Chapter 10 - In which I find that my dear wife was not exaggerating when she told me her parents were crazy.

In retrospect, I should have seen it coming.  My father-in-law always seemed a little too good to be true, constantly smiling and telling the church he pastored (and everyone else) about how GREAT JESUS IS!  I assumed it was a Midwest thing.  My wife’s family is from Iowa, and I’m from New England.  When my wife moved here, she became visibly upset after we went grocery shopping:

Me: Are you OK?
Her: That cashier was SO RUDE!
Me: What are you talking about?  She didn’t even talk to us!
Her: I know, right?  How rude!

That about sums up the difference between Midwestern and New England culture.

My experience growing up Catholic was that no one ever smiled in church or talked about how GREAT IT WAS TO BE CATHOLIC!  So when I met my in-laws and went to their tiny Baptist church where my father-in-law was the pastor, it was quite a different experience.  Even though the service was tame by megachurch standards (which I had yet to experience), everything felt different.  People I didn’t know welcomed me, said hello, and seemed happy to be there.  The cross at the front of the church didn’t have a giant bleeding statue of Jesus’ corpse nailed to it.

The weirdest thing?  The whole place was full of BIBLES!  Just lousy with ‘em!  There was one for everyone so you could make sure the pastor wasn’t making shit up.  Catholic churches have one giant Bible for the priest, and a Cliff Notes version for everyone else called a missalet.  It contains snippets from the Bible, as well as a crib sheet on when to bow and when to stand, and stern instructions to non-Catholics to not even THINK about taking Communion.

My wife’s family and their church seemed like exactly what I was looking for.  Of course, my wife had told me stories.  Oh, had she told me stories.  Stories of the huge screaming matches her parents had when she was younger, and the hurtful comments her dad made about her mom in my wife’s presence - starting when my wife was three years old.  The story of when her mom threatened to leave and her dad woke up her three younger siblings (who were about eight years old) in the middle of the night, lined them up in front of her mom and told them her mother was going to leave them.

There were more.  But on some level, I dismissed these stories.  I don’t know why.  Was it because her dad seemed so happy now?  Maybe, but cracks occasionally showed.  I was witness to some screaming matches, though they seemed less intense than what my wife had described.  Was it because I just wanted to believe that Jesus could change someone?  That was probably part of it.  

But I think the real reason can be found in a book called Matilda by Roald Dahl.  

Its a children’s book.  The villain is a character who is the headmistress of a school in England.  She’s referred to as the Trunchbull, and she’s a terror.  She locks kids in a tiny cupboard with broken glass on the walls.  She grabs a girl by the pigtails, whips her around like a lasso, and throws her over the playground fence.  Why?  Because she doesn’t like pigtails.  You get the idea.

The book contains this quote about her, made by the heroine Matilda, who is an extremely gifted child.  In regards to why no one has stopped the Trunchbull’s outrageous behavior, she says:

"Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog. Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it's unbelievable...”

Now, I’m not claiming this was my father-in-law’s intention.  I am also not saying I thought my wife was a liar.  But some of the stories my wife told seemed so off the wall that I think I subconsciously dismissed them.   I just thought she might be a little biased - after all, I told her stories about how crazy my family was too, but deep down I knew I was a little biased about them.

Shortly after I started dating my wife, gay pornography sites were found in the browser history of the family’s computer.  My father-in-law said he had been visiting these sites to talk to gay people about JESUS and the AWFUL SIN OF HOMOSEXUALITY.  I believed him.

I’ll wait for you to stop laughing.  Take your time, it’s fine.

All set?  Great.  No really, no apology necessary - I deserve it.

This happened ten years ago.  Nothing more was ever said about it.  

Fast forward to a year ago.  The in-laws come to visit, and they bring one of my wife’s younger brothers, now a strapping lad of twenty-one (we’ll call him Nathan).  We noticed Nathan was being really rude to his parents.  There was a shouting match in which he stormed out of our house.  We figured it was just normal parent/child stuff.

