this every week every week
424
00:24:41.960 --> 00:24:43.640
and how long did that last?
425
00:24:43.960 --> 00:24:48.720
For years? Oh my god, those Sundays were AARs. Monday
426
00:24:48.799 --> 00:24:51.839
nights he had a meeting of all of the young
427
00:24:51.880 --> 00:24:54.359
people he was training for leadership. Again, I was part
428
00:24:54.359 --> 00:24:57.319
of that that happened up there. But he wanted to
429
00:24:57.319 --> 00:25:00.039
eat dinner while he did that, so we had to
430
00:25:00.039 --> 00:25:03.839
provide food. So we're bringing up dinner that has to
431
00:25:03.839 --> 00:25:07.640
stay hot, and it has to be something he likes.
432
00:25:07.640 --> 00:25:10.000
But he's super picky and if it doesn't taste good,
433
00:25:10.039 --> 00:25:14.279
you're going to hear about it. So Sunday's absolute torture.
434
00:25:14.400 --> 00:25:17.319
Monday nights absolute torture because we're probably going to talk
435
00:25:17.319 --> 00:25:20.319
about Sunday and how all the things we screwed up.
436
00:25:21.119 --> 00:25:24.799
Tuesdays were a prayer meeting that happened where everybody's praying.
437
00:25:25.279 --> 00:25:28.400
Wednesdays we're a leadership team meeting with John again, where
438
00:25:28.440 --> 00:25:32.400
I was absolutely wracked with anxiety. Yeah, Thursdays I had
439
00:25:32.440 --> 00:25:33.960
a day off. I didn't have any.
440
00:25:34.759 --> 00:25:35.599
Man big day.
441
00:25:36.279 --> 00:25:40.240
But then it was again all weekend, you know, prepping
442
00:25:40.319 --> 00:25:43.039
for the meeting on Sunday, having to figure that out.
443
00:25:43.240 --> 00:25:45.200
How many people are coming on Sunday at this point.
444
00:25:47.119 --> 00:25:50.400
We never I that at our most we had like
445
00:25:50.440 --> 00:25:51.480
one hundred people.
446
00:25:51.880 --> 00:25:56.079
And then at your least as an adult, and we.
447
00:25:56.079 --> 00:25:58.599
Always had a lot of kids. There was always a
448
00:25:58.599 --> 00:26:02.799
lot of kids, but it was it was never that big.
449
00:26:03.119 --> 00:26:04.559
Yeah can be.
450
00:26:04.759 --> 00:26:06.359
There's no way to control it if you get.
451
00:26:06.559 --> 00:26:11.400
If you can't. So when twenty twenty hit, like I know,
452
00:26:11.960 --> 00:26:15.799
pandemic bad, Yeah, twenty twenty was so good.
453
00:26:16.240 --> 00:26:18.359
Yeah, you were in this at twenty twenty.
454
00:26:18.759 --> 00:26:22.920
Yes, And it was the first time we stopped having
455
00:26:22.920 --> 00:26:28.799
contact with John because we were shut down. We met
456
00:26:29.359 --> 00:26:31.599
as much as we could until the State of Vermont
457
00:26:31.640 --> 00:26:33.319
said no more meeting in person.
458
00:26:33.599 --> 00:26:36.640
Literally, the State of Vermont is responsible for you escaping
459
00:26:36.680 --> 00:26:41.720
a cult. Yeah, and listen to our podcast. And now
460
00:26:41.759 --> 00:26:42.720
I'm just curious.
461
00:26:42.960 --> 00:26:46.400
Yes, so this March twenty twenty, we have the shutdown.
462
00:26:46.480 --> 00:26:46.759
Okay.
463
00:26:46.799 --> 00:26:50.119
I started listening to Deck the Hallmark in October.
464
00:26:49.839 --> 00:26:52.680
Of twenty twenty of twenty two. Okay, okay, great, back
465
00:26:52.759 --> 00:26:55.480
to your not about me. I just was curious as
466
00:26:55.519 --> 00:26:56.480
to well.
467
00:26:56.319 --> 00:27:00.119
It plays a part in it actually? Oh okay, Yeah, y'all,
468
00:27:00.160 --> 00:27:01.000
y'all were amazing.
469
00:27:03.480 --> 00:27:04.960
I'll take it.
470
00:27:05.720 --> 00:27:10.559
Mark. We shut we start shutting down by May. We're
471
00:27:10.680 --> 00:27:15.079
doing really limited services like we're doing a little worship
472
00:27:15.440 --> 00:27:17.799
thing that's happening in our living room, that's being streamed,
473
00:27:17.839 --> 00:27:21.759
that's being recorded two days early. John's giving a message
474
00:27:22.079 --> 00:27:24.640
up in his place that's being recorded a day early.
475
00:27:24.839 --> 00:27:29.079
It's streaming on Sundays, and people for the first time
476
00:27:29.880 --> 00:27:34.200
are either not going to a Sunday service or spending
477
00:27:34.240 --> 00:27:37.759
time with their family, like literally, for the first time,
478
00:27:38.519 --> 00:27:39.519
they're not.
479
00:27:39.599 --> 00:27:40.440
Having to do.
480
00:27:42.319 --> 00:27:46.240
Yeah, And and it suddenly became like it became the
481
00:27:46.240 --> 00:27:48.880
first time we started doing things like you know, you
482
00:27:48.920 --> 00:27:52.839
had your little pod of people. And by this point,
483
00:27:52.880 --> 00:27:55.000
so to get back, my parents have not died yet.
484
00:27:55.359 --> 00:27:58.960
They're still around. They're still kicking. They in two thousand
485
00:27:59.000 --> 00:28:01.640
and two they had gone through a bankruptcy and they
486
00:28:01.759 --> 00:28:04.680
moved to the town where the church was. Hey, my
487
00:28:04.759 --> 00:28:07.079
dad was going to church by then. He'd gotten saved.
488
00:28:07.079 --> 00:28:10.880
When I was nineteen years old, he's in not going
489
00:28:10.920 --> 00:28:11.319
to help.
490
00:28:12.000 --> 00:28:13.759
Hey, yay.
491
00:28:14.400 --> 00:28:17.240
But over the years, like I just hadn't had a
492
00:28:17.279 --> 00:28:20.079
relationship really with him when I was a kid, obviously
493
00:28:20.160 --> 00:28:22.640
he wasn't around. It was it was good, it was
494
00:28:22.680 --> 00:28:27.319
like a positive. I got older. He ended up working
495
00:28:27.440 --> 00:28:32.720
and running a banquet center and needed some help and
496
00:28:32.759 --> 00:28:35.200
I was like, hey, I know waitressing, and I went
497
00:28:35.240 --> 00:28:37.799
to work with him. And though that started this like
498
00:28:38.039 --> 00:28:42.079
beautiful relationship for me of just getting to know my
499
00:28:42.160 --> 00:28:46.519
dad and just like in that wonderful way that you
500
00:28:46.519 --> 00:28:49.720
can just fall in love with your parents. And that
501
00:28:49.880 --> 00:28:52.880
happened for sure where I would walk in and he'd
502
00:28:52.880 --> 00:28:55.720
just be like, oh, honey, oh you're here, and that
503
00:28:55.920 --> 00:28:58.799
wonderful delight you get me that, you know, it just
504
00:28:59.200 --> 00:29:04.279
was fantastic. So twenty twenty, he had he'd been diagnosed
505
00:29:04.319 --> 00:29:09.480
with congestive heart failure fifteen years twenty years before, so
506
00:29:09.920 --> 00:29:13.599
he's very careful during COVID. And it was me, my
507
00:29:13.759 --> 00:29:17.119
unmarried brother, my mom, and my dad and we would
508
00:29:17.160 --> 00:29:20.920
go on drives and Sunday afternoons, we're just driving around,
509
00:29:21.119 --> 00:29:25.599
having a good time, enjoying each other's company. And about
510
00:29:25.640 --> 00:29:28.160
that time I start having aphib.
511
00:29:29.359 --> 00:29:33.359
Yeah, I wonder why crazy My heart would go.
512
00:29:33.880 --> 00:29:35.720
My heart rate would go up to like one ninety
513
00:29:35.799 --> 00:29:40.880
one seventy in aphib. I couldn't breathe a difficulty, went
514
00:29:40.920 --> 00:29:45.000
to the doctor a lot, and I think it was
515
00:29:45.160 --> 00:29:50.200
right about that time I remember distinctly praying God. It
516
00:29:50.240 --> 00:29:53.119
was after a really bad meeting where we had gotten
517
00:29:53.200 --> 00:29:57.599
reamed out and I finally went, God, I I cannot
518
00:29:58.039 --> 00:30:02.599
go to another bad meeting. I need you to do something.
519
00:30:03.839 --> 00:30:07.880
And from that point on, every time I would go
520
00:30:07.920 --> 00:30:10.920
into aphib and have to go to the hospital, it
521
00:30:11.000 --> 00:30:13.599
was I missed a really bad meeting.
522
00:30:15.119 --> 00:30:19.119
And until COVID stopped them from happening all together.
523
00:30:19.480 --> 00:30:22.839
Well, no COVID, they still happened very much, but it
524
00:30:22.880 --> 00:30:28.240
happened less, and so over the course of twenty twenty,
525
00:30:28.920 --> 00:30:32.319
we finally figured out that I'm having for no and
526
00:30:32.759 --> 00:30:36.759
no idea why I'm having electoral issues, and I ended
527
00:30:36.799 --> 00:30:43.240
up having an ablation in September. So I had started
528
00:30:43.279 --> 00:30:46.480
subbing at the public high school about six years prior,
529
00:30:47.920 --> 00:30:50.160
and which I loved. I loved it. I loved being
530
00:30:50.200 --> 00:30:52.480
able to work with the kids. I loved. I'd gone
531
00:30:52.519 --> 00:30:54.359
to a private high school. So I'm walking into this
532
00:30:54.400 --> 00:30:56.640
public high school and going, wait, what people just have
533
00:30:56.839 --> 00:30:59.319
just for colored hair? What? What are these kids doing
534
00:30:59.319 --> 00:31:04.640
with facial what are we doing? But I really liked
535
00:31:05.359 --> 00:31:08.000
I liked being with them, I liked getting to know them,
536
00:31:08.079 --> 00:31:11.720
I liked getting to love them. And you know, see
537
00:31:12.480 --> 00:31:18.240
kind words do wonders on heartsah, and but I hadn't
538
00:31:18.279 --> 00:31:20.640
been working long enough to be able to collect a
539
00:31:20.680 --> 00:31:23.880
lot of unemployment, so I had when everything shut down,
540
00:31:23.920 --> 00:31:27.759
I started collecting unemployment. I got the oblation in September.
