“Well…That’s not REALLY what those verses mean…”

I am FURIOUS. I am LIVID. I am… am… speechless. The words slowly sink in. I wear a long sleeve, high neck red sweater (As in the day of the grassy knoll, I remember exactly what I had on like a Polaroid) a long denim skirt, and boots. My face hasn’t seen makeup for years, my hair has not seen a scissor and I work at a bank.

And I am pissed as HELL at DH.

There has been a split in the United Pentecostal Church.

Book of Romans, bla bla, grace, bla bla (I would explain the Bible behind it but then this story would be dry as a diet taco and you’d go back to that literary panic attack known as Facebook), there is suddenly a reason to pitch the holiness standards. YOU HAVE TO BE JOKING. After all of the Bible study, all of the painstaking research, all of the careful combing through the original Greek and Hebrew and…how could this have been missed? And why is it always the guys who decide this shit for the women?? So, much as it initially happened when I STARTED following all of this now apparent BS, the Pastor and my husband explain why the external holiness standards are suddenly being dropped, and, well, I guess that’s what we’re doing now.

But, just as prisoners tend to do, I just sit there and look at the open door a while. What? Is it possible?? Can I REALLY trim my hair without risking hellfire, brimstone, and worse…being called on the carpet by the Pastor? OH… I think I might be able to buy a pair of jeans! Can I wear jeans now? Holy shit, can I tweeze these damn Andy Rooney brows??

That’s it, I’m buying lipstick.

Almost immediately, I go get a job at a salon again and it is great fun to be back, even though this isn’t the career I want. I really can’t go back to school just now, DH has a Master’s in music and is having a hard time finding work. After years convinced it was signing my soul’s death warrant, I ask one of the girls to TRIM MY HAIR. Buh’bye, Godly Covering. She shows the back to me. Hair doesn’t grow evenly, and it’s four inches longer on one side, listing diagonal like an inebriated piece of macrame. The ends appear run over by a lawnmower. You may have already figured this, but uncut hair is NOT very flattering.

Remember Bible Thumper? He comes to our apartment one day. He… is on the other side of this debate. I’m not sure how many UPC churches left and became Independent Pentecostal, but it was a handful in an international denomination, and his church dug their heels in hard. I am not wearing a skirt.

Uh oh.

I can remember my first pair of jeans post-UPC, hip huggerish boot-cuts that would be wayyy out of style today. But nothing came between me and my Calvin Kleins, and I loved my new rebel denim. Bible Thumper is profoundly unimpressed, not surprisingly this is the last time we see him socially, he is now on the other side of the UPC fence. I still think about him when I go to the mall and see ladies with long skirts, tennis shoes, no makeup and long hair, it’s such a dead giveaway. People watchers, take note: UPC women at the mall are like guys on bikes with neatly pressed white shirts in Utah or red shirts in Captain Kirk’s away team, you just know. (Mormons and UPC’ers fare better than Redshirts, of course.) I wonder where he wound up, he married some very young girl who looked like she walked off the set of Little House on the Prairie, and I assume they drove their sedan off into the sunset church service.

Remember Pastor South? His church is just a half hour away, and his church has also exited the UPC, we visit back and forth quite often, entertainment options in UPC are pretty limited as you might imagine, even after those crushing standards are lifted.

We are still extremely devoted to the church, and there is a parsonage attached that is kind of run down. No one lives there, and, having just moved back from university with DH not yet having found work, we are allowed to move quite literally into the church and start renovating. We replace flooring, paint cabinets, tear out and replace fixtures, remove a Brady Bunch house’s worth of paneling and somehow manage to make the walls look like they hadn’t been through Armageddon. It finally feels like home, maybe we’ll be settled for a while now??

But then, Pastor Kind resigns…Pastor Kind is tired. He has been a Pastor here at this tiny church for close to 20 years and worked a full time job as well. The church never seems to really take off as far as attendance goes, and has dwindled down to a handful. DH is the deacon/trustee/only guy left, and ownership of the building, which is paid off, is taken over by Pastor South, who has agreed to pastor both churches.

