Meet Joy -- Part 1

Meet Joy Hopper. She is a 59-year-old mother of six.  

An elementary teacher. 

And -- a former fundamentalist, pentecostal Christian who resides in the Pacific Northwest.

Joy spent over 5 decades loving Jesus with her whole heart, mind, and strength. 

She taught her children to do the same. Her oldest, at about age 19 or 20, came home from a year abroad declaring she was no longer a Christian. This devastating news forced Joy on a search for answers that could help win her eldest back to Jesus. 

However, as many of us who've found ourselves in this very situation understand -- the evidence Joy discovered, after many months of reading, studying, and watching debates  completely dismantled those pillars she had erected to uphold her faith. And before she knew it, her entire belief system had collapsed with a deafening thud. 

The next several years were tremendously difficult and yet exhilarating as she left the church (her entire support system!!), ended her 30-year marriage, and started anew.

During those troubled years, Joy wrote a memoir called Joy Unspeakable, Toxic Faith and Rose-colored Glasses, as a way to process and make sense of it all. "I chronicle the ways in which my rose-colored glasses (a metaphor for my faith) distorted reality and robbed me of agency from the time I was a small child until my 50s when the glasses finally fell off." You can find her memoir on Amazon -- here's the link: https://www.amazon.com/Joy-Unspeakable-Toxic-Rose-Colored-Glasses-ebook/dp/B08NFNT2GC

The picture Joy chose for this episode is of her falling out of a raft while attempting to maneuver a huge rapid.  This reminds Joy of what her deconstruction felt like -- absolutely terrifying to be thrown off the boat, finding herself in the thick of the rushing current, but before too long --  she was okay. And free. And everything turned out just fine. :-)

Transcript

Unknown Speaker  0:13  
Welcome to women beyond faith, where we are finding freedom on the other side, one story at a time. For women who have walked away from faith, the challenges are often overwhelming, isolated, abandoned by family, misunderstood by partners, ostracized by friends, shamed for thinking critically, cursed for speaking out subdued by the patriarchy. Thank you for joining us today, as we provide a platform for women to speak up, to speak out and to share their stories, because their stories count their stories.

Unknown Speaker  1:01  
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, from cold, snowy southern Ohio, I have the extreme privilege of having Miss joy hopper on the show today, I was fortunate to meet joy in person a couple of years ago, gosh, was it just too I guess three years ago when we happen to be able to have a lovely retreat down in the mountains in Tennessee, with some of our online buddies, and I actually was lucky enough to get to pick joi up at the airport and transport her to the cabin. And so it's kind of neat to be able to chit chat with you. Not necessarily in real life, but kind of in real life via zoom. So welcome joy. It's good to talk to you, girl.

Unknown Speaker  1:54  
It's got Thank you. You're already nervous. I just blew the beginning already. It's lovely.

Unknown Speaker  2:02  
It is lovely. So you grew up? Am I am I correct? In this assessment? You grew up in Christianity as a child like your family was a religious family?

Unknown Speaker  2:15  
Yes, well, um, when I was three years old, I was placed in a foster family. And they were very devout fundamentalist Christians and through circumstances out of my control, it turned out that I stayed with that family and they eventually adopted my transistor and I and so. So from the age of three on, I was a part of the Assemblies of God. denomination with my with my new adoptive family. Wow.

Unknown Speaker  2:47  
And did that family have other children

Unknown Speaker  2:50  
that belong to it? Yes. So they had three boys. I have three older brothers. And it's kind of funny, because in my birth family, I also had three older brothers. And so I swap the three from my birth family. And now I have three in my adoptive family.

Unknown Speaker  3:08  
Oh, my goodness, that's kind of curious. That's kind of a God thing.

Unknown Speaker  3:15  
One of them had the same name, Steve. Oh, my gosh.

Unknown Speaker  3:19  
He sometimes he really knows what he's doing. I don't know. So it was a pretty so Assemblies of God. I've had a little bit of an exposure to Assemblies of God. And so you guys went to church, a whole bunch when you were kid?

Unknown Speaker  3:36  
Oh, absolutely. We went on Sunday morning, Sunday evening, there was a midweek Bible study that we went to. I was a part of the mission nets. That was the program for girls to teach her how to be a godly young lady. And then I went to youth group as a teenager, they they were called Christ. ambassadors. Um, yeah, we were we were all in every time the doors were open. Our family was there.