541
00:31:27.759 --> 00:31:30.480
But then I was running out of money. Yeah, and
542
00:31:31.640 --> 00:31:34.920
my roommate worked at a company, a factory, and she said,
543
00:31:35.000 --> 00:31:38.440
we need help. Would you like to come work for us?
544
00:31:38.920 --> 00:31:44.599
Because she was the favored child basically, and she and
545
00:31:44.680 --> 00:31:47.960
I need to say this, and like the she knew
546
00:31:48.000 --> 00:31:51.599
she had that power, and she used it as best
547
00:31:51.680 --> 00:31:56.160
she could to help her friends, and so like I
548
00:31:56.240 --> 00:31:58.680
mean that, like, so she knew she could do stuff
549
00:31:58.680 --> 00:32:02.319
that the others would be looked frowned on. So she knew.
550
00:32:02.319 --> 00:32:03.960
Coming to me and saying, hey, would you like to
551
00:32:03.960 --> 00:32:07.440
work for my company? It gave the blessing that I
552
00:32:07.480 --> 00:32:11.880
could do that without coming under fire. So I did.
553
00:32:12.119 --> 00:32:14.519
I went to work for her company for part time,
554
00:32:14.640 --> 00:32:18.359
twenty hours a week. I was still to tutoring. And
555
00:32:18.799 --> 00:32:20.759
it was in October of that year that I stumbled
556
00:32:20.799 --> 00:32:26.400
upon your podcast with the wonderful jingle bell Bride.
557
00:32:26.599 --> 00:32:29.319
Oh yeah, oh yeah, that was a premiere episode I
558
00:32:29.319 --> 00:32:31.839
think from one year that's right with Alonso yep.
559
00:32:32.079 --> 00:32:33.279
Well no, it was with Chris.
560
00:32:33.440 --> 00:32:35.960
With Chris, yeah.
561
00:32:35.200 --> 00:32:41.319
It was great. But anyway, so I ended up becoming
562
00:32:41.359 --> 00:32:45.279
a member of the Facebook group and that was the
563
00:32:45.319 --> 00:32:48.000
first time I'd been a member of any community that
564
00:32:48.079 --> 00:32:52.759
was diverse. Wow, like outside of the Christian sphere, because
565
00:32:52.759 --> 00:32:55.440
we were isolated within the Christians.
566
00:32:55.519 --> 00:32:58.880
Yeah, you weren't even a part of a diverse Christian community,
567
00:32:58.960 --> 00:33:01.480
much less a diverse the first community.
568
00:33:02.680 --> 00:33:06.680
And you know, I'm I'm reading all these comments and
569
00:33:06.720 --> 00:33:08.839
getting to know all these people and going, well, they're
570
00:33:08.880 --> 00:33:11.400
different than me. I also really we all have the
571
00:33:11.440 --> 00:33:14.400
same sense of humor, Like this is really great, Like
572
00:33:14.519 --> 00:33:17.079
this is a safe place for me to just sit
573
00:33:17.119 --> 00:33:19.160
back and watch and not feel like I have to
574
00:33:19.160 --> 00:33:21.680
have an opinion about anything. I've always had to have
575
00:33:21.720 --> 00:33:23.359
an opinion about something, and we didn't.
576
00:33:23.480 --> 00:33:26.079
We didn't yell at you a single time until movie
577
00:33:26.160 --> 00:33:27.400
drafts last.
578
00:33:27.160 --> 00:33:35.400
Month, and by then I was yelling back. So so
579
00:33:35.480 --> 00:33:39.880
that kind of starts happening. But it's also the election, right,
580
00:33:41.240 --> 00:33:46.000
So this election, we we had started coming out of
581
00:33:46.079 --> 00:33:50.000
our isolation a bit. Are you familiar with Morning Star?
582
00:33:50.519 --> 00:33:52.079
Are you familiar with Joiner?
583
00:33:52.400 --> 00:33:52.720
Yes?
584
00:33:54.200 --> 00:33:59.359
The Joiner was really integral of our church stuff. I've
585
00:33:59.359 --> 00:34:03.319
always thought he was horrible writer, so I couldn't stand
586
00:34:03.359 --> 00:34:06.799
his books. Yeah, but we read like The Final Quest.
587
00:34:06.920 --> 00:34:09.559
We Final Question the trilogy, wasn't there, Yeah.
588
00:34:09.440 --> 00:34:12.800
Oh yeah, yeah, but we read The Final Quest multiple times.
589
00:34:14.079 --> 00:34:18.079
The closest that John got to admiring anybody was Rick Joyner.
590
00:34:19.360 --> 00:34:23.880
So he Rick went full on like right wing conspiracy
591
00:34:23.920 --> 00:34:28.639
theory with David Barton, and he went right and we
592
00:34:28.719 --> 00:34:29.679
followed him right into it.
593
00:34:29.800 --> 00:34:32.480
Yeah that's out in North Carolina, that's really close to us.
594
00:34:32.840 --> 00:34:36.639
Yeah, so we went right into it. We were watching
595
00:34:36.719 --> 00:34:40.079
all of the David Barton videos. We were dude, yes,
596
00:34:40.599 --> 00:34:43.760
and all of the prophets are saying Donald Trump is
597
00:34:43.800 --> 00:34:46.039
going to win this election. That this is I mean,
598
00:34:46.360 --> 00:34:50.239
and I'm in it. That summer of twenty twenty, we
599
00:34:50.320 --> 00:34:53.400
had a BLM parade come by our house and I
600
00:34:53.559 --> 00:34:56.920
was pissed, like, I can't believe we're doing this. Yeah,
601
00:34:56.960 --> 00:35:00.760
And that was the first time I think I went, wait,
602
00:35:00.800 --> 00:35:07.440
I don't like the person I'm turning into. Because it
603
00:35:07.480 --> 00:35:11.039
had been a couple of years like that, The unveiling
604
00:35:11.079 --> 00:35:14.199
of it for me had started over the course of
605
00:35:14.239 --> 00:35:17.360
several years with like books like Pete s. Gazerro wrote
606
00:35:17.719 --> 00:35:23.679
the emotionally mature Christian or something spiritually whatever, emotionally mature
607
00:35:23.719 --> 00:35:26.880
spirituality or something where I read the book and I went,
608
00:35:27.119 --> 00:35:33.159
Johnson infant. Yeah, it has no emotional maturity. I take
609
00:35:33.159 --> 00:35:36.760
the test. I'm a teenager. If he took, I'm answering
610
00:35:36.760 --> 00:35:41.000
from his perspective, and he's an infant. Sheila Gregwah had
611
00:35:41.000 --> 00:35:43.920
written The Bear Marriage and I was listening to The
612
00:35:43.960 --> 00:35:47.159
Bear Marriage podcast some and I'm going, wait, I grew
613
00:35:47.239 --> 00:35:49.119
up this way, this is you know. So it was
614
00:35:49.199 --> 00:35:51.320
just this kind of rethinking of basics.
615
00:35:52.000 --> 00:35:56.639
Yeah, chance to get out and hear other voices, right, yeah.
616
00:35:56.079 --> 00:36:00.880
And then recognizing I'm listening to Canvas owns Ben Shapiro
617
00:36:01.360 --> 00:36:02.559
like all of the worst.
618
00:36:02.320 --> 00:36:05.280
Of the worst, I'm sorry.
619
00:36:05.360 --> 00:36:09.159
And realizing that all you're doing is giving me permission
620
00:36:10.079 --> 00:36:14.159
to be a horrible human, Like if I read the Bible,
621
00:36:14.199 --> 00:36:17.559
and trust me, I've read the Bible, Jesus is super
622
00:36:17.679 --> 00:36:19.920
clear on don't be a bad person.
623
00:36:19.960 --> 00:36:24.199
That's right. Yeah. Yeah, the twenty twenty it just so happened.
624
00:36:24.199 --> 00:36:27.559
It catches you at quite a point in your life.
625
00:36:27.599 --> 00:36:31.079
But never was the quiet part set out loud more
626
00:36:31.119 --> 00:36:32.519
than in twenty twenty.
627
00:36:32.440 --> 00:36:36.079
Right, and that's where I started seeing it myself and
628
00:36:36.199 --> 00:36:39.960
go and recognizing, to a certain extent it had been
629
00:36:39.960 --> 00:36:42.960
primed in me from the church culture, because the church
630
00:36:43.039 --> 00:36:46.760
culture had been to appeal to your worst nature. So
631
00:36:47.159 --> 00:36:48.880
of course I was going to end up in this
632
00:36:49.079 --> 00:36:53.639
area where everybody's saying, well, yes, this horrible human is
633
00:36:53.719 --> 00:36:57.559
God's answer, because we have a horrible human who's God's answer.
634
00:36:59.360 --> 00:37:00.360
Don't they looks similar?
635
00:37:01.199 --> 00:37:03.119
Yeah? Self fulfilling prophecy.
636
00:37:03.639 --> 00:37:08.159
Yeah. So but anyway, you know twenty twenty hits, I
637
00:37:08.280 --> 00:37:11.440
voted for Trump, I praying for him to be elected.
638
00:37:11.559 --> 00:37:13.719
I he's not. That's weird.