For a while he carries on, commuting to both locations, but he eventually decides to sell the building where Pastor Kind had pastored all those years, and put the profit from that into his own church’s building project in the other town. To this day, no one knows that the shiny new building Pastor South built was from the proceeds and hard work of Pastor Kind’s original church in our hometown. I wish they knew how Pastor Kind’s legacy enabled the church that still stands today. The parsonage we had made our home now sold, we wind up going along with the money to Pastor South’s town, population 5000 with little going on and no college. Little did I know how many years we would spend in this one-horse town, or what a pariah I would become by the time I finally saw its lights dimming in my rear-view mirror. At this point, I’m still a Good Church Girl, diligently polishing my doomed halo.

Back to my new Tiny Town…fine and dandy that the holiness standards have been jettisoned, but there are many things that remain… obedience and submission to your husband, submission to the pastor, and gifts of the Spirit, a Pandora’s box I have yet to open, and absolutely the source of many of the craziest, and funniest, stories.

Wanna hear a few??

“You’re brainwashed.”

Sharp words from my sister.

We had escaped Pastor Strict’s draconian church, watching everything we own bouncing around in the back of Pastor Kind’s trailer as we followed behind in our rusty Escort. There’s a reason for every name in this story and honestly, Pastor Kind was SO kind that he literally built a trailer and drove on down. We pitched all our stuff in and headed back up to the UPC church in central Wisconsin. It was a relief to be headed back home, and I was VERY excited to see my UPC friends, and my family.

Which brings me back to my sister’s accusation.

I am in tears because I’m honestly convinced she is really, truly, going to hell in a handbasket (What do they do with all these baskets in hell? Are they kindling?). According to what I believed, she was. Ensuing was the latest argument with my formerly closest sister, and one REALLY big bone I have to pick with the effects of this belief system. There are verses teaching about separating from family members to follow God, thus, what is called brothers and sisters in Christ often takes the place of family, if family is not involved with the Church. Yeah, well…my own actual family was a big buncha booze drankin’, face paint and pants wearin’ heathens, not the kind of influence you want in your good Holy life (Translation: My family was normal.). As you might imagine, by this time I had very little in common with them. One of my biggest regrets about my years in the church was the distancing effect it had on my family, who would be considered “worldly”, and let me tell ya, they were not exactly jumping up-and-down to unlock the secrets of the Bible. The same could be said of my friends outside the church, you’re supposed to be spending time with the people who will build your faith… so my circle of friends became the size of a little churchy Cheerio.

I’m very grateful to have been able to reconcile with my family later on, but I definitely missed out on my 20s and 30s with them. Church was top priority, twice on Sunday, once on Wednesday, Bible studies and various groups through the week, and revivals on weekends. I will always be grateful that when I got out and made my family a priority again, they all welcomed me back with open arms, killing the fatted calf (or at least a bottle or two of Kendall Jackson.)

I saw this pattern many times over the years, the church would frown on or outright forbid family or friends who had different lifestyles or moral choices, or living arrangements, or in the case of UPC, didn’t follow those doggone Holiness standards, the heap of craaaaazy rules about dresses and hair and card games and theaters and whatever else the church decided was Holy And You Need To Do This.

Back in my hometown again at Pastor Kind’s church, we resumed our slightly more relaxed-and much more fun-life with my UPC pals. We would travel all over visiting different churches, they would hold “revivals” and everyone would flock to the latest Revival like pigeons descending on an abandoned Happy Meal. One of the places we visited quite often was a church about a half hour away, this is where we met Pastor South. I don’t recall where he was from, but definitely the South. And he was funny, and wore a mustache, which told you a bit about him, because facial hair on men was commonly disallowed in the UPC. (Apparently on women it was okay, heh heh)

His wife, who was a wonderful person, had a VERY old-school hairstyle, a kind of mushroom-shaped, teased pouf with a topknot. Years later, I discovered the reason. When she became involved in ministry, the church lady Gestapo sat her down and informed her THIS is how she was to wear her hair. No choice for you! I thought she was in her fifties, and was surprised to discover one day she was actually like 30somethingish. Later, when she was done with UPC and had normal hair, she looked MUCH younger, and you could actually see her beautiful face. Wouldn’t be the first time Pentecostal hair made someone look a lot older than they were. I probably looked older at 22 with my UPC approved hair pile than I do today.

