CHAINS a Thesis Submitted to the Kent State University Honors College in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for University

CHAINS

A thesis submitted to the Kent State University Honors College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for University Honors

Stephanie Giles

May, 2020

Thesis written by

Stephanie Giles

Approved by

______, Advisor

______, Chair, Department of English

Accepted by

______, Dean, Honors College

Thesis written by

Stephanie Giles

Approved by

______, Advisor

______, Chair, Department of English

Accepted by

______, Dean, Honors College

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS…………………………………………………………….…v

PREFACE………………………………………………………………………………..1

CHAPTER

I. HOME……………………………………………………………..………4

II. JONAH……………….……………...………………………..…….…….9

III. TARGET……………………………….…………………………..…….16

IV. BLOOD…..…………………………...………………….………………23

V. SPECIMEN………..……………………………………………………. 31

VI. MASKS…………………………..….…….……………..………………43

VII. GPA……………….……………………………………………….….…50

VIII. DARKNESS..……………………………………………………………60

IX. LIGHT………………………………….………………………………..67

X. PAIN…………………………….……………………………………….89

XI. BUMP…………………………………………………………………..123

XII. DIAGNOSIS……………………………………………………………141

XIII. OKAY………………………………………………………………….148

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Friends

Leanne—Thank you for being so supportive of me ever since I met you in high school. Thanks for encouraging me to keep going and complete my thesis even when I was frustrated with writing. Thank you for reading and helping edit the whole thing. You’ve been a wonderful friend to me.

Brianna—Thank you for inspiring me to achieve this goal. Seeing you complete your thesis a year before me gave me hope that I could do the same. Thank you for giving me tips along the way, always encouraging me through the entire process, and even volunteering to read the whole thesis to give me advice.

Teachers

The most truly inspirational people I’ve ever met are my teachers and professors.

I wouldn’t be who I am without the tremendous impact they’ve made on my life. I wish I could thank every single one of them for what they’ve taught me—not just about education, but about life as well. I want to give special thanks to the following:

Salem Wesleyan Academy:

Mr. Goodnow—Thank you for helping me realize my love for math and for being probably the biggest influence on my personal teaching style. Thank you for seeing the potential in me and hiring me as a teacher after having me as a student all throughout high school.

Miss LaVan—Thank you for helping me use my creativity in writing and for your enthusiasm about literature in class. Thank you for teaching me how to use my dramatic nature in the best ways possible. More importantly, thank you for being my hero when I was in high school. You were the teacher that I wanted to be someday. You helped me find my dream and then encouraged me to go for it. You made me believe in myself. Mrs. Lynn— Thank you for putting up with my long creative writing pieces and for your helpful comments. Thank you for being so meticulous about formatting when grading my

v high school composition papers. You taught me the importance of detail and the importance of correct grammar. Thanks to you, formatting papers in MLA, APA, or even Chicago Style in college was a breeze.

Kent State University:

Dr. Rose and Dr. Blasiman—Though I do not know you personally, I appreciate your willingness to be a part of my defense committee. Thank you for being so easy to work with and for agreeing to help me.

Dr. Pfrenger—Thank you for seeing potential in me and recruiting me into the Honors Program. Thanks for encouraging us all to push ourselves harder and to make the most of our time at Kent State. Thanks for telling me over and over to speak up more in class, even though I was so shy my first year. Thanks for being patient as I adjusted to my new life and for being so understanding when I was going through a hard time. You had me convinced my first semester in Honors that I could handle writing an Honors Thesis.

Dr. Moneysmith—Thank you for teaching me so much in Critical Theory and Reading. The chapter about feminism has forever impacted my life. Thank you for giving me strong foundations in professional writing and for your wonderful feedback on my writing. Thank you for teaching me how to work with a group of people, and most importantly, thank you for teaching me to always climb higher than what I think I can reach.

Dr. Smiley—Thank you for taking over as my Honors advisor for my last couple years at Kent. Thank you for helping me make the final decision to write a thesis and for always keeping me on track. Thank you for supporting me the whole way and helping me believe that I could do it. And of course, thank you for helping me learn to love geography.

Professor Winter—Thank you for pushing me so hard as a writer in your classes. It forced me to learn new ways of writing and to grow as a person. Thank you for the wonderful Creative Nonfiction class that inspired this thesis and for your excellent feedback that showed me ways to improve my writing. I could have never written this thesis without what I’ve learned through your classes.

Thank you for agreeing to be my advisor for my thesis and for making sure I didn’t give up even through one of my worst semesters ever. You made me feel like I could do it if I just kept pressing on. Thanks for everything that you’ve taught me about life. I’ll never forget what I’ve learned.

PREFACE

“Chains:” Interpreting Themes in my Writing

When I first began planning my thesis, I thought it would be mostly about how my femininity affects my life. During the Spring 2019 semester at Kent State, I took a

Critical Theory and Reading class online with Dr. Moneysmith. The basic concept of the course was learning to look at texts through different lenses or theories. During the chapter about feminism, I found myself applying the reading strategies not just to literature, but also to my own life. I started to feel more comfortable writing about myself as a woman, and I decided that is what I wanted the central theme of my thesis to be.

The first section I wrote was the scene where I went on an all-guys fishing trip to

Lake Erie and felt like I had to prove myself to them simply because I was the only woman onboard. I began to write similar scenes, such as the dodgeball scene and others about my dad. As my advisor, Professor Winter, and I discussed my writing, we realized there was something much deeper at play than simply my gender. Knowing a bit about my religious background, Professor Winter suggested considering whether that had shaped my worldview.

In my Critical Theory and Reading class, we not only covered feminism, but also

Social Reader-Response Theory, which suggests that interpretations of texts are often based on the communities we are raised in. As Professor Winter and I discussed my

religious background, I began to realize that this Social Reader-Response Theory not only applies to literature, but to life as well. Being raised in such a conservative religious home had impacted the way I viewed the entire world.

The focus in my writing slowly began to shift as I found my religion to be the underlying influence in my life. The themes I had initially found in my writing had been family, femininity, and my relationships with men. Now, I realize that these themes were all chained together by the outlook I developed based on my religious upbringing.

I grew up in a Wesleyan Methodist home, which is explained at length in my thesis. I thought I had to be perfect for God and for my church, even though I never understood the basic principles of my own belief system. I followed rules that didn’t make sense without grasping the core beliefs, which led me to pretend to be someone I wasn’t. I tried to incorrectly apply things I had learned in church to my life; my expectations of men were even based on biblical characters, which led to vast disappointment when I realized how different reality was. My main concern in life became what others thought about me. In that, I lost myself. My religion was my prison.

Transferring to Kent State was one event that helped me find my own place in the world. A new worldview, a new acceptance of salvation, and a new acceptance of myself helped me break the chains of my own making.

For craft, my writing process began with simply writing as much as I could as quickly as I could. When I met with Professor Winter, we analyzed what I had written and examined the themes of my writing. This was helpful because it forced me to really find connections between the short sections I had been submitting. As my thesis grew, I

began seeing more threads that needed connected to the whole. One of my greatest challenges was making sure so many different themes were all tied together by a solid resolution.

I never dreamed I would be able to write anything of this length, but it has pushed me to reach farther than I ever have as a writer. Although it is a complete work now, I feel it is something I could continue to add to, and I may consider publishing at least parts of it someday. I truly believe my writing has improved vastly over the course of my thesis work, and I now have hope that I could potentially write a novel someday after I graduate. I’m grateful for how this work has challenged me to grow as a writer, and I’m so thankful to everyone who has helped me get to this point.

I. HOME

~ Train up a child in the way he should go:

and when he is old, he will not depart from it. ~

-Proverbs 22:6 KJV

The story of Jonah was always one of my favorites. Perhaps because I loved the water and fishing so much that a tale of a man swallowed by a giant fish was absolutely intriguing to me.

I used to remove the blue-green plastic lid from my toy box and sit on my knees in the middle, imagining that I was on a ship heading away from Nineveh and toward

Tarshish. The wind picked up, and the waves became choppy. The curved toy-box lid rocked back and forth as my ship entered the storm.

“We’ve never seen a storm like this before!” The sailors screamed. Knowing I was the cause of the storm, I told them to throw me overboard. I leapt from my toy-box lid onto the pink carpet—waves ready to drown me at any second. The storm stilled, but I was not yet out of danger. The large white toy box swam up behind me. Crawling inside my toy box, I raised my eyes to the heavens and cried out, “I’ve been swallowed by a

FISH!”

Stories like this were told in a way that brought out the best of the Bible for young minds. Run from God and you might be swallowed by a giant fish, but prayers of

repentance result in happy endings. Trust God like David, and you can kill the giants in your life.

Imagine my surprise when I later found out the book of Jonah ends with Jonah being angry with God and refusing to accept that God would pardon the Ninevites for their sins. The same David that killed Goliath was also an adulterer who watched a woman bathing on her roof and then sent her husband out to war on the front lines so he would be killed. King Saul consulted with a witch in order to speak with the ghost of a dead prophet, and the book of Judges includes a gruesome tale of a Levite who chopped his concubine up “limb by limb” into twelve parts and sent them to different areas of

Israel (Judges 19:29).

But as a child, I was only taught about the heroes.

On Sunday afternoons, we sat around the table as a family and I excitedly told my parents what I had learned in church. After that, we did quiet activities until the evening services. In order to “keep the Sabbath day holy,” we never went out to eat or shopping on Sunday, and both of my parents worked jobs that gave them Sunday as their day off instead of Saturday.

No riding bikes on Sunday.

No fishing on Sunday.

No running on Sunday.

No playing on the swing set or trampoline.

Only quiet reading or computer games. Barbies were okay.

As a child, I never realized people do work on Sundays. My whole world stopped on that special day. No school. No work. Just time spent in worship at church and then time with family at home.

I grew up in a Christian home. Wesleyan Methodist, to be specific. I didn’t understand what most of it meant, but I did know that we attended church every Sunday.

The morning started with Sunday School, which was fun because it was only kids my age. After that, all the kids from kindergartners up to 12-year olds went upstairs to a special children’s service while the adults listened to a message preached by our pastor in the main sanctuary. The children’s service was filled with happy songs about Jesus, like

“Did You Ever Talk to God Above,” “Right is Never, Never Wrong,” and “Jesus is

Caring for You.” There were Bible stories with colorful pictures, a fun game to test our memory on the Bible stories, and very nice teachers that gave us sticky, fruity candy when we left.

I didn’t know anything about my actual church denomination when I was younger. I thought Wesleyan Methodism was the only religion. Even my Christian school was Wesleyan Methodist.

The Wesleyan Methodist Church was started in the 1840s, and my particular section (Allegheny Wesleyan Methodist) split from the main conference in 1968 because of a disagreement over modesty and “worldliness”—which at that time had to do with issues such as television, women’s clothing, and hairstyles. My conference viewed it as

worldly,” or “sinful for people to own a television or for women to cut their hair or wear pants. These rules—made by men in the 1960s—are still in place today at my church.

This means my family didn’t own a TV because our church said that TVs were full of evil and not a wise use of time. I was born in the mid-90s. We didn’t have a newspaper subscription. We didn’t have internet. I didn’t have any friends that weren’t

“church kids,” and I attended a Christian school. My only contact with the world outside of my extremely conservative family, school, and church was in trips to town or through secular books. A Little Princess, The Swiss Family Robinson, The Boxcar Children, and

The Babysitters’ Club were my only escape from my Wesleyan Methodist life.

Sunday night snack was my favorite thing. After the evening services were over, my parents let us eat “snack food” rather than cooking an actual meal. We would just grab anything and everything we could find and throw it all on the table. Leftovers, crackers, cheese, and pretzels. The important part was that we were all together, laughing and enjoying our time with each other. This was rarely possible during the week with my dad working such late hours delivering feed to farms in a big, red truck.

I loved the atmosphere at church, even if I didn’t truly understand what the meaning of it all was at that point. I just saw happy people in a happy place.

When I was six or seven years old, I decided I wanted to be a Christian.

“Decided” –only because that was the only logical thing to do. The decision was hardly my own. It was just what was expected of me. At that age, I didn’t really understand why

I should pray or what I should do next. I was simply afraid of going to Hell if I died. In children’s service, I heard Hell was a lake of fire that no one escaped from.

I knew I needed to pray and ask Jesus to save me from my sins. Once, when my teacher asked me if I had whistled during class, I lied for fear I would be in trouble. The time I stole a cool pencil sharpener from a kindergarten friend plagued my mind as I tried to sleep. The darkness of my bedroom scared me.

Between sobs, I cried out for my mommy. She helped me pray a prayer of apology for my sins. I repeated the words she said to our Heavenly Father.

I simply needed to be good. Follow the Ten Commandments. Don’t sin.

Obey my parents.

II. JONAH

~Reign over the fish in the sea…~

Genesis 1:28 NLT

“You know, I once heard a preacher say that girls shouldn’t play with them

Barbies.” Grammy nodded towards the doll in my hand as she stirred something on the stove.

“Why not?”

“They say you’ll wanna look like them—skinny waist and everything.”

I studied the Pocahontas Barbie in my hand. “Oh.” I knew I couldn’t look like that. She was plastic. What was the big deal? I hopped off the chair in Grammy’s kitchen, taking Pocahontas with me. “Come on, Allie.” I grabbed my younger sister’s hand and dragged her alone behind me towards the basement. “Let’s go play.”

I wished I had brought my Barbies from home.

My younger sisters and I stayed with Grammy and Papa every weekend while both of my parents worked extra hours. I never knew this wasn’t normal until I was much older. To avoid paying a babysitter, Mom would take the three of us to Grammy’s house on Friday afternoon, and we would stay overnight and until Mom was done working on

Saturday.

Grammy’s house was fun because my Uncle Mark still lived in the basement while he tried to save enough money to buy his own place. He taught me to play Mario games on the NES and the SNES. Grammy even let us use the internet on her computer sometimes. The only thing her house was lacking was the huge box of Barbies from home. Pocahontas had matted hair from the time that she had been put through the dryer after I had tossed her in the pool. Grammy’s barbies weren’t as fun as my Barbies at home either.

We didn’t get new toys often. Usually only for birthdays and Christmas, unless they were from a dollar store. Even then, new toys were rare. My sisters and I all agreed that our prized possessions were our Barbies—even though most of them had been bought for a quarter at yard sales. I wasn’t allowed to take them to school. Barbies were against the rules of the private Christian school for several reasons: the teachers didn’t want students undressing them, and Barbies wore makeup and “immodest clothing,” which were not allowed at school either.

We didn’t play with Barbies the way our friends did anyway. Our friends typically sat around doing their hair or trying all the different outfits on them. That was boring. My sisters and I made them go on adventures and created stories with them-- everything from recreating Bible stories to elaborate kidnappings and soap-opera-type family dramas. That’s how I began writing. I still have a box of handwritten stories based on the Barbies of Sunset Beach, which was what we called our little town. Each character became more and more developed over the years until I decided I was too old to play

with Barbies, but their memory lives on through many of the fictional tales I have written since.

Those great adventures with 25-cent Barbies made me feel rich. The only times I felt poor were when I overheard whispered conversations between my parents discussing whether we could afford piano or violin lessons again. Or occasionally during conversations at school about Red Lobster. My parents said it was too expensive. Taco

Bell’s 79 cent tacos were like five-star dining.

I felt like a princess when my dad bought me a bag of those crunchy cinnamon twists.

Days spent sailing in my toy-box ship became less frequent as my dad and his brother—Uncle Jeff—started taking me on fishing trips on Jeff’s lake in Sebring. It was exciting to finally sail in a real boat.

The boat rocked gently as seven-year-old me stared at the bright orange bobber dancing in the water.

Did it just move?

No.

It was only sunlight sparkling across the surface. My eyes were playing tricks on me.

I blinked and rubbed my eyes, allowing my gaze to wander back to my reel. It was a kid’s fishing pole—a nice, shiny red one with a closed bail and push-button since I

didn’t know how to use an open bail yet. I yawned. The fishing was slow today. I turned to grab my yellow Snoopy-themed tackle box to play with the funny rubber worms.

A snake. A black snake.

I froze mid-reach, studying the unmoving creature curled up on the bench beside me in the boat. “Um . . . Dad?”

“Yeah?” Dad said, busy watching his own line.

My Uncle Jeff shot to his feet. I gripped the side of the boat to keep my balance as it tilted in Jeff’s direction as he yelled, “Whoa! Snake!”

“What?” Dad jumped up, too.

“Snake,” I repeated calmly, pointing at the little guy only a few inches away from my leg. He was just napping in the warm sunlight.

In one smooth motion, Jeff grabbed the paddle and smacked it out of the boat.

I crawled to the high side of the small fishing boat as if I could balance the weight of two grown men. Dad wouldn’t be happy if the boat tipped over.

Dad patted my knee gently as I watched the snake slither away from us in the pond.

I recast my line. The bobber landed only inches away from an overgrown bush dangling over the edge of the pond. That was a good cast “where the fish would be,” as

Dad would say. I peeked at him, hoping he’d seen. He either hadn’t noticed or hadn’t commented.

The bobber went under. Not fast, but a slow, steady pull.

“I got one!” I yanked to set the hook and reeled it in. Maybe it was a nice bass. It felt heavy. Dad set his pole down and watched.

“It’s… a turtle.”

I giggled as we pulled it onto the boat. It wasn’t very big, and it looked mad. I held my rod patiently as Dad tried to take it off the hook. He didn’t want it to bite me.

“Ugh. Hand me the pliers, Jeff.” Dad took the pliers from his brother. “You hooked this guy too deep, Steph.”

I chewed my fingernails. I hoped he could get it off the hook.

Eventually, he freed the turtle and threw it back in.

Two minutes later, I caught the same turtle again.

“Seriously?” Dad grabbed the pliers again. He threw the turtle back.

I caught it a third time.

“Blast it, Steph! Can’t you cast somewhere else?”

I stared into the water.

Commandment #5: Honor thy father and mother.

A few months later, Dad watched me try to grab one of the fast, tiny fish from our minnow bucket. “You know how to hook those minnows, Steph?”

“Yup.” I tossed my braid over my shoulder and grabbed the hook. “You showed me already. Up through his chin and nose but not too far back, or you go through their brain and they die.”

“Yup.” Dad watched me as I carefully brought the hook up through the little triangle under the minnow’s mouth and carefully out the top just above its upper lip.

Perfection.

“Try to cast right beside that bush in the water. Looks like a perfect place for crappies. They like structure.”

I know, Dad.

I wasn’t good at aiming at that age. I held my breath as I let the line fly.

Oh no. I tried to reel it back, but my rig still sailed into a tree.

“Blast it, Steph. What’d you do that for?”

“I’m sorry.”

Dad snatched the rod from me and whipped it quickly to the right several times, trying to pop the hook loose. He pulled harder, but it wouldn’t come out. He wrapped his hand around the line and gave it one last, sharp tug. The line snapped, leaving my bright orange bobber dangling high above the lake.

“Way to go, blockhead. Now we’ve lost the entire rig.”

I stared into the water, wishing I could jump in and swim away.

“I’m sorry.”

More similar situations followed this, prompting me to start practicing my casting. I’d set up hoops in the yard and try to cast a weight into the circle. My cousins and I had a contest one time to see who could aim the best with a fishing rod with a setup similar to a dartboard, but it was laying on the grass instead of hanging. I won, hitting dead center with my cast.

Years later, I was casting for smallmouth on Lake Erie, and someone challenged me, “I bet you can’t hit that small, triangle-shaped rock on the shore.”

I smirked and flipped the bail up, preparing to cast. It wasn’t too windy, and I had a decently weighted Rapala lure on my line. The boat was moving slowly, and my target was quite far away.

The lure hit right on target. I looked at Dad. He didn’t say a word.

Maybe the reason I was so attached to Dad was simply that he was never home. I only saw him as the hero who came home every night to give me a hug. When he returned from his long nights of trucking, I was the first one to the door, screaming,

“Daddy’s home!” Every morning when he left, I snuck out of bed at 4 in the morning, climbed on top of my dresser, and watched out the window as his truck lights faded into the darkness. I then crawled back into bed and slept for a few short hours before waking up for school. It was dark again when he got home.

III. TARGET

~ The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge ~

Proverbs 1:7 KJV

At home, there was my dad. At school, there was Miss LaVan.

From kindergarten all the way up to my senior year of high school, I attended a private, Christian school. Though my class size fluctuated as students moved in and out of the area, my class never had more than 13 students.

While most schools start the day with a pledge to the American flag, our day started with three.