Unknown Speaker  4:06  
Wow. And did it seem like the church brought about positive feelings feels and like positive habits in your, in the family? Like was it helping you guys to be a healthy family at the time?

Unknown Speaker  4:22  
Well, you know, in some ways, definitely, um, I felt like the church was where I was loved and accepted and noticed. And my when my twin and I joined the family, we were kind of like, celebrities in a way, you know, because we were seen as these, these poor little, you know, heathen children that were had the good fortune of being put into a godly family. And so the whole church kind of took, took it upon themselves to to shepherd us and love us and try and bring us Up in the in the faith and so, from an emotional, you know, kind of a social emotional standpoint, the church very much met those needs of belonging and feeling accepted and loved. And so that was a positive. Yeah. And then you know, going to church as a positive thing as a family, you know, that's the thing that you all might participate in together.

Unknown Speaker  5:24  
Yeah, yeah. It's helping to develop connections, and you're spending time together and opportunity for conversations before and after services. Yeah, it can be a hugely positive experience. I mean, there were years for my family. My husband was never quite as excited about going to church as I was, when we were raising our kids. You know, yeah, sometimes there was that kind of fight between he and I, but, um, but yeah, I feel like we always had great conversations in the car ride on the way home and talking to the kids about what went on in Sunday school and even teaching their classes. So like, I feel like, Yeah, sometimes when I look back at my decades in the church, you know, it's with fondness. You know, which, it's not all terrible, I suppose I, I still haven't found that a similar means by which to go about doing that, on the side of the site of faith, but it's gonna take us a while, I think to build up those kinds of communities.

Unknown Speaker  6:28  
Yeah, I agree. I think the closest thing I've found, you know, post, all of this was, is the you you? You know, currently I I, kind of, well, since the pandemic, I haven't been, yeah, right. Church in over a year. But, but at least there's a group that I did I have a sense of belonging with, and that that still helps, that's a part that I have retained. And

Unknown Speaker  6:56  
that is good. So So as a child, like, do you you bought in to the, the tenets of the faith? Would you say at the Assemblies of God, denomination that you were a part of?

Unknown Speaker  7:08  
Yes, you know, I, I guess I didn't know any better. You know, it, just whatever you're raised in, you believe that that is your truth. And you know, in hindsight, I look back and I just think, oh, my goodness, we did so many weird things, like, just all the speaking in tongues in the prophecies and the dancing in the spirit and with the, what is called the Jericho walk, where the whole congregation will stand up and just start marching around the, the auditorium and just a lot of weird things. But it all was normal to me, because it was all I all I knew. I was 100% invested in Christianity. But looking back, I, I can now see why I was so invested. It's such a fear based religion, and when you know if the, if this right young age are being told that you must accept Jesus or you will burn in hell forever, and that there's this devil that some possibly, you know, sneaking around, he's going to try to try to get you to sin, so that that you're going to go to hell, right? You have all these, these few things put in place. Like, of course, I'm going to be 100%, you know, invested in Jesus, because the alternative is just unthinkable, you know?

Unknown Speaker  8:32  
Yeah, it seems so like, as you're talking and as I look back at my days in the church, like I there are, it seems like, abuse to me, you know, like that, we were told that this is the one way the only way and that most of us are not exposed to any other religions, for sure. But even any other necessarily denominations or ways of living. And so yeah, it is often the only thing that we do know and that we're trying, it makes sense that we that we buy in fully, so often when we're raised. And no wonder there's this big scary conversation that takes place about us going off to colleges, right, what after we graduate from high school, because it is an opportunity for all of those different things, different people in different ways of life and different sexualities, and it makes sense that they they scare us about doing that as well.