I worked an entry-level bank job (meh) and kind of lived for leading worship because secular music was forbidden fruit. DH taught piano and studied the Bible constantly.

Funny thing thing about studying obsessively…it has a tendency to breed questions.

Remember how I said in Chapter Six things were about to change?

“Sister Monica, you really shouldn’t spend time with Sister Tammy.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “She’s…well, she struggles with her faith, and…” I was tuned out at this point and all I was hearing was the MWA MWAA MWAA of Charlie Brown’s teacher.

We had been in Central Illinois for a few months, and this was Pastor Strict’s latest edict.

Back in Pastor Kind’s church, we had a wonderful, fun, dynamic group of friends and would often stay up past midnight playing games, heading to Perkins for coffee, or watching movies (I know, I know. No TV. For some reason, VHS movies were allowed… but no R-rated movies, you might as well just get yourself a pitchfork and tail if you were gonna watch that smut.) There were good bits of church… learning about love, compassion and service, genuinely thinking about and caring for those around you, and being with great people with whom I am still friends to this day. The positive character taught was priceless.

Then came the day we packed the U-Haul and drove the straightest, flattest, most boringest road straight into the tightest loop of the Bible Belt, and it all changed.

We found our way to the one-room efficiency apartment on cobblestone streets (they hum when you drive on them!), piled our handful of possessions into the tiny place, and hurried to visit our shiny new UPC church.

We walked in and were instantly accosted by an overly jovial, squashy faced man who looked to be just a bit older than us? Younger?? This dude looked barely legal. Not that he would be caught dead buying alcohol, much less cigarettes. He introduced himself as Pastor Strict with the handshake and personality of a used-car salesman. Buzz cut hair as short as possible, with an impressively bunned wife whose name I still can’t remember because her role in everything was so damn subservient. Her hair was down to her feet, though I never got to see it because it was always stacked up tightly at the back of her head. He was EXTREMELY excited to welcome us into his rather empty church, and I was uneasy from the beginning. DH wasn’t thrilled about it either, but by golly it’s the only UPC church in the area, so we were kinda stuck.

They didn’t have a genius Hammond organ player like in Pastor Kind’s church, and there was often the singing of “specials”. I never knew why they were called this. Specials were just solos, usually to a recorded soundtrack. Lord have mercy, in the church they would let pretty much ANYONE sing a Special, so the songs were often sung rather poorly, occasionally while reading the lyrics directly off the cassette insert; microphone in one hand, folded cardboard insert in the other. Sometimes the tape would be warped, and sometimes this got so bad it would be good, and I would be biting my tongue to not completely bust out laughing. Remember that DH and I were both musicians, and this was worse than amateur night at Karaoke in a random Northwoods tavern.

And we had to listen SOBER.

I worked at a dry cleaners and later managed a flower shop, not too bad. Once while creating a dried arrangement, I accidentally squirted hot glue on my hands and yelled SHIT!!! … uh oh… I felt really bad about that and repented for like a week. Bad girl, no cookie. I once had to call someone else in to deliver a dozen roses to a tavern because I couldn’t have my car seen in a bar parking lot and have the appearance of evil.

They were big on this appearance of evil thing, as you imagine this could expand to apply to all sorts of situations. The appearance of impropriety was a huge taboo, and I became kinda paranoid about what I was wearing. I was taught to examine myself front and back in a mirror to make absolutely sure I wasn’t causing men to lustfully stumble by seeing the overtly sensual stray calf or upper arm. I wasn’t allowed to enter a bar at ALL, unless it had a restaurant and we were there for the food. I did wonder… the Bible addresses gluttony as sin, and you couldn’t go to the bar, but man oh man, you could eat and eat, and pile on all the pounds you wanted, seemed very inconsistent to me. I mean, because, of course, it was.