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the

Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

“I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag, and to the Savior, for whose kingdom it stands. One Savior, crucified, risen, and coming again with life and liberty for all who believe.”

“I pledge allegiance to the Bible, God’s Holy Word. I will make it a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. I will hide its words in my heart, that I might not sin against God.”

I said all three pledges every school day from kindergarten until my senior year of high school. After the pledges, we prayed and then had Bible class. Bibles were required.

We were supposed to always have one ready in our desks. Sometimes we even had sword drills—a race to see who could find a Bible verse the fastest.

“Draw your swords,” the teacher would say. We would all raise our Bibles in the air. The teacher would then say a random verse, such as “Proverbs 1:7,” and we would repeat the reference, still holding our Bibles above our heads. “Charge!” the teacher would say, and at that moment we began flipping quickly through our Bibles. Whoever found the verse the fastest would stand and read it aloud and often be awarded a piece of candy.

This game was intended to help us learn the books of the Bible so we would become familiar with navigating scripture and be able to recite them all in order.

In elementary school, Mondays began with chapel where we sang about Jesus and learned Bible stories. On recess, we often played cops and robbers or acted out Christian allegories.

C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia became a class favorite in 3rd grade. The

Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe provided plenty of roles for all who were willing to participate. I liked to be Susan. The elegant archer. Aslan, the “God” character, was not played by anyone. His role was too special. But we all imagined his presence.

The first year I had Miss LaVan for a teacher was my third-grade year. She was the one that encouraged me to read the “big books.” Her floor-length flowy skirts and pretty auburn hair made me think she was a princess.

My class found out that Miss LaVan’s birthday was coming up, and one student had the brilliant idea to cut paper into tiny squares of confetti.

“She’s gonna love this.” I snipped pieces of paper smaller and smaller with a pair of red child’s scissors. We stuffed the tiny bits of paper into envelopes and hid them in our desks. We did this during recess every day until her birthday. There must have been an entire pound of confetti by the time we were done.

“Let’s put it on the fans so that it will fly all around the room!” One of the boys had the brilliant idea.

To this day, I have no idea how a couple third-grade boys managed to find a way to put confetti on the ceiling fans, but somehow they did. When Miss LaVan went to the office, a student ran to the fan controls while the rest of us turned in our chairs to face the classroom door.

“Happy birthday!” We all shouted as she entered the room, signaling the student by the fan switch.

White paper confetti rained down from the fans and landed in ugly heaps on the floor. I can still see the look of shock on Miss LaVan’s face as her third-grade class cheered and applauded her. We had to clean up the piles of paper that coated the classroom floor, but we didn’t care because we thought we had truly made her day.

“Miss LaVan,” I stared up at the teacher I thought was the most beautiful and smart woman in the world, “You’re my favorite teacher.”

“Aww, thank you!” She smiled the way that made her eyes dance.

“When I grow up, I want to be a teacher just like you.”

I never liked the drama. My best friends since kindergarten were both boys. Ben and Denver were better friends than the cliquey girls at my school. For some reason though, when my class reached 5th grade, it was as if boys and girls were two entirely different species that couldn’t mix.

Especially with our Christian school’s rule that girls and boys should never be closer than six inches apart from each other.

“Hey Steph! Wanna join our club? It’s about horses. No boys allowed.” Karissa was the girl with all the cute notebooks—the pink and purple sparkly kind that made all the other girls jealous. I didn’t want to be in that club. All the popular girls were in it.

I joined a smaller club. It was supposed to be a drawing club, but Kristy and

Kayla decided to make it about horses instead. Another horse club. No boys allowed.

What is it that makes horses “girly?” Their long, beautiful manes? Their gracefulness?

I just didn’t get it.

The horse club was awful. Kristy would write down things in a notebook about horses and occasionally draw one. I hated horses. From our table, I could see the boys

playing computer games. Kristy followed my gaze to where Ben and Denver were playing a Midtown Madness racing game.

“Boys are weird.” She seemed as uninterested in the racing game as I was in her horse club. I sighed and picked up another horse book. I would have much rather been reading a mystery novel of some sort.

“Boys are gross.” Sarah was the most ridiculous of them all. If a boy touched her desk, she would douse it in hand sanitizer to get rid of the “cooties.” This went on until

Mr. Duvall, our 5th grade teacher, gave her a lecture on the proper usage of hand sanitizer.

I didn’t understand the other girls. The boys were my friends, but if I hung out with them the girls would probably think I was weird.

“Boys are gross.” I repeated.

Dodgeball.

I couldn’t think of a worse way to spend recess. I wasn’t good at sports to begin with, but dodgeball was the worst. I waited in the line of students as the teacher counted us off.

“1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2…” Mr. Duvall walked down the line assigning a number to each student. The dreaded 1-2 count off meant splitting up best friends standing by each other in line and completely randomizing the teams.

“Okay, split up. Team one on the left, team two on the right!”

As we moved into our separate groups, I scanned the opposing team’s players.

There he was. Aaron.

Aaron was the largest kid in 5th grade. Rumor had it that he had been held back a year, but I don’t know if it was true. Not only was he a head taller than the rest of us, but he was also just very big. He had a school-wide reputation for being sent to the principal’s office more than anybody else.

He scared me . . . and he was on the other team.

I was nearly useless as far as throwing went. I couldn’t throw the ball hard or fast enough to hit anyone, but I was pretty good at dodging.

BAM. Another teammate was out. I glanced around and realized I was the only one left. The other team was much better than mine. I backed up slowly as Aaron stared me down. His ruddy face was freckled, and his eyes sparked with mischief. We both knew he was going to win. In slow motion, I watched him wind up and release the ball. I shut my eyes. When it hit, I staggered backward into the brick wall. Between that and the stinging pain in my arm where the ball had hit, my eyes burned.

“Ha!” Aaron and his teammates cheered as they celebrated their victory.

“Girls are such wimps.” I overheard a conversation between some of the other boys. One of them shot a look in my direction.

“Crybaby.”

Mr. Duvall blew the whistle. “That’s game!”

I brushed the tears away and rubbed my arm. I needed to be tougher.

I’m not going to ever cry again.

And I didn’t. Until I got an eye infection a few years later and realized that tears are important for cleaning out your eyes.

IV. BLOOD

~ I will sharpen the pain of your pregnancy, and in pain you will give birth~

Genesis 3:16

I was probably 11 years old when Mom decided it was time to talk to me about puberty.

Only she didn’t really.

“It’s just something that will happen to you because of Eve. Remember when

Adam and Eve sinned in the Bible?” She didn’t seem to know how to explain it. “Women are punished because of her. You will bleed for one week of every month. . . and have to shave your legs now. . . These are pads. You have to use them once a month—”

“Like diapers.”

“Well . . . no. Not exactly.”

I felt awkward.

She was awkward.

Everything was awkward.

She left a little booklet on my bed that described what menstruation was and why it happens. I hated that book. I didn’t want that to happen to me.

I crumpled up the book and shoved it to the bottom of my sock drawer.

I was too afraid to talk to Mom about any of that stuff. It wasn’t because she was like Dad . . . she was more like the total opposite. She was so laidback and non- confrontational that she often simply avoided any potentially awkward or controversial subjects.

She started buying me bras, but we never discussed them. They just showed up on my bed and I would wear them even though my chest was as flat as could be.

“Psst! Hey!” One girl would whisper loudly during class. Another would turn around with a questioning look on her face. The first would mouth, “Your bra strap!” and point dramatically at her own shoulder, indicating the slight wardrobe malfunction.

Why was it such a big deal? All the girls were wearing them. We could hide the straps but not the shape of our newly grown breasts.

Well. Those of us who actually had them, anyway.

It was around that time that I got my first period. While I’ve heard this described by other women as a moment they will never forget, it wasn’t like that for me.

I can’t remember it. I think I was about 12 years old, and I think I was at home, but I don’t know for sure. The only thing I remember is that I didn’t tell anyone.

Not even my mom.

I wound sheets of toilet paper around my hand as a makeshift pad and balanced it carefully in my underwear before pulling them up tightly. If there was a day with a heavier flow, I’d sneak one of Mom’s pads out of the package, but my periods were so

light back then I never had to worry about it. I only took pads occasionally, so Mom never noticed they were missing.

Not like diapers, huh? Sure does feel like one.

I hated pads.

I also didn’t tell my mom when I started shaving my legs. I borrowed her razor and carefully cleaned it every time I used it. I did it for probably a couple months, and I don’t think she ever found out about it. One day we were walking to the ball field, and she asked me if I wanted a razor for when hair would start growing on my legs.

You’re a little late on that, Mom.

“Sure. That will probably be useful.”

* The following Easter, we spent the weekend in Hillsdale, Pennsylvania, with my mom’s sister and her family. I don’t remember much about it except that it was a small town in the middle of nowhere.

My Uncle Paul was a preacher in a tiny church in that tiny town. For the Easter

Sunday morning service, my family sang several songs and my dad spoke for a while about the meaning of Easter and Jesus being raised from the dead. I think I played a piano solo, but I can’t remember. After service, we walked back to the house and had a wonderful Sunday dinner. It was a lovely time spent with family—especially my three cousins.

Until I got my period.

I remember sitting in the bathroom for what felt like hours contemplating the situation. The toilet paper trick worked well when I had access to a bathroom often, but it

would never work for the 2.5-hour drive back to Salem. I had already searched underneath the sink and inside every drawer in my aunt’s bathroom. No pads or tampons to be found. I didn’t want my boy cousins to know. I didn’t want my dad to know. I didn’t even want mom to know.

But I couldn’t stay in the bathroom forever. And leaving the toilet meant I needed something to protect my clothes.

I emerged from the bathroom and stepped back into the living room, where 13 family members were staring at me, wondering what on earth had kept me in the bathroom for so long. I pulled Mom away from my family.

I tried to sound nonchalant. “Mom, I got my period.”

“Are you serious? I’ve been wondering when you would start!”

I couldn’t lie to Mom. I shrugged, once again trying to downplay it. “Actually,

I’ve had it for a while. I just never told you.”

“Like . . . how long?”

Stop asking questions, Mom!

“I dunno. A while. Several months.”

I left the bathroom, this time feeling the security of an overnight-sized pad. My whole family seemed to know the situation. I could feel everyone’s eyes on me as I crossed the living room to sit on the couch. Every step I took reminded me of the pad’s presence as its edges rubbed my skin. Could anyone see it through my clothes? Was my family as conscious of it as I was? What were they thinking about me?

Mom, did you have to tell the whole WORLD?

That was the last time I said the word “period” for years. I only referred to it with dumb code words. “Aunt Flo” was a ridiculous term, and anything that included the word

“red” was just plain obvious. At my house we often said, “I won the grand prize (got my period), do you have any trophies (pads/tampons)?”

The dumb phrases were just a way of avoiding the subject.

It was tradition for Mr. Duvall’s 6th th grade class to have a water fight at the end of the school year. All elementary school was like a build-up to this final moment before moving on to middle school, and I was so ready. I had a bright green Super Soaker water gun that I couldn’t wait to try out. My goal was to drench my teacher—and the boys, of course.

Much to my dismay, the curse that now ruled a quarter of my life decided that would be the perfect day to show up in full force. I didn’t know how to use a tampon yet, and I was too afraid to ask my mom.

It’ll be fine. Just try not to get hit below the waist. Water guns don’t usually spray that much anyway.

I was confident about my plan. The war was to take place in set boundaries in a public park, and my class spread out. Mr. Duvall stood in the middle of the “arena,” loudly counting down from 10.

He shouted “GO!” and grabbed his own water gun.

I stayed hidden, watching the other students charge each other.

Stealth. That’s the key. I can get them, and they’ll never see me. This bush will protect me.

As I waited for an unsuspecting target to approach, I noticed one of the other girls trudging to the bus.

I left my cover and jogged over to her. “Hey, Jeanette! Wait up!”

Her arms were crossed tightly across her chest. “Hi, Steph.” Her tone was mournful.

“Are you okay? What happened?”

“My shirt!”

I stared at her, not understanding.

“It’s too light. Look… it’s see-through!”

Sure enough, water had completely soaked the pale pink shirt she was wearing.

Not only that, but it also hugged her figure more tightly than our school dress code permitted.

“I’m just gonna go sit in the bus.”

I stood there feeling helpless as she left the arena. At least I had worn navy blue.

It wouldn’t be see through.

My musings were interrupted as I was attacked from behind by one of the boys.

Game on.

It wasn’t too bad. The boys all aimed for my face and waist-length ponytail, thrilled at the possibility of making me look like a drowned rat. Down low, everything felt pretty dry. I was finally able to relax and enjoy the water fight. Breathing hard, I ran

toward one of the park pavilions and crouched down behind a large brick pillar. I chose a target and began slowly moving forward.

Sploooshhhhhhhhhhhh.

An entire 5-gallon bucket of water was dumped on me from above.

I froze and turned around to see Mr. Duvall laughing behind me.

Please, please, please don’t let there be red dripping down my legs right now.

The joy of the game was gone for me. Every time I tried to run, I felt the soggy pad squishing into my skin. The adhesive part no longer stuck to my underwear. I couldn’t sit down for fear all the liquid would ooze out and onto the back of my skirt.

I don’t remember anything else from that day except hiding out in a smelly park bathroom with cold, silvery metal toilets. It was unlit, had no hot water, and no soap. This was how I imagined jail to be. The toilet paper was about as soft as tree bark and everything down there was already sensitive from a wet pad rubbing my skin raw all day.

I hadn’t thought to bring an extra, and the flimsy toilet paper would only melt the second it touched my soaked clothes.

So I sat in that cold, dark bathroom, wringing water and blood out of a mushy, used pad, hoping it would last until I got home.

I got my period on our family vacation about three years later. I didn’t want to deal with a soggy pad, so I simply stayed out of the water. I still have pictures from that vacation of me very carefully crouching while building a sandcastle close to the shoreline, with my butt lifted up just enough that the waves wouldn’t touch my clothing.

Our rental beach house had a hot tub, and my sisters begged me to get in with them. I sat on the edge and dangled my legs in. Mom noticed and immediately knew what was up. She told me she had tampons in her bathroom bag and that I could use one for water-related activities.

“You just have to push it up inside you.”

Maybe I remember what she said incorrectly, but I’m pretty sure that was the only information I got. I was without access to a computer on vacation, and I didn’t yet have a cellphone. I couldn’t even ask Google. I had never tried putting anything inside of me and I didn’t have a clue how tampons worked.

I put the plastic applicator inside of me. It was painful.

I left it there.

V. SPECIMEN

~ But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect ~

Matthew 5:48 NLT

I thought being a Christian—and a Christian woman—meant being perfect. While

I’m sure some of the preachers I heard meant well, their messages often sounded like if you become a Christian, you aren’t allowed to mess up ever again. Bible verses like “be ye therefore perfect” were easily misused without giving context or explanation.

My confusion came from my focus on the wrong parts of Bible verses, verses out of context, and preachers who used the verses incorrectly. Yes, we follow the Bible, but context means a lot. Picking and choosing Bible verses to follow makes little sense.

Many people have heard the story of the woman who did this and opened her Bible to

Matthew 27:5 “Judas went out and hanged himself” and then to Luke 10:37 “Go and do likewise.” While this is humorous, it is told as a cautionary tale about the misunderstandings that result from reading things with no context. Imagine picking up any other book and reading only a few sentences from each chapter and trying to make sense of the book!

I John 2:1 begins “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin.” The verse could be cut off there, but it continues to say, “but if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”

This verse is only one of many that I misunderstood. The largest reason I kept giving up at “trying to be a Christian” was that I thought if I messed up, it was all over. I had to completely restart from scratch and be “resaved.” From this point of being

“resaved,” I’d once again mess up in some way and get frustrated with being back at the start again and quit trying altogether.

Devotions were the same way. In children’s service, we sang a song with the words “Read your Bible, pray every day, and you’ll grow, grow, grow.” I felt like a criminal if a day passed in which I didn’t read my Bible or pray. I thought it meant I had to restart again.

So I gave up entirely.

Every time I felt guilty again and decided I wanted to be a Christian again, my first mistake sent me back to the beginning of my journey. Or so I thought.

I discussed this with one of my youth leaders a few years ago. Knowing that I liked analogies, this person told me to picture my spiritual journey as climbing a ladder.

“Don’t think of it as falling all the way back down to the bottom. If you feel like you’ve really messed up, imagine that perhaps you’ve slipped and lost a rung or two. But look at all the progress you’ve made! You don’t have to start from the bottom. Just reestablish your footing and keep going.”

I’ll never forget that. It was a life-changing moment for me when I realized God isn’t going to throw me out if I make a stupid mistake. If I miss a day of reading my

Bible, He isn’t going to yell at me. Humans make mistakes. We’re busy. Things get us

down—and God knows that—and the God of the Bible is loving and merciful. The only reason I ever thought otherwise was just a huge misunderstanding.

This out-of-context Christianity is also seen in some rules of the church, such as the rule that we should not wear jewelry—no jewelry at all. Not even a wedding band.

This belief comes from the phrase, “Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry” but no one mentions the next part: “rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight (1 Peter 3:3-4). This verse doesn’t not specifically say to not wear jewelry. It is simply asking us to not focus on jewelry or fancy hair to be beautiful because God sees the beauty of the heart. Not only this, but the “gold” indicates costly jewelry. This should be common sense—don’t spend excessive amounts of money on jewelry to try to make yourself beautiful.

I believe my church has the rule about not wearing jewelry to just eliminate these issues entirely (what’s costly to one person may not be to someone else, etc.), but because of the way verses have been misused, many people have concluded that jewelry is entirely wrong. Do I think people are sinning if they wear jewelry? Absolutely not. I might not wear jewelry myself, but I also would never say someone wearing jewelry can’t be a Christian. Song of Solomon is full of references to jewelry, and even the story of the prodigal son ends with the son being given a gold ring.

My mom never wore jewelry. Just like her mother, she followed the rule printed in our Wesleyan Methodist discipline book: “Let the dress of every member of every

Allegheny Wesleyan Methodist church be plain and modest. Let the strictest carefulness and economy be used in these respects.”

Mom always had her dark hair pulled back in a neat bun. She wore a lot of pullover shirts with stripes, but nothing too fancy. Every day but Sunday, she wore jean skirts—and taught me and my sisters to do the same. Sundays, we wore nice dresses or pretty, flowery skirts.

Mom was gentle and feminine.

~ I will sing and make music ~

Psalm 57:7 NIV

“Just one more time,” I told my mom as I picked up my violin again. We needed to leave for the recital, but I wanted to practice again just in case. I put the violin back on my shoulder and curled my fingers around the bow, my pinky just lightly brushing the screw on the end. Musical notes from a Vivaldi concerto danced across the page as I began to play. It was the hardest piece in the book, but I had picked it because it was in a minor key and it sounded so beautiful.

“Is Dad coming to my recital?” I asked as I strapped my instrument into its case.

Last year he had skipped in order to do yard work.

“I . . . don’t think so. He’s not even home from work yet. Let’s go before we’re late,” Mom said as she threw her purse over her shoulder.

I yanked the zipper around the side of the violin case and grabbed my sheet music. “I’m the last one up to play. Maybe he could make it just for my piece?”

“Maybe.” Mom’s voice held an air of uncertainty. “I’ll ask him.”

At the recital, I couldn’t focus on the beginner versions of “Twinkle, Twinkle,

Little Star,” and “Fur Elise.” I constantly turned around to see if my dad had arrived. My hands were sweaty. I stared at my glistening palms. I tried to inconspicuously blow on them. Sweaty hands would mean slipping and missing notes on the strings.

He wasn't coming. I could feel it.

The girl before me was really good. She half-bowed and walked back to her seat.

I stood shakily and gently picked up my violin from the black velvet hollow within its case. It was dead silent as I climbed the four steps to the stage. My accompanist nodded encouragingly. I set my music on the stand and surveyed the crowd.

There he was.

My dad.

I smiled and began to play. After the recital, I pushed my way through the crowd to find my parents. Dad had already gone home to mow the yard.

“Did you hear me play, Dad?” I asked excitedly when I got home, still feeling light as a feather with the same kind of relief that comes after finishing a difficult test.

“Yep. I heard. I don't understand why they always have to put recitals on the nicest day of the year. When am I supposed to do my mowing?”

“I'm sorry,” I said.

The dull ache started in my left side. It wasn’t anything like a stomachache. I didn’t feel sick at all. It was just pain.

I went to my room and sat down on the floor. Sharp pain stabbed my insides over and over, worsening every second. I chomped down hard on my lip, refusing to cry.