Then, my mother-in-law revealed that something had happened between Nathan and his father, but we were “better off not knowing.”  When asked, my father-in-law said Nathan had “found out about some sin in his [my father-in-law’s] life, and confronted him about it” and that everything was fine now.

Now, for the non-Christians in my audience, when sin is discovered in a male American Christian’s life, its almost invariably of a sexual nature.  And usually, it’s porn.  Never mind anything else going on in the guy’s life - he might be prideful, gluttonous, greedy, hateful, what have you...but when “sin” is discovered it’s usually in the history of their web browser.

We assumed that’s what happened.  Then, my father-in-law found a note from my Nathan on his pillow: “Either you tell Mom or I will”.

Turns out, Nathan had been molested by his father several times, starting when he was sixteen.  Well, we were right about the sex part, just wrong on the details.  

Details started to come out.  But to hear my in-laws tell the tale, Nathan was at fault, and, from what we could piece together, had initiated the whole thing.  Why?  We were told that he had told his mother that she “now had biblical grounds for divorce”.

Nathan admitted he has said this.  So we started to theorize.  Had he entrapped his father to give his mother a way out?  Surely this fell into Trunchbull territory.   But had his father actually initiated it?  That also seemed crazy.  

More details came out.  My father-in-law had been molested as a teenager.  He had made inappropriate sexual comments to Nathan when he was thirteen (something which he still denies, or at least “doesn’t remember”).   We don’t have any specific details as to what happened - just that it was of a sexual nature.  Nathan admitted that in some cases, he had been the one that initiated it.  Other times, it was his father.

Well at least things were out in the open, right?  But the story doesn’t end there.  Remember how my father-in-law is a pastor?  My wife and I thought things needed to be a little more “out in the open”.

My in-laws disagreed.

The Heretics Bible: John 8:1-11

Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. At dawn he went to the temple, where the people gathered around and he sat to teach them. The Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery and asked “This woman was caught in adultery. Moses commanded us to stone her. What do you say?” They asked this question as a trap.

But Jesus bent down and wrote on the ground. When they asked again, he stood up and said “Whoever is without sin can throw the first stone.” And he continued to write on the ground. At this, they went away until only the woman was left. Jesus asked her “Has no one condemned you?”

“No one,” she said

“Then neither do I condemn you,” said Jesus. “Now go and sin no more.”

“Forgive me, sir,” the woman said, “but why did you spare me and not the guy from the Old Testament who was executed for picking up sticks on the Sabbath? Surely my sin was greater.”

“Umm…” said Jesus.

“I mean, if you’re God, that means that you were the one who ordered him to be stoned to death.”

Jesus mumbled something about sovereignity.

"It's in Numbers 15:32-36." the woman said helpfully.  “I don’t mean to be ungrateful, I’m just trying to understand.”

“WHAT IN THE WORLD IS THAT!” Jesus said, pointing off in the distance.

And when the crowd turned, he fled.

Chapter 9: In which the shit hits the fan

Names have been changed to protect the innocent (And the guilty. Mostly the guilty)

“For almost thirty years, we’ve been able to say that the leadership at this church has never had a moral failing, but...we just found out Dan and Christina have been
having an affair...

Our head pastor trailed off.

This was a bombshell. Our worship pastor had been having an affair with someone on the worship team. The head pastor continued:

“This is going to be a difficult time. I want to make one thing perfectly clear: I’m going to be upset if people say they saw this coming. No one saw this coming. No one. “

Funny...our pastors always said that they were listening to what God had to say to them. I guess God didn't see it coming? Or maybe they just weren't listening hard enough? Oops.

An internal investigation was launched. It turned out this was the second affair. Double oops.

The first was years ago. Dan, his wife, the women he was fooling around with at that time, and her husband had a private meeting and decided the church didn’t need to be told. It was between them and God. The affair would stop, and that would be that.

Yeah, right.

The worship pastor was fired. Not too long after, the administrative pastor’s secretary was fired. There had been an “inappropriate relationship”. The pastor refuses to take any responsibility. It could have been an emotional affair. Or maybe the secretary just developed too close a relationship with him, I don’t know. But in my experience these things aren't one sided.