As usual, we were almost immediately recruited to lead worship, but then came the rules which are always more stringent when you’re “up on the platform”. Since I was married, my hair had to go up, and as you may recall, this is the guy who wanted strictly skirts on the women, no cheating. Do not pass go, do not collect 200$. Somehow Pastor Strict was tied into the upper level of command in the UPC, so we as the main worship leaders would travel and play with him sometimes, and this is when I really had to turn the modesty up to 11 so no one could accuse Sister Monica of improper attire.

Back to Tammy, though.

Most of the women I met in this church, as you might imagine, seemed a bit brainwashed to me. I was starting to wonder if the front hair swoops were hiding lobotomy scars. But there was one woman I instantly connected with, and Tammy was AWESOME. She also had questions about this “I’m the King” attitude that Pastor Strict had, and she was more easygoing about rules… more normal, I guess. Pastor Strict got wind of me spending time with her and sat me down to have a little talk. He would view a woman having her own questions about things as rebellion, so I really wasn’t too surprised when he pulled me aside. Bad company corrupts good character was the verse, and I was no longer allowed to spend time with Sister Tammy.

Dammit. I really liked her.

This is when the expectations of being in church leadership started to really set in…you’re the example, you don’t want to cause anyone to stumble, be submissive, don’t swear and don’t use substitutionary language, either. I was rebuked one day for saying heck. “I rebuke you, Sister Monica!” interrupting my conversation with another person. I had no idea what I had done wrong, then he admonished me that a substitute swear is just as bad as the original word. Well, what the frick?! I became pretty quiet and submissive, and hated that anytime we went out to eat, I was stuck with the ladies chatting about quilting and recipes and all manner of things I was totally uninterested in while the guys talked about doctrine, a discussion I would loved to have been allowed into, but nope, this was it. This was my life. I was to be this dowdy, handmaid’s-tale shadow of a woman, in a quiet support role. At least I still got to do music.

We became VERY anxious to get the hell out of there and back to Pastor Kind’s church, and by a highly ambitious miracle, DH got his Master’s degree in a record nine months. We tossed it all right back in the U-Haul, said goodbye to this indoctrination station in a cornfield, and fled back to our home church.

Things were about to change there, too…

I am SOBBING.

Walking down the aisle in my absurdly modest long-sleeved high-necked totally unsexy wedding gown, I want to run, but I can’t. I don’t understand what went wrong, aren’t you supposed to marry your best friend?! Fiancee is an awesome person whom I deeply respect and care for…

Why. Isn’t. This. WORKING??!

I am barely 20. I make it through the ceremony and Fiancee becomes Husband, whom I will refer to as DH (Dear Husband) until DH becomes DX (Dear Ex), but take a seat, it’s gonna be a while before this can happen.

Problem.

I know almost immediately that this was a mistake. DH is a wonderful person, and we have a lot of fun together and a lot in common, but this is like being married to a good roommate, just not the right person to marry. AT ALL.

well… at the same time this is all happening, I am being taught all about women being submissive and obedient. So, although I know immediately this wasn’t a good idea for either of us, I cannot change it. You are WAYYY not allowed to get divorced in this church. The ONLY Biblical reason you can get divorced is if one or the other cheats, and neither of us are that person. I’m trapped, and must make the best of it, because I want to do the Right Thing, and at this point I believe that divorce is always Wrong. Many think this is uncommon, yet almost every church I was in had this belief. This is the rule that eventually cost me my career as a ministry leader.

So.

About that women being submissive deal… Pastor Kind was really pretty good about allowing you, within reason, to have your own convictions. His daughter wore face powder and tinted lip balm, and shocked me one day by wearing baggy basketball-type shorts to work out. I, ever the overachiever, didn’t even tweeze my eyebrows anymore and looked like Eugene Levy in my wedding pics (Notice. NONE of you have seen them, have you?). Remember, no makeup, ladies! You don’t wanna be like Jezebel who painted her eyes and was subsequently thrown out the window to be devoured by wild animals until only the palms of her hands were found, do you?? (yes, that’s a Bible story. I don’t recommend it for bedtime.)