“Mommmm!” The yell exhausted me. I crossed my arms and hugged my stomach tightly.

Mom peered into my room.

“My side . . .” I paused, gasping, “it hurts so bad.”

“Is it cramps?”

“No. Much worse.” I laid down on the ugly blue carpet and curled up as tight as I could. “I already took ibuprofen. It’s not helping.”

“Lay down for a bit. Maybe it will get better.” Mom left my room and went back to whatever she had been doing.

The pain kept gradually increasing.

“Mom!” No response. She couldn’t hear me at the other end of our ranch-style house. I tried to stand but cried out at the piercing sting in my side. I crawled to the living room and grabbed the arm of the couch.

“I can’t take it anymore.” I crumbled back into a ball.

My parents eyed one another.

Dad spoke first. Quietly, as if I wasn’t there. “It could be appendicitis. I’ll take her to the ER.”

He raced into his room and changed out of his pajamas. He scooped me up in his arms and carried me out to his little work car and gently set me in the passenger’s seat.

“What if you get pulled over?” I mumbled as we sped down the highway.

“It’s an emergency.” Dad shrugged. “Hopefully we won’t.”

The hospital in Salem was only about seven minutes from my house, but we probably made it in five. At 10 PM there weren’t many vehicles on the highway, and

Salem was like a ghost town. I don’t remember how I made it inside the hospital, but I am pretty sure Dad carried me. We had to fill out a lot of paperwork. In my dreamlike state, I struggled to focus on the questions the nurse was asking me.

“When was the last time you had your period?”

I stared at her in disbelief. She thought this pain was caused by cramps? Like I didn’t know what cramps felt like. And asking me that in front of my dad? I had never discussed my period with anyone except for the brief, awkward conversation with Mom.

I wanted to crawl under my seat.

“Umm, I don’t know…” I muttered. “Probably a couple weeks ago?”

I could hear my mom’s voice in my head. “You need to keep track of your period.”

The nurse was looking at me like I was a child. I just wanted the pain to stop. I wanted the questions to stop.

I don’t remember how I got to the hospital room, but I do remember being told to change into a hospital gown. The gown—hardly fit to be called clothing—was draped over a chair. I wasn’t allowed to wear anything underneath for the CT scan. My own clothes fell into a pile on the cold, white hospital floor as I removed them. The hospital was warm, but I still shivered as I stood there completely naked, staring at the hospital gown.

The gown was lightweight and covered much less than I thought it would.

The back doesn’t even close??

The nurse knocked on the door. “Ready?”

“Yeah.” I hoped she couldn’t read the discomfort in my response. I used one hand to hold the back of the gown shut as we walked down the hall to a different room. A doctor came in and began pressing on my stomach.

“Does this hurt?”

What a ridiculous question. I assumed my moan was an adequate response, but he continued poking all over my stomach.

I had never had any kind of bloodwork done. Dad told me to look away, but I wanted to watch.

The nurse came in with six tubes. She told me I probably shouldn’t watch. I did anyway.

The needle went into my arm smoothly and without any pain. It was different than

I had imagined. It was weird seeing the dark red liquid filling the vials and knowing it was coming out of my veins.

Dad shook his head. “I can’t believe you watched that. It makes me queasy.”

“You need to drink all of these.” The nurse set a tray with six small cups of blue liquid. “We can’t do the CT scan until you do.”

The blue stuff was nasty. I took small sips even though my dad told me to chug them to get it over with.

I don’t really remember anything else except lying on some sort of stretcher and going into a big machine that gave me instructions.

“Breathe … Hold your breath … Breathe . . . Hold your breath . . .”

Within minutes after the completion of the CT scan, the doctor informed us that there was a fairly large cyst on my left ovary.

“The pain is similar to appendicitis in intensity,” the doctor confirmed, “but pain from your appendix would be on your right side.”

I learned a lot about cysts and how they rupture and cause tremendous pain, but eventually they typically go away on their own. My pain was already fading, but to be sure it had gone away we had to schedule an ultrasound appointment for the end of the week.

“This will probably never happen to you again. Most women don’t have this happen to them at all, or maybe once or twice in their lives. If it does happen again, schedule an appointment with your doctor.”

At some point before leaving the hospital, my pastor and his wife came in and prayed with me--even though it was the middle of the night.

I didn’t get home until 5 in the morning.

“I need to go to school.” I trudged down the sidewalk. It was weird to be coming home when the sun was just coming up.

“No, Steph. You need sleep.” Mom was adamant that I should stay home. “You never miss a day. It won’t hurt you.”

“But . . .” I trailed off, not wanting my mom to know that the real reason I wanted to go to school.

I was afraid missing the day’s lessons would impact my grades.

I felt like Anne of Green Gables when Marilla told her she had to stay home from school. “But some of the others will get ahead in class.” I couldn’t let the other students pull ahead of me in our tight competition for the highest GPA. My dream was graduating with a perfect 4.0.

I was really tired though.

“Maybe I could sleep and go in later?”

“We’ll see.”

I only slept until 10 and decided I could still make it for my English class and everything after that. When I got to school, things felt weird. Everyone was staring at me.

“So, what happened to you?”

“Are you okay?”

I shrugged. “I have a cyst on my left ovary that ruptured.”

The boys stared at me. Girls fidgeted in their seats. My teacher said nothing but looked shocked.

I didn’t understand why it was such a big deal.

At the end of the week, I went to my ultrasound appointment. Before that, a woman squeezed my breasts and asked me a list of questions about my period.

I felt like a specimen.

The blue gel was cool on my skin, and the ultrasound wand tickled my tummy.

The results confirmed that the cyst was gone. I could go on living my life like a normal teenager.

Supposedly.

Except the cysts would keep coming, and they would get much worse.

Around this time, I attended our church revival. Basically, revivals are when a traveling evangelist visits the church and preaches a message every evening for a week in order to “revive” a church. So really, it’s just a bunch of special services to excite everyone about Jesus.

The evangelist preached an intense sermon about Hell that night. I tried to sit still in my seat, hoping the people around me couldn’t see that I was trembling. At the end of the service, we stood for a closing prayer, and the evangelist gave an invitation to anyone who wasn’t a Christian to come up front and pray at the altar. I gripped the back of the pew in front of me so tightly that my hands hurt. As the evangelist gave one last call, I shakily left my seat and walked toward the altar, wondering if everyone was judging me. I could feel their eyes as I walked up the aisle. Hundreds of eyes, drilling into my back.

Once I got up to the altar, I didn’t know what to do. People surrounded me and prayed loudly, but I just cried a lot. I don’t even remember saying or thinking any words.

I just sobbed violently until I felt better. I returned to my seat, assuming I had “gotten saved.”

As I walked out of the church, one of my youth leaders hugged me and told me he was proud of me. I thought I was supposed to feel spectacular after such an event. I heard about the joy people found when they became Christians. The world supposedly became an entirely different place.

I tried to convince myself. “The stars look brighter!” I said lamely as my family walked to our van.

Dad wasn’t there, but I never told him about my experience.

My mom just smiled.

VI. MASKS

~ Devote yourselves to prayer ~

Colossians 4:2 NIV

My school had incredibly high academic standards. The grading scale was based on a seven-point scale, rather than the more common ten-point scale. Instead of 90-100 being an A, only 94-100 counted as A’s. This means a 72 is a failing grade.

Like everything else in my life, I thought school had to be perfect. I spent hours studying for my CP classes to ensure I would maintain a perfect 4.0 GPA. The long hours spent studying paid off as I continued to receive perfect A’s in every subject.

Ben and Denver were both Christians. I often wished I had the kind of religion

Ben and Denver had. Unlike me, they seemed to actually understand the point of everything. They even organized a prayer meeting during lunch every Thursday in the chapel of our school to allow students to spend extra time with God. I wanted to be more like them, so I went a couple times at their urging. While they prayed, I knelt uncomfortably and stared blankly at the pew in front of me.

I never prayed. I never read my Bible except if needed in school.

I didn’t know how to talk to God. I usually just sat there wondering how to pray.

Sometimes we sang choruses. One time I felt so out of place, I made a joke to one of the other girls that had attended that day. I don’t remember what I said, but I was laughing about a song title in a way that others thought was sacrilegious. A disapproving look from a senior made me feel guilty.

I stopped going to prayer meeting.

~ God’s will is for you to be holy, so stay away from all sexual sin ~

1 Thessalonians 4:3 NLT

Sex.

The forbidden topic.

It’s no wonder my mom didn’t want to discuss puberty with me. Wesleyan

Methodist people don’t seem to ever talk about anything even remotely connected to sex.

We have a very strong rule about not having sex before marriage. From this rule comes a lot of smaller and less necessary rules. At school, girls and boys were never allowed to touch one another except perhaps a high-five or fist-bump. We had a “six-inch rule” which told us how far to stay away from anyone of the opposite gender.

When I was a sophomore, one of the boys broke his arm while playing volleyball, and because of his cast, he needed someone to help roll his sleeve up during class one day. Touching his arm made me feel guilty yet thrilled at the same time.

These strict rules were intended to protect us, but the air of mystery around sex and boys made me more curious. I like to know things. I like answers.

But I was too afraid to do my own research at first. Even in biology, I’d peek ahead to the human anatomy section at the drawing of a man who had no more distinct manly features than a Ken doll anyway and immediately flip back to the current chapter as if my book was on fire.

I didn’t say “sex” out loud until maybe my junior or senior year of high school, because I thought it was bad to say. I never heard anyone else say it either, other than my biology teacher talking about asexual reproduction.

I thought since I was a Christian I was wrong for wanting to know. Since no one talked about it, it just felt forbidden. And evil.

~ Flee from sexual immorality~

I Corinthians 6:18 ESV

I distinctly remember the moment when I discovered my sexuality. I was still in high school, though I am not sure of my exact age at the time. It was late at night. I had turned off the light and I was having trouble sleeping. I had been tossing and turning for a while, and I decided to flop over and try sleeping on my stomach. My body rubbed against the mattress as I restlessly searched for sleep. I blinked. It felt like electricity was surging through my veins, awakening every part of my body. At this point, I had some vague ideas about what sex was, but I didn’t even know it was possible for a person to pleasure themselves in this way. I repeated the same movement over and over, attempting to savor each moment of pleasure until I was exhausted. Afterwards, I reached for my

phone and searched Google, trying to satisfy my curiosity. What was this magical thing I had experienced?

I felt like a child trying to steal cookies from the cookie jar.

I felt guilty—I must have done something I shouldn’t have.

But I wanted answers.

I was too ashamed to talk to anyone about these experiences, for multiple reasons.

First of all, I was pretty convinced that I was sinning. In addition to that, though, I was simply embarrassed. Talking to someone would mean admitting that I was absolutely clueless about the way the human body works and sex in general. Besides, I was enjoying my rebellion.

I entered some really sketchy chat rooms that I had no business being on. Chatting with older men that would type, “ASL?”

I had to google the acronym. “Age, sex, location.” I can’t remember if I actually gave my age or location to anyone, but I am ashamed I didn’t have more common sense.

This was not something my church life had trained me for. It was a scary new road, but I just wanted to see more.

Not wanting to be a total rebel, I gently eased my way into doing things I had been told not to do. R-rated movies. Chat rooms with strangers. I also did things I was never told not to do, but that I was pretty sure were wrong.

Mainly. Humping old stuffed animals or big fluffy pillows.

One summer during this time, I tried to become a Christian again, even though I still didn’t know what that meant. I halfheartedly tried to stop doing the things I thought were bad, and I even got baptized. A small crowd of people from my church gathered at a pond located on a bumpy country road near my house. It was a cold day in September, and I stood in line with several others who were also going to be baptized. All of the women had to wear bright, turquoise bathrobes over our clothes so the men wouldn’t see the shape of our bodies after our clothes were soaked. The men didn’t have to wear bathrobes. I didn’t think that was fair.

I watched what the others did and copied their movements. When it was my turn,

I walked to the edge of the water and faced the crowd in my fluffy bathrobe. I publicly declared that I would serve God with my life and renounce my sins.

All eyes were on me. Drilling into me.

The water was chilly.

I waded out to where my pastor and another church member stood waiting. I crossed my arms over my chest as the others had done, and they each gently grabbed my arm with one hand, while holding my back with the other. They lowered me into the water, back first. It was just a quick dunk, and then I sloshed out of the pond where the pastor’s wife handed me a towel. My teeth chattered as we sang songs about God like

“I’ll Say Yes, Lord, Yes,” “I’m So Glad I’m a Part of the Family of God” and “I am

Determined.”

Even though it was cold, the sun shone brightly, and I felt good.

It was short-lived. I turned my back on God only about a month later—I decided I didn’t want to be a Christian and I went back to self-pleasure.

There were too many rules, and I didn’t want to follow them.

~ God saves you by His grace when you believe…

Salvation is a gift from God.

It is not a reward for the good things we have done.. ~

Ephesians 2:8-9 NLT

I think I frequently based my “Christian” status on how I felt. After crying at the altar during revival and releasing all my emotions, I felt better, so I assumed that meant I was a Christian. After the baptism, I felt good. Then, the next week when I didn’t feel as happy, I thought I must have done something wrong and “lost” my salvation.

This confused me because I was following all of the rules my church had about clothing and hair. I looked like a Christian… why didn’t I feel like one? I grew up in the church, yet I knew nothing about God or my own religion. It was like I was just following the rules, but I didn’t know who God actually was. I relied only on my emotions and following the rules.

Ephesians 2 tells us that salvation cannot be earned by our works or by following a bunch of rules.

It’s a gift.

Imagine someone brings you a birthday present. How weird would it be to make them continue holding onto this gift while you try to earn it by doing a bunch of nice

things for them? At the end of the day, you feel exhausted from your effort but still haven’t taken the gift. You feel like you haven’t done enough to please this person, so you give up and leave—never actually taking the gift.

That’s what I did. I never understood what salvation was because I was so blinded by my own emotions and by the rules my family and church said were so important. I missed the point entirely.

Inwardly, I basically gave up. I decided salvation was unattainable. Something always out of reach. I continued dressing like everyone else and pretending to be a

Christian, but inside I didn’t care.

I put on a Christian mask and continued on my way.

VII. GPA

Wesleyan Methodists consider the Arts to be quite important. I was taught at a young age to appreciate music and literature. In school, I was often praised for my creativity and encouraged to use it for good. I sang in a choir for about six years—music about Jesus, of course. While movies were controversial, we were encouraged to go to plays and even perform in school plays. I had the female lead role in two plays at SWA and participated in several others. My favorite elementary teacher, Miss LaVan, got moved to high school literature and English courses. She always made lessons so fun with her expressive teaching style and she had us do the coolest projects. My favorite high school project was when my group made a short video depicting Edgar Allen Poe’s

“The Pit and the Pendulum.” Unfortunately, I think the school might have actually gotten in trouble for Miss LaVan allowing us to make videos, since they were viewed as wrong by some parents. Miss LaVan had to tell us that the school wouldn’t let us share our videos online because “some parents wouldn’t be happy.”

She was a rare gem of a person. Her creativity was seemingly endless, and her dramatic teaching style worked for nearly everyone in the class. I can still remember her reading some parts of Macbeth aloud to us.

Her favorite character to read from that play was Lady Macbeth. Anytime I read

Lady Macbeth’s soliloquy, I hear it in Miss LaVan’s voice. Macbeth is still my favorite

Shakespeare play with Hamlet coming in as a very close second.

Even more important than the literature, though, Miss LaVan taught me more about life than any other high school teacher. Even though I was a straight A student, I had zero confidence in my academic ability. I was so afraid of getting an answer wrong on my homework, I would visit her room during a free period and show her my homework.

“Miss LaVan, is this answer right?”

She’d look me in the eye and say, “I don’t know . . . is it? You tell me.”

More than any other teacher I had, she seemed absolutely genuine. She didn’t claim to be perfect in her Christianity. She didn’t hide the fact that she had bad days sometimes. She was real. I wanted to be like her.

But I wasn’t.

She was always shining with the Christian love I had always been told about.

One year, I got the lead role in the school play. It wasn’t a well-known play—it may have even been written by someone in the Wesleyan Methodist movement. The premise was that the main character, Maggie, has just lost her father and is forced to move in with her grumpy Aunt Bertha. Maggie is a Christian and Aunt Bertha isn’t and hates any talk of Maggie’s religious beliefs. Of course, at the end of the play, Aunt

Bertha becomes a Christian.

During our dress rehearsal, my insecurities suddenly took over. I don’t know if it was the subject of the play or simply nerves, but I just felt like I couldn’t do it. I knew my lines like the back of my hand. I loved my costume, and I wanted to succeed.

You can’t do this. It has to be perfect, and you’re gonna mess it up.

Miss LaVan pulled me into the wings and gave me one of the most incredible pep talks I’ve had in my entire life. I don’t remember every word, but I distinctly remember the ending of it: “Stephanie, you are one of the most melodramatic people I know. Don’t you dare tell me you can’t do this. I know you can.”

In that moment, Miss LaVan did something that no one else had ever done.

She made me believe in myself.

Miss LaVan’s class was always my favorite of the day, and she never failed to make me smile with her sarcastic humor. She was one of the only people that ever saw through my act. While I tried to hide my inner feelings about my frustration with my supposed religion and God, sometimes they manifested themselves in my sulky attitude and whiny comments.

To keep straight A’s I usually tried to be quite attentive in class, but one week I thought life was just awful and I didn’t care about anything. I slouched so far down in my seat that I almost fell out of it. I stared at my hands and refused to make eye contact with anyone—especially not Miss LaVan.

Life is awful. I hate myself. Everything is too hard. Where’s God? He doesn’t care. Why doesn’t this religion work for me?

The bell rang and I gathered up my books.

“Miss Stephanie,” Miss LaVan caught me before I escaped out the door, “I’d like to talk to you after school.”

See? Worst day ever. Life is awful. Now I’m in trouble because of my stupid attitude.

I wasn’t in trouble though.

“What’s up with you lately?” She asked me so gently, her large brown eyes filled with concern. “You’re not acting like yourself.”

I don’t even remember what I said, but I must have told her that life was “too hard” and I “couldn’t do it,” because I remember that she had me write Philippians 4:13 on my hand.

I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.

I wasn’t anywhere close to practicing Christianity at that point, but somehow it comforted me. I wrote it everywhere and my attitude brightened slightly.

The most important things Miss LaVan taught me weren’t about literature.

They came from the many times she spent listening to me talk when I had no one else to go to. The moments she made time to encourage me when I was down.

After my overnight hospital visit and decision to attend school after an hour of sleep, I walked into her room during a free period. I showed her the needle marks from the bloodwork and IV.

“It hurts.” I circled around her desk and wrapped my arms around her neck. She gently embraced me as I buried my face in her shoulder.

In truth, the needles hadn’t hurt at all. Though I didn’t say it aloud, I believe Miss

LaVan somehow knew my hurt went far beyond my physical body. Maybe she knew about my internal confusion. About Dad. About my constant running away from

Wesleyan Methodism. About me feeling like I was constantly drowning. She was there for me.

I continued working hard for my grades all throughout high school. Once during a physics test, I finished my test but held onto it for an extra 15 minutes because I could see one of my friends was still writing his essay across the room. I didn’t want him to write a better essay, so I frantically scribbled anything down I thought fit with the question. This attitude helped me to always aim for the highest grades I could get. The competition with my friends never came between us. It brought us together and helped all of us keep our grades up.

We did “A Christmas Carol” for the school play one year. Miss LaVan was the director, and I was given the role of Mrs. Cratchit. We turned it into a musical, so I also had to sing a duet with my daughter, Martha.

I still vividly remember Miss LaVan’s face after the play when she told us that we did well. She was beaming.

After the play, we passed around our scripts and signed them with little notes the same way we always did with yearbooks. Some students just scrawled their names. Best friends wrote extensive paragraphs. Others wrote quotes from the play or “great job.” I asked Miss LaVan to sign mine on the inside cover, which I had kept blank just for her.

In her beautiful cursive, she wrote, “Thanks for all the hard work you did! Great job! -

Miss LaVan.”

When Miss LaVan got engaged, she asked me to play in a string trio in her wedding. Some of her other students were involved as other string players or ushers.

The script with the note from Miss LaVan still sits in a box in my room with a single lily from her wedding bouquet.

My literature classes at SWA were much different from what I’ve taken since then. It wasn’t because of the teacher. Miss LaVan was incredible. The textbooks, however, were made by a Christian company, and they were all heavily focused on seeing things through a biblical worldview.

This means anything we read was analyzed only from a Christian perspective. We read nothing that involved any swear words whatsoever, nothing that included sexual references, and nothing about extremely controversial topics.