Unknown Speaker  9:37  
Yeah, and, um, one of the other things, you know, within this, within this, and I think it's probably happens in many churches, we were constantly told that we had the, the most correct understanding of other churches didn't have it quite right. So we were even, you know, suspect of other Christians. churn in the world itself if you weren't, if they weren't Christian, I mean, we were just taught that the whole world is this dark, scary, evil place and and that we have no place, you know, in that world that we're in it, but we're not of it, you know, we're separate. And so I had this healthy fear of I'm not healthy. It was really unhealthy, actually, you know, obviously, everyone and everything that I'm apart from my little church and my little heart. And so that was just another another way that the church used, you know, fear and misinformation to kind of keep us all huddled in our little in our little bubble,

Unknown Speaker  10:47  
right? I mean, do you when you look back, like, I like to believe that people are good, but misguided? I mean, like, do you believe that the leaders of your church and your parents, do you believe that they truly, also believe that this was the truth and that this was the way about which we were supposed to live our lives? Or do you think that there was some? I don't know. misunderstand that misunderstanding, but that they knew that they were preaching a lie, or that they weren't all about the truth? I mean, do you have what do you what are your thoughts on that?

Unknown Speaker  11:27  
I think that they really, really believed it. Yeah. You know, I think that was just in the eye. Cuz Don't we all instinctively think that we're right, when we Yeah. You know, like, I think I'm right, that Christianity is bullshit.

Unknown Speaker  11:43  
Second, that,

Unknown Speaker  11:44  
right, you know, and and yeah, there might be some, some selfish ulterior motives in terms of, you know, your, your finances, or you're tied to going to the church. And, you know, I think, on some level, maybe there's some dishonesty there to keep the churches, church doors open. But, but fundamentally, I think they really, truly believed in what they were saying. Yeah. And, you know, share that with the, they wanted their followers to believe the same.

Unknown Speaker  12:16  
Yeah, right. I mean, like, nowadays, right, this side of faith, you know, looking back and, and even like, looking at all of the people I know, who are still in faith in different denominations, and how they each believe that their way is the one and only way it's such To me, it's such an obvious, like, you can't all be right, like you either all wrong. You know, you're probably all wrong, that's probably the greater likelihood then one of your particular denominations actually has discovered all of the truth. Like, it just seems like an obvious like, how can you guys not see this? Like, it seems so obvious today, but when we're surrounded by that, and that is the only thing that we know, at the time, it makes sense that we, that we buy into it hook line, and sinker. Pre our did did did your siblings, each of your siblings remained faithful to the church, like when you were growing up?

Unknown Speaker  13:13  
Um, so my, my twin and I were the most devout of any of the kids, my older brothers were, they were pretty nominal, in their, in their faith. And, um, you know, I think they, none of them took it as seriously as my sister. And I did, and even my dad, who, before we had been adopted into their family was had been a preacher. And that he had his doubts too. And there was a period of a year or two where he didn't go to church. And it was a, it was a source of lots of consternation in that family. And my mom, she didn't want to go without my dad, because it seemed like she wasn't being submissive to him or something, you know, and so she would stay home with him, but would send us to church with with one of my older brothers and his wife. So, looking back, it's like, yeah, I had this, this kind of rocks, rock solid view of the family that all of us were these staunch believers. But in hindsight, you know, there were some cracks in the armor. You know, growing up even the most, you know, the, the patriarch, right. Interesting, huh?

Unknown Speaker  14:38  
Yeah, I can relate to your mom. I remember those feels like I made my husband. After he left the faith he left before I did. I like made him go. I like you are the patriarch of this family. I don't know what I was thinking like, that sounds so anti christian wife.

Unknown Speaker  14:57  
I made my husband go to church.

Unknown Speaker  15:00  
What to do?

Unknown Speaker  15:02  
Oh my gosh, is I'm saying that but, I mean, did you have any cracks in your foundation at all early on? But do you remember anything from those years that you were, you know, before you graduated from high school? Um,

Unknown Speaker  15:19  
you know, I, I think there were, there were little doubts that would would pop up all the time. But I always attributed those doubts to the devil is trying to, to tempt me to not follow. follow God. And so any little doubt was just immediately suppressed. They were, you know, it was I couldn't go down that path or even think along those lines. I don't remember specifically, but I remember that, that. That feeling of hope, but that's not true. Oh, yeah, it's true. It's,

Unknown Speaker  15:56  
it's gotta be true.

Unknown Speaker  15:57  
It's true.

Unknown Speaker  16:01  
I mean, did you struggle with I don't know, perfectionism and that you were having you needed to follow the rules in order to be a good Christian woman at the time or girl at the time, like, was that difficult for you to follow the rules and to do all the right things? And? Or did that come fairly easily? For you?