There was quite a bit of variance in what different churches would allow, in some you could wear a wedding band or a brooch because it was considered part of your clothing, while other churches disallowed any jewelry at all. Some, like Pastor Kind’s, allowed split skirts or culottes (homely, but at least an option), but the next church we found ourselves at was Pastor Strict’s, and as you may recall, that would be a big NOPE from him.

A lot of the churches wanted your hair up if you were married, it was considered too… flirty, I guess? Sensual? Fleshly? Victoria’s Secret model? …to wear all this uncut hair down and flowing freely, so the unintentional yet hysterical consequence of this was some damn hilarious attempts at piling this mass of hair on top of one’s head. These were formidable super-structures of pins and spray intended to keep ten pounds of hair in place, because in the stricter churches, if you’re a married woman, you have no choice. (Google Pentecostal bun. DO IT NOW. You’re welcome.) Rumor had it that in the 50’s era, UPC ladies would use those round oatmeal boxes inside their buns to make the hair even higher. Thing is, there was this deal called dancing in the Spirit, and sometimes women would dance in church so hard that they would “dance their hair down” and the whole structure would come tumbling down and hang askew, pins a’flyin and such. Yes, I saw this happen, more than once.

NO choice. That was really kind of how it worked. The church/Pastor would kinda make your choices for you, as would your husband. God is the head of the church, the church/Pastor is in authority over the man, the man is the authority over the woman. I guess maybe the woman gets to rule over the dog? It sounds so deranged when I look at the actual words, but yep, as women in the church we REALLY got ripped off. Men get to pursue whatever they want, a woman’s highest calling is as wife and mother, and once married, you are relegated to helper. To this day, the Bible phrase “keepers at home” makes me want to fetal-position in a corner.

I determined that my way to make the best of things, since I couldn’t get divorced and now needed to fulfill the supporting role of wife, was to be the best damn wife and worship leader I possibly could, to support DH who had finished his bachelor’s degree and was on to the next level. I sewed clothes, went to ladies groups, cooked and cleaned, and did my best at being the Stereotypical Conservative Church Lady.

Aaaaand there’s some verse in there about women learning in submission and silence, so I’m expected to be submissive and quiet.

Yep, I did this.

Wipe that smirk off your face.

My gut was shouting SOMETHING IS SPECTACULARLY WRONG every step of the way, but we were taught that the heart could be deceitful, and that the Devil was trying to get us to fall, and rebellion was as the sin of witchcraft, and it was really just that anything the Bible said that could be taken as a rule of some sort was, right down to not coloring your grey hair because a grey head is the head of wisdom (mmhmmm, that’s a verse, too).

So, I shelved my own personality and aspirations, and we packed up to pursue DH’s Masters degree at a top university in the Southern Midwest. Somewhere between point A and point B, though, we crossed the Mason-Dixon line and wound up in the Bible belt, where the UPC was a LOT tougher about the rules.

Enter Pastor Strict, and the end of what little of me was left.

“Sister Monica, I really see you working in a flower shop, or something like that.” I was having a conversation with Pastor Kind about my day job as a hairdresser, I had a rather large clientele, and paid for my own college and apartment. No way could I pay for college if I had a minimum wage job. But I was between hair and a hard place, how could I be holy if I was chopping off women’s spiritual coverings all day long?

I can’t imagine what my coworkers thought at the salon as I suddenly started showing up in long skirts with no makeup and uncut hair. I still tried to dress as stylishly as possible, but COME ON, this had to stick out like a nun in a nudist colony.

This was tough. All my life, I had aspired to be a professional singer and play with a band. I loved the creativity and complexity of jazz, and the balls-out energy of rock, and funk that grooves so hard it moves your body for you. Music was my life. At age 6 I was at a wedding with my parents, a little bundle of overactive energy that never shut up (I know you’re not surprised). I approached the band boldly. “I can sing that song!” “Would you like to?”