Even Shakespeare selections were carefully chosen. We read the majority of

Macbeth and discussed biblical imagery and symbolism (such as the prophecies about

Macbeth and the reference to Judas Iscariot in the porter scene).

Composition class was mostly the same. Unfortunately, Miss LaVan moved away after she got married, so I never got to take composition with her. My composition teacher ended up being a first-year teacher who was still figuring things out. Our narratives had to be written with a Christian worldview and meant to teach a Christian lesson. One of my creative narratives was about a man surrendering his daughter dying from leukemia to God similarly to how Abraham was willing to surrender Isaac to God.

. . . Justin balled his fists. “God, you already took my wife. You can’t take my daughter too!” He began to pace the room, occasionally glancing back at the pale, sickly child on the bed. Memories flooded his mind. The first time he had held her, the joyful expression on his wife’s face, Brianna’s cheerful voice calling, “Daddy, play with me!...

Daddy, read me a book! Watch this, Daddy!... I love you, Daddy!” Vivid pictures of her playing with her dolls, swinging on a swing, running, laughing, and smiling up at him flashed before him, reminding him of what her life should be like.

Justin clenched his teeth and blinked back the tears that threatened to fall. “God, it’s not fair!” he cried inwardly. “I can’t let you have her! Please God, heal her!” He pleaded. In his heart, Justin knew he should be praying for God’s will to be done. But his head told him that if God decided to take his little girl, he would be left alone.

. . .

“God, I can’t do this!” he silently protested. “I know you can heal her! You healed so many sick people in the Bible, why can’t you heal my little girl? I can’t take this anymore! God let her live, please! I’ll do anything!”

“Surrender.” The word was not audible, but Justin felt it.

“God I can’t! You can have everything in my life except my Brianna!” Justin mentally cried out in anger.

“Surrender” This time the word came to him with more intensity. Justin wrestled with himself. “God, I can’t. I can’t do it.” Yet in his heart, he knew he had to. “God,

please spare my daughter,” Justin prayed silently, “but …” he bit his lip. “I want Your will to be done. I… I surrender all.”

I can hardly read it without cringing. Looking back, though, it at least gave me valuable practice writing and it gives me something to compare to and see the progress

I’ve made.

I also wrote my own allegory with myself as the main character. I called it “The

King’s Daughter” and it was about a princess that left her palace home to go into the forbidden city below. After getting herself into trouble, she was about to be killed for her crimes when her father—the king—dies in her place.

My longest high school paper was actually required to be titled “The Christian and ______” and we could choose a topic from a list to fill in the blank. The topics were mostly things that were somewhat controversial or completely unaccepted within our school. It was an extensive research project, and we were required to have many sources. It was required to be at least 12 pages long. My topic was “The Christian and

Racism,” which is something I am still passionate about. My research quickly summarized a few things like the Civil War, the Holocaust, and maybe the KKK, and then provided biblical support as to why it is completely impossible to be a Christian and be racist. Looking back, it was not a great research paper, but the main point of it was that we would be able to provide the necessary biblical support for our argument.

The creative projects were always my favorite, so I remember very little about research-based papers. I won a couple writing contests in high school, and one of my stories was published in the Wesleyan Methodist magazine.

Outside of class, I continued crafting creative writing pieces that weren’t school related. I kept my stories hidden, even from my closest friends. I was afraid someone would tell me I was a terrible writer and crush my dream of writing a book someday.

“Principal Forrider, members of the board, family, friends, and underclassmen: we are so glad you have come to this momentous occasion, and I am honored to speak on behalf of my classmates this evening.” I paused briefly before continuing, remembering my speech teacher’s tips.

Remember to look at the crowd. Don’t just stare straight ahead or at your notes.

A blue-and-white tassel bobbed in my peripheral vision as I glanced up. The pews in the church sanctuary were packed. Several hundred people watched as I fumbled with my notes. Eyes drilling into me. Into my soul. I had never spoken in front of a crowd this size, and I felt unprepared. A whirlwind of activities had caused the day to fly by in what felt like seconds. I barely remembered moving my feet in the step-pause rhythm to Pomp and Circumstance during the ceremony or hugging my parents before taking my place with the other graduates. My mind spun. I needed to focus. Taking a deep breath, I continued my speech.

“First of all, I want to thank all of my teachers for everything they have done.

Salem Wesleyan Academy is so blessed to have a wonderful faculty…”

I tried to steady my shaking voice as I spoke. My speech was full of the usual thanking teachers, thoughts of the future…Blah, blah, blah. And Christian stuff. I knew

what to do. I needed to act a little emotional when talking about how much God had helped me and how blessed I was to attend a Christian school.

“School went so much better this year with the feeling of God’s presence with me.”

I tripped over that part. I hoped no one noticed. Church people in the crowd nodded in response to my words. My parents and my two sisters gave me encouraging smiles.

Pasting a smile on my face, I powered through the rest of my speech. I numbly walked back to my seat as applause shook the building. It was over.

I received excellent feedback. Women from the church hugged me tightly, congratulating me. The pastor and many others shook my hand, saying, “God bless you,” while others complimented me on my speech.

I felt like a star.

That was me. Valedictorian, Christian goody-two-shoes, and an all-around good girl.

A fake.

On my way home that night, I opened the gift the school had given me for graduating with honors.

A Bible.

VIII. DARKNESS

The next step for me was clearly laid out after graduating. There was a Christian college—Allegheny Wesleyan College—about 10 minutes away from my house that was closely connected with my church. It was basically assumed that graduates of the

Christian school would immediately enroll there after high school.

“So, are you going to AWC?” Church people asked me nearly every Sunday that summer.

I didn’t want to go.

I wanted to go to Kent State University.

I was afraid I would disappoint everyone if I went to Kent State, so I filled out the application for AWC. They had very few degrees: Most were in music ministry, missions, pastoral, or Christian education. I wasn’t interested in any of them, but I decided to be a music major since I played four instruments.

We were required to attend church every Sunday, as well as chapel services throughout the week. The chapel services made me extremely uncomfortable since I didn’t even want to be a Christian at the time. I didn’t want to sit by anyone there and lurked as close to the back as I could. Leanne, one of my best friends from high school, would ask me to sit with her, and I’d huffily join her, upset that I even had to attend the service. It was torture.

I sang the songs and bowed my head during prayer, unwilling to let anyone see that I didn’t belong. One day, President Hardy called me out mid-service. “Stephanie

Giles, we haven’t heard anything from you all semester. Why don’t you stand up and testify?”

Testify. Tell everyone what God has done for you.

Easy for a Wesleyan Methodist. Tricky for a fake.

My heart nearly stopped, but I stood up slowly. “Uhh…” I cleared my throat and gripped the back of the pew in front of me so hard my knuckles turned white. “Well, I was driving the other day and I noticed how beautiful the fall leaves were.” Yes. I could make this work. “I am so thankful for the beauty God has given us to enjoy and also for how He has been helping in my life.” I crashed back down into my seat, afraid Leanne could hear my heart pounding. I mean. Technically not a lie, right? God has probably helped me with something in the last couple weeks.

I slouched down farther into my pew and blocked out the speaker’s voice.

~ Come, let us sing to the Lord! ~

Psalm 95:1 NLT

Each year, the college had auditions for music groups that acted as representatives to go out and spread word about the college to nearby churches. These were typically trios or quartets. Since I was a music major, I was a prime target. The heads of the music department tried to recruit me over and over, but I evaded their pursuits and skipped tryouts. “I have to work,” was my excuse when they asked me why I hadn’t auditioned. A couple days passed, and I received a call from the music department on my way to work.

Somehow, I had been chosen as a pianist for a group, even though I had never auditioned.

The music director hesitated slightly after telling me the news. “Is that okay with you?”

I unwillingly said “yes.”

I hit “end call” and stared at my steering wheel, unable to move. I questioned my decision over and over. I, of all people, would be traveling with a quartet to share the gospel through music and bring in more students for the college. I also would have to take turns with other students in the music department playing the piano during chapel services.

We had a special service where all group members were supposed to kneel around the altar and have people pray over us and our ministry. Praying that God would use us as we sang about Him to share the gospel with others. As people prayed loudly around me, I felt sick.

What have I gotten myself into?

Singing and telling others about a God I didn’t even know.

~ Outwardly you look like righteous people,

but inwardly you years are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness ~

Matthew 23:28 NLT

It was hard to attend Bible classes. I wasn’t interested in hearing about God, and I typically wrote short stories on my laptop from my spot in the back row. I withdrew from

everyone during this time. Hanging out with friends or family could have potentially revealed that I wasn’t “practicing what I preached.” I was afraid to talk to Leanne for fear she would realize that I had essentially been lying to her since I met her my junior year of high school.

I said I was a Christian, but I didn’t know what salvation was.

I said I was a Christian, but I didn’t know who God was.

I said I was a Christian, but I was a hypocrite.

To everyone else, I looked like the perfect Wesleyan Methodist, while behind their backs I did things I would have told others not to do.

During the day, I perched piously on a piano bench, singing “Shine, Jesus, Shine” but at night I hid in the darkness of my room and watched videos that would have made my parents cringe. Sexually explicit videos were my forbidden fruit. Only I didn’t share with Adam. I kept the fruit a secret. The pleasure I felt was quickly overridden by my guilt each time though.

My Bible was pushed to the side as I read the trashiest books I could find free on

Kindle. Strange, sensual stories about mystical gender-swapping were fascinating to me for a while. Looking back, I don’t think a lot of these were as bad as I thought they were at the time, but some of them were quite erotic, which I felt was very wrong.

My smile felt like a plastic Barbie smile as I played “How Great Thou Art” in front of crowds of church people across the US when we traveled for several weeks on tour. Like Barbie, I felt hollow inside. My fellow group members shone as they praised

God, while I continued to hide behind my smile. Part of me longed to try again. To be a

Christian. The other part of me wanted absolutely nothing to do with God or the church.

I’m not like you guys.

One night, I found myself lying face down on the floor in my room. I was exhausted and tired of trying. Nothing could make me happy. Pretending I was a

Christian was stupid when I had pushed all of that away on the inside.

Ashamed. Dead.

My life was a disaster. I was going to a Christian college simply because I was expected to. Wasting money to pay for semesters of Bible classes I didn’t care about. If I finished, my music ministry degree would be useless anyway. My family and friends were distanced—because I had pushed them away.

Why am I following the rules if I don’t even want anything to do with

Christianity?

Rolling onto my back, I stared at the ceiling in defeat. I didn’t know if I had the strength to stand up. Pulling myself up by grabbing the edge of my dresser, I stared at the girl in the mirror. Someone I didn’t know stared back with dark, empty eyes. She was ugly and I hated her. I wanted to pick up my hairbrush and use it to smash the mirror and destroy the girl.

You’re nobody. You are despicable. Everyone hates you. The thoughts bombarded me from all directions. I wanted to cover my ears, but I knew that wouldn’t stop the

voices. I took one last glance at the dull eyes in the mirror and then went to bed. This is who I was, and I didn’t know how to fix it.

I tried to pray. “I’m sorry, God,” I would say weakly. But I was never actually sorry.

I just didn’t want to go to Hell.

I wish I could say that I tried to make the best of things at AWC.

But I didn’t.

All I did was retreat further into my shell and away from the people who cared about me. I knew I should talk to someone. I knew I could try to fix things.

But I didn’t.

I was like Jonah. Only instead of being swallowed by a fish, I was being swallowed by a Christian college and my own mopey attitude. People pushing me to be a

Christian musician frustrated me until I wanted to run in the complete opposite direction.

I began to hate myself. I couldn’t find satisfaction in anything. I hated who I was on the inside, and I hated my outward appearance. I would never look at myself in the mirror, and I preferred to stay shut away from the world.

I sat on my bed, staring blankly at the wall. What if I would just… end everything?

Would anyone miss me?

A chill crept down my spine. I wondered how I would do it. I looked down at the veins in my wrist and shuddered. I remembered a teacher talking about suicide; most people probably regret it the instant they make the cut, but it's too late at that point. I

imagined a blade gleaming as it sliced across my wrist and how the blood would look against my pale skin.

What if I had second thoughts? I wouldn’t be able to go back. I’d end up in a panic and no one would find me until it was too late.

Drowning then. I now pictured myself at an icy pond. I’d fling myself into it and let my body plunge beneath the surface. I can swim though, and I knew I would have to consciously force myself to inhale underwater. I trembled at the thought of not being able to breathe.

That sounds terrifying.

“You can’t go to heaven by committing suicide.” I had heard it all my life.

Because killing yourself goes against the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.”

I snapped back to reality. I couldn’t do that.

I curled up in bed and cried.

IX. LIGHT

I made one of the best decisions of my life after that year at AWC—I transferred to the Kent State Salem campus with Leanne and left the Christian world, my quartet, and most of my friends behind.

People I thought would care and try to convince me to come back to AWC didn’t.

Some people were surprisingly okay with my transfer, while a few others never spoke to me again. My pastor and his wife supported my decision, as did my family. This was the first time I left my safe zone. No longer could my church shelter me from “the outside world.”

I’m not sure what I expected. The stereotypical Christian view of a public university is that it’s a place filled with bad language, drug addicts, and overall bad influences.

I walked shyly into my first class at Kent State Salem campus and sat down in the front row. A girl with dark hair plopped down beside me a minute later.

“Hi! I’m Gina!” She smiled brightly and began chatting with me.

She was nice.

My speech class required us to do several group projects. I met Lauren—a very pleasant atheist that didn’t mind talking about her beliefs while respecting mine.

I felt a bit like I had been lied to. These people seemed nicer than a lot of people I had met at a Christian college—other than my high school friends who still treated me so kindly. Maybe my problem was that I had been so isolated by my own religion, I didn’t know how to handle things beyond my church. I found myself looking for signs that people were judging me—when in reality, they weren’t. I thought a few of my professors probably hated me simply because I looked different than everyone else—but I found that they were no different than the kind students I had met. No one hated me because I wasn’t “normal.” I was basing my opinions of what they thought about me on my own feelings of isolation.

Originally, I had registered for some major related to radiology. In order to fill in my electives, I ended up in an English literature class where I met a group of English students who all seemed to be absolutely in love with their major. Dr. Pfrenger was quite passionate about the subject matter and was constantly trying to recruit more students to become English majors. It didn’t take much to convince me. I switched majors after only a few weeks at Kent.

The literature class showed me how little I’d been prepared at AWC to seriously analyze literature. My literature classes at AWC were worse than my literature classes at

SWA as far as the narrowmindedness. Everything we read was either Christian or close enough to be analyzed easily with a Christian worldview. My longest papers were about

Ben Hur and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I didn’t even realize Huck Finn was satire. I only saw the racism and everything from my Christian perspective. Even though

the teacher was excellent, she was simply passing down what the school required her to teach about.

I don’t believe there was anything wrong with the way we were required to analyze these papers. The only potential problem is that some Wesleyan Methodists seem to have a fear of looking at any perspective besides their own—and AWC was actually much more conservative than my church as far as all of that went. Of course, I didn’t realize any of this until I transferred to Kent State.

I’ve always loved reading. In third grade I was reading Anne of Green Gables,

The Chronicles of Narnia, the Babysitter’s Club series, and plenty of Nancy Drew. My third-grade teacher encouraged me to keep reading and made sure to keep some more advanced books in the classroom for students like that loved reading. I quickly moved into reading novels. My parents have an entire wall of books in their room, many of which I’ve read. They’re almost all considered “Christian” books. “Christian Romantic

Suspense” or “Christian Mysteries.” These basically read like regular mysteries except the main character is usually a Christian or becomes one at some point in the book.

There’s often an overarching religious theme in the book as well.

I had only read Christian books before this. My high school book report was on

Black: The Birth of Evil, an allegorical novel by Christian author Ted Dekker. Other than the few sketchy kindle books I read, I had absolutely no experience reading anything not labeled Christian or Classic.

Music was similar. I grew up only listening to music from one genre—Southern

Gospel. The Cathedrals, the Gaither Vocal Band, and Ernie Haase and Signature Sound.

In church, we sang mostly old hymns like “How Great Thou Art,” “Amazing Grace,” and

“Great is Thy Faithfulness.”

I studied classical music in depth when I took piano and violin lessons for 14 years. Vivaldi was the composer that made my spirit soar as I got lost in his minor concertos. Many times, when I was frustrated with life, I found refuge in playing my violin. Anger and frustration faded away as my bow glided across the strings to Vivaldi’s

Concerto in G Minor or occasionally the infamous “Bach Double,” which my teacher called the tricky Bach duet.

I was taught that pop music was wrong. Country music was wrong. Contemporary

Christian music was too worldly and empty of meaning. Rock, rap, or metal—absolutely never ever listen to them. The first time I listened to a Taylor Swift song, I felt like I was committing a crime. At Kent, Dr. Smiley let us listen to Swahili rap in our Geography of

Africa course.

I found myself struggling to write response papers for my classes at Kent because

I only knew how to do so from a Christian perspective. It was difficult for me to go from my status as “smart kid” to suddenly feeling like I had no idea how to write a paper. I met with Dr. Pfrenger dozens of times and often stared in dismay at all the red markings on my papers. It was then that I earned my first B. He kindly worked with me and helped me improve until I was finally able to bring my grade back up to an A in the class. Shortly after this, Dr. Pfrenger also convinced me to join the Honors Program at Kent.

One of my first honors classes involved me writing a response to an episode of

Black Mirror called “Be Right Back.” In this episode, the main character recreates her

dead boyfriend in the form of a very realistic robot—that she even has sex with. I didn’t know how to handle watching a video clip with a sex scene in it, even though I had seen similar things in the darkness of my bedroom. The sex scene didn’t even include nudity.

But I felt so guilty.

I felt like I should close my eyes. I tried to peek at the other students’ reactions without being obvious. How could they just sit there and watch this? Did it not bother anyone? I wondered if Leanne felt the same way, but I couldn’t see her where I was sitting.

Should I leave the room? Am I sinning by staying here?

What would my parents think?

What would my church think?

What did I think?

I’m such a rebel.

Soft chimes. My alarm.

My room was still dark in the early morning, and I wanted to go back to sleep.

Snooze.

The chimes sounded again five minutes later.

I turned the alarm off this time, telling myself it was time to get up. I sat up and rubbed my eyes, as if it would clear the fog from my brain. It was a school day and I needed to get up and get dressed. As I pushed the blankets away from me, cold air hit my skin and I shivered. I lazily swung my legs over the side of the bed, in no hurry to get up.

My short legs didn’t reach the floor and I scooted forward on my butt until my weight dropped to the ground.

It felt like I had landed on ice.

I couldn’t make sense of what was happening. I took a step forward. There should be carpet beneath my feet, but I only felt a cold sponge. Did something spill on the carpet? I took giant strides across the room to my light switch, trying to move without touching the ground. The overhead light clicked on and I turned to look behind me.

Puddles of water shone in the lighting.

My bedroom had flooded. I crawled up on my cedar chest and peered out the window. A river of water ran past my window through our yard and into our neighbor’s.

It must have rained all night and melted all the snow in order for that amount of water to still be gushing past.

“Mom!” I abruptly leapt off of the chest and darted out from my corner of our house. “Mom, my bedroom flooded!”

Dad answers. “You’ve gotta be kidding me!”

I stopped in my tracks. I didn’t realize he was home. I watched him silently as he stormed across the kitchen. I trudged back to my room, grabbing a trash bag along the way as he followed me. I could smell the dampness before I entered. The dampness felt heavy in my lungs. I could hear dad grumbling under his breath, but I couldn’t make out any words.

I crossed the soggy carpet and started snatching notebooks from the area closest to the window where the water was coming in. Dad came in and surveyed the mess. My

mind flashed back to the time he was so mad that he threw his favorite mug across the room. The handmade, glossy-blue mug from a pottery shop in the Smoky Mountains had shattered upon contact with the kitchen counter, and then Dad complained that it broke.

There was also the time he went golfing and bent a putter in half because he was mad that he missed. He looked almost that kind of mad. I frantically tried to rescue anything of importance.

“I cannot believe this. Unbelievable.”

His voice was too loud for the early morning.

I said nothing.

He suddenly ripped the trash bag from my hands. “It’s all ruined.” He grabbed the carpet and began yanking it up. He stuffed dripping carpet and padding into the trash, revealing the gray cement underneath. “Take this,” he snarled, shoving the bag towards me, “It’s full.”

I grabbed the bag, but I wasn’t strong enough to lift it. I twisted the top into a sort of handle and dragged it backward and out of the way.