Unknown Speaker  16:25  
Oh, I absolutely had this perfectionistic. You and I mean, I tried my best but but again, it stemmed from this, this horrible fear down in my gut that I that I wasn't going to make it. And, you know, when I think about Christianity, it's like, there's these these, these two narratives. One is this promise of this unspeakable joy of having your sense forgiving, given and knowing Jesus, but then, on the other side, there's just so much fear that's placed within the theology and what I, what I realized kind of in hindsight is I was processing all of this and my deconstruction, that, um, you know, the bad news is that the very second you're born, you're, you're under God's wrath because you're born a sinner because of Adam's sin. before you've even had a chance to sin. You're fundamentally nikora view you are a sinner, and therefore, an object of God's wrath. And the only way to be out of God's wrath is to accept Jesus into your heart because then God sees the Jesus in you and can love you, but apart from Jesus, you're just nothing are these filthy rags, you know? And so, so then, you know, as a child, I accept Jesus into my heart, obviously, I want Jesus in me because I know that I'm that I'm sinful, that I'm, you know, that I can't measure up. Again, that's not the end of the story. So you think, oh, you accept Jesus, good, you're gonna go to heaven, Jesus loves you. But then in the theology, they possibly create all this doubt, like, Oh, you may think you're said, but but you know, there's this Lamb's book of life. And you know, when you get to heaven, there's this, they're gonna open the book, and if your name is not written in that book, um, you know, you're gonna go to hell, and you may have thought your name was written in there, but it might not be, you know, it's like, holy cow. Like, I'm just so worried that what if, what if I think I'm a Christian, but my name is not in that book? And then this doubt that, yeah, you're saved, but but you can lose your salvation by sending because God cannot have any sin in his presence. And so, even though I have accepted Jesus, if somehow, I am tempted, and I sin, and then I die. Yeah, so so being saved still wasn't. It wasn't. It wasn't necessarily a comfort, because there were still all these other ways in which I was still doubtful about just any assurance of salvation. And so, so what that led to all kinds of perfectionism and, and just denial, I couldn't even admit when I made a mistake, because I was so afraid by even admitting it that, that that, like, God would hear you like somehow, thank god if I just didn't even own up to my shortcomings. Trick God into thinking that I you know, that I was perfect. Like I had this mentality that I literally just had to be a Christian, the perfect person to earn favor with God and that's a heavy burden for a child. My gosh, yes, very, you know,

Unknown Speaker  20:02  
huge burden. I mean, do you feel like your sister struggled similarly? Like, are your, your twins? Are your personalities? Kind of the same, too? Or?

Unknown Speaker  20:17  
Yes, I think she felt the same way. I think we both had this, this very, very earnest desire to please and you know, to please this family that adopted us, you know? And to please this God, who, who can love us and hate us? And you know,

Unknown Speaker  20:39  
it makes no sense when you start thinking about it from a different angles.

Unknown Speaker  20:45  
Mm hmm.

Unknown Speaker  20:46  
Yeah, that's, that's tough. That's a tough burden for a kid. It's a tough burden. It's a lot of work. I mean, I didn't find I didn't come to Christianity officially until I went off to college, like my parents were kind of non believers as a kid, when I was a kid, but I had these super religious, paternal grandparents. And I spent a lot of time at their house and I had an aunt that was my age and other aunts that were mothering me and caring for me. And so I heard all of these narratives, right. But I was fortunate in that I didn't live them, I didn't have to live them day in and day out, it was like, I would poke in, you know, a day or two a week and, and maybe spend the night and do devotionals with them after dinner and sing songs with them. And pray before bedtime. So like I was able to escape, you know, and kind of like, Huh, that's interesting, huh? And so like, I think, being in faith, it was a little bit easier for me, when I finally joined, because I already had some sort of, I don't know, foundational belief about me as a human and that I wasn't a terrible person. And I don't know, I don't know, it's it's so, so curious how it all works out. So did you go to Christian school associated with this, this church at all? Or were you in our public school?

