My Escape from the Belly of the Beast
I studied the Bible for 20 years and worked at church 5 days a week
Submitted by Don R
Content warning: child sexual abuse
I grew up in the church. Well, actually, the first 5 years of my life were not so church like. My mother left when I was about 2 years old. She never bonded with my sister or me, and so she left us with our father. He also didn’t have the ability to bond with anyone, so we were pretty much on our own from a very early age.
Sometimes we had babysitters, but more often my sister (a year older than me) and I would be left to fend for ourselves. When my father married his second wife, they put us in foster care for a year while they went to bible training.
When I was six, I “got saved”. I still remember the flannelgraph board with the story of Jesus. I remember really loving him, and I really needed someone to love and be loved by at that point in my life. Our parents came back and got us shortly after that, and we moved to California for them to start a ministry. They were very involved with Campus Crusade for a while, and we were brought up in a very strict fundamental Christian household.
Some years later, we moved to Big Bear, where they started a church. I remember the good feelings of…