“Blast it.” Dad threw the window open. He was breathing hard, and I wondered if he felt as sick as I did.

“Look at this mess.” He pushed my cedar chest away from the wall, revealing everything I’d kicked underneath it in the last several years. I wordlessly began picking up dried-out highlighters, tiny hairpins, and missing socks as he tossed another strip of carpet out the window. Mom gingerly stepped into my room. She looked either sad or worried. I couldn’t tell which. She was silent too. Dad continued his rampage.

“Well? Are you gonna help?” His forehead shone with sweat as he heaved a bundle of soaked padding outside. I stepped in and tried, but again, I wasn’t strong enough. I tugged at the carpet, but I couldn’t rip it up like he could. “Forget it, Steph. If you can’t help, get out of the way.”

Before I escaped, one item by the wall caught my eye.

My graduation Bible. It had been carelessly kicked under the chest at some point.

I picked it up and felt a pang of guilt as water dripped from the spine. The front cover of the Bible was untouched, but the back cover was soaked, as well as about a fourth of its pages.

I had never even opened it.

“Can we save this?” I asked Mom. It was salvageable and eventually was returned to a shelf where it would once again remain untouched.

~ For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a commanding shout, with the

voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God… Together, we who are still

alive…will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air ~

I Thessalonians 4:16-17 NLT

Conviction. That’s what it’s called when someone becomes aware of their sinful state and realizes they need God, according to my church. I knew I wasn’t a Christian.

Going to church doesn’t make anyone a Christian. I heard sermon after sermon every single Sunday, doing my best to block them out. But some still bothered me, mainly the

ones about Hell: “If you are a sinner when you die, you will burn forever.” The sermons about Jesus coming back were equally terrifying.

The rapture. As I understood it, Jesus would come back some day and all the living Christians would go to Heaven, leaving the sinners behind. I read a book about it when I was in high school. It suggested that all of the Christians would just vanish into thin air, leaving only their clothes. In the book, this caused a significant amount of damage. Christians who were driving disappeared, leaving their cars to careen off the road. Fires started as stoves were left unattended and sirens filled the air. Police searched houses for answers as to what had happened. Chaos ensued. People knocked down doors to other houses and raided them for goods. New wars began and no one was safe.

The sermons said if I missed this, it would be too late. After preaching, Pastor

Grabill would gently ask if anyone would like to pray at the altar. I wondered if my parents could see me shaking. But I held my ground. I wasn’t good enough. God wouldn’t want me, and I didn’t want to commit my life to this. I continued to attend church though, not willing to disappoint my family or my church. I carried my Bible for looks, but quickly shoved it into my purse, ready to escape when the service was over. I shook hands with my pastor, smiled, but avoided eye contact. He had the kindest eyes I have ever seen, and it felt like they drilled right through me and saw the darkest parts of my heart.

There were times I wished I could pray, but pride stopped me from walking up the aisle to the altar. I couldn’t walk up there to pray in front of two hundred people who thought I was a Christian. I knew I needed to, but I didn’t.

The church service was dragging by. I glanced at the clock impatiently, and then back at Pastor Grabill. Time seemed to have stopped. Suddenly, almost the entire congregation disappeared, leaving only me and a few others. The rapture had occurred, and the Christians had all gone to Heaven with Jesus. We had missed it. Jesus walked over to me. I couldn’t see His face. He was too bright. But He was sad. He had to turn away from me.

“Please,” I begged, “Please save me.”

“It’s too late.” He wept as I knelt before Him. I pleaded with Him over and over to please give me a second chance. But I’d had my chance.

I woke up in a cold sweat. I jumped out of bed and then tiptoed into my parents’ room. Mom’s steady breathing and dad’s snoring relieved me. They were still here. It wasn’t the rapture. These nightmares became more and more frequent. Even in moments where the house seemed too silent, I would panic and search the house, only comforted when I found my mom or my dad.

During this time, I didn’t realize that my youngest sister was going through a similar situation. Caitie is four years younger than me. Though we are best friends now, she barely spoke to me during my year at AWC and my first year at Kent State—likely because I had pushed everyone away.

While normally a bubbly and sweet girl, Caitie suddenly quit talking to people.

She spent all day on her computer in chat rooms, messaging a friend she had made

online. She stopped wearing her brightly colored clothing and started only wearing black.

Though Mom begged her to eat, Caitie hardly ate anything at mealtimes, and she refused to participate in meal conversations.

I wanted to talk to her. I wanted to help.

But I needed help myself. I was confused about what I believed. I didn’t know how to give life advice to anyone else.

Mom kept saying we needed to pray for Caitie.

I wish I would have.

I can’t remember who discovered she was cutting herself, but when I found out, I remember feeling sick to my stomach.

This is my sister. Bubbly, sweet Caitie.

Mom and Dad tried talking to her. Nothing seemed to be working.

I wish I had tried more.

Later I found out that we had been fighting some similar battles.

But we both sat in our rooms with our doors locked.

Hiding from parents.

Hiding from God.

BANG! BANG! BANG! I was sound asleep when the pounding shook the house.

LED lights flashed outside of my window. Men were shouting, and someone was beating on my window. I threw my covers back and sat up.

This was it. The rapture. The world was ending. I leapt from my bed and took off down the hallway towards my parents’ room. I could already see the lights flashing in their windows, and I could still hear the pounding. I stumbled into their room, crying out for my dad, hoping he was still there. Shaking uncontrollably, I begged him to wake up.

“Daddy!” My teeth chattered as tremors of fear wracked my entire body.

“What the devil?” He jumped out of bed with a look on his face I’d never seen. I had also never heard him use that phrase before, which scared me even more.

“P-people are pounding on our house… Fl-flashing lights…” I gasped between sobs.

The doorbell rang several times.

Dad grabbed the gun and Mom followed him closely. I wept bitterly as I trailed along behind. In those two minutes I had gone from being an independent, hateful adult to a terrified little girl.

The pounding continued. “Open up! Police!”

My dad put the gun down and cautiously opened the door.

“Are you the parents of Caitlin Giles?” The officer was serious.

“Yes,” My mom pushed past my dad, panic evident in her tone. “Why?”

“We have her down at the station.”

Mom shook her head in protest. “No. She’s here.”

I broke into Caitie's room with a butter knife. She wasn't there. The bed was empty, and pink curtains danced around the open window as icy winter air blew into the

room. Mom saw the empty bed and the open window, but she still denied that her daughter would run away.

The officer explained that someone had called in a report of a girl walking alone on a bridge. Some Salem cops had picked her up and taken her to the station. It was below freezing outside, and she had walked several miles in the dark. She almost died. I imagined that she was probably going to jump off the bridge, but I didn't want to think about it. The policemen apologized for the scare. They said they had tried calling the house and ringing the doorbell, but no one heard it. This was odd, because I am normally a light sleeper, often awakened something as simple as a truck going by outside.

My mom and I sat nervously in the living room while Dad went to pick Caitie up from the station. When they returned, Caitie would not speak to anyone. I shook for hours. I didn't want to go back into my room. I was terrified. I stayed up all night in the recliner, watching both doors to our house.

What if that had been the rapture?

The thought wouldn't go away.

I skipped class the next day, which I had never done before in my life. Caitie slowly emerged from her room, shyly hugging a teddy bear.

“The policeman gave it to me.”

I wanted to wrap my arms around her and never let go. I was so glad she was alive, but I felt more dead than ever.

I barely slept over the course of the next several weeks. Every single car that drove by awoke me with a jolt as the lights passed my window. My mind flashed back to

that moment. The pounding. The shouting. The terror. I squeezed my eyes shut and pulled the blankets over my head. I couldn’t focus on anything.

“I can’t do this anymore.” I sat cross-legged on my bed in the dark, speaking aloud. “God? I am so sick of all the ups and downs. I don’t know what to do, but I have to do something.” I tried to recall what my church said about how to become a Christian.

The rules kept popping into my head, but I pushed them out. “No. I know it’s more than a list of rules. I’ve basically followed the rules, but there’s got to be more. The rules only make me feel trapped.”

There has to be more to being a Christian than just the rules.

In the following several weeks I searched for answers. I still couldn’t sleep unless

I covered the window with a blanket. If I didn’t, the lights outside would instantly take me back to that awful night in February when Caitie had run away.

I missed class several days in a row—something I had never done before.

Running on almost zero sleep, I met with Dr. Pfrenger and apologized for missing class. I mumbled something about my suicidal sister. He kindly allowed me to turn in the work I had missed, but my heart was barely in it. I wrote response papers in a sort of daze. I have no idea how I maintained an A average that semester.

Mixed in with fear about my sister running away again or attempting suicide again, I also feared my own spiritual state. I was still terrified that God was angry with me. I was confused by the rules and I didn’t know how to fix my life.

I determined that I would back away from the rules of my church for a while and simply focus on what the Bible said and what I felt like God wanted me to do—which was totally new for me.

I knew my church was extremely conservative, and I didn’t want to concentrate so much on the rules that I missed the big picture of what God was truly supposed to be.

Though I continued attending services at church, I ignored what I heard and focused only on what my Bible said.

“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved,” my Bible told me.

I did believe. It was never a matter of disbelief for me; I always believed in the teachings of the Bible and God’s existence.

I followed all the rules, didn’t I? And it got me nowhere.

“How do I know I’m a Christian? Like how do I know that I’m saved?” I asked a youth leader.

“Steph, you believe the Bible is true. You believe in Jesus Christ, and you’ve confessed your sins, right?”

“Right.”

“You know all the facts. But you’re missing the heart side of things. You have to believe. It’s about faith.”

It turns out that religion really isn’t like math. There’s not always a perfect formula or a list of exact rules to follow. Some of it is simply about the heart. For the first time in my life, I realized that a bunch of rules weren’t going to save me. In reality, the

rules were trapping me—strangling me with a false sense of security and a skewed sense of what Christianity was really about.

I had missed the point entirely.

Maybe God wasn’t who I thought He was.

Maybe I was tired of trying to please a God I thought was hovering over me with a stick, ready to beat me the second I made a mistake or stopped following a rule.

Maybe He wasn’t an angry father waiting for me to mess up so that he could yell at me and tell me to start over. Maybe Christianity wasn’t about dressing differently from everyone else and not drinking alcohol. Maybe it wasn’t about angry, sweaty preachers screaming about sinners burning in hell.

Maybe it wasn’t about trying to be perfect.

Maybe it was about a God who loves me despite my imperfections.

Maybe it was about a relationship—not a rulebook.

I finally accepted the gift.

Salvation.

I’d done nothing to deserve this gift. I’d been playing pretend all along when the gift was right in front of me the whole time. I had been living a lie my entire life.

That’s what love is, Steph. Forgiving people when they don’t deserve it. Accepting imperfect people and loving them regardless.

I wasn’t sure if I had imagined the voice in my mind or if that was how God spoke to people, but either way, I understood. It was as if I had been released from chains that had been weighing me down for years—because I simply believed.

Prayer was something I never knew how to do even though I was raised in a

Christian home. My biggest problem was that I was trying to sound like the fancy prayers

I heard at church.

My pastor prayed so beautifully and gently, but other men at church prayed using big words and “thee’s” and “thou’s.” Trying to sound so distinguished frustrated me, so I often just gave up again.

Prayer isn’t supposed to be like that. Learning that my religion was less about rules and more about a relationship proved to be useful in this area as well. Instead of trying to copy the people I heard pray at church, I began talking to God like a friend. This worked wonders for me. It was like something clicked in my mind. The Bible confirmed my discovery as I read verses about God caring about the little things in our lives. Prayer doesn’t just have to be fancy words recited daily. It can be as simple as, “Hey God, I had a bad day today” or while driving down the road, just a quick, “Wow, the trees are absolutely gorgeous. Thank you for creating this beautiful world for us to live in.”

Having faith that He is the same God in the Bible that cares about the sparrows reassured me that He also cared about how my day was, and I began to feel much closer to Him. When reading my Bible, I began keeping a notebook close by to scribble down

thoughts about what I read. I wanted to learn everything I could about God and what the

Bible actually said instead of going by what my church told me.

As this continued, I noticed my attitude changing. Starting the day off talking to

God and reading my Bible brightened my entire day. The weight I had felt from trying to keep a bunch of rules I didn’t understand seemed to melt away as I learned that fancy prayers and dozens of rules don’t make a Christian or God.

I pulled into Dunkin and shut my car off. Nervously tapping my fingers on my steering wheel, I glanced around the parking lot for my pastor’s vehicle.

Why did I decide to do this?

The gold minivan pulled into the spot next to me. Mrs. Grabill waved cheerily and climbed out to greet me. The pastor locked the van and the three of us walked into

Dunkin.

“Can I help you?” The girl at the counter smiled brightly.

“If you know what you want, go ahead.” Mrs. Grabill motioned me forward.

I ordered a chocolate chip muffin and a small milk. As I reached for my wallet, my pastor told me not to worry about it and that they would pay for everything. After we all received our orders, we sat down at a table away from everyone else. The pastor prayed over the meal, and we began to eat.

“So, you said you had some things you wanted to talk about?” Pastor Grabill’s eyes held a soft, concerned look, and he spoke gently. “What’s going on?”

I shifted in my chair and stared down at the sparkly sugar sprinkles on my muffin.

“Well. I guess I wanted to apologize for pretending to be someone I wasn’t for. . . well, most of my life really.”

The listened intently as I shared my story with them. The fact that I had never truly accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior until recently. My attempt to run from God. My rapture dreams. The night the police pounded on my window. My search for truth.

My whole story.

It felt amazing to have everything out in the open. I was no longer hiding anything.

“I had no idea.” My pastor set his coffee down and looked me in the eye. “I’m so sorry I never saw that you were hurting like that.”

“I hid it well.” I smiled wryly.

“But Stephanie, we are so happy that you’ve felt comfortable opening up to us today. And we’re so glad you’ve found a relationship with God through all of this.”

We chatted for a little longer and agreed to keep meeting every couple of months.

Pastor Grabill prayed for me before we left.

A few weeks later, I was on the schedule to play a violin solo for a special song in a Sunday morning service. I carefully chose a song based on its lyrics and asked my violin teacher to be my accompanist.

“We have a special number in song at this time,” my pastor announced as he did every Sunday. I tried to steady my hands as I picked up my violin. The instant my hands

touched the sleek wood of my instrument, I felt more relaxed. I climbed the stairs to the platform and took my place behind the music stand. I eyed the microphone in front of me, took a breath, and began to speak.

“Before I play, I just feel like I need to take the opportunity to thank God for how much He has been helping me recently. I’ve had a lot of up and downs in my life— mostly downs actually.” I tried to explain the mask I had been wearing, all the while eyeing the congregation of close to 300 people. They didn’t look like they were judging me. They looked like they cared.

“It’s like a house that is painted beautifully on the outside, but the walls are made of cardboard.” I continued, glancing at the notes I had jotted down above my sheet music.

“Looks nice on the outside but has no stability and is empty on the inside. It’s essentially garbage. Worthless.”

I paused to smile.

“But I’m so thankful that God recently used an extremely traumatic situation to wake me up and I finally settled things. All of my life, I struggled knowing exactly where

I stood with God, but I am so thankful that God really saved me. I’ve never felt this deep of a relationship with God before. It’s like I actually know Him on an entirely new level.”

I spoke for a little longer and informed the congregation that I would be playing a song called “Now I Belong to Jesus,” found on page 417 of their “Sing to the Lord” hymnal if they wanted to follow along to the words. The last two verses fit so beautifully

with what I knew had happened to me. I quickly mentioned a few of the lines that really stuck out to me before I began playing.

“Once I was lost in sin’s degradation. Degradation. That’s the process of degrading—humiliation, shame, misery. . . the trap I was in had me to this point until

Jesus lifted me up from that sorrow and shame. And then verse two says that joy floods my soul since Jesus freed me from the sin that had enslaved me. I’m so thankful for that joy.”

I didn’t feel the eyes of the people in the congregation. They weren’t drilling into the depths of my soul now. This wasn’t like when I had been in the AWC singing group.

For once, I wasn’t up there for myself. It was just me and my violin—making music for

Jesus.

I lifted my bow and began to play.

Once I was lost in sin's degradation,

Jesus came down to bring me salvation,

Lifted me up from sorrow and shame,

Now I belong to Him.

Now I belong to Jesus,

Jesus belongs to me,

Not for the years of time alone,

But for eternity.

Joy floods my soul for Jesus has saved me,

Freed me from sin that long had enslaved me

His precious blood, He came to redeem,

Now I belong to Him.

Now I belong to Jesus,

Jesus belongs to me,

Not for the years of time alone,

But for eternity.

X. PAIN

Through all of this, my problems with my menstrual cycle grew worse. Every month it was heavier than ever. The heaviest overnight pads or tampons would barely work for a few short hours. I continued getting ovarian cysts, even though the doctor told me over 7 years ago that I should never have another one in my life.

One of the best things I ever did to make this manageable was to purchase a menstrual cup. It’s made of a soft, flexible silicone, and is inserted similarly to a tampon.

Instead of absorbing the blood, however, the cup simply catches it. When removed, you simply dump it out, rinse, and reuse. Not only is this safer than a tampon, but it is also environmentally friendly and tends to hold much more than any other option I’ve tried.

As my periods continued to get worse, I found a bit of relief in the fact that I could now do many things I couldn’t do before, like swimming during my period.

I went to a gynecologist when I turned 21. I had my first pap smear and was tested for cervical cancer and ovarian cancer. Both tests came back negative. They planned to continue running tests, but I didn’t have the money. Since I was going to school full time at Kent, I had mountains of books to read and pages upon pages of essays to write. Even while working two part-time jobs, it was hard to fit in enough hours to support my schooling.

My parents didn’t want me to know, but it had taken us several years to pay off my CT scan and ultrasound from when I was 13. When I got my wisdom teeth removed, it took me an entire year to pay the bills because our insurance didn’t cover the procedure. Apparently, sometimes being an adult means realizing anesthesia costs a lot more than I’d ever imagined. I occasionally thought of going back to the doctor, but every time, I just followed that thought with, I’ll wait until I have the money.

A few months after my appointment with the gynecologist, I received a phone call informing me that their business was closing and that I would need to transfer to a different doctor.

I didn’t.

The pain was on my mind when I met Jonathan and David Allbright. They creeped me out from the very beginning. I only started hanging out with them because of their sister, Wanda. I needed a friend, but I didn't realize I was getting the package deal.

These brothers had just moved into the area from Tennessee, and they must have come straight out of the boonies. They had the most dramatic hillbilly accents I had ever heard in my life, and I rarely saw them without their cowboy hats. Jonathan frequently wore a plaid shirt with overalls, and with his red-blond beard, a pitchfork would have completed the hillbilly-farmer look perfectly. I first only agreed to go fishing with them if

Wanda was along. As a small woman, I wasn’t comfortable going alone with Jonathan and David.

David was closer to my age than his 30-year old brother. He was short for a man, and quite stout.

Apparently he was a preacher.

I never heard him speak until the first night we all went fishing together.

“Do ya want me to bait yer hook?” His deep, booming voice made me jump.

“Uhh. No. Thank you.” I grabbed a worm from the plastic container and ripped it in half with my fingers.

“Well, would ya look at that,” he drawled. “This gal ain’t afraid of worms.”

I gave a small, awkward laugh and threw my line out. They were shocked when I outfished them. I caught nearly 25 bluegills that night and several bass. They caught maybe 5-6 fish each.

I don’t know why I continued to hang out with them. Perhaps it was just nice to fish with people who didn’t criticize my every move. I was used to going with my dad, who would yell if I accidentally snagged a bush. One time he almost threw the boat motor in the lake when it didn’t start. Though the Allbright brothers unnerved me, I appreciated the fact that they never grouched at me about my cast not being perfect or me wasting bait if I missed a bite—and I was basically only hanging out with them because of their sister anyway.

In August 2018, we planned a trip to West Branch Lake. I awoke at 4 AM and went to Walmart for bait. I also grabbed one of those bags of tiny, powdered-sugar donuts and then drove straight to the lake. It was still dark as I trudged down to the fishing pier, lugging my tackle bag, a bucket, and two fishing poles. I sat alone on the

bench and listened to the water lap gently against the beams underneath the pier. The sky began to glow a lovely rose-orange as the sun began to peek over the horizon. It was so beautiful. Since it was daylight, I began fishing. I had only caught two crappies when I heard the truck doors and David’s loud voice.

The small bridge to the pier shook as they galumphed across it in their big boots.

Jonathan stood too close to me, as usual. I eyed the tackle on his bright blue fishing pole.