Unknown Speaker  22:08  
We didn't have any Christian Schools in our little town, but I went to the public school. And I considered the even in elementary school, I considered it my mission field. You know, I was this young, young evangelist, you know, even as a as a young kid, well, especially. So I went to, to Bible camp, I think was like nine or 10 years old. And the Bible camp was very much like if you saw the documentary, Jesus camp last summer, it was just like that, where they just program you the whole week, you're just in these, these little these tent camp meetings, kind of tent meetings, where you're just kind of indoctrinated that whole time. And there's a whole lot of emotionalism and this hype, and they just kind of send you away on fire for Jesus but but that the whole, it's just like this. So hard to describe, but they really prey on your emotions and get you just worked up like to get filled with the Holy Spirit. And so everybody's just, you know, just crying and wailing and screaming at the altar begging for the Holy Spirit. And then when you're a kid, when you just start crying, and all that you just kind of work yourself into a tizzy. And then you kind of think that that was the Holy Spirit when you don't when you step away from it as adult, like, no, you're just emotionally, completely emotionally manipulated. But, um, so but then the whole, the tired after Bible camp was like, you're gonna go to your schools, and you're going to tell everybody about this experience, you tell everybody about Jesus. And so, you know, so I would go to school, and I'd have these, you know, Jesus loves you buttons on my, my closing. I felt really embarrassed. I mean, so, again, that was the part where I wanted to do the right thing, and I wanted to follow Jesus, I didn't want God to spit me out of his mouth for being lukewarm and all that, you know, right? That it was terribly embarrassing wearing those buttons. So that, you know, and so again, I'm thinking, I'm not worthy. I'm not worthy of being a Christian because I'm, I'm ashamed of the gospel, you know?

Unknown Speaker  24:27  
Crazy. I mean, do you remember your like your your mom, your parents being like, proud of you for being so outwardly Christian and wanting to do the right thing?

Unknown Speaker  24:37  
Oh, definitely. I got so much praise from medals, you know. So I have this one story that I have it in my my memoir, where I was in sixth grade. And we had this student teacher who was really creative and just kind of this hippie, gal and we all really liked her and one day in order to Line up to lunch, he said, today to line up for lunch, everybody's going to dance their way into the line. And the kids are kind of giggling and thought it was really fun. And so one by one, these kids will just start dancing. You know, and, and it looks like just a hood. It's just a fun moment. But for me, oh, there's all this this fear and dread, because in some ways of God, dancing is a sin. And I couldn't differentiate between dancing in a line for lunch and just, you know, dancing in a, you know, in a pool hall, or whatever it is, for your dance, you know, like, Oh, this world that I didn't know anything about, you know, but, um, but I felt like, if I were to dance, I would be sinning against God, and it would, you know, I would lose my, my testimony. Or, you know, I look back, and it's just so cringe worthy. But, um, I stayed in my seat, I wasn't going to dance online, because I just was, and this was I was drawing a line in the sand, I was going to not be ashamed of the gospel and, and that was my way of not being ashamed. But, uh, so the teacher sees, and I'm sitting there and she's like, Why are you sitting there? Answering the lion. And I said, you know, this softness. It's against my religion to dance. Oh, she's like, what? Like, it's against my religion today. And, and everybody is just like, just staring at me, and I'm just, oh, butt cheeks are hot. And I just feel so embarrassed and humiliated. It's just like, Oh, well just go get in line, then. Just go get in line. I was so like. And then I go home and tell my mom, the story is she's just like, What? You know, well done. good and faithful servant. You know, she just said, well, that's, that's what you do. You know, how Christianity is about. She didn't say that. But what I internalize like that we have to be willing to be humiliated. it as a sign of our allegiance to this quad?

Unknown Speaker  27:09  
Oh, my gosh.

Unknown Speaker  27:12  
Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  27:14  
That's not okay.