639
00:37:13.840 --> 00:37:16.400
You started listening to us the month beforehand too, so man,
640
00:37:16.480 --> 00:37:17.480
good for you.
641
00:37:17.599 --> 00:37:21.639
Yeah. Well, and he's not elected and the profits are wrong.
642
00:37:22.320 --> 00:37:25.320
But we don't stop praying, we don't stop fasting, We're
643
00:37:25.360 --> 00:37:29.119
listening to Dutch sheets, we're supporting, supporting Sean Foyte, We're
644
00:37:29.159 --> 00:37:32.519
doing all this stuff like we were in it. Yeah,
645
00:37:32.559 --> 00:37:38.079
And when January sixth happened, I cried because I sat
646
00:37:38.079 --> 00:37:42.760
there and went, what the hell have I believe? Because
647
00:37:42.800 --> 00:37:47.960
this is wrong? What? Like, what guys? What just happened?
648
00:37:49.039 --> 00:37:53.719
And I couldn't I couldn't anymore.
649
00:37:53.800 --> 00:37:54.760
You couldn't none see it.
650
00:37:55.280 --> 00:37:57.480
I couldn't, and it was like I didn't know how
651
00:37:57.519 --> 00:38:01.679
to move forward. But like genuinely felt like everything in
652
00:38:01.679 --> 00:38:04.760
my life had fallen apart. So it was like my
653
00:38:04.880 --> 00:38:09.320
politics had always been tied to my Christianity. I was
654
00:38:09.400 --> 00:38:13.000
pro life because I was a Christian. Correct, I was
655
00:38:13.199 --> 00:38:16.440
against all homosexuality. It's a sin. You're going to help
656
00:38:16.559 --> 00:38:20.440
because I'm a Christian and there's no separation. So when
657
00:38:20.480 --> 00:38:23.320
all of a sudden this falls apart, I don't know
658
00:38:23.360 --> 00:38:24.360
what this is anymore.
659
00:38:25.519 --> 00:38:27.960
And for the first time in your life, maybe one
660
00:38:28.000 --> 00:38:29.519
plus one doesn't equal three.
661
00:38:29.800 --> 00:38:31.760
It doesn't make sense. I counted it, and I don't
662
00:38:31.800 --> 00:38:38.280
see it. In our church, the atmosphere was just building tension,
663
00:38:38.679 --> 00:38:42.400
and I remember talking to my friends, my parents, We're
664
00:38:42.480 --> 00:38:46.360
all on the edge. It was like, we're all at
665
00:38:46.360 --> 00:38:48.119
the point where we're going. I don't think I can
666
00:38:48.159 --> 00:38:50.719
take this much longer. I remember my parents saying, if
667
00:38:50.719 --> 00:38:53.239
we go to another meeting or he yells at us,
668
00:38:53.480 --> 00:38:58.000
we're signing off, because they were on zoom, like I
669
00:38:58.079 --> 00:39:01.239
can't do this anymore. Remember sitting there and going, God,
670
00:39:02.199 --> 00:39:05.559
I need you to stop aaars and Monday night meetings,
671
00:39:06.039 --> 00:39:09.039
and literally the next day, John goes, We're going to
672
00:39:09.079 --> 00:39:11.239
stop AARs and Monday night meetings. And I was like,
673
00:39:11.280 --> 00:39:13.119
I don't know what prayer means anymore.
674
00:39:13.840 --> 00:39:15.480
Apparently that word.
675
00:39:17.119 --> 00:39:21.079
I'm not arguing with that. And then in March of
676
00:39:21.159 --> 00:39:25.000
twenty twenty one, John's wife and my roommate came to
677
00:39:25.039 --> 00:39:29.719
me and said, what happened twenty years ago? Why did
678
00:39:29.719 --> 00:39:34.719
you leave? And I was completely cornered, and I.
679
00:39:34.519 --> 00:39:37.199
Told them awesome, and.
680
00:39:38.920 --> 00:39:42.039
I was shaking. I mean, it took me time to
681
00:39:42.039 --> 00:39:45.119
get through the whole story. I left there and I
682
00:39:45.159 --> 00:39:47.840
went to my parents and I told my parents, and
683
00:39:49.280 --> 00:40:00.079
I the way it crushed my father it was I
684
00:40:00.079 --> 00:40:04.639
I told him what had happened, and he just it
685
00:40:04.719 --> 00:40:08.519
was like he had personally been lied to. For his
686
00:40:08.760 --> 00:40:12.880
entire time. He had been best friends with, he'd considered
687
00:40:12.920 --> 00:40:16.159
him his best friend, and to find out John had
688
00:40:16.199 --> 00:40:19.280
done this to his daughter and not and just covered
689
00:40:19.280 --> 00:40:23.880
it up. And my mom told me stuff that had
690
00:40:23.920 --> 00:40:27.880
been said to her when she was pregnant for my brother,
691
00:40:28.559 --> 00:40:30.960
where John was like, you you know you're lusting after me.
692
00:40:31.079 --> 00:40:33.000
John is five foot two and looks like a frog.
693
00:40:33.519 --> 00:40:37.159
My father was a six foot tall, gorgeous Greek man.
694
00:40:37.199 --> 00:40:38.480
My mother's looking at John.
695
00:40:38.400 --> 00:40:43.639
Going okay, all right, come on, have you seen my husband?
696
00:40:43.880 --> 00:40:46.840
That is not a thing. All I can say is
697
00:40:46.880 --> 00:40:50.199
it felt like I'd finally pulled the pin on the grenade.
698
00:40:50.400 --> 00:40:54.519
But I watched the devastation happen, and I tried, and
699
00:40:54.559 --> 00:40:56.280
so I did what I could do, which was throw
700
00:40:56.320 --> 00:41:02.559
myself on top of it, which led to so much there.
701
00:41:02.599 --> 00:41:08.440
It was an absolute nightmare for the next month, and
702
00:41:08.559 --> 00:41:11.159
all I could think was every time was like everybody's
703
00:41:11.239 --> 00:41:16.239
trying to figure out which ways up. Because I told
704
00:41:16.280 --> 00:41:18.960
a few people, some of them went and told other
705
00:41:19.000 --> 00:41:27.079
people there was a massive like it was like an
706
00:41:27.079 --> 00:41:30.280
explosion that happened underground. So some people on up, you know,
707
00:41:30.320 --> 00:41:32.679
on the on the top, knew that there had been
708
00:41:32.679 --> 00:41:35.159
an explosion. For other people didn't know why this is
709
00:41:35.159 --> 00:41:38.360
there an earthquake? They didn't know what was happening. And
710
00:41:38.840 --> 00:41:44.400
I ended up meeting with the other elder and his
711
00:41:44.440 --> 00:41:47.400
wife and they're going, why did you tell anybody? I
712
00:41:47.440 --> 00:41:49.599
can understand you telling your parents, but why did you
713
00:41:49.639 --> 00:41:54.079
tell his wife that wasn't yours? To tell you that
714
00:41:54.199 --> 00:41:58.360
happened years ago? It's over? Why I thought this was done.
715
00:41:58.480 --> 00:42:01.039
I don't know why this is coming up again, and
716
00:42:01.079 --> 00:42:03.000
I'm sitting there like are you are? We? Are we
717
00:42:03.039 --> 00:42:06.000
still here? Like you still don't get it? So I
718
00:42:06.039 --> 00:42:09.199
was sent to go talk to John and apologized to him.
719
00:42:09.280 --> 00:42:11.039
And you murdered him in cold blood.
720
00:42:11.400 --> 00:42:13.400
I wish I could say that, No, I did.
721
00:42:14.199 --> 00:42:16.760
If I'm reading a novel, that's the ending that I'm
722
00:42:16.800 --> 00:42:18.119
looking for, right.
723
00:42:18.599 --> 00:42:21.719
I went and I apologized and I said, I'm so sorry.
724
00:42:21.960 --> 00:42:26.519
God, damn it, I'm really sorry about this. No, no, no,
725
00:42:26.800 --> 00:42:34.400
stop apologizing. This is your story.
726
00:42:36.800 --> 00:42:39.559
Well, so I did. I went and apologized, and the
727
00:42:39.760 --> 00:42:41.800
entire time I'm thinking, why am I here doing this?
728
00:42:41.920 --> 00:42:45.440
But okay, I want to not. I wanted to just
729
00:42:45.480 --> 00:42:48.880
go away. Yes, like this is awful and awful, and
730
00:42:48.920 --> 00:42:51.559
I did this. I did this, I did this right,
731
00:42:52.960 --> 00:42:58.440
and so we got he He texted the whole household.
732
00:42:58.679 --> 00:43:03.800
By that point we had there were one two I
733
00:43:03.880 --> 00:43:06.800
think there were four or five young younger women like
734
00:43:06.840 --> 00:43:10.880
me and others living there, plus his wife. His wife
735
00:43:11.000 --> 00:43:17.679
is just struggling over what to do, and he's demanding
736
00:43:17.679 --> 00:43:20.599
that she move up with him and his side piece
737
00:43:21.480 --> 00:43:25.400
at the land because that's obviously what the problem is
738
00:43:25.400 --> 00:43:29.199
is that, And she's going, I can't do that, and
739
00:43:29.280 --> 00:43:31.559
I'm trying to figure out what the right answer is.
740
00:43:31.599 --> 00:43:34.480
Because I can't figure that out. The other elder isn't
741
00:43:34.559 --> 00:43:38.599
getting involved at all. One thing leads to another, and
742
00:43:39.480 --> 00:43:43.079
we end up it was me and three other roommates
743
00:43:43.119 --> 00:43:49.679
stayed at the house. Well, it turns out, fun fact,
744
00:43:49.719 --> 00:43:52.360
it never was his house. He was renting it and
745
00:43:52.400 --> 00:43:54.679
he wasn't actually the one paying the rent. The church was.
746
00:43:55.880 --> 00:43:59.840
So we went, oh, hell no, you know, price of
747
00:44:00.280 --> 00:44:04.199
being what it is in this this town, we'll take
748
00:44:04.239 --> 00:44:07.880
the rent over. So I went to the rent the
749
00:44:07.960 --> 00:44:12.280
landlord and signed the least in my name. We paid
750
00:44:12.280 --> 00:44:14.679
for it from there on out, because it was like, wait,
751
00:44:14.679 --> 00:44:16.760
you've been holding this over our heads and.
752
00:44:18.280 --> 00:44:18.679
You didn't.
753
00:44:18.920 --> 00:44:20.960
You don't even you don't even pay for it. The
754
00:44:21.039 --> 00:44:23.079
church does, like you don't even have that authority.
755
00:44:23.159 --> 00:44:25.519
This is so you're just taken back. You're taking back
756
00:44:25.559 --> 00:44:26.480
your power and your story.
757
00:44:26.599 --> 00:44:30.119
We started doing that, and what ended up happening. You know,
758
00:44:30.199 --> 00:44:34.480
his wife, God bless her, got out and ended up
759
00:44:34.480 --> 00:44:39.119
filing a separation, ended up you know, her story is
760
00:44:39.159 --> 00:44:42.880
her story, but she got out and his daughter that
761
00:44:42.920 --> 00:44:45.199
was still living there, you know, had fallen in love
762
00:44:45.239 --> 00:44:48.639
with a wonderful man and got married like two months
763
00:44:48.719 --> 00:44:53.440
later because she was done and she got out, so
764
00:44:53.719 --> 00:44:57.880
well done her. And so I'm there with at that
765
00:44:57.960 --> 00:45:00.639
point it was four other roommates and and we all
766
00:45:00.679 --> 00:45:02.519
are looking at each other, going, how do we do this?
767
00:45:03.480 --> 00:45:06.400
Because the way we've been doing it has sucked? Right
768
00:45:07.039 --> 00:45:09.360
there's you know, the way we've been talking to each
769
00:45:09.400 --> 00:45:14.639
other has been awful. And I will say, I mean,
770
00:45:14.800 --> 00:45:18.159
so many people left. My parents left. My dad never
771
00:45:18.199 --> 00:45:21.000
came back to church, He never saw John again, he
772
00:45:21.039 --> 00:45:24.440
never saw anybody. And that was probably the hardest part
773
00:45:24.440 --> 00:45:29.079
for me. Was not that they left, God totally, no,
774
00:45:29.599 --> 00:45:34.480
not that they left, but that nobody knew why they left.
775
00:45:34.679 --> 00:45:39.119
So people stopped talking to them and treated them like
776
00:45:39.239 --> 00:45:42.280
they were the pariah. And they didn't know. They didn't
777
00:45:42.320 --> 00:45:44.280
know why they'd left, and I didn't feel like I
778
00:45:44.280 --> 00:45:46.800
could tell them, So the only thing I could do
779
00:45:46.920 --> 00:45:50.760
was say, you know, they had very good reasons for leaving.
780
00:45:50.840 --> 00:45:55.440
They trust me, No, they knew why, you know, why
781
00:45:55.480 --> 00:46:00.440
they left. And for myself, it felt like I stayed.
782
00:46:00.760 --> 00:46:03.800
I did not stay because of John, but I did
783
00:46:03.840 --> 00:46:08.239
stay because I felt like watching these kids, these younger
784
00:46:08.280 --> 00:46:12.159
folks that I had taught, watching my nieces and nephews
785
00:46:12.840 --> 00:46:16.559
deal with all of this pain, I just didn't feel
786
00:46:16.599 --> 00:46:19.559
like I could leave them because it would cause more pain,
787
00:46:20.360 --> 00:46:23.480
and I didn't want to do that. So I stayed,
788
00:46:23.639 --> 00:46:26.840
and I stayed in contact with my parents. But it
789
00:46:26.880 --> 00:46:29.519
wasn't the same, you know, wasn't the same as it
790
00:46:29.559 --> 00:46:33.000
had been. And we both tried, like we you know,
791
00:46:33.039 --> 00:46:37.440
we put the effort in my roommate that she and
792
00:46:37.519 --> 00:46:39.920
my brother that had been single, had been in love
793
00:46:39.960 --> 00:46:42.800
with each other for years, and because of the culture
794
00:46:42.840 --> 00:46:47.360
of the church, it was so John was so horrible
795
00:46:47.559 --> 00:46:51.519
to couples who wanted to get married, like he demoralized
796
00:46:51.559 --> 00:46:56.320
the man. He just destroyed the relationship until the only
797
00:46:56.360 --> 00:46:59.239
way they could get married was with his permission. It
798
00:46:59.280 --> 00:47:02.440
was just horror. And so they had never pursued, really
799
00:47:02.480 --> 00:47:04.679
seriously pursued each other, but they were They've been in
800
00:47:04.679 --> 00:47:06.800
love for years, and they did. They got married, and
801
00:47:06.840 --> 00:47:12.440
they're happy and wonderful and thank God. But they were
802
00:47:12.480 --> 00:47:16.400
gone and they had left. My parents had left, and
803
00:47:16.639 --> 00:47:20.199
I stayed, and I've got roommates who we are trying
804
00:47:20.239 --> 00:47:23.840
to navigate this new normal, and we I gotta say
805
00:47:23.840 --> 00:47:27.559
we kind of crushed it. We did pretty good because
806
00:47:27.599 --> 00:47:29.599
we are sitting there going, wait, we've all been way
807
00:47:29.599 --> 00:47:32.639
too involved in each other's lives. Yeah, there's been a
808
00:47:33.519 --> 00:47:35.519
did you get counsel for that? Are you sure that's
809
00:47:35.559 --> 00:47:37.760
what you should do? Yeah, And now we're backing off
810
00:47:37.800 --> 00:47:39.360
each other going good for you.
811
00:47:39.599 --> 00:47:41.920
Yeah, good that.
812
00:47:42.159 --> 00:47:44.800
Happy for you, learning how to talk to one another
813
00:47:45.199 --> 00:47:48.559
in a way that was kind and not judgmental, having
814
00:47:49.280 --> 00:47:53.760
you know, conversations about the past twenty years, and letting
815
00:47:53.760 --> 00:47:56.880
each other have space to like, if you're not in
816
00:47:56.920 --> 00:47:59.519
the same space, I am with that, totally fine. You're
817
00:47:59.559 --> 00:48:01.599
not able to talk about that right now. Give you
818
00:48:01.639 --> 00:48:03.960
space to do that and not force you to listen
819
00:48:04.000 --> 00:48:07.800
to a conversation you're having PTSD over. Yeah.
820
00:48:08.000 --> 00:48:09.840
Unpacked your trauma in a healthy way.
821
00:48:10.360 --> 00:48:14.039
Yeah, and that was I'm really grateful that I stayed
822
00:48:14.039 --> 00:48:18.039
for that because it did help enormously. But I was
823
00:48:18.079 --> 00:48:21.480
deconstructing while I was still going to church to a
824
00:48:21.519 --> 00:48:22.360
large degree.
825
00:48:22.639 --> 00:48:25.440
Yeah, I think that anytime that you've got the trauma
826
00:48:25.480 --> 00:48:29.559
that you've experienced, as soon as that wool gets or
827
00:48:29.639 --> 00:48:32.239
that wool gets pulled off of your eyes. You can
828
00:48:32.280 --> 00:48:35.679
still go through the motions, but you're already processing. Yeah,
829
00:48:35.719 --> 00:48:37.119
and so when do you leave entirely?
830
00:48:38.039 --> 00:48:42.159
So like my dad. So, my dad got sick, he
831
00:48:42.199 --> 00:48:44.920
was he'd already had congestive heart failure. I'm pretty sure
832
00:48:44.960 --> 00:48:46.960
that that was the final straw for him in a
833
00:48:46.960 --> 00:48:50.719
lot of ways. He started to feel poorly in October
834
00:48:51.559 --> 00:48:57.360
of twenty twenty one. Okay, and I looked at my
835
00:48:57.400 --> 00:49:00.039
mom and I said, look, I know my brother and
836
00:49:00.079 --> 00:49:03.199
his new wife, my former roommate, we haven't had contact.
837
00:49:04.400 --> 00:49:07.519
I need you to know that there's like on my side,
838
00:49:07.599 --> 00:49:10.360
I genuinely believe we were all doing our best. Like
839
00:49:10.519 --> 00:49:13.159
nothing they did, they did like, but I don't know
840
00:49:13.199 --> 00:49:15.320
if I can contact them. I don't know if they
841
00:49:15.360 --> 00:49:17.519
want to hear from me. Yeah, that I would really
842
00:49:17.599 --> 00:49:19.239
like not the first time I see them to be
843
00:49:19.280 --> 00:49:22.719
in a hospital, Like, can we have a connection where
844
00:49:23.360 --> 00:49:26.199
you know, something bad happens. So my brother, you know,
845
00:49:26.320 --> 00:49:30.280
contacted me and we talked and a little bit, not
846
00:49:30.400 --> 00:49:33.039
about everything, but a little bit, and then just kept
847
00:49:33.039 --> 00:49:37.000
the connection going. And my dad finally was told I
848
00:49:37.039 --> 00:49:39.920
think in December of that year of twenty twenty one,
849
00:49:40.280 --> 00:49:43.719
that he needed a heart transplant. He went down to
850
00:49:44.880 --> 00:49:48.199
Boston Medical or a bunch of tests, stayed there for
851
00:49:48.239 --> 00:49:52.039
two weeks, which was awful because my mom didn't go
852
00:49:52.119 --> 00:49:54.519
with him, so she wanted she needed a ride. I
853
00:49:54.599 --> 00:49:56.639
was supposed to take her, but everybody in my house
854
00:49:56.719 --> 00:50:00.079
ended up with COVID and it was like, oh so,
855
00:50:00.280 --> 00:50:02.440
But in the process of that, he he just wasn't.
856
00:50:02.519 --> 00:50:04.960
He was like, I can't, I can't go through this anymore.