His line was too heavy, and his hook was too large. I didn’t say anything. We had a fishing contest, which I won with about 35 crappies. I set my pole down and tied my hair back, noticing how hot it was getting.

“You done already?” Jonathan asked.

“Just taking a break.” It was 95 degrees and extremely humid.

“Take yer time. It’ll give me time to catch up.” Jonathan’s laugh was obnoxious, like a clown’s in a horror movie. I eyed the water beneath us. The heat was suffocating. I wasn’t prepared for swimming. I had my contacts in, and I was wearing my fishing clothes. Besides that, I was on my period. Though I was using a menstrual cup, I wasn’t sure I felt up to swimming.

I slipped through the railing to the outside edge of the pier and took a deep breath.

It was at most a 10-foot drop and I wasn’t sure how deep the water was, but I knew it was deep enough I wouldn’t hit bottom. To the amazement of the Allbright brothers, I cannonballed off the edge and into the green water below to join several other swimmers.

Relief. I was too exhausted to swim much, but I kicked back onto my back and floated in the cool water, thankful for a break from the heat. David, Jonathan, and Wanda didn’t

know how to swim. As they leaned over the railing, observing me, I became very aware of the fact that my wet shirt was clinging to me.

Well, this is awkward.

I let my body drop beneath the surface and began to swim towards the ladder when a boat approached us. A small beacon light flashed on top, and I eyed the other swimmers, who mumbled “uh-oh.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” the sheriff said harshly.

“What?”

“Swimming is not allowed here. I’m sure the signs are clearly posted. Pack up your things and leave immediately.

I swam slowly back to the pier and climbed the rusty ladder. David’s face was red with anger, and I hoped he wouldn’t yell back. We searched the area thoroughly, and there were no signs indicating that swimming was prohibited. People swim there all the time. We trudged back to our vehicles with a bucket of fish, our tackle, and nets. I leaned my ultralight against my red Chevy Cruze and turned towards the guys.

“I’m sorry, but I really need to go to the bathroom.” I had been avoiding drinking water so I wouldn’t have to go, but I knew I needed to deal with my period.

David looked upset. “That guy is waiting for us to leave,” he nodded towards the sheriff's boat, still patrolling around the docking area.

“I’ll try to hurry.” I half-jogged back down the hill towards the bathrooms, dodging goose poop along the way. My uterus screamed every time my flip flops smacked the sidewalk. The smell of a park bathroom greeted me before I even passed

through the door. My wet clothes hung heavily from me, which made things difficult. I could feel the pressure from the menstrual cup and knew I should have done this hours ago.

Hurry, Steph.

As I removed the cup from my body, the pressure released. Blood exploded in every direction. I inhaled sharply. It was worse than I’d thought. I shoved the cup back up inside of me and yanked some flimsy toilet paper off the roll. It melted against my wet skin and I grabbed another five feet of the thin tissue, frantically dabbing spots on my soaked clothing. I stared at the blood-spattered floor in horror. The white and green sheriff’s boat outside flashed into my mind and I began scrubbing my blood from the nasty tile floor. I double-checked my jean skirt before exiting the stall. Taking one last glance, I noticed a few drops on the wall I had missed. I hastily wiped them away and washed my hands thoroughly.

“What took so long?” David hissed.

He must be one of those angry preacher types.

“I’m sorry.”

“Let’s go. We’ll fish at Berlin instead.” They roared out of the parking lot ahead of me. I sat gingerly on driver’s seat in my Cruze, hoping no blood remained on my clothes. Berlin Lake was nearby, and we were fishing again in no time after hiking down a steep, rocky hill to the water’s edge.

I didn’t feel good, but I didn’t want to say anything.

“Oh, that made me MAD.” David fumed about the sheriff off and on as I sat silently on a rock. I hugged my stomach tightly, suddenly feeling sick.

I haven’t eaten anything all day. I grabbed my backpack and pulled out the bag of donuts I had bought almost eight hours ago. Just seconds after eating the tiny, powdered- sugar donut, my heart started pounding. The sun seemed to intensify, and time began moving in slow-motion. I sluggishly began packing up my things.

“You’re packing up already?” David and Jonathan were shocked. I usually have to be dragged away from fishing. I nodded, breathing hard. I didn’t want to tell them how horrible I was feeling. I began my climb up the steep, jagged rocks. My feet were too heavy, as if they were made of lead. My heart raced and my vision blurred. I paused to catch my breath.

What is happening?

The weeds bobbing in the breeze were no longer distinguishable as the world spun before me. I sat down. Jonathan and Wanda passed me up.

“Are you okay?” David stopped to check on me.

I nodded silently. “Go ahead,” I mumbled, “I’ll catch up.” I tried to smile. They disappeared from view.

You can’t stay here all day. Just walk to the car and turn on the air. You’ll be fine.

I stood up and took one step forward. Another step.

I collapsed.

I was still conscious, but barely. Wind rushed in my ears and my head pulsated with every thud of my racing heart.

“Steph!” Wanda sounded far away but I could sense her approaching.

A nearby fisherman ran towards us. “Is she okay?” He seemed alarmed but his voice was calm. I could hear them talking but nothing made sense.

“Has she drunk anything today?” the man asked.

“No.” Somehow I pulled the answer from my swirling thoughts. I haven’t. I haven’t eaten or drunk anything at all in over 24 hours.

A water bottle was thrust into my hand. The fisherman knelt and looked me in the eye.

“Drink this now. Slowly.” He was kind, but firm. I took a few sips. “Not too fast,” the fisherman repeated gently. “Can you walk?”

“Yes.” I slowly rose to my feet and staggered towards my car. Dizziness overwhelmed me and I looked down at my feet, begging them to move. The fisherman watched with concern. I stumbled drunkenly along until I reached the guardrail. I would have to climb over it to reach my vehicle. There were no breaks in it in either direction for miles.

“Can you make it over?” The fisherman seemed worried. Wanda just stood there watching. I touched the cool metal of the guardrail. I couldn’t even fathom how I would be able to climb over it. Everything got fuzzy and my knees buckled. The fisherman was at my side in an instant. Without a word, he lifted me up in his arms and carried me over the railing.

After we made it to my car, I insisted I was well enough to drive. I sat down in the front seat, though Wanda begged me not to. I lowered my head for just a second to rest and promptly blacked out. It wasn’t for long.

“She’s not driving home,” the fisherman shook his head. He and the Allbrights softly discussed my health and eventually Jonathan drove my car home as I laid across the back seat, wrapped in a blanket and shivering. I kept seeing his pale blue eyes in the rearview mirror, checking to make sure I was still conscious.

After this incident, the Allbrights seemed to feel it was their duty to protect me.

“Make sure the little lady’s drinkin’ enough,” David would say as he tossed a water bottle in my direction.

“Is the princess drinking enough water?” Jonathan would text me nearly every day.

Princess.

The nickname bothered me. I wanted to say something, but I didn’t want to hurt their feelings. I just tried to laugh it off, like I did many of our odd conversations. I couldn’t keep quiet about my recent discoveries about God and what Christianity is truly about. David, being a preacher, was happy to share in my enthusiasm, while Wanda and

Jonathan smiled and listened.

Except then David started bashing my education.

“Ridiculous,” he’d say. “You don’t need that degree. You’d be a fine wife for someone someday. A man will support you. You won’t ever be able to live alone or support yourself.”

I felt myself flinch a little inside and held my chin a little higher. “Actually, I plan to possibly go on and get my master’s degree at some point.”

David snorted and shook his head. He told me he didn’t think education was all that necessary “except maybe fer doctors and people. Definitely not preachers.”

I argued a bit, but he made it clear I couldn’t change his mind.

Yeah, I assume people love listening to sermons by a preacher with poor grammar—who probably has no idea what he’s talking about half the time.

I thought maybe I would be able to slowly back away from David and Jonathan when Wanda moved back to Tennessee at the end of August. I was wrong. They seemed to cling to me even more. I used school as an excuse to not hang out for a while, until I dropped out of several classes mid-semester. I couldn’t pay the bills. That’s when David offered me a job working on his paint crew. I was already working two jobs, but I was desperate, and he offered to pay me $10/hour.

“Here, little lady.” David steadied the ladder as I mounted it. “Now remember to be careful with that there heat gun!”

I nodded and switched it on to 1100 degrees. The job was difficult for me. I spent days leaning on a ladder with a heat gun in one hand and a scraper in the other to peel the old paint from the wooden siding. My arms ached as I chiseled old paint off while David

supervised from the ground. Jonathan also worked for his brother, and he stayed fairly close by, playfully flicking paint chips at me but rarely working.

“Good thing yer wearin’ leggin’s under that skirt,” David roared with laughter from below as he stared up my dress. I rolled my eyes and climbed down, the ladder shaking with each step. David offered me his hand and not knowing what else to do, I took it and dismounted, feeling like a woman in the 1800s.

I am quite capable of getting off of a ladder by myself.

I wish I’d said it aloud.

In the following weeks, we started painting. I didn’t realize how much I was being used until later. They begged me to bring food and didn’t pay me for it. David and

Jonathan did groundwork while I was sent to the top of a shaky ladder to climb to the third story with no safety equipment.

“‘Cuz yer the smallest, so you can fit in under that there roof better.” David boomed, flashing his Cheshire Cat grin.

“It's so high. And the ladder wobbles,” I bit my lip.

“You mean to tell me yer scared?” His blue eyes twinkled mischievously.

“Of course not.” I snatched the paint bucket and climbed to the top, putting the finishing touches on the building. I’m not scared of heights. But this isn’t safe.

I complained to one of the youth leaders at church about my situation. About my struggle with Dad. The Allbrights. People treating me wrongly. I knew I was whining.

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“Steph. Have you ever tried standing up for yourself? You can’t complain about your situation if you don’t do anything to try to change it. I don’t want to hear any more self-pity from you.” The youth leader tried to help. I just moped about it.

Meanwhile, the Allbrights continued pretending to be my knights in shining armor. When leaving the paint job one day, my car got stuck in the mud, and they were more than delighted to help. When they saw my thin winter coat, they insisted I come shopping with them to look at coats. I wanted a nice, warm Carhartt coat, but they were too far out of my price range. Tractor Supply happened to be having a decent sale the day we went, and I found a camo coat with pink accents that I really liked. It was a kid’s size large, but it fit me perfectly. I decided to buy it, but when we reached the checkout,

David pulled out his credit card. I argued with him a little, but he barked at me that I should just accept the gift.

The coat was warm, but every time I wore it, I felt like it wasn’t really mine. To make things even weirder, they had apparently heard me mention that my car needed a new battery. One day while I was waitressing, they came into the restaurant and asked for my keys.

“Why?” I didn’t even bother hiding my suspicion.

“We bought you a new battery and need to see if it works. Don’t worry. We’ll have your keys back in less than 45 minutes.”

Slightly exasperated, I tossed them my keys so I could just get rid of them and get back to my customers. They returned my keys as promised, and when I left work, my car

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had a brand-new battery installed. Not only that, but they had also taken my car to the gas station across the street and filled it up for me.

I was basically broke at the time, so I appreciated the kindness in one way, but I was totally unnerved by it in another. Their good deeds always seemed to be overshadowed by their attitudes. It seemed to be their way of showing me that a young woman needs men to support her, as David so frequently reminded me.

They came in to work and asked the hostess to sit in my section frequently. They always left me amazing tips—often a twenty for one meal. David, always wearing his icky black cowboy hat, became known as the “creepy cowboy” by all the waitresses.

Things got even more complicated when Wanda sent me a message to let me know that both of her brothers liked me and were fighting over me at home. They stopped coming in to eat at the restaurant together, and I found myself often stuck waiting on only one of them at a time, which was awkward.

A few weeks after finishing the paint job, Jonathan sent me the longest text I had ever received, declaring his love for me. When I came to the line, “because for some reason, I love you.” I wanted to throw up. This was a situation where I couldn’t just silently let things happen.

I texted back, telling him I appreciated his kindness, but I wasn't interested. I thought that was the end. I stopped contacting them until I needed to borrow David’s table saw for a project I was working on. I had used a circular saw for everything I could, but I didn’t want to ask my dad for help. He would only be upset. No one was home

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when David brought his table saw over. He set it up in the garage and told me to bring my project over. He shut both doors. I stood back, uncomfortable.

“Come here.” David motioned me over. He had me “help” cut the wood, and then tried to teach me how to use a hammer.

I know how to use a hammer. Please don’t touch me.

He celebrated my ability to pound nails as if I was a child. As if it was something he never expected a girl to do.

The garage door started going up. My parents were home. David left in a hurry looking guilty as my dad chewed me out for having David help me instead of him. My dad doesn’t even own a table saw.

* I believe part of the reason I tended to let people walk all over me was because I grew up thinking that being a Christian woman means always being kind and gentle.

While being more like Jesus does mean having a gentle spirit and being kind towards others, it doesn’t mean it’s okay to let people take advantage of us or treat us horribly all the time.

When Jesus found out that people were using the temple wrongly, he didn’t politely ask them to leave. He literally drove the moneychangers out of the temple and flipped over the tables they had set up.

The ideas I had in my mind about being submissive and meek proved to be wrong in some cases. Pain made me stronger, but I also learned that sometimes it’s okay for me to stand up for myself—it didn’t impact my relationship with God negatively.

It made me stronger.

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To keep up with my expenses, I was still working as much as possible. I had been waitressing at Das Dutch Haus Restaurant for several years, and I was also painting for the Allbrights that fall. I even dropped out of one of my classes at Kent so that I would have more time to work.

I should email SWA and see if they could hire me for anything.

The idea hit me out of nowhere. I simply woke up thinking it one day. I’m now convinced that God speaks to people by putting thoughts into their minds exactly like this. I believe it’s the way He leads His children into specific situations.

I emailed the school and was surprised to hear back almost immediately. They were in desperate need of a tutor for a few senior boys that were in danger of not graduating.

“It will have to be approved by the school board, but we will let you know as soon as possible.”

I wasn’t expecting that response, nor was I expecting a follow-up email the next week asking me to start working as a tutor. The pay would only be minimum wage, but I was grateful to have another job opportunity—especially in a Christian high school.

I made six dozen buckeyes in preparation for Christmas. David wanted a dozen, so I told him I’d drop them off as a thank-you for allowing me to use his table saw. I parked by their house, assuming everyone was home. David was waiting alone on the porch. He was wearing that same grubby cowboy hat he always wore. I didn’t have a

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chance to even shut my car off before David was at my open window. I handed him the tiny box decorated with snowmen and ribbons.

“Hey, Steph?” He rested his arms against the edge of my window and stuck his head inside. I perched on the far side of my driver’s seat. He was too close. “I just wanted to apologize for being harsh with you the other day.”

“It’s fine.” I didn’t even know what he was talking about. With no one else around, I just wanted to get out of there.

“Steph. You don’t have to be afraid of me.” David reached in my car and grabbed my shoulder tightly. I couldn't move. I couldn’t breathe. “You don’t have to be afraid,” he repeated. His hand was huge grasping my tiny shoulder. His fingers were too low. Too close to my breast. His grip was too tight.

My mind flashed back to the time a large man had grabbed my leg while I was waitressing at work. He had put my tip in my pocket and squeezed my thigh while feeling all the way up my leg. My feet had frozen to the floor and I had said nothing. I cried on my way home and showered immediately, trying to scrub away the feeling of his fingers.

SAY SOMETHING, STEPH. My mind screamed. Don’t let him take advantage of you.

“Am I making you uncomfortable?”

“Yes!” I wanted to scream the response, but it was a strangled cry at most. I rolled up my window and sped away, wishing I had said more. Dissatisfied with my response, I sent a raging text telling him off that night and telling him I wished I had slapped him.

“And don’t ever touch me again.”

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It would have been better done in person, but I still felt triumphant.

I cut off all communication with them after that.

“I don’t know how to do this,” my mom looked sadly down at the pole in her hands. She wasn’t used to a spinning reel and only knew how to work a push-button one.

“Hun, I already showed you.” Dad seemed annoyed to have to explain it again.

Those were precious seconds in which he could be fishing for smallmouth bass. He brushed past me to the front of the boat where mom sat. I bit my lip. I should have explained it to her. I would have been nicer. We were quiet as we casted shiny Rapala lures out into the choppy Lake Erie water.

Adrenaline surged through my body when one hit. Smallmouth bass always fight hard and jump out of the water, trying to throw the hook. Dad yelled at me to not lose it, unnerving me. I still got it in, and after that, we caught one after another. Things were going well until the wind caught mom’s lure. Her cast went farther than intended, and the lure bounced along the rocky shoreline.

“Babe!” Dad was furious. “You’re going to scrape up my Rapala!”

Mom was silent.

“Blast it.” Dad threw his pole down and crossed his arms. “Those are expensive!”

He snatched the pole out of Mom’s hands and began whipping the line, trying to unsnag it. “I can’t get it. It’s stuck.” He gave one final yank and the line broke. “Don’t you know how to cast?” His voice was harsh.

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I glanced at Mom out of the corner of my eye. Her sunglasses hid her eyes, but I heard her sniffle.

“Dad, she just learned how to cast today!” I snapped back, surprised at the strength of my own voice. “You can’t expect her to be perfect. If you’re that worried about it, drive the boat over there and I’ll jump ashore and find it.”

“It’s too rocky,” he complained, “We’ll scrape the bottom of the boat.”

“Then I’ll jump in and swim over,” I crossed my arms and frowned.

“The water is probably only 40 degrees,” he grumbled, starting the motor. “We’ll just have to risk it. Prob’ly won’t find it anyway.”

“If you can’t find it, I’ll buy a new one,” I retorted.

It only took him about five minutes to find it. Mom wanted to stop fishing, afraid of “messing up” again. I encouraged her to keep trying and she ended up catching one of the largest fish. I was proud of her.

As a child and teen, I thought that women should only be soft and sweet wives, meant to raise children, cook, and clean. My mom has always worked weekends and a couple weekdays, so I don’t know where this idea came from. My church definitely doesn’t preach that.

“That’s not even biblical,” one of the Sunday school teachers said one morning regarding past ideas about what the role of a woman is. “What about Deborah in the

Bible—she was a leader! And then there’s Jael . . .”

We all laughed.

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Judges 4 tells the story of Jael, the heroine that killed General Sisera to deliver

Israel from the enemy. She welcomed Sisera into her tent, waited until he was asleep, and drove a tent peg through his skull with such force that it went all the way through and into the ground on the other side.

The Sunday school teacher was right. The Bible says nothing about women being weak in any way. Nor does it speak of women who should only cook and clean. Deborah,

Esther, Jael, Ruth, and many others are examples of strong women in the Bible.

My misconceptions had little to do with my Christian worldview, but perhaps they were forced upon me by people like the Allbrights, who treat women as weak and incapable of doing things for themselves. Or maybe it’s just the way the world is in general.

As a teen, I remember trying so hard to fit in with the other girls. Instead of trying to be myself, I tried to cram myself into a mold to be more like them. I said my favorite color was pink because it was a “girly” color.

My favorite color has always been a soft, turquoise blue.

Even worse, I quit doing something I loved because I thought it was a “boy” thing.

I quit fishing.

For several years.

But when I stopped caring what people thought about me, my life got so much better. I also painted my bedroom light blue. I tromped around in the mud barefoot, went digging for worms, and filleted my own fish.

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I simply learned that I am no less of a woman wearing mud boots and a raincoat, fillet knife in hand beside a bucket of dead fish than I am in my fanciest dress for a formal banquet at work.

Some of my best fishing has happened within the last year. I had learned how to put up with my dad, and though I often fished alone, I still went on our annual smallmouth trips with him. I caught the biggest one every year, and this year I even managed to hook a Fish Ohio qualifier—which basically just means it’s larger than average, and you get a cool pin from the Division of Wildlife.

We went again with one of Dad’s friends, hoping to catch more. Every time we went out on the lake, I prayed the motor would run so Dad wouldn’t be grumpy. I never even imagined what was about to occur. Dad shifted to the other side of the bench at the stern. His rod happened to be sitting there, and the movement knocked it off the side of the boat. He grabbed at it frantically, but it was gone in a second.

Immediately, we dropped anchor. Dad and his friend both grabbed spare rods and reached down to the bottom in an attempt to hook the lost rod and retrieve it. The depth reader said we were in only eight feet of water. With two grown men at the stern, I climbed to the highest point at the bow, hoping to somehow cancel their weight. My small body did little to help the dramatically tipping vessel, but somehow we stayed afloat. I closed my eyes and prayed, “God, please help us find this rod,” over and over. It wasn’t a cheap rod, and it had a great reel on it as well.