And, just like that, there I was singing Bobby Vinton to a crowd of wide-eyed onlookers, including my parents, who had no idea that I had no fear of getting up in front of people. I belted out that cheesy song in my cute little red flowered sundress and I was hooked. I LOVED the stage, and I loved crafting a song and performing, even that young, I knew this is what I wanted.

I was a bullied bookworm through my elementary and middle school years, and would spend hours in my room singing songs and pretending to be performing. Today when people ask me how I do what I do, the answer is… I’ve already done this a million times in my room as long as I can remember, the only difference now is I’m on stage. I would perform everything to my imaginary audience, from cheezy 70’s ballads, which I STILL love, to the entire Crystal Ball album by Styx (bandpals, if you’re reading this YES I wanna cover Crystal Ball, please.)

Back to reality, here I was having the conversation that was the beginning of the end of my college career. The band life I wanted to pursue was chock-full of worldliness, so I put my heart and soul into being a worship leader instead. So, I said goodbye to the university for the moment, always with the intent that I would go back when I could afford it. I wish I had known then… “when I can afford it” is the death toll for many dreams. Today, my mantra is more like “bust down walls and tear down buildings till I make a damn way”, but we have a looot of story before that happens.

I did quit my job as a hairdresser, quit college, and found an entry level job at a bank. During the time I submitted to this belief about women’s hair having some sort of spiritual significance, I worked at a dry cleaner, a bank, and damn if I didn’t actually wind up working at a freaking flower shop.

None of them paid well enough for me to go back to college. Besides, I was VERY busy at church. Church services were twice on Sunday and once on Wednesday, extra Bible studies and prayer services, and social gatherings (fellowship is the word, to this day I think only churches use this archaic term) and week after week, I was being trained in submission and obedience.

Speaking of which…this is where my problems started with being a woman.

Jeans, out. Pants, out. Cool zebra leggings (remember this was 1989) out, out, OUT!! Tank tops, out because shoulders are too provocative, the most revealing thing I can wear up top is T shirt sleeve length, and skirts (mandatory) calf length my GOD no knees, please!! I remember owning a calf length skirt with a slit in the back, well slits are for sluts, sooo I took a bandana and stitched it in there. No one would stumble to sin because they saw the back of MY calf! We, as women, had the responsibility to not cause men to “stumble”, as in to think lustful thoughts (like they weren’t gonna do it anyway).

We found a local UPC church with a pastor whom I will call Pastor Kind. He was a good man, and, like the rest of us, just wanted to do the right thing. A few friends and I had all gotten into this at the same time, and we were all in intensive Bible studies. To this day, I know the Bible better than most churchgoers. This is something the Apostolics/Pentecostals are REALLY good at, they know their scriptures really, really well. SO, I was learning to keep myself from what they would call worldly and/or fleshly pursuits, and here is where it really starts to affect my life direction.

Familiar with the term “secular music”?

I wasn’t either, but I was about to be schooled.

I, pursuing jazz studies, and Fiancee, studying theory and composition, listened to a regular diet of Brecker Brothers, Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald and everything from bebop to twelve-tone, from Schubert to Schoenberg. We were about to lose our lives, they would say for the sake of saving our souls. We both lived for music and most of it was about to go away for a very, very long time. I’m writing this for entertainment, and I want it to be funny, but as I type this out, I’m still emotional over what we lost.

Secular music was wrong. Worldly. Of the Devil. So, one evening I remember, Pastor Kind’s daughter came over and we destroyed our secular cassette collection. We had races where we would break the tape, then one person would grab each loose end and pull it out of the cassette as fast as possible, first person to run out of tape is the winner!!

Brecker Brothers, gone. Stevie Wonder, gone. All of my beloved Steely Dan and Fiancee’s rare early Pink Floyd bootlegs, gone, gone, GONE. Balinese gamelan music, Ravi Shankar’s experiments in sitar, all were disallowed. I think I STILL owe Columbia House money for the mountain of cassettes that were destroyed that day. Music was to be for God, and this is where we enter the wonderful world of contemporary Christian music.