857
00:50:05.360 --> 00:50:09.320
So he came home and he died March eighth, twenty
858
00:50:09.360 --> 00:50:09.840
twenty two.
859
00:50:10.119 --> 00:50:11.840
Okay, I'm sorry, and.
860
00:50:12.719 --> 00:50:15.719
You know I was able to see him and we talked.
861
00:50:16.000 --> 00:50:18.559
You know, it was good and reconcile. Yeah, you had
862
00:50:18.599 --> 00:50:20.960
reconciled your relationship with him and you were your friends.
863
00:50:21.199 --> 00:50:23.280
It was still you know, that's still pain I carry,
864
00:50:23.559 --> 00:50:27.000
of course last year, you know. But so he died
865
00:50:27.039 --> 00:50:30.639
in twenty twenty two, and I think it might have
866
00:50:30.760 --> 00:50:36.960
been that summer that I realized I'd been sexually assaulted. Yeah, like,
867
00:50:37.239 --> 00:50:39.039
it took that long for me. And it was something
868
00:50:39.119 --> 00:50:41.679
Diane Langberg had said because I listened, so I'm you know,
869
00:50:41.719 --> 00:50:44.599
I started listening to the Roys Report. I started listening
870
00:50:44.599 --> 00:50:47.440
to all of these podcasts that I'm like, y'all, this
871
00:50:47.599 --> 00:50:48.760
is a problem.
872
00:50:48.400 --> 00:50:49.960
Across the board, it is.
873
00:50:50.280 --> 00:50:54.480
Yeah, and then as far as the deck, the Hallmark crew,
874
00:50:55.840 --> 00:51:01.760
like Justin Kirkland wrote this beautiful peace for Esquire about
875
00:51:01.760 --> 00:51:03.199
his own testimony.
876
00:51:02.840 --> 00:51:05.519
One of my favorite. Yeah, it is phenomenal.
877
00:51:05.639 --> 00:51:09.880
I cried. Yeah, I read that and I cried, And
878
00:51:10.280 --> 00:51:13.280
without question, that was what was the final straw. And
879
00:51:13.360 --> 00:51:17.519
the homosexuality is the sin crab. Yeah, because I sat
880
00:51:17.519 --> 00:51:22.400
there looking at this beautiful human who if I if
881
00:51:22.440 --> 00:51:26.639
you're telling me, I like, I just was like, nope,
882
00:51:27.599 --> 00:51:29.840
you've changed. You've not just changed my mind, like my
883
00:51:29.960 --> 00:51:33.880
heart is completely different on and like it was just
884
00:51:33.960 --> 00:51:37.679
this beautiful I just nothing but respect.
885
00:51:37.840 --> 00:51:39.280
You're going to try to remember to put that in
886
00:51:39.320 --> 00:51:41.199
that link in the show notes. If you're listening, would
887
00:51:41.199 --> 00:51:43.360
like to check out that article. It's Justin Kirklan, the
888
00:51:43.400 --> 00:51:45.480
first guest on this podcast. You can listen to this episode.
889
00:51:45.480 --> 00:51:49.679
But that article is absolutely beautifully written and well done.
890
00:51:50.159 --> 00:51:53.760
Yeah, and I just I wept, and you know, all
891
00:51:53.760 --> 00:51:55.840
of a sudden, it's like all of these things I've
892
00:51:55.840 --> 00:52:00.880
been raised one way, you know, just was bullshit and
893
00:52:01.639 --> 00:52:05.079
in so many ways, and so like we had we
894
00:52:05.119 --> 00:52:08.199
had been we had had the Bible drilled into us.
895
00:52:08.280 --> 00:52:10.079
We I've read the Bible cover to cover, you know,
896
00:52:10.159 --> 00:52:12.679
three times, and you know, read the Book of John
897
00:52:12.840 --> 00:52:17.239
fifteen times in one week. And I'm going looking at it, going,
898
00:52:17.519 --> 00:52:24.559
nowhere is Jesus espousing all this stuff you say, thanking
899
00:52:24.639 --> 00:52:26.280
John would sit there and say, look at the fruit
900
00:52:26.320 --> 00:52:27.920
of my life and say it as though it was
901
00:52:27.960 --> 00:52:30.199
all the accomplishments. And I'm going, Jesus was really clear
902
00:52:30.239 --> 00:52:33.039
on fruit, like Paul says, fruit, and it's gentleness and
903
00:52:33.159 --> 00:52:35.239
humility and love and kindness.
904
00:52:34.800 --> 00:52:37.039
And these patients, that's all the good stuff.
905
00:52:37.400 --> 00:52:38.480
You're not showing any of them.
906
00:52:39.119 --> 00:52:42.719
But also, like I think the like you know, we tried.
907
00:52:42.880 --> 00:52:44.840
All we can do is human beings is fine beauty
908
00:52:44.840 --> 00:52:47.880
in the ashes, And yeah, I want to fix all
909
00:52:47.880 --> 00:52:49.840
of this for you, and I can't, and I shouldn't
910
00:52:50.199 --> 00:52:54.840
because it's your story and your journey. But you've, you know,
911
00:52:55.199 --> 00:52:57.679
in the last I thought you had been out of
912
00:52:57.719 --> 00:53:00.320
this longer, and literally in the last three years i've
913
00:53:00.320 --> 00:53:04.400
known you, You've gone back to school, you've gotten gotten married,
914
00:53:05.559 --> 00:53:09.440
You're you're really grabbing life by the horns, like you're
915
00:53:09.480 --> 00:53:15.719
really finding a way to acknowledge, speak in existence your trauma,
916
00:53:15.880 --> 00:53:21.119
and and understand that that doesn't control you anymore. And
917
00:53:21.159 --> 00:53:24.719
that's I wish that would have been you from the beginning.
918
00:53:25.119 --> 00:53:28.840
But I'm so thrilled that it's you now, you know.
919
00:53:29.039 --> 00:53:31.920
Yeah, I mean I had been subbing one day. That's
920
00:53:31.920 --> 00:53:33.800
what had happened is I subbed one day in an
921
00:53:33.840 --> 00:53:36.000
English class and it was like this little voice inside
922
00:53:36.039 --> 00:53:38.800
me went, you can do this. You could go back
923
00:53:38.840 --> 00:53:39.599
to school and do this.
924
00:53:40.079 --> 00:53:40.360
You can't.
925
00:53:40.559 --> 00:53:42.840
I brought that to the leadership and they said, no,
926
00:53:43.800 --> 00:53:45.960
you've you're anointed by God. You know what's funny, as
927
00:53:46.000 --> 00:53:49.280
schools don't hire people who are anointed by God. That's
928
00:53:49.360 --> 00:53:54.519
not as certificate you can get. I was told I
929
00:53:54.719 --> 00:53:58.079
was already. I was always told I was humanistic, and
930
00:53:58.159 --> 00:54:01.639
I think that was just code for nice, of course,
931
00:54:02.880 --> 00:54:06.280
but trying to see the best in people, which I
932
00:54:06.320 --> 00:54:07.960
think any good teacher should be.
933
00:54:08.199 --> 00:54:09.079
Yes, a good.
934
00:54:08.920 --> 00:54:11.079
Teacher should try to see the best in people.
935
00:54:11.159 --> 00:54:12.480
Yeah, yeah, it's a teacher.
936
00:54:13.119 --> 00:54:14.199
That's the point.
937
00:54:14.440 --> 00:54:18.440
A good teacher isn't there to leave you with rudimentary knowledge,
938
00:54:18.480 --> 00:54:20.920
nor is it there are they there to fix problems.
939
00:54:20.960 --> 00:54:23.760
It's to see where someone is and meet them there
940
00:54:24.559 --> 00:54:29.360
and hopefully move them. That's it. That's it. If I
941
00:54:29.400 --> 00:54:31.960
could go back and speak to teachers, which is something
942
00:54:32.039 --> 00:54:33.559
I want to do, but no one would hire me
943
00:54:33.599 --> 00:54:36.199
to do it because I literally left education. But that
944
00:54:36.239 --> 00:54:39.360
would be what I would say, is like, sometimes that
945
00:54:39.519 --> 00:54:42.920
happens through the books and the numbers and the history.
946
00:54:43.199 --> 00:54:47.199
Sometimes it happens through relational rigor and accountability, and sometimes
947
00:54:47.280 --> 00:54:51.719
it happens with just presence just being there. But I
948
00:54:51.760 --> 00:54:56.519
can't imagine anyone being able to have a better, more understanding,
949
00:54:56.519 --> 00:55:00.719
compassionate teacher than Sarah because of your experience, Like if
950
00:55:00.760 --> 00:55:02.199
anybody needs to be a teacher.
951
00:55:01.920 --> 00:55:05.559
At you, yes, well, and that's so I wanted to
952
00:55:05.599 --> 00:55:08.559
go back. I was told it was you know too much,
953
00:55:08.559 --> 00:55:12.559
I shouldn't do it. In twenty twenty one, my parents,
954
00:55:12.639 --> 00:55:14.719
my dad's still alive, I told them I want to
955
00:55:14.760 --> 00:55:18.239
go do this, and my dad was like, absolutely, that's right,
956
00:55:18.760 --> 00:55:21.480
you should do that for sure. And I went and
957
00:55:21.519 --> 00:55:24.719
talked to the other elder and he said no or no.
958
00:55:24.760 --> 00:55:27.559
He didn't say no. What he said was you'd really
959
00:55:27.639 --> 00:55:30.079
have to hear from God, which is kind of a
960
00:55:30.159 --> 00:55:34.320
veiled no. And I just I was pretty shook. Up
961
00:55:34.320 --> 00:55:37.719
by that, but I decided, with my dad's health at
962
00:55:37.719 --> 00:55:41.239
any rate, I could probably wait. Yeah, And so I did.