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Somehow, Dad was staying moderately calm, just occasionally saying, “Oh, I feel sick. How could I be such an idiot?”

“I can help.” I tied my hair up and took off my jacket. “I’ll dive down and search the bottom.”

“No way, Steph. That water’s like ice. You’ll freeze.”

“But I could get it back. I’ll follow the anchor rope down to where you dropped it and drag my hands over the rocks.”

“No. Wait.” Dad’s friend spoke up. “I think I have it!”

Somehow, his large treble hooks had managed to snag the cork handle on Dad’s rod.

I also still believe it was God that helped keep Dad calm and helped us find that expensive rod. I felt that my silent prayer was heard

“Thank you, God.”

Unlike me, Caitie hadn’t spent much of her life trying to figure out religion. She had never actually tried to learn about salvation and seemed to have little interest in being a Wesleyan Methodist—or even a Christian in general. She had started to improve some after the night she had run away because she had been put on medication for depression.

We became the best of friends. I talked openly about my relationship with God— something I had been unable to do all of my life until I really got things figured out. She was sweet about it but still seemed uninterested.

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I didn’t push. No one should be pushed to God. In pushing, you risk driving someone away. Instead, I prefer the phrase “love them to God.” In other words, if you are truly like Jesus, love will pour out of you until it’s bound to be noticed by others. This love is what should draw people to God.

Jesus didn’t pushily command people to follow Him.

He asked them.

He befriended them.

He loved them.

I don’t know that I helped much, if at all, with Caitie’s change. All I know is that

I did my best to never push her away. She needed someone to just be there.

One Sunday morning, I was sitting in church and taking notes on the sermon as usual. My heart suddenly felt very heavy. Pray for Caitie. Either God spoke directly to me or He brought the thought to my mind. I stopped focusing on the sermon and began praying silently for my sister. I learned later that my mom had the same feeling at exactly the same time, as did several other church friends.

Pastor Grabill concluded his sermon and asked if anyone would like to come to the altar and accept the gift of salvation, and my sister slipped past us and walked to the front. Her whole body shook with her sobs. I made my way to the altar as well and knelt beside her, praying that she would see past the emotions and find the same beautiful God who I had discovered.

From that day and on, Caitie was a completely different person. She was back to the happy-go-lucky girl I knew as my sister, but somehow better. She even started

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wearing cheerful colors again and was happy to chatter away at the dining room table like she had before her dark time.

My sister was back.

It seemed like only a minute between when I fell asleep and when my alarm began to chime.

Snooze.

I wearily sat up and rubbed my eyes.

2:45 AM.

15 minutes until I needed to leave. I swung my legs over the side of the bed and sat still for a minute, questioning my decision to go fishing with my uncle and his buddies. My stomach always felt a bit odd on these early mornings and moving too quickly would only make it worse.

My alarm sounded again. This time, I turned it off, knowing I was no longer in danger of drifting back to sleep.

2:50 AM.

Ten minutes. I grabbed the outfit I had set out the night before. The blue shirt was a light spandex material, perfect for the 90-degree weather forecasted for today. Instead of taking the time to do my hair, I smashed a navy-blue NYC hat over the tangled mess. I twisted the doorknob quietly, but the latch releasing still seemed as loud as a gunshot in a house that was still asleep. All I needed was my phone charger, some water, and a snack

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since I was still too queasy to eat breakfast. I was thirsty, but I didn’t want to be the one who needed to go back to the docks for a bathroom, so I didn’t drink anything.

Before I pulled the front door shut, I paused to make sure I had remembered my keys.

I should have remembered to turn on the porch light. At nearly 3 AM, it was still pitch-black outside. I shivered, unnerved by the long walk to my car. I jogged past the long side of the garage only to suddenly stop in my tracks at the sight of a dark shape in my driveway.

“Don-Don! You stupid cat!” I hissed, heart racing. He blinked his big yellow eyes at me and meowed. I popped the trunk of my Cruze and stuffed the bag of fruit snacks and a granola bar into my tackle bag, along with my water bottle and phone charger.

Fishing poles. Tackle. Everything I needed was there.

I pulled out of the driveway at 3:01, doing my best to focus on what I was doing even while half-asleep. The meeting spot turned out to be an unlit gravel lot in the middle of nowhere. Jeff and his buddies weren’t there yet. In the rearview mirror, I nervously eyed the tall bushes behind my car and decided to switch off my lights and lock the doors. My uncle arrived next, shortly followed by Josh and Dan. I quietly watched the men load their things into my uncle’s truck, suddenly feeling shy. I was the only girl going, and I didn’t know Josh or Dan at all.

“Anyone have pliers?” Uncle Jeff glanced up from his tackle bag, looking first to the guys.

“Nope. Sorry.” Dan tossed his equipment into the truck bed.

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“I do. They’re in my tackle bag.” I pointed to my blue bag in the truck. “I also have a spare dipsy diver, some fluorocarbon line, and lots of swivels.”

Jeff looked amazed. “Oh, okay. Good. Well, I guess we’re ready to leave then.”

I hesitated, suddenly feeling anxious. Would I be sitting in the back with one of

Jeff's friends?

“Wanna hop up front, Steph?” Dan must have sensed my uncertainty.

I breathed an inward sigh of relief and climbed in the passenger’s side of the truck. The nearly two-hour drive was filled with a lot of chatter from the guys as I quietly listened.

“You want a sandwich?” Jeff asked as we pulled into a Sheetz.

I shook my head. I still wasn’t hungry, and I still didn’t want to drink anything before going out on the boat.

I climbed out of the truck in Geneva and shivered when the cool morning air hit me. Or perhaps it was a shiver of apprehension.

“We should all probably use the bathrooms before we launch. We’ll be out on the water for a while.” Jeff and the guys headed into the men’s room while I cautiously crept around to the other side of the building to find the women’s restrooms. In the dim, greenish lighting of the park bathrooms, I stared at myself in the mirror while I washed my hands. I was there to catch walleye. Most of these guys couldn’t be that much more experienced than I was, could they?

Very conscious of how much time I was taking, I skipped the hand dryer and rubbed my hands on my jean skirt. I didn’t want to be the one they were waiting on.

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I still was. The boys had all made it back to the vehicle by the time I exited the bathroom.

“That’s everyone, right? Let’s head out!”

I stood on the dock as Jeff and Dan launched the boat and then parked the truck.

Josh held the boat to keep it from floating away, which was always my job when I went with my dad.

Jeff and Dan returned and climbed down into the boat while Josh continued holding the rope.

“You gonna wear the life vest?” Jeff handed one to me.

“Um,” I stared at it. We would be out a few miles from shore where the waves would be choppy. Dad would have wanted me to wear the vest, even though I’m a much better swimmer than him. I glanced up at the other guys. No one else was wearing one.

“Nah. I can swim.” I put my right hand on the side of the dock and nimbly hopped into the boat.

We left the dock at 5:15 AM. Jeff’s boat was fast. I tied my waist-length hair up to avoid it blowing in my face and enjoyed the ride as we bounced across the waves in

Lake Erie. A couple miles out, we slowed down and put four lines in the water after Jeff explained to the other guys how the dipsy divers worked. We hit a large wave in our small fishing boat, and I grinned to myself as Josh flailed his arms to catch his balance while I crossed my arms confidently.

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I saw the first bite. “Fish!” I called, pointing at the rod. They all looked at me, expecting me to get it. “Go for it, Josh!” I didn’t want to make the first catch just because of “ladies first.”

Josh got the first walleye in, and I happily grabbed the next pole. I had never caught a walleye on this type of rig, and I was unaware of how difficult it would be for me to do. A dispy diver is a large, round thing that attaches to fishing line in order to make the lures drop deeper into the lake. Since they’re so big around, they pull hard on the line as they drag through the lake. When a fish hits, you have to pop the dipsy diver before reeling in the line. This tips it sideways and allows for an easier fight.

Unfortunately, I was hardly strong enough to yank hard enough to break the pressure, so

Jeff had to help me a few times. Once the dispy diver was popped, I handled the fight and reeled it in myself.

“You need help?” The guys asked when I pulled my first walleye in.

“Nah, that’s okay.” I knew how to get it off the hook.

Watch out for the spiny dorsal fin.

Don’t ever try lipping a walleye. They’ve got super sharp teeth.

About 7:30, I started to feel really hungry, so I ate a couple fruit snacks and my oats and honey granola bar. We continued fishing for a while. As the sun intensified, my head started aching. Reasoning with myself that the trip was probably halfway over, I finally took a couple sips from my water bottle.

I reeled in my biggest walleye ever and backed out of the fishing for a while to let the guys have some fun. The headache worsened. I sat down to take a break, hoping it

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would make me feel better. The boat had slowed down to about 2 mph, and we were in some pretty rough water. I watched the waves rock the boat rhythmically and zoned out for a while.

Waves. Everywhere. Rolling up and down and all around us. So smooth and consistent.

My whole body felt like it was spinning. I blinked.

Focus on something else, Steph.

I had grown up going on fishing trips in boats. This certainly wasn’t my first time on Lake Erie, or even in waves that high—and I had never been seasick before.

Stop thinking about it.

I drank a little more water. My head spun. Perhaps looking at something other than the water would help.

“What to do if you feel seasick,” I typed into Google. Looking at my phone made things much worse. Nauseous, I moved to the front of the boat and inhaled deeply. I slowly let the air out. Repeat.

It helped a little, but not much.

“Here, Steph!” Jeff pointed at a pole with a bite on it. I took the pole but found myself too weak to pull in a fish. Jeff held the pole while I reeled. I was too exhausted to even look at the fish, and I stumbled back to the front of the boat.

“Are you sick?”

“A little.” I admitted.

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Josh offered me some Dramamine, but I assumed it was too late to be of help. I took it anyway and tried to keep breathing in the fresh air. Gas fumes from the motor made it worse. I tried to focus on the shoreline, but it was too far away to see very well.

I was going to puke. I knew it.

I grabbed the edge of the chair to steady myself.

“If you’re gonna chum, do it off the side of the boat.” Jeff was smiling at his buddies but looked a bit concerned as I staggered to the front of the boat and grabbed the rail.

“Fair warning guys… I think I’m gonna puke.” The words barely left my mouth before my stomach turned upside down.

I threw up.

I didn’t want to be weak. Leaning over the rail, I cupped my hands and splashed lake water on my face. The cool freshness of the water made me feel alive again, but Jeff was already steering the boat back toward the docks.

I didn’t want to be the reason we went back.

Stop it, Steph. They’re not thinking that.

I chatted with the guys on the trip back, trying to prove that I was okay. Or perhaps I was trying to prove to myself that I was okay.

I only had time for a 15-minute nap before work. I still felt light-headed for most of my waitressing shift that night, but I even managed to serve a group of 11 people without any trouble.

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The thing that made me feel the best, though, was when I returned home, and my dad told me a story about when he was seasick. He said he spent the entire trip throwing up many times, not just once.

Caitie was my fishing buddy last summer. We went to Mosquito Lake during the catfish spawn in June. She had fished very little, other than with Dad’s help on our beach vacations. We had four lines in the water, but the fishing was slow. I taught her how to bait her own hook and gently lob the line out so that the soft chicken liver wouldn’t fall off.

She got the first fish.

Seeing the joy on her face was worth the entire trip.

“How do I hold it? Are his whiskers sharp?” Caitie seemed absolutely delighted at the flopping channel cat in the net.

“Do you ladies need help? I can show you how to hold it!” A random fisherman jogged over just as I had lifted the fish from the net.

Aware he was listening, I grinned at my sister. “Their whiskers can’t hurt you.

They’re just feelers. This is where you can get hurt.” I pointed out the sharp pectoral fins with my free hand. “You wanna hold it behind these fins with your hand under its belly.”

The man continued watching me as I gently began handing the large fish over to my sister.

“Hold it tight,” I warned. “And with your other hand, grab around just in front of his tail.

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“Well.” The older gentleman smiled at us. “I was going to help you ladies out, but it looks like you really know what you’re doing.”

“Thank you, sir.” I grinned.

That same day, I caught my second Fish Ohio qualifier of the year—a 26-inch channel catfish.

We went fishing together again a few weeks later. I had been going to West

Branch almost every week to catch crappies, which are my favorite fish to eat fresh. This time, I happened to have my heavier rod set up off the end of the West Branch Pier rigged for carp: 10-pound line or heavier and a large hook with sweet corn threaded on it.

Leave the bail open. I could hear my dad’s voice in my head. If you don’t, a carp is plenty strong to pull the entire rod into the lake and it would be gone forever. It almost happened while fishing with the Allbrights the previous summer. David had wandered off to the bathrooms and left his rod unattended. Just as he was walking back, a massive fish took his bait. I immediately started running toward it, but there was no way I could make it in time. The fish was pulling it away at a fast speed. David yelled at me for losing his rod. I grabbed my own rod, and he yelled at me again for not knowing what I was doing.

Relax, buddy. I got this. I had seen it happen before when a giant stingray had pulled my dad’s rod into the ocean. Everyone on the pier had casted out their own lines until someone hooked the rod and brought it back in—and Dad was still able to land the

80-pound stingray.

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I planned to use the same strategy to rescue David’s rod. I tied a weight on quickly so I could throw and aim better and whipped the line out towards the rod that was still being dragged across the lake by an angry carp. Missed.

Come on, Steph. You can do this. I paused to carefully aim, trying to consider the rate at which the carp was pulling the rod further away.

“You’ll never get it that way.” David snapped. He started running down the shoreline. I’m not sure what his plan was, considering he couldn’t swim.

I casted again and hit dead-on this time. All that casting practice had paid off.

David wasn’t even thankful. “You shoulda watched my rod better.”

“You didn’t ask me to watch it. Besides, I was on the other end of the pier! And I got it back for you!”

“You let the fish get away.” His face reddened as he grew angrier. “That was prolly a nice carp.”

“That’s why you keep the bail open,” I explained to Caitie. “Then the line will just go out freely instead of the whole rod being dragged in.”

I had always wanted to land a carp. They’re worthless for meat, but they are large, which makes them fun to reel in. I had several instances in my life when I had one on the line, but they always seemed to break the line by twisting it around the rocks.

I was getting ready to pack up our gear, when I suddenly saw the tip of my carp rig start jerking. Line was rapidly leaving the spool, and I dashed over to flip the bail down. The second I stopped the line, it felt like I was trying to reel in a bus.

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Ziiiiinnnnnnggg! The drag sang as the fish steadily pulled more line out. Pull up, reel down. Pull up, reel down. I repeated the words in my mind, breathless with the thrill of the fight.

Pull up. If done without reeling, pulling the rod up keeps the line tight, but not so much that the tension breaks it.

Reel down. When the fish isn’t pulling so hard, drop the rod down to loosen the tension and reel quickly to gain a bit on the fish. This brings it gradually closer.

My arms ached. Every time I started getting him close to the pier, he’d take off again and I’d have to repeat the same process. Pull up, reel down.

“Look! There it is!” Caitie pointed to the murky water where a dorsal fin broke the surface.

Adrenaline rushed through me when I saw the size.

I cannot lose this fish. It’s a monster.

This would be the hardest part. I couldn’t bring such a big fish 10 feet up to the rail without my line breaking, which meant that I would have to gently lead it over to the rocks where Caitie could net it. That also meant I would have to be extremely careful to keep the fish away from the beams holding up the pier and the sharp rocks so it wouldn’t break the line.

I held my rod steady, ignoring how sore my arms were becoming. “Caitie! How close can you get to it?”

Caitie edged her way further out, trying to find solid footing on the rocky shoreline. “Can you get it any closer?”

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The drag zipped out again, but not as long. The carp was finally getting tired. I cranked it back in closer again, edging my way to the left any time the fish would give me a bit of slack line. The carp broke the surface again, but this time slightly on its side.

A rainbow of scales gleamed in the sun on its massive side. I held my breath as I guided the line closer to the net.

Caitie tried once and missed.

Second try. “I got it!” She yelled, swooping the carp up headfirst so it couldn’t escape. I laid my rod down and raced over with my tape measure.

“Oh my goodness.” I danced around the net, squealing like a child while Caitie hopped up and down beside me. “He’s huge! Oh my goodness! Help me measure him!”

We both worked to hold the fish still. From lip to tail, the carp measured 30 inches, which was large enough to qualify for my third Fish Ohio catch that year.

“Can you take a bunch of pictures?” I handed my phone to Caitie and gently pulled the hook out of the carp’s mouth. It was far too big around for me to have a solid grip underneath, so I slid my right hand into his gills and used my left to support underneath the tail. “He’s so heavy!” I could barely hold the carp away from my body for the picture. “This thing probably weighs about 15 pounds!”

I squealed again. “Ahhh Caitie! Look at that thing!”

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XI. BUMP

Tutoring at SWA had gone incredibly well. The more time I spent teaching students how to do math, the more I realized how much I loved being in a teaching position. Though my main goal up until this point had been simply to graduate, I now had an even higher goal—to someday come back and teach full time at this school.

“Miss Giles,” Mr. Goodnow caught me after a tutoring session one day, “Can you meet with me in my office for a couple minutes?”

“Sure.” My heartbeat quickened. Had I done something wrong? I sat down in a soft chair across from my former Calculus teacher—now my supervisor.

“How do you like the teaching/tutoring that you’re doing right now?”

“I love it! I have felt so at home here, and I feel like I’ve connected really well with some of the students.”

“Would you consider teaching here part time starting this fall?”

The question caught me entirely off guard. I was still in school myself with only two semesters remaining before getting my Bachelor’s in English. Being a small, private school, however, SWA had different requirements for teachers than public schools. At

SWA, they could technically hire anyone with a degree as long as it was passed by the school board. This meant that I qualified just with my Associate of Arts, especially if I was only part time.

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“You don’t have to decide now.” Mr. Goodnow started pointing things out to me on the contract and explained what I would be doing. “You just need to return the contract to me by the end of the month.”

I mentioned my worry about whether I was qualified. He laughed a little and said he was confident I could handle it; I would only be teaching lower-level high school courses. Algebra 1 and Algebra 2 would be a piece of cake for me since I had already been through Advanced Calculus. Biology would be a bit more prep work, but still an easy course to teach. Finally, Spanish I wouldn’t be a problem for me because I was actually a Spanish major for a while and had taken more than enough Spanish to teach a level 1 course.

This was my dream, but it was a big decision. I would be teaching four classes and even though I would be done at noon every day, I would still have to do, lesson prep, grade papers, attend faculty meetings, and attend school events. In addition to this, I would be taking a full load of classes at Kent State. Writing an honors thesis as an undergrad would add to the stress.

You’d have to be crazy to sign that contract, Steph.

This was my dream, though. What if this had been my intended path all along? I still felt confident that God had led me into the tutoring position. Was this part-time possibility a way of allowing me to get my foot in the door without committing myself as a full-time teacher yet?

You can’t survive on that income.

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I went back and forth, carefully considering the pros and cons. The only way I could make it work financially was to continue waitressing on top of all of my other responsibilities. I considered whether I could handle writing a thesis and keeping up in my own schoolwork.

Do I follow my head or my heart?

It wasn’t an easy decision. But I knew I wanted to teach. Maybe this was God giving me an opportunity to make a difference somewhere.

I signed the contract.

“You should meet this guy that goes to our church. We think he’d be a good match for you.”

I stared at the picture my aunt had sent me. I wasn’t sure about his looks, but it was a blurry photo. After a quick search on Facebook, I found the guy. His profile picture was a little buck he had apparently shot in 2015.

Your profile picture is four years old, dude.

I scrolled through his other photos, fairly unimpressed. Almost every picture was from 2015 or before except a few slightly more recent ones that didn’t give much of a view.

Ah whatever. Couldn’t hurt anything.

Friend request sent.

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He accepted the request that night, just as I was heading to a July 4 th fireworks display. I visited my aunt and uncle’s church in Canton only twice before my cousins helped set me up on a group outing to the McKinley Memorial, where I talked to this guy for quite a while. Unsure of what to do next, I sent him a message that night on

Facebook, letting him know that I had enjoyed our time together. He responded right away, but I figured we’d never message again.

Five days later, he messaged me again and we decided to go kayaking and fishing together. Several dates later, we decided we were “official.”

I’m not sure what I saw in him. He was a total bump on a log.

Mr. Bump-on-a-Log was 100% country. Camo hats and jackets, pickup trucks and boots, hunting and fishing, and guns. It was no surprise that we ended up at Fin, Feather,

Fur on one of our dates in Boardman after a quick meal at Chick-fil-A.