Groan.

I know now, that if you are a professional musician, and you visit a church, you are exactly three seconds away from being asked to join the worship team. As, of course, we were. This is how my experience in church leadership started, and I still remember the Pastor sitting down with me and explaining that my voice was to be used for God’s glory, and just for worship. This…. is how I became a worship leader.

(Aaaand, we have a title, folks. Well, at least half a title. The rest will show up in Part II.)

All was not totally lost, though. Being in the Pentecostal church, at least some of the music was really, REALLY good. Many Gospel greats like Mahalia Jackson, Shirley Caesar and any number of incredible choirs have their roots in the Pentecostal or Baptist tradition, and the music is truly transcendental. And Pastor Kind’s older daughter was a kick-ass, goddess-voiced, creative monster of a Hammond organ player. MAN could she kill it on the Hammond, that Leslie speaker vibrato breathing life into every verse and chorus. She was so amazing, and the music was so urban-spiritual at this little church, I wonder to this day if we ever would have gotten involved if the music weren’t so good. There’s always a silver lining, mine was the discovery of great Gospel music.

Musician pals to this day wonder why the hell I don’t know any music from the 90’s.

Well, now you know.

To my benefit, at least I didn’t have to live through the Macarena.

So.

Why did I give up my freedom and individuality? How does a sassy aspiring jazz singer with a helluva personality and a foul mouth get caught up in such a hot mess?

Let’s backtrack a bit.

I was the youngest of 8 in a good Catholic family, evidenced by the 8 kids bit, of course. Anyone with older siblings knows that being the youngest can make you rather compliant, and a bit on the flinchy side. My brothers and sisters offered a wide variety of excitement such as sudden death or six months in the hospital, or tickle torture, or spit yoyos hanging over my face with my arms pinned down, you get the idea. For my siblings who may read this, yes, I am aware that I could be a total pain in the ass, too. We had a good family nevertheless, and it was instilled that we do the right thing, even when it’s a difficult choice. This works out great when the right thing is actually the right thing, not so well when the right thing is just what you THINK is the right thing, but really isn’t. That sentence is confusing as hell, but correct. I think. Maybe.

So, there I was, sassy snarky Monica just reeling in my life. I was in college for vocal jazz performance, singing had been my passion since I was six, and I was VERY determined to be the best I could. I had spent a year ahead of college going to cosmetology school so I could work my way through college doing something other than flipping burgers, and I enjoyed my support job. I love learning, so my plan was to get my vocal jazz degree and then move on into the sciences, with the vision of being some sort of scientist and a performing musician as well. I wanted to continue taking classes indefinitely, learning over my entire life. I wanted to know everything about everything. and this was my way to do it.

Until Thanksgiving of 1989. Sometimes destiny is changed by a single event, this was one of those evenings.

We are at my future in-law’s, in a dark, musty-dusty basement sitting in velveteen patterned chairs that looked to be circa 1962 with a smell to match. Fiancee has a friend over, we’ll call him Bible Thumper, who is talking about a personal, powerful and real God, and how the Bible is real and relevant, and has SO much more in it about how to live your life than anyone knows. (Remember, I was raised Catholic. I knew the rosary prayers and such, but jeez like any good Catholic, we didn’t really read the Bible.) So, he has this copy of the Bible with him (King James Version, of course), and he’s showing us different things in the Bible. And I’m sitting there like, well shit, it’s the Bible, right?? I really should follow this, it’s the right thing to do!

I had no problem with many of the things he was talking about.

Then he took the left turn at Albuquerque.

Did YOU know the Bible has verses in it about women’s hair? Something something the angels will know a women’s glory because of their headcovering, etc etc and if she is shaven she might as well be shorn yadda yadda… Anyway the long and short of it (sorry!) is that women should not cut their hair. It’s bad. Just for women, though. So, I, of course wanting to do what’s right am not only thinking ohmahgawd I can’t cut my hair but also ohmahgawd what do I do with my job??! And SHIT I just took the Lord’s name in vain and DAMMIT I just swore and we can’t do that either and…oh, hell not again! (I was rebuked once by Pastor Strict for using the word heck! Can’t even darn it to heck anymore. Sheesh. Wait, can I say that??)