Unknown Speaker  27:17  
No, it's not okay, that makes me You know, there are some folks, some of my friends, actually, that I'm trying to build community here with a humanist community here within Cincinnati, who are very friendly toward religions, you know, not just the church, but like, think that it's possible for all of us to somehow get along and get along well, and, and when I hear stories like that one you just shared, it's like, no, that's not okay for children to be experiencing those sorts of things. It's not okay for them to believing that, to believe that they are unworthy of some one's love some make believe fairy in the sky is love, because they might dance to get into the lunch line, like, it just seems so. not okay. You know, like, we're taking those like, you know, from that Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you know, like those basic physiological and safety needs that are on the bottom of the triangle, they're, like, we're like messing with those. Mm hmm. And we're not allowing those to fully form and develop that foundation that, that kids need to be able to be healthy people, healthy humans and like it, it bothers me greatly. I still haven't quite figured out what my relationship is to religions. These days, I'm still especially now in this era in which we find ourselves with Trump and the storming of the Capitol and the evangelicals and the evangelical Christians. And it's, it's a huge struggle for me right now to be able to have any kind of conversation with, with family, like we have a lot of family right now who are evangelical Catholics, and who are huge supporters of Donald Trump still to this day, and they're buying into all the conspiracy theories about the vaccination and all these things and, and the base of it for them is their faith in God, like they truly believe that Donald Trump was put into place put into position by God, and that he is somehow like the savior of our world. And like, I just don't see it that way. And I, I don't know I don't I just think religion is so unhealthy for so many reasons, and especially when children are indoctrinated.

Unknown Speaker  29:47  
I agree. Like I think, I think the only way it seems like it's okay if you really don't buy into any of the doctrine or the teachings and it's just a warm, fuzzy Yeah, there's this, there's this God who made you who loves you and he kind of has your back, you know? Even that falls apart when in your life, you you experience these horrible, some horrible crisis or tragedy and you you you've prayed to that God who's supposed to have your back and he doesn't come through, right? You know, it's like, what could is it? I don't I just I don't know what good it is anymore. And I agree those conspiracy theories and the whole Trump thing is just so soured me on even wanting to hold out an olive branch because it's just, it's so destructive. It's it's taught toxicity on a national level, you know, we felt it on a personal level, but now we're seeing it on display for the world. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker  30:47  
that's a good way to say it.

Unknown Speaker  30:49  
And one of the things you mentioned earlier about just seems like it's so abusive for a child, I feel like all that fear and trauma of just being afraid of constantly afraid of the rapture, you know, because the rapture was supposed to be this glorious thing, but like, how terrifying it is for a child because they say, it's gonna happen like a thief in the night. Well, what's what's the most terrifying image for a kid in the night? You know what I mean? There's that there's no warning that this God who was gonna snatch you out, just snatch you up in the air, he won't give you at least a heads out like whisper to you, hey, in a couple minutes, I'm going to come but don't worry. Oh, my gosh, you it's gonna be okay. No, he says, when you least expect it in the night when you're sleeping and you're vulnerable. That kind of thing, you know, you're going to be just messed up and how scary to be like, it's like, you're going to be kidnapped. And like, that was just a horror. And then in the alternative is to not get snatched up in the night, you're going to get left behind. So there's no, there's no good way to look at the rapture without just absolutely absolute terror, you know. And so you've got that, and then just that that unrelenting fear, that you're not good enough that somehow no matter despite all your good efforts, and despite your love for Jesus, that God isn't going to love you back. Because you're just not good enough, that he's going to send you to this, this place of eternal conscious torment. And I feel like all that trauma wires, our brain, we know that now was, like, one of my, my biggest regrets is that I lived 50 years of, of fear based ideology. Yeah, and I'm sure that it has rewired my brain in ways that I can never recover from at this point. And, and it's like, I just want to save all these little children. And I, you know, I see family members who are still raising their children. That way, I Oh, my goodness, there's just I just want to, I want to grab those children and whisper in their ears. Not true, not true. You okay, there's not a hell you're gonna be.

Unknown Speaker  33:05  
So, my one of my kids is currently over in Thailand, teaching English to these adorable Thai little children. And she's really gotten into studying Buddhism, secular Buddhism. And you know, she's done yoga for a while, she's 22. She's done yoga for a while, but she's been reading books about Buddhism, and listening to podcasts and watching documentaries, and encouraging me to do the same thing. And when you remove, you know, the religious aspects of Tibetan Buddhism, when you remove that away, you just have the secular Buddhism piece, like, it's just lovely. And all and it's like, yeah, if kids could be raised without any of the tenants of religious faith, but just be taught to, to just work on becoming their best selves, and be in tune with who they are, and what are they and what do they want to do with their life? And what makes them tick? Like, it just seems like we would be so better off as a society and as a world and as a universe, you know, but I don't I don't know. I think religion is going to be around for a while.