963
00:55:42.639 --> 00:55:45.480
I waited. My dad died in March of twenty twenty two,
964
00:55:45.599 --> 00:55:48.519
and that summer I started the process to go to
965
00:55:48.559 --> 00:55:53.000
our community college in Vermont, and I took the Assessment
966
00:55:53.000 --> 00:55:55.280
of prior Learning, which is a course that goes through
967
00:55:55.280 --> 00:55:59.039
your entire life. You pull credit, you pull out learning,
968
00:55:59.239 --> 00:56:02.760
you form them into like courses. You ask experts in
969
00:56:02.800 --> 00:56:06.280
their field if they could write a letter saying, yes,
970
00:56:06.599 --> 00:56:10.239
you have accomplished credit college level credit. Yes, So I
971
00:56:10.239 --> 00:56:10.639
did that.
972
00:56:10.840 --> 00:56:13.119
How many questions about the Book of John World There?
973
00:56:14.119 --> 00:56:19.000
No, none, not It's weird. It's so weird, it's so crazy.
974
00:56:20.440 --> 00:56:23.719
I got eleven courses of history through that. I got
975
00:56:23.880 --> 00:56:29.960
forty eight credits total. And I started the journey. So
976
00:56:30.960 --> 00:56:33.920
I am now in my senior year of college. I'm
977
00:56:33.960 --> 00:56:38.880
doing my student teaching right now with my practicums part
978
00:56:38.920 --> 00:56:41.880
two with stuff. Then I'll do my student my full
979
00:56:41.920 --> 00:56:43.000
student teaching in the spring.
980
00:56:43.159 --> 00:56:43.800
That's awesome.
981
00:56:45.360 --> 00:56:49.880
And over the course of twenty twenty two, like I can't,
982
00:56:50.199 --> 00:56:56.239
the disillusionment happening in the church was amazing. It was amazing,
983
00:56:56.679 --> 00:56:59.840
like all of the meetings were literally like there was
984
00:56:59.840 --> 00:57:03.119
an older group that was my parents' age, and they
985
00:57:03.119 --> 00:57:05.800
would have meetings where they just basically sat around and
986
00:57:05.800 --> 00:57:08.599
put this this is shitty and I hate it. And
987
00:57:09.039 --> 00:57:12.119
I was like it was amazing. There were young girls
988
00:57:12.199 --> 00:57:17.239
and you know, and then over the so everybody's trying
989
00:57:17.280 --> 00:57:20.199
to figure out what's happened to John's wife, like she
990
00:57:20.320 --> 00:57:25.719
literally dropped off the map. Nobody knows why John divorced
991
00:57:25.760 --> 00:57:31.199
her in twenty twenty two. Okay, but he doesn't tell anybody.
992
00:57:30.760 --> 00:57:32.440
That NAHN, that'd be a big deal.
993
00:57:32.559 --> 00:57:36.920
So but he decides he's going to marry this girl
994
00:57:37.320 --> 00:57:40.199
that is now she's forty something years old. She's the
995
00:57:40.280 --> 00:57:42.679
longer age girl, but she's been under his influence for
996
00:57:42.760 --> 00:57:45.639
well over twenty years. Yeah, he's going to marry her.
997
00:57:46.079 --> 00:57:47.920
And the other elder finally looks at him and says,
998
00:57:47.960 --> 00:57:50.440
and you fucking tell people, Yeah, I'm not doing it
999
00:57:50.480 --> 00:57:52.800
for you. You go around and you tell everybody you're
1000
00:57:52.800 --> 00:57:56.280
doing this right like they've been. They they started standing
1001
00:57:56.360 --> 00:57:58.760
up to him. So he starts with the older group
1002
00:57:58.880 --> 00:58:01.280
and I can't tell you the joy in my heart
1003
00:58:01.480 --> 00:58:04.960
when they let him have it with both barrels of
1004
00:58:05.280 --> 00:58:09.239
like you have treated us like crap forty years and
1005
00:58:09.320 --> 00:58:13.440
you've been doing what you know, they just it was
1006
00:58:13.559 --> 00:58:14.599
a three hour meeting.
1007
00:58:14.719 --> 00:58:16.360
I mean he should be in jail. I don't want
1008
00:58:16.360 --> 00:58:18.480
to be clear. And if you're up there and have
1009
00:58:18.599 --> 00:58:20.280
pieced any of this together and like to call the
1010
00:58:20.320 --> 00:58:22.599
cops anybody listening, I'd love for you too. I don't
1011
00:58:22.599 --> 00:58:24.880
really care what the statute of limitations are, but this
1012
00:58:24.960 --> 00:58:26.679
is nice too. This is nice too.
1013
00:58:27.079 --> 00:58:32.039
That yes, so people stopped paying tithes. Yeah, people stopped
1014
00:58:32.039 --> 00:58:35.000
pay and like the leadership at the time because so
1015
00:58:35.079 --> 00:58:37.639
John was no longer as much involved, and they were
1016
00:58:37.639 --> 00:58:39.400
looking at people and going, if you don't want to pay,
1017
00:58:39.440 --> 00:58:42.400
don't pay. Yeah, you don't want to be like literally
1018
00:58:43.000 --> 00:58:47.280
use your pocketbook. And so they stopped. And it finally
1019
00:58:47.360 --> 00:58:49.960
got to the point where the church couldn't function because
1020
00:58:49.960 --> 00:58:52.360
of course they didn't have the money to pay for
1021
00:58:52.400 --> 00:58:56.119
the farm on that property because the church had been
1022
00:58:56.119 --> 00:58:59.639
paying for it. And they finally got the new leadership
1023
00:58:59.639 --> 00:59:02.519
that had would kind of started moving in, got ahold
1024
00:59:02.559 --> 00:59:07.119
of the books and went, wait a second, John's literally
1025
00:59:07.199 --> 00:59:10.320
been the one calling all the shots. Financially, that's illegal.
1026
00:59:11.440 --> 00:59:13.559
It turns out this has all been bad.
1027
00:59:13.880 --> 00:59:16.920
Yeah and yeah, it turns out and turns.
1028
00:59:16.679 --> 00:59:21.239
Out, and that I think the end of January we
1029
00:59:21.360 --> 00:59:27.119
probably had our first like meeting where every the chairs
1030
00:59:27.119 --> 00:59:30.559
were all in a circle, there was one or two
1031
00:59:30.599 --> 00:59:35.239
microphones and they were passed around and people finally, for
1032
00:59:35.280 --> 00:59:39.960
the first time in forty some odd years, said things
1033
00:59:40.000 --> 00:59:42.280
and what they were feeling, what they were angry about,
1034
00:59:42.280 --> 00:59:46.440
what they had questions about. John was not there, but
1035
00:59:46.559 --> 00:59:49.880
it was. We had three of those. They lasted hours
1036
00:59:50.239 --> 00:59:54.920
and people just finally said things, and the final conclusion
1037
00:59:55.119 --> 01:00:00.960
was everybody resigned and the church folded good. And it
1038
01:00:01.000 --> 01:00:05.280
was hard on the younger kids, the younger folks, because
1039
01:00:06.079 --> 01:00:09.519
they had invested so much time and energy up to
1040
01:00:09.559 --> 01:00:12.920
the farm that they had they were the ones that
1041
01:00:13.079 --> 01:00:15.360
they had been told their whole lives this is for
1042
01:00:15.400 --> 01:00:19.199
you day, and so for some of them it really
1043
01:00:19.280 --> 01:00:24.159
was heartbreaking. I'm sure myself I was deeply relieved because
1044
01:00:24.159 --> 01:00:25.119
I was like this, of course.
1045
01:00:25.880 --> 01:00:28.440
Yeah, well it is. But you know, when the emperor
1046
01:00:28.480 --> 01:00:31.599
has no clothes, you know, the the more invested you
1047
01:00:31.599 --> 01:00:33.039
are in the younger you are, you're probably going to
1048
01:00:33.079 --> 01:00:34.920
try to be like, no, there's clothes we promise you
1049
01:00:34.920 --> 01:00:37.239
know what I mean, Like, you don't have the experience
1050
01:00:37.320 --> 01:00:38.599
to know, well, you.
1051
01:00:38.559 --> 01:00:41.760
Know what I mean, right, And they didn't, like they
1052
01:00:41.760 --> 01:00:44.559
were terrified of John. They couldn't stand John, but they
1053
01:00:44.599 --> 01:00:47.960
were they were hopeful because he's old, he's in his
1054
01:00:48.320 --> 01:00:52.360
seventy truly, he'll die. But they were hopeful that somehow
1055
01:00:52.760 --> 01:00:54.119
something you know.
1056
01:00:56.039 --> 01:00:59.800
Yeah, So the church disbanded.
1057
01:00:59.679 --> 01:01:04.440
Just stopped in February of twenty two. And that was
1058
01:01:04.480 --> 01:01:08.400
the same month that my husband now husband, got hired
1059
01:01:08.719 --> 01:01:11.000
at the company where I worked. Oh wow, in this
1060
01:01:11.239 --> 01:01:14.679
tiny little department of three people, and he walks in
1061
01:01:15.039 --> 01:01:16.800
and I was like, oh, you're very handsome.
1062
01:01:18.320 --> 01:01:22.000
That's nice, which is it's allowed for you to be
1063
01:01:22.000 --> 01:01:23.719
attracted to your husband. I don't know if you know this.
1064
01:01:24.239 --> 01:01:25.119
I know it's crazy.
1065
01:01:25.280 --> 01:01:26.199
Well is crass?
1066
01:01:26.320 --> 01:01:28.800
Spoiler Larry Christensen missed the vote on.
1067
01:01:28.760 --> 01:01:36.000
That one, didn't He. Yeah, he just put up a
1068
01:01:36.039 --> 01:01:37.480
shirt and was like, look at me. So a dragged.
1069
01:01:40.039 --> 01:01:44.880
So yeah. I remember coming home from work and telling
1070
01:01:44.920 --> 01:01:48.039
my roommates, so, there's this guy. I really like him. Yeah,
1071
01:01:48.079 --> 01:01:52.079
And you know it was like I'd been thinking about
1072
01:01:52.079 --> 01:01:55.760
my sexual ethic and how I don't see I'm Sorry,
1073
01:01:55.800 --> 01:01:58.320
I read the Bible a lot. I don't see where
1074
01:01:58.320 --> 01:02:02.320
God's like, don't have sex before marriage where he says,
1075
01:02:02.519 --> 01:02:04.199
you know, maybe don't sleep around.