I was young, and an idealist, and thought that jeez, what if he’s right? At this point, I was still fearful enough of hellfire and brimstone that I thought I had better at least investigate.

Other discoveries that night… no drinking or smoking (fairly common in churches) no fornication (oops!) no television (the One-Eyed Devil!) and lets see… You weren’t supposed to be “worldly”, a catch-all phrase that could mean anything from jewelry to makeup to a slit in your skirt. Pastor Strict would say “Better a blemish on your face than a blemish on your soul.” Oh yeah, that’s right! No pants for the ladies either, because THAT, my dear, is cross dressing! There is sooo much more, but I’m not throwing all my cards on the table just yet.

I can’t.

We’re not allowed to play cards either. For reals.

I’m not sure what it was that made me swallow all of this hook, line, and sinker, but I did. Rest assured, there are Bible verses for all of it, that’s how they getchya. All at once, me, Fiancee, and a few friends all made a leap into this insanity that would take us on a roller coaster ride I had never planned. I think we just all wanted to do the right thing, and who were we to question the Bible? I mean, a million hotel room drawers can’t be wrong, can they??

There are more things I learned that night, Bible Thumper talked late into the evening about how all you need was the power of God and things would magically fall into place, and I haven’t even touched on signs and wonders and such yet, but suffice it to say that we decided that following this way was the right thing to do. I literally pitched my makeup, my pants, my bad language, my wine and smokes (Camel Lights, baby!) and my personality and quite honestly my will and control over my own life. Overnight my appearance went from badass to Brigham Young, from funky to frumpy. My family was convinced I had joined a cult.

My family… was right.

I am sitting in the back seat of Pastor Strict’s black sedan. His wife, all suited up in her floral dress and impressively sized bun resembling the foot tall soft-serve cones from one fantastic place called Belt’s (in Stevens Point and worth the trip), is sitting submissively – and quietly – at his side. I have my uncut hair braided (more on that later) and am next to my husband, and we are off to a revival. The music will be amazing, the content, well… not so much.

“I got the pattern for these from my friend in the church up North”, I say. I am wearing what was called a split skirt back in the day, a beautiful peach floral cotton… well, if you pictured 80’s wallpaper, you’re right. I am doing my best to do the right thing, and doing the right thing means following the rules, and following the rules means no cutting your hair, no pants, no jewelry, no makeup, or no anything else that might possibly look like you’re relevant to society.

Pastor Strict in his Texan drawl: “Sister Monica, anything with two legs is of the devil. What you need is a proper skirt.”

…And with that sentence, one more bit of freedom, of personality, of my self expression, is stripped away.

And I can FEEL IT.

I gaze out the dusty car window, silent tears streaming down my cheeks. I mustn’t complain, I mustn’t think badly of Pastor Strict. Guess I’m gonna have to pitch my homesewn creation and get me some God-approved skirts…

How easily we can assign control to another human being, and in this case holy shit, did I ever! This is just a beginning snapshot of where I started the journey I’m writing about, the United Pentecostal Church in this case, though you will hear about several others. I do not wish to discuss doctrine, I am telling my story strictly for entertainment value, because sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, and man, let me tell you it is one straaaannnge story.

I start with this story because it was one of the watershed moments in giving up Monica, in giving up who I was as a person. But don’t worry, I’m going to get Monica back, and then some, heh heh.

I have waited a loooong time to tell my tale. I am changing names and locations, and am taking liberties with conversations in which I may not recall specific words, but will tell the gist of the story. Don’t take it too seriously, I certainly haven’t.

This is a true story, or at least based on a true story, as much as I recall. As far as you know.

One thing I can assure you, it’s not boring.

Enjoy!

-Monica