Then the youth pastor’s wife divorced him. We were assured that he had done everything possible to save his marriage, and that he would be staying on staff. They didn’t come out and say it, but they made it seem like his wife’s fault. Again, these things are not one sided, and people who knew him knew that there had been problems for a long time, and that he hadn’t addressed them. It’s been five months since the divorce, and, to my knowledge, he still wears his wedding ring. And the church was much less forthcoming with information than they were when the news of the affair broke.

But hey, people aren’t perfect, right? Forgive! Hate the sin love the sinner! Don’t judge lest ye be judged. Etc., etc.

And we did forgive. People aren’t perfect, myself included. And we were assured by the remaining pastor’s that change was a comin’.

But then we were attacked on a second front.

Chapter 8: In which I find Prozac to be more effective than Jesus

“Its positive.”
“What?”
“ITS POSITIVE!”
“WHAT?”

That was how I found out about my impending lack of sleep and free time.
Nine months later, I held my daughter in my arms and thought “Now what?”. Women may be shocked at this lack of paternal attachment. Allow me to explain: on some level, women develop a relationship with an unborn child throughout the pregnancy. Men don’t, because we can’t have a relationship with a swelling. Especially when it’s the first one.

I decided I didn’t want my kids to have a Dad who was anxious all the time. My wife had started seeing a therapist, and suggested that I do the same since it had really helped her. I was resistant. Talking about my problems to a trained professional? Surely this newfangled approach was not in line with what the Bible recommended.

You see, I had accepted that the Bible was the Inerrant Word Of God, and that I should do what it said. And it said nothing about licensed therapists. It did, however, say a lot about praying, which I had been doing. Surely, if I kept doing it the anxiety would go away, right? And if that wasn’t enough, I was attending church, attending bible study, and reading the Bible. Anxiety didn’t stand a chance!

But though it lessened enough for me to hold down a job, it wouldn’t go away. I didn’t want to inflict this on my kids, and I realized that the Bible didn’t say that penicillin was OK either, but I was fine with taking antibiotics.

So, after a suitably long period of procrastination, I started seeing a Christian therapist, who I still see today. Eventually he recommended a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist recommended Prozac (which is used to treat anxiety as well as depression).

There’s an astounding amount of ignorance surrounding anti-depressants both within the Christian community and without. Christians who wouldn’t hesitate at any form of medical treatment for a physical ailment (well, maybe not stem cells)
become staunch Christian Scientists when it comes to any form of mental disorder. The belief is that God should be enough. Just pray and your anxiety/depression/whatever will vanish!

I was tempted to believe this as well. This was until I wound up on Percocet after having back surgery. Having never taken such a strong painkiller before, I was anxious to get off it as quick as possible.

I got off it a little too fast.

The first couple of days weren’t so bad - just a couple of medium strength panic attacks. I knew this was a potential withdrawal side effect, and I was used to anxiety anyway, so I weathered them OK.

Then one night I got depressed. I thought I had been depressed before, but this was a completely different animal. In about the space of an hour so, I went from feeling a little blue to full on, black depression. I was having suicidal thoughts. Not in the sense that I was actively planning to kill myself, but I seriously started to think that life wasn’t worth living any more.

I told my wife, who ordered me to take a Percoset. I hesitated but did it. Within ten minutes, the symptoms evaporated. I now had no doubts that some people needed medication to cope with mental disorders.

I once saw a church sign that said “Jesus Is My Prozac!” Let me tell you - my experience is that Prozac is much more effective. I won’t say I’m no longer anxious, but the medication has defanged the beast.

I can look at situations that would previously have given me knots in my stomach,
and I’m not afraid. I can dismiss casual comments from people which, previously, would have made me think “What did they mean by that? Are they mad at me?”

I’ll just go ahead and say it: I love Prozac. Prozac is my Jesus. I would happily take it every day for the rest of my life.

And its a good thing I started taking it, because shortly after I did, the shit hit the fan.

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This post is part of life:unmasked, a blogging project started by Joy Bennett at her blog, Joy In This Journey