1076
01:02:04.360 --> 01:02:06.880
Yeah you could, you could get there, but you could
1077
01:02:06.880 --> 01:02:09.679
not get to don't have sex before marriage, because because I'm.
1078
01:02:09.559 --> 01:02:11.960
Trying to figure out where when Adam and Eve's wedding
1079
01:02:12.000 --> 01:02:12.360
day was.
1080
01:02:12.559 --> 01:02:15.960
But also, yeah, there's that. There's also all of them,
1081
01:02:16.159 --> 01:02:18.639
all of the men in the Bible who were God's
1082
01:02:18.719 --> 01:02:22.119
chosen men that all didn't do that. And then there's
1083
01:02:22.159 --> 01:02:26.679
also people groups that don't have marriage Sarah, Like you know,
1084
01:02:26.800 --> 01:02:30.119
I used to ask this to kids in history class, Like,
1085
01:02:30.199 --> 01:02:32.119
you know, white people didn't let slaves in our country
1086
01:02:32.119 --> 01:02:34.199
get married. They didn't let him get they let him
1087
01:02:34.199 --> 01:02:38.239
do it. So were they all just sinning? Like is
1088
01:02:38.239 --> 01:02:41.639
that like how dumb an American and just modern? Is
1089
01:02:41.679 --> 01:02:42.719
it to think that? Anyway?
1090
01:02:42.800 --> 01:02:45.239
Sorry, go back to you, But I remember, I mean,
1091
01:02:45.800 --> 01:02:48.000
and I was wrestling through it and what is my
1092
01:02:48.159 --> 01:02:51.199
sexual ethic that's right I believe and and and I'm
1093
01:02:51.199 --> 01:02:53.159
not even talking about what I believe that should be
1094
01:02:53.159 --> 01:02:58.800
imposted on anyone else? Yeah, for you, and you know,
1095
01:02:59.079 --> 01:03:02.280
it became a case of like commitment matters. Commitment for
1096
01:03:02.440 --> 01:03:06.320
me is important and I'm not even going to impose
1097
01:03:06.360 --> 01:03:09.159
that on my nieces and nephews, but for me, this
1098
01:03:09.320 --> 01:03:13.920
is important. And I mean Roger and I we talked
1099
01:03:13.960 --> 01:03:16.360
and talked, and I tell him now, he was like,
1100
01:03:16.920 --> 01:03:19.599
if you go into a shelter and animal shelter. He
1101
01:03:19.719 --> 01:03:22.760
was like, I was like a little shelter pup. He
1102
01:03:22.920 --> 01:03:27.199
just was quiet and calm, and I could just approach
1103
01:03:27.280 --> 01:03:31.480
him quietly, and he just it was He was so wonderful.
1104
01:03:31.599 --> 01:03:34.280
And we you know, we fell in love and got
1105
01:03:34.320 --> 01:03:37.760
together and it was amazing and wonderful. And I moved
1106
01:03:37.760 --> 01:03:43.599
in with him in December, and.
1107
01:03:41.320 --> 01:03:43.400
And you got married. All that happened in a whirlwind.
1108
01:03:43.880 --> 01:03:46.119
It did, I mean it did. And at the same time,
1109
01:03:46.159 --> 01:03:48.599
it was like, oh my god, you're the one. Like
1110
01:03:48.719 --> 01:03:51.400
I used to imagine what you would be like I
1111
01:03:51.440 --> 01:03:53.079
couldn't like.
1112
01:03:53.440 --> 01:03:55.159
But you know, it's it's.
1113
01:03:58.400 --> 01:04:00.559
For the first time in my life, I felt safe.
1114
01:04:02.000 --> 01:04:05.079
I felt safe to be me. I can be loud,
1115
01:04:05.199 --> 01:04:08.360
I can laugh, I can be goofy, I can feel sad,
1116
01:04:08.800 --> 01:04:10.840
I can feel whatever I'm feeling. He'll tell me all
1117
01:04:10.880 --> 01:04:13.559
the time, like, feel what you're feeling. Just know that
1118
01:04:13.639 --> 01:04:16.079
I still love you, that's right, And it's like, oh,
1119
01:04:16.119 --> 01:04:18.599
thank God. You know, he's the one that pushes me
1120
01:04:18.639 --> 01:04:20.880
to go like, do you actually like that person? Though?
1121
01:04:22.320 --> 01:04:24.960
Well I can get along, yeah, but do you like
1122
01:04:25.039 --> 01:04:25.639
that person?
1123
01:04:25.840 --> 01:04:27.440
Roger sounds like a great dude.
1124
01:04:30.239 --> 01:04:35.440
Genuinely like he and he you know, it's like he's
1125
01:04:35.519 --> 01:04:39.519
so like he's not a Christian in that sense, you know,
1126
01:04:39.599 --> 01:04:41.360
he sits there and goes I wish I could know
1127
01:04:41.480 --> 01:04:44.719
for sure God is real, And I'm like, so do Why.
1128
01:04:44.440 --> 01:04:47.599
Would you call yourself? Would you? What would you say
1129
01:04:47.679 --> 01:04:50.519
right now? Like as we actually have to wrap this up,
1130
01:04:50.519 --> 01:04:52.079
although I could talk to you all day, like, what
1131
01:04:52.079 --> 01:04:55.079
would you say right now? Like you've been so scarred
1132
01:04:55.199 --> 01:04:58.519
by a cult? How has that affected you spiritually? Like
1133
01:04:58.559 --> 01:05:01.119
you're deciding things for you now? I think that's healthy.
1134
01:05:01.440 --> 01:05:03.320
What does that look like for you? Ex essentially?
1135
01:05:03.760 --> 01:05:06.800
So it's come to the point where I really still
1136
01:05:06.880 --> 01:05:14.280
like Jesus. I think I can't seem to get away
1137
01:05:14.280 --> 01:05:18.559
from the idea of that there's a God, and but
1138
01:05:18.719 --> 01:05:22.440
love seems to be the thing that that one, like
1139
01:05:22.679 --> 01:05:25.679
God is love. I can stick with that one that
1140
01:05:25.679 --> 01:05:28.920
that and what that looks like. And I can and
1141
01:05:28.960 --> 01:05:32.719
I say that because I even looking around like nature
1142
01:05:33.360 --> 01:05:37.079
that like the way you know, mother birds are with
1143
01:05:37.199 --> 01:05:41.360
their heads chick all of that like love seems that
1144
01:05:41.480 --> 01:05:45.280
I can get with that. But yeah, I think I
1145
01:05:45.400 --> 01:05:50.599
found that. It turned out I'm not spiritually inquisitive, Like
1146
01:05:50.719 --> 01:05:53.920
I'm just not a Christon who wants like I've got
1147
01:05:53.960 --> 01:05:56.280
friends who are exploring all kinds of stuff, you know,
1148
01:05:56.320 --> 01:05:58.559
I've got one that was like, let me try witchcraft.
1149
01:05:58.639 --> 01:05:59.039
How was that?
1150
01:05:59.079 --> 01:06:02.440
Oh that's scary, you know, Like I'm just not someone
1151
01:06:02.480 --> 01:06:06.800
who is wants to go out and have a religious experience.
1152
01:06:07.840 --> 01:06:10.400
And that was where I realized that my mom chose
1153
01:06:10.719 --> 01:06:14.960
charismatic Christianity. Correct, I did not, you did not, And
1154
01:06:15.119 --> 01:06:18.880
I don't like nothing about it attracts me. I'm not
1155
01:06:19.000 --> 01:06:23.360
attracted to that kind of an experience. It turns out
1156
01:06:23.400 --> 01:06:26.360
I'm pretty heady as far as like academic literature. Like
1157
01:06:26.400 --> 01:06:29.960
I like that part. But I still listen to some
1158
01:06:30.000 --> 01:06:33.360
of those podcasts like you know, Sheila Greguara or The
1159
01:06:33.440 --> 01:06:36.159
Roy's Report. I still listen to them sometimes and I
1160
01:06:36.199 --> 01:06:40.159
get like amped up, Like I like, there's a William
1161
01:06:40.480 --> 01:06:46.679
Brandham research podcast that is fantastic for tracing, like the
1162
01:06:46.719 --> 01:06:50.039
New Apostolic Reformation all the way to William Brown. Wow,
1163
01:06:50.079 --> 01:06:54.119
and it's wild. I love that podcast. But again it's like,
1164
01:06:54.599 --> 01:06:56.840
I'm not I'm never going to go to church again.
1165
01:06:57.400 --> 01:06:59.320
I can't imagine sitting under store.
1166
01:06:59.320 --> 01:07:01.519
I can't imagine I would tell you not to like
1167
01:07:01.800 --> 01:07:05.159
I would legitimately be like, you know, it's almost like
1168
01:07:05.239 --> 01:07:08.360
talking to an alcoholic. It literally would be like Sarah,
1169
01:07:08.519 --> 01:07:10.639
you don't go through those doors, don't do it.
1170
01:07:11.960 --> 01:07:14.119
And the thing, you know what, so I and part
1171
01:07:14.159 --> 01:07:16.880
of the deconstruction was recognizing that what had appealed to
1172
01:07:16.920 --> 01:07:20.760
me was the certainty. Yeah, I liked the certainty of
1173
01:07:20.880 --> 01:07:25.159
knowing right and wrong coming to I still think right
1174
01:07:25.199 --> 01:07:27.599
and wrong. You know, there's there's things that are right
1175
01:07:27.639 --> 01:07:33.519
and wrong. But I've had to resist that temptation to
1176
01:07:33.599 --> 01:07:36.280
swing the other way, of course, and be just as
1177
01:07:36.440 --> 01:07:38.679
extreme and fundamentalist on the other side.