Unknown Speaker  34:16  
Yeah, it's not going away.

Unknown Speaker  34:19  
going away anytime soon. Darn it. Darn it. So I know you stayed in religion for five decades. And so that means that you raised your children for much of that time, right?

Unknown Speaker  34:35  
Yes.

Unknown Speaker  34:36  
into the faith. And so let's move a little bit. So you, you graduated from college, did you graduate from high school? Did you go off to college at that time?

Unknown Speaker  34:46  
Well, you know, we talked about how our kids don't want to send us to any secular universities. corrupted right and, and so my parents said they would pay for all my college if I went to Bible College. And so I went to this little Podunk College in North Dakota, the population of the town was only 2000, the population of the school was somewhere between 350 and 400 students. And I was really a willing participant in this decision. Because that was that was it. I graduated from high school in 1980. And oh, the evangelist, though everyone was saying that Jesus was going to return in 1980. Oh, my gosh. And I was just so nervous that I wasn't going to make it that I might fall away. If I went to. I think, you know, that I was still fragile. I think there was still something in me that that questioned and wondered what I would do if I wasn't in a safe little bubble. So I went to the safest bubble I could possibly find little, you know, out in the middle of nowhere, where you can't possibly find any, any thing to tempt you to sit in the middle of a farm, you know. And so I went to this Bible College for four years, Jesus didn't come, but all the thief in the night videos were still all the rage. And so it certainly kept that fear alive. And but I, you know, I'm in while at Bible college, I, I just wanted to, I figured it well, until Jesus came, I needed to make sure that I stayed right with God, and that I pursued a life of service to God in preparation for the Rapture. And so I wanted to marry minister and be a pastor's wife, or some missionaries wife, you know, big thing for Jesus. And so I didn't want the four years there and it and my senior year I started dating this, the this guy, and we'd been going to school that whole four years together. So we, you know, when it's a small school like that, you know, everybody, but um, so I ended up marrying this, this guy from Bible college. And it's kind of funny, when I look back I, one of the main reasons that I married him was because our names rhymed. And I thought that was a sign from God. Again, we like, within Pentecostalism, it seems like you there's a detachment from reality, because everything is like, you see everything from the supernatural lens where God is always just giving you signs about things to give you direction, right? So it's not based on on just reality. It's just kind of based on these signs. And you know, you always throwing out that fleece or whatever, you know, our name's Ryan day, I thought, yeah, this is meant to be where you know, where the, we're gonna be the rhyming missionaries. and stuff. And so, yeah, so so we got married, but, but even when we were dating, had I not been looking through this little kind of magical lens, this this distorted lens of faith, I would have seen even before we got married, that this wasn't really a good fit. He was was cruel. He was manipulative and controlling. And, you know, he would just weird little things. I should have seen it. But I didn't, because I may, because I didn't want to see it. And he was my only prospect. You know, um, you know, again, I think Christianity even kind of interfered with my process of selecting a partner. Yeah, for sure.

Unknown Speaker  39:03  
I mean, how do you? How did you explain away? I mean, maybe like you said, maybe you weren't even it wasn't even a conscious. They were those sorts of behaviors that you now looking back and see were unhealthy. Maybe you didn't even see it then. But like, how do you think you explained it? Like, we're able to explain it away? Like, God would change him? Or again, maybe it was something you were doing that was leading him to behave poorly?

Unknown Speaker  39:31  
Do you remember Do you Yes. Oh, absolutely. And, um, so during my deconstruction, I'll come right back to that story. But, um, during my deconstruction, I was trying to process all of just this whole spiritual evolution and spiritual development, right. And, and one of the themes was this idea of these rose colored glasses that and that, that is a metaphor for my faith. And with those glasses, like every circumstance look different than what it really presented in reality, and so, so this, so this person who I'm dating, I'm going to marry, and then eventually do Mary, you know, he treats me poorly, he's condescending, he's controlling. And I with these with these rose colored glasses interpreted that, oh, God wants to use this person to bring me closer to Christ to sanctify me to make me more Christ like to, to rid me of any idolatry of thinking that one person can make me happier than then what Christ can make me so. So he's just this tool. Yeah, yeah, he was a tool. Yeah, for sure. He was this tool used by God to, to change to find me.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai