My adoption was finalized in 1989. I was already their child, so nothing changed, not really. I was just barely three years old when the papers arrived in the mail. The finishing touch on a deal that had already been made.

In the beginning, my adopted mother was warm. She had her emotional outbursts, but she could also be incredibly kind and loving. I saw glimpses of what I imagine other kids called “normal.” My earliest memories aren’t all bad. There were moments, quiet ones, where I felt safe. But that safety always had an expiration date. It didn’t last.

My father was already a heavy drinker before I ever entered the picture. He was thirty when he started dating my mother, who was just seventeen. I later learned he was on his fifth marriage by then. Neither of them were strangers to dysfunction, but what tethered them together wasn’t just trauma, it was theology.

They were part of a church most people have never heard of: Berachah Church in Houston, Texas, founded and ruled by R.B. Thieme Jr. A pastor by title, but a colonel according to the US Military. My family was among the loyal. Three generations deep.

That was my introduction to God.

Church wasn’t a community, it was an indoctrination camp. We went six hours a week: Sunday morning and evening, and Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday nights. When I was six or seven, I got in trouble for something small, I can’t even remember what, and my punishment was to attend all the adult services instead of just Sunday School. That meant sitting still in wooden desks, taking notes word-for-word, for hours. If I stopped writing, even briefly, Fred (our local preacher and Thieme disciple) would call me out.

The rules were endless. We couldn’t scratch arms or make any movements that would draw attention, chew gum, cough too loud, or even reach under our desk during service. Men weren’t allowed to use the restroom in the building at all. If you missed a single service, even for work, you were publicly humiliated the next time you showed up. Vacations were only allowed when the pastor teacher was on vacation. We even listened to recorded sermons (called “tapes”) on family trips. I still remember hearing one from the 1970s where Thieme said we should bomb Africa.

At church, we were taught that any good deed, recycling, volunteering, giving back, was prideful and misguided. That only unbelievers did those things, and only to get into Heaven. We weren’t supposed to eat fast food. No tattoos. No jewelry. No long hair on boys or short hair on girls. Nothing secular. Nothing soft. Just obedience.

Sermons focused almost exclusively on Romans and Ephesians. For fourteen years, I sat there, silently taking notes, never once going back to read them. I wasn’t learning…I was surviving. He preached endlessly about sex, on the tapes meant for teens. Said sex outside of marriage left a permanent scar on your soul. And if you got pregnant? The baby wasn’t a baby yet. Not until the “breath of life.” You were told to “handle it” at an abortion clinic. Quietly.

Even our pledge of allegiance came before service. No singing, except for one woman who sang Amazing Grace while the rest of us remained seated. Children weren’t allowed in the main service until eighth grade, except for New Year’s Eve, when we endured a three-hour military-style marathon that terrified me. The doors were locked from the inside. You made a sound? You were escorted out by an armed officer.

It wasn’t just my parents who enforced this…it was the culture. It was the brainwashing. I wasn’t allowed to join Girl Scouts. Or sports. Or make noise. My body learned stillness before it ever learned joy.

We were spiritual foot soldiers, marching toward a God I was never sure I believed in, just feared.

If someone left the church, their name went on a list. “Reversionists.” Worse than unbelievers. Worse than sinners. We were told not to speak to them. Not to even look at them. The hierarchy went: 1) Berachah believers, 2) Christians at other churches, 3) unbelievers, and 4) anyone who left. It was spiritual apartheid.

My dad ruled our house like Thieme ruled the pulpit. He drank heavily, tithed obsessively…even when we couldn’t put food on the table. I remember going to school hungry while watching him mail off checks to Houston. God didn’t want us to starve. But Fred did and so did Thieme.

My mom? She never learned to think for herself. I believed it was an arraigned marriage. Moved from her parents’ house into the home of a man nearly twice her age. She didn’t know how to mop a floor, or cook a meal, but she was supposed to take care of this man, as well as honor and obey. She was never given the space to grow – or to leave. She was never going to leave him, nor would he leave her. She knew his secrets, and he knew hers. Secrets that are important in how they shaped me.

I left at sixteen. But parts of me never did. I still struggle with what “normal” faith even looks like. I still flinch at certain Bible verses. Still can’t write with a pen too long without my hand cramping and my stomach tightening. I still question if my childhood was real, or if I dreamed it all.

Over the next few years, I came to understand that our home was more performance than peace…polished on the outside with “yes ma’am”s, “no sir”s, and Sunday morning smiles. To the world, we looked like the perfect family. But inside, I was silently unraveling. By second grade, I saw the truth: we were nothing like other families. And no amount of religion could smother the voice in me that wanted out.

Survive or surrender. Born this way or made this way. Either you strike first – or you don’t get up at all.

Choose carefully.