1178
01:07:38.719 --> 01:07:40.440
I think we all have to do. I think, guys,
1179
01:07:40.440 --> 01:07:42.679
it's a battle every day when you know someone The
1180
01:07:42.719 --> 01:07:44.280
hardest people to love are the people that you know
1181
01:07:44.320 --> 01:07:45.639
are wrong right.
1182
01:07:45.679 --> 01:07:49.760
And also because I've had to learn to be comfortable
1183
01:07:49.800 --> 01:07:53.159
with uncertainty. Yeah, when my dad died, it was the
1184
01:07:53.199 --> 01:07:55.079
first time I went wait, I don't even know if
1185
01:07:55.079 --> 01:07:58.079
I believe. I don't like, where is he? Yeah, I mean,
1186
01:07:58.119 --> 01:08:00.280
I'm forty something years old, going, I don't know where
1187
01:08:00.320 --> 01:08:02.679
my dad is. You've been telling me my whole life
1188
01:08:02.679 --> 01:08:05.239
he's in heaven, and when I read the Bible, I
1189
01:08:05.239 --> 01:08:08.440
don't know where that is. I don't know what's there.
1190
01:08:08.559 --> 01:08:14.199
Jesus says it'll be great, sort of like he's no clarification.
1191
01:08:14.920 --> 01:08:17.800
And so I don't know where my dad is. Like
1192
01:08:17.880 --> 01:08:19.760
that that was a big thing you have.
1193
01:08:19.720 --> 01:08:22.640
To like, Yeah, I think not knowing is the first step,
1194
01:08:22.680 --> 01:08:26.159
but living in that and finding peace and grace in
1195
01:08:26.239 --> 01:08:28.239
that is a second step. That takes time.
1196
01:08:29.039 --> 01:08:30.920
Yeah, And so that's kind of where I'm at right now,
1197
01:08:31.039 --> 01:08:33.680
is just kind of feeling like, and I think that
1198
01:08:33.720 --> 01:08:36.439
bothers my mom, you know, She's like, are you praying?
1199
01:08:36.479 --> 01:08:39.319
Do you pray? You know? And so because because again
1200
01:08:39.439 --> 01:08:42.279
she chose charismatic christanity, he hasn't left that.
1201
01:08:42.520 --> 01:08:45.359
Yeah, she left the church, but she didn't leave the
1202
01:08:45.479 --> 01:08:46.600
She left the cult, but not.
1203
01:08:46.520 --> 01:08:50.880
The exactly exactly. And that's kind of ultimately been what
1204
01:08:51.079 --> 01:08:53.439
I think a lot of folks that age in our
1205
01:08:53.479 --> 01:08:56.720
group did, was they left the cult, but they didn't
1206
01:08:56.800 --> 01:09:01.159
leave that, whereas people my age and younger, Hell yeah,
1207
01:09:01.279 --> 01:09:04.960
most of us are like, yeah, we're done done, like literally,
1208
01:09:05.039 --> 01:09:07.840
like we can't. I can't go to church. There's that's
1209
01:09:07.880 --> 01:09:11.319
not an option. And yeah, it's been a journey, but.
1210
01:09:12.079 --> 01:09:14.640
This is as good as based. I don't know, but
1211
01:09:15.239 --> 01:09:18.199
this sounds to me as though this is as good
1212
01:09:18.239 --> 01:09:19.960
and as healthy as you've been as an adult.
1213
01:09:20.000 --> 01:09:24.119
Oh my god, yes, absolutely absolutely, And and like you know,
1214
01:09:24.119 --> 01:09:26.439
I'm still in contact with so many of my friends
1215
01:09:26.439 --> 01:09:28.840
there because we all we were all there at the
1216
01:09:28.920 --> 01:09:31.760
whole time. And I'm watching them, you know, they they're
1217
01:09:31.760 --> 01:09:35.359
getting married, they're having babies, they're living their best lives
1218
01:09:35.720 --> 01:09:39.920
without judgment, without you know, somebody grilling them and being
1219
01:09:39.920 --> 01:09:42.319
told they have to spank their six month old. And
1220
01:09:42.319 --> 01:09:44.800
they're sitting there going, hey, you know child development means
1221
01:09:45.279 --> 01:09:47.479
and they're learning and they're sitting there go I'm never
1222
01:09:47.760 --> 01:09:50.960
touching my child like that. I'm you know, learning new ways.
1223
01:09:51.199 --> 01:09:54.720
And I think that has been probably the most healing
1224
01:09:54.760 --> 01:09:56.920
for me, is watching this and going, I think this
1225
01:09:57.000 --> 01:10:01.199
is the best revenge, you know, yea, the always yeah,
1226
01:10:01.560 --> 01:10:03.560
but this family, like that I had mentioned before that
1227
01:10:03.600 --> 01:10:06.680
was the whipping boy like they had like three marriages
1228
01:10:06.720 --> 01:10:10.600
in a year and their kids get married with babies,
1229
01:10:10.680 --> 01:10:13.039
and you know, I'm just looking at it going thank
1230
01:10:13.079 --> 01:10:17.600
God like this is the best yeah, justice to live
1231
01:10:17.640 --> 01:10:18.359
your best life.
1232
01:10:18.560 --> 01:10:22.920
Sarah, what a journey. You are just an inspiration. And
1233
01:10:22.960 --> 01:10:25.960
I thanks for feeling comfortable sharing your story here, and
1234
01:10:26.039 --> 01:10:29.640
thanks for for just being with me and sitting with
1235
01:10:29.680 --> 01:10:31.960
it for over two hours and some really tough stuff.
1236
01:10:32.960 --> 01:10:35.920
But man, if we can't go out and love others
1237
01:10:36.760 --> 01:10:39.600
and you can, then we all have a problem. So
1238
01:10:39.800 --> 01:10:42.399
I appreciate you being here. I appreciate you doing this well.
1239
01:10:42.439 --> 01:10:43.359
Thanks for letting me.
1240
01:10:43.600 --> 01:10:48.840
Oh absolutely, I can't thank Sarah enough for joining me
1241
01:10:48.880 --> 01:10:51.520
this week. The courage and fortitude to share this story
1242
01:10:51.760 --> 01:10:54.920
is not just admirable, it's a herculean feet the likes
1243
01:10:54.920 --> 01:10:57.039
of which I don't know if I could manage myself.
1244
01:10:57.239 --> 01:10:59.119
Sarah has every reason to be mad at the world.
1245
01:10:59.399 --> 01:11:02.239
She could just fly live an angry existence. She was
1246
01:11:02.279 --> 01:11:05.199
pretty much born into this situation. Her agency was taken
1247
01:11:05.199 --> 01:11:07.119
from her, and she was trapped in a world of
1248
01:11:07.199 --> 01:11:10.359
high patriarchal control that demeaned the idea of learning new
1249
01:11:10.359 --> 01:11:13.319
things and experiencing a life outside of the belief system
1250
01:11:13.319 --> 01:11:16.159
that was established for her. It led to gas lighting,
1251
01:11:16.560 --> 01:11:20.399
verbal abuse, and sexual assault. Sarah could lose to this anger,
1252
01:11:20.560 --> 01:11:23.800
but she refuses to. She's speaking her truth. She's living
1253
01:11:23.800 --> 01:11:26.479
her life to the fullest. She's utilizing her new found
1254
01:11:26.520 --> 01:11:28.600
freedom to do all the things she wanted to do
1255
01:11:28.920 --> 01:11:32.000
but wasn't able to earlier in life. Even more amazing,
1256
01:11:32.159 --> 01:11:34.680
Sarah finds power in the unknown, beauty in a world
1257
01:11:34.720 --> 01:11:36.960
around her that she can't control, even when it was
1258
01:11:37.000 --> 01:11:40.399
controlled for her for so many years. She's learning, growing,
1259
01:11:40.479 --> 01:11:44.079
and loving along the way. If Sarah can be this example,
1260
01:11:44.399 --> 01:11:46.840
then most of the rest of us are just without excuse.
1261
01:11:47.279 --> 01:11:50.560
I found myself becoming so angry at those that hurt Sarah,
1262
01:11:50.760 --> 01:11:52.800
and I think we should all work as hard as
1263
01:11:52.840 --> 01:11:55.680
humanly possible to end hurt like that for others. But
1264
01:11:55.720 --> 01:11:58.600
I was also uplifted by Sarah's demeanor and her willingness
1265
01:11:58.640 --> 01:12:01.720
to do the next right thing. Thanks for listening. Breakfast
1266
01:12:01.720 --> 01:12:03.479
in Hell is produced by Will Cown and written and
1267
01:12:03.520 --> 01:12:06.239
hosted by Daniel Thompson. If you enjoy the pod, please
1268
01:12:06.279 --> 01:12:07.880
do us a favor with a rating and review on
1269
01:12:07.920 --> 01:12:10.760
Apple Podcasts and follow us on Instagram at Breakfast in
1270
01:12:10.840 --> 01:12:14.000
Hell Pod. You can also join the discussion group on Facebook.
1271
01:12:14.119 --> 01:12:15.800
It's free and the link is in the show notes.
1272
01:12:15.960 --> 01:12:17.880
If you've got questions, comments, or would like to be
1273
01:12:17.920 --> 01:12:20.159
on the show, dm us on Instagram or send us
1274
01:12:20.159 --> 01:12:26.920
an email to Breakfast in Hell Pod at gmail dot com.
1275
01:12:28.439 --> 01:12:31.039
You're about to hear some ads that helped keep the
1276
01:12:31.079 --> 01:12:35.600
lights on here in the old studio. Thanks for listening
1277
01:12:35.760 --> 01:12:38.600
or don't listen. It's really up to you at this point.
1278
01:12:38.760 --> 01:12:40.279
It is at the end of the show. I mean,
1279
01:12:40.560 --> 01:12:43.439
you're listening to me Hi. But here they come. I
1280
01:12:43.520 --> 01:12:59.760
promised our coming. Yep, here they are. Happy Day.