Both of us have terrible navigational skills, so I pulled up my GPS to take us back home after an hour of browsing the shelves of guns and fishing gear.

I muted the GPS and read the directions to Bump while watching the brightly colored screen. “Turn right onto I-680.”

It was only a 25-minute drive, and I had gone home this way dozens of times, but

I was distracted by our discussion in the truck. Both of us were so wrapped up in the conversation, we missed the signs screaming, “LAST FREE EXIT.”

As we approached a toll booth, my heart dropped. I peered down at my phone’s

GPS. “1 hr 40 min.”

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Oh no.

“Um . . .” My hands shook. “I . . . I think we missed our exit.”

We soared through the toll booth with Bump’s E-ZPass, and I chewed my lower lip. “There are no more exits until New Castle, PA.”

What’d you do that for? Pay attention, blockhead. I could hear my dad yelling.

I glanced over at Bump, who was pulling off the road to check his own GPS. He verified what I already knew. We were stuck on the turnpike.

I was terrified. This is YOUR fault, Steph. You idiot. I clenched my teeth and waited for the yelling. Bump seemed too distracted to yell at me, though.

At the next toll booth, Bump asked the woman if he could turn around. She sighed and gave some snippy response but okayed it. I gripped the door handle tightly as we headed back towards Boardman.

“I hope these tolls weren’t too expensive.” Bump smiled at me, but I didn’t respond.

He’s mad. I just really screwed up. The yelling is about to start.

Bump glanced at me again and held out his hand. I took it, and he squeezed mine gently. He chattered a bit on the way back, but I couldn’t bring myself to say much.

I finally spoke when he parked the truck in my driveway. “I’m so sorry Bump.”

My voice broke and I hated myself for it. “That was all my fault. I can pay for the tolls.”

Bump shrugged. “It’s fine. It don’t matter.”

Why isn’t he yelling?

“I’m really, really sorry.”

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He smiled reassuringly. “It’s okay.”

First day of school.

I was slightly nervous, but mostly excited. I had spent the last week attending faculty meetings and decorating my classroom. Like my bedroom, I used a light turquoise color theme with coastal decor. I swooped a large fishnet across the corner above my desk, and a ship’s lantern added a cozy feel to the small classroom. A new, sleek whiteboard was begging for me to try my brightly colored dry-erase markers, and stacks of textbooks awaited the arrival of the students.

I relaxed the instant I met my students. My first class was Spanish I. I handed out lists of Spanish names and asked each student to pick one to use for Spanish class, which opened up some pretty great conversations. This low-pressure assignment, along with learning “me llamo” was a wonderful first day experience.

Biology, Algebra 1, and Algebra 2 flew by in a rush, but I loved every moment. In the weeks that followed, I fought through ups and downs and started getting more into the routine of things.

“You’re so . . . small. Do high schoolers actually respect you?” I’m only five feet tall, and it’s usually one of the first questions I’m asked when someone finds out I teach high school.

Yes. My students are wonderful. I read a lot about classroom management before

I started, and while I am still learning, I think I started off on the right foot. I know there are theories about “not smiling until second quarter” in order to prove that nothing gets

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past you, but I don’t agree with them. Some of my students have rough home situations.

Maybe some of them are yelled at in the morning before school. Maybe some of them are depressed. Maybe some of them are as miserable and confused about Christianity as I was at their age. That’s why I instead chose to be a smiling face every day. If there were situations that required me to be stern, I did my best to handle them quickly and in a way that wouldn’t make things worse.

My first and one of my only issues happened fairly early in the year. My back was turned as I wrote a formula on the whiteboard in Algebra 2 class. Suddenly, a marker sailed past me, just barely missing my ear before whacking against the whiteboard.

Instant snickering behind me.

They’re expecting a reaction.

I resisted the urge to raise my voice or snap at my students in any way. Instead, I froze in place, marker still mid-line on a fraction. I closed my eyes and didn’t move for a full 20-30 seconds. Finally, I slowly turned around and took a breath.

My students stared at me with wide eyes. A few were staring down at their papers. My classroom was completely silent.

“Well. I suppose we should move on,” I said in the calmest voice I could manage.

I later dealt with the issue, but not in front of all the other students. It never happened again.

Each day had its own challenges, but I continued to learn.

Each day was a new adventure.

Each day, my love for teaching grew.

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I’m not actually sure why I started dating Bump. There wasn’t a lot I liked about him at all. He was too quiet. I love conversing with people and having deep conversations. It seemed like no matter what I said, though, Bump just shyly smiled and nodded. It feels the same as when you say something to someone that can’t speak English well, but they smile and nod politely even though they have no clue what you said.

He was nice to me. Opened the truck door for me. Never got frustrated about anything.

But he just wasn’t my type.

He didn’t seem to care about my education. He never knew what to say when I excitedly talked about my writing or a cool fact I had learned. He didn’t even pretend to care. I’m such an expressive person, and he was the complete opposite.

“Remember that paper I’ve been so worried about?” I asked him one day.

He nodded.

“I got an A on it!” I grinned.

He smiled and nodded, and after a pause, responded, “That’s good.”

I went on about it for a while but Bump just continued staring and nodding occasionally. He very clearly did not share my enthusiasm about school—not my teaching or my own education. It wasn’t just school, though. He was like that about everything. I showed him a picture of the huge carp I caught that summer and once again, he just smiled and nodded. Asking him questions about himself or his thoughts about certain topics was even worse. It was common for me to talk for several minutes about a

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subject I was passionate about only to have him just nod and say, “Yeah.” Questions were frequently answered with, “I dunno.”

Perhaps part of my choice to date him was because he was simply one of the only single, Wesleyan Methodist guys I knew. The Bible talks about not being “unequally yoked” with unbelievers, and my church frowns on relationships with people who do not claim to be Christian. It’s okay if they aren’t Wesleyan Methodist as long as they have similar beliefs.

It’s normal for Wesleyan Methodist women to get married in their early twenties.

I guess I felt like I had to settle for another Wesleyan Methodist, even though none of them were all that appealing to me. It was almost as if church people had pushed the relationship on me. It was obviously my choice, but there was definitely some pushing from other people around me. As things started to bother me about Bump, I knew I needed to do something, but I was afraid.

I was afraid of disappointing my church people, who thought we were made for each other simply because we were both Wesleyan Methodists. I was afraid of disappointing my mom, who predicted that I would marry Bump. I felt doomed to only date one of the few remaining single guys at my church—and I didn’t like any of them.

Since these were my only options, I just felt stuck.

I really knew I had a problem when Bump and I walked into church together and I saw people watching us. I felt sick to my stomach.

Why don’t I want anyone to see us together?

Perhaps that was the moment that I realized the real problem.

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I don’t want to be with him.

I called Bump one evening when I was home alone. Too many things were bothering me, and I had some questions I needed to ask him.

“Bump, what do you like about me?”

Silence.

“Like, why did you start dating me?” I tried to encourage him to speak.

“I don’t know. You’re . . . pretty.” He didn’t say anything else.

“That’s it?”

“Yeah. I mean . . . I don’t know.”

This is ridiculous.

“I guess I just feel like we have two totally different ways of looking at life.” I bit my lip. “I have big plans. Dreams of things I want to do after graduation. “Do you have any personal goals? Dreams?”

Pause.

“I dunno . . .”

“Have you ever thought about what you want to do with the rest of your life?”

“I dunno. Work, I guess.”

“But . . .” I let out an exasperated sigh.

I felt slightly bad for putting him on the spot, but I was also frustrated at myself for not asking him these questions sooner. How had I been blind enough to date this guy for three months?

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“Bump . . . I don’t think it’s gonna work.”

“You mean you think we should break up?”

A phone breakup felt rude, but I didn’t want him to drive 30 minutes to Salem just so I could break up with him.

“Yeah. I’m sorry.”

~ Christ has truly set us free. ~

Galatians 5:1 NLT

Breaking up with Bump was freeing. Though my church hadn’t specifically told me to date him, I still felt like my breakup was a way of saying, “I don’t have to always do what my church wants me to do.” Though I had been coming to this realization ever since I had finally accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior, it was becoming even stronger.

After 20 some years of nearly drowning in rules and misunderstandings, I felt like

I was finally swimming on my own—with God’s help. The rules and my worries of what other people thought were no longer dragging me down.

The feeling of relief continued as I started to live without fear. Leanne invited me to go bowling—something that I had always been taught was wrong. I guess when the

Wesleyan Methodist group began in the 1960s, bowling alleys tended to be associated more with drinking and smoking—neither of which are things we’re allowed to do.

Though there was no rule against going to one, it would be extremely frowned upon.

My first bowling experience was shortly after I had turned 24. We went to

Camelot Lanes in Boardman, Ohio. The only things I knew about bowling were from

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playing it on Wii Sports. I intentionally lagged behind Leanne and her boyfriend, not wanting to go inside first. I had a lot of questions I wanted to ask, but I didn’t want to look stupid for not knowing the answers.

How do you get the bowling ball back every round?

How do the pins stand up after they’re knocked over?

I followed everyone else to get shoes and to pick out bowling balls. The shoes reminded me of rental ice skates. I tried not to think of how many other feet had been in them.

At 5’0’’ I only weigh about 100 pounds, so Leanne suggested I get the lightest ball possible. I didn’t even know bowling balls had sizes. I tried the smallest one I could find. It was still heavier than I expected, but a lovely shade of blue and cool to the touch.

My fingers didn’t fit in the holes.

I had to go up to the eight-pound ball. It was metallic magenta. I didn’t know how to hold it, so I had to ask Leanne and Nathan. I also made sure I would be last in our lineup.

Nathan got a spare. Leanne sent one ball down the gutter but recovered on her second shot. Then it was my turn.

I stepped up to the line and focused on the way I was holding the ball. I thought it would gracefully leave my hand, but I let go too late. It thunked down hard on the lane and then sadly trailed off into the gutter.

“Okay, so that time, you let go too late. Try releasing the ball earlier.” Nathan coached me from the side as I retrieved my ball from the magical ball return thing.

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This time, my release was perfect, but I hadn’t thought to attempt aiming. Again, the ball rolled into the left gutter.

“That was better. Now just focus on aiming!” Leanne encouraged me while

Nathan took his turn. He got a strike.

Leanne took her turn.

I stepped up again. This time though, I actually knocked down seven pins. I got at least one spare and always knocked down seven or eight pins. I wasn’t great, but I was consistent, which actually helped me score higher than Leanne in the end, since she sent the ball into the gutter several more times.

“So, are you having fun?” She asked between games.

I hadn’t realized how relaxed I felt until that moment. “Yeah! My arm hurts a little bit—like in the crook of my elbow. But I’m having a great time!”

I gazed around the bowling alley. There were people on both sides of us, but none of them were staring at me. No eyes were drilling into my back.

I felt just as close to God as always. He wasn’t going to throw me out.

“Your turn, Steph!”

I grabbed the ball and stepped up to start the second game.

~ Judge not, that ye be not judged ~

Matthew 7:1

For a group of religious people that are supposed to be following the example of

Jesus, Wesleyan Methodists can come across as quite judgmental. I can remember a time

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when a member of my church almost didn’t let me play me cello in a string quartet because she thought my dress was “too short,” even though it came several inches below my knee. While I’ve reached a point now where I would just shrug it off, I was quite upset by her comment back then. She made me feel so guilty about it that I didn’t wear the dress to church ever again.

More recently, a church member made a comment to my dad that my hairstyle was “too worldly” because of the loose strands around my face, even though the back was pulled into a bun. This time, I didn’t change. I knew where my relationship with God stood, and my hair had nothing to do with it.

My mom didn’t even raise me like that. While some people at our church claim that

Wesleyan Methodists are the only Christians that will make it to heaven, my mom told us at a very young age to disagree.

“Yes, we wear skirts all the time. That doesn’t mean women that wear jeans aren’t

Christians. Even though we don’t wear jewelry, wearing jewelry doesn’t make you a sinner. We dress the way we do to respect our church.”

If it wasn’t for my mom teaching me this, I’m not sure how I would have handled

5 years at Kent State. No one looked like me. Those first few students and professors who were nice to me helped me realize right off that bat that my mom was right when she said to never judge people that don’t look like me.

“Judge not, that ye be not judged.” These are words spoken by Jesus.

It’s not our job to judge others.

Christianity is about love.

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I bought my first Bible in January 2020. All the others were gifts.

The front page reads “Presented to ______by ______on the occasion of ______on ______(date).”

I wrote my name in cursive in the first blank and stared at the next blank. My other Bibles all had other names written there. I contemplated if I should write “Myself” on the next line or if that would be weird.

Are all Bibles supposed to be gifts? Or only given on special occasions?

This Bible was different. I glanced back at the thin cardboard box that I’d tossed in the trash. “New Living Translation,” the box declared in bold lettering. Most of my other Bibles were King James Version, except for the one New King James Version. KJV is the hardest to read, and NKJV isn’t much better. All my life, though, I was told that

KJV was the best translation.

I had been feeling frustrated with my daily devotions. I was finding it difficult to focus on the text in outdated English. I don’t typically use the Bible app on my phone for devotions, but I decided that I needed something different that day. I switched the app into NLT instead of NKJV and began reading.

It was an entirely different experience. It felt like when I put my contacts in every morning. Everything is still there, but it’s sharper and clearer than before. That’s what the

NLT was like.

KJV: “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

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NLT: “If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

Why is this not accepted in my church? The NLT doesn’t change the meaning of the text. It simply removes old language and jargon. Most of the older people at church would say the KJV is the only translation that should be used. My pastor doesn’t even agree with that; he frequently reads other versions from the pulpit on Sunday, especially when reading a difficult passage. When I asked my family’s opinion on NLT on our family chat, my uncle responded that he likes it, but the other one—a pastor—said, “It’s okay, but make sure you use a KJV for reference.”

I only did that the first time I read it. It was distracting jumping back and forth between the two different translations. I read the entire book of Romans in about an hour and wrote three pages of notes. I had read it before, but in this new Bible, I was drawn into the text in ways I never had been before. New questions arose in my mind as I scribbled down my thoughts in a notebook.

I’m searching. I know what I believe, but I want answers about other things. What does my church have against bowling alleys? Why do women have to wear their hair pulled back?

I know that being a Christian means following what the Bible says. However, there is a difference in what the Bible says and what my church says. In Romans, Paul specifically calls out the Jews on this issue, saying that following the rules is absolutely pointless without a change in heart. In other words, if you follow every single rule your church has but you have not had the experience of salvation, the rules are certainly not

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going to save you. In addition to this, if the church is holding their own made-up rules above the authority of scripture, they are putting themselves higher than the Word of

God.

It reminds me of a recent conversation I had on an extended family group chat through Facebook messenger.

G: “I seen Leanne out at Kohl’s with her hair down and wearing short sleeves. Such a shame.”

Me: “The Bible doesn’t say anything about short sleeves or wearing your hair down”

G: “Yes, but she knows the way”

Ummm, what? I was absolutely appalled to see that kind of nonsense in an extended family chat. I sent a huge paragraph defending Leanne and suggested that perhaps we should also not be bashing her either. That is exactly the kind of attitude Paul condemns in Romans, which is also why I have such a problem with church people that judge others and suggest that if you don’t look exactly like them, you aren’t a

Christian. “The way” indicates that only Wesleyan Methodists will be going to Heaven, which is something that I don’t believe even for a minute.

That idea isn’t even Biblical.

This is why I’m searching. I agree with my church doctrinally. But I do not agree that our rules are all important. I also don’t agree with people who say our group is the only way to get to Heaven.

I don’t agree for a second.

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The pressure of teaching and taking classes at the same time eased slightly in

Spring 2020. I had somehow made it through the previous semester’s full load while teaching and waitressing part time, but I had completely drained myself. Constantly throwing myself into my teaching for my students left me with little energy for my own schoolwork, and the semester was difficult for me. I was meeting with the campus counselor every week in an attempt to keep myself from having a total meltdown.

In Spring 2020, though, I only had one final class to take before graduating, along with finishing my Honors Thesis. My Christmas break from taking classes at Kent and teaching at SWA re-motivated me for both.

I found myself loving every moment at SWA and Kent State as well, especially as

I became aware that my time was growing short with both. My journey at Kent was nearly over, and though I complained about my heavy workload in the previous semester,

I realized I was going to miss taking classes. At SWA, I planned to continue teaching, but the hardest part about that was that I would “lose” my current group of students when the next came in.

The end of both school years should be celebrated.

But I knew that it would be bittersweet.

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XII. DIAGNOSIS

As I continued working toward my degree, I also continued working two jobs. I began to climb my way out of debt slowly, and I started saving up money to go back to the doctor. The ovarian cysts just kept coming back, and my periods were getting more irregular and even heavier than before. One month, I had my period two weeks in a row, while other times I would go over 70 days without having one at all. It was a new year, and I was ready for answers.

I finally went to a new gynecologist in Boardman, Ohio. In my first appointment,

I was poked a lot and thoroughly examined pretty much everywhere. Dr. Brennan wanted to do a pap smear since it had been several years since my last one, and she also gave me an order for bloodwork. In addition to that, she scheduled me for another ultrasound.

“I won’t try to put you on any medication until we get to the bottom of this.” She smiled reassuringly. This was new. My previous doctor had just shrugged and suggested birth control—which I didn’t prefer to be on.

Money, money, money.

I panicked about the cost to my mom, who reassured me that once I hit our deductible, I wouldn’t have to pay any more. This reassured me slightly, but even with the copay I was having to pay $100 per doctor visit.

The bloodwork was to be done after a 12-hour fast. No food. No water.

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I had bloodwork done several times before and I never had a problem, but I was worried about not eating or drinking for that long—especially after the West Branch incident. Morning shakiness was common for me, but it always went away immediately after eating breakfast.

Leanne and her fiancé kindly agreed to be my chauffeurs. I was worried that I’d be woozy after the bloodwork, so I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t be driving myself.

It was pitch black. I could faintly hear someone saying my name.

“Stephanie?”

Who is that? How do they know my name?

“Stephanie, I need you to wake up.”

A bright light cut into the blackness. Everything was white.

“Stephanie?”

Answer her!

My lips wouldn’t move. I couldn’t move anything. Not even my fingers.

I must be dead. Heaven is bright. That voice must be an angel.

“Stephanie? Do you know where you are?”

How did I die? Was I in a car accident? Did my family survive?

My vision slowly focused. I became aware of the fact that I was staring at the ceiling somewhere white. Hospital maybe? Have I been in a coma? Is my family alive?

“Are you okay, honey? You were completely fine, chattering away and suddenly I lost you!” Her voice sounded nice.

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Oh! The bloodwork!

“Did . . . did I pass out?” What a stupid question Steph.

“You went out fast.”

“I can’t move my fingers.”

“I know. Drink this water. You’ll be able to in a few minutes.”

“It’s okay.” Someone was squeezing my hand. I was throwing up.

On myself? No. Someone’s holding a trashcan for me.

I had blacked out again.

“Focus on breathing.”

I became aware of the fact that I was gasping for air. My skin felt like it was on fire.

She’s calling someone. Asking if I need an ambulance?

She held my hand until I woke up completely. “So, I am not going to be able to finish this bloodwork today. You cannot fast again. Ever. If a doctor tells you to, tell them you can’t. I got what I need for the fasting one, but when you come back, make sure you eat a good meal first, okay?”

I got my results a few days later. I had very high levels of prolactin—a hormone that is responsible for making breast milk. Since I was neither pregnant nor breastfeeding, it was concerning to Dr. Brennan. She wanted to do a second round of bloodwork to retest it. This time, without fasting.

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The levels were even higher the second time. For women who aren’t pregnant or breastfeeding, it should be less than 25. Above 50 becomes a concern.

Mine was 76.9.

Apparently this can be caused by two things: the thyroid and the pituitary glands.

Dr. Brennan diagnosed me with hypothyroidism (underactive thyroid), which explained a lot more things than my irregular periods. Some were things I didn’t even know where connected, such the fact that I always have icy cold hands, even on warm days, or that my hair is always super dry and falls out easily.

She told me we still weren’t done with testing though. The bloodwork had proved my thyroid was underactive, but the prolactin levels were so high, she suspected there may be an adenoma (benign tumor) on my pituitary glands, which are found in the brain.

When she ordered an MRI for this, I found myself shaking. She kept saying not to worry, but it was hard.

Adenoma. Pituitary glands. Brain. Tumor. MRI.

Not comforting words.

Trust God, Steph. He’s gonna get you through this.

Isaiah 41:10 NLT “Don’t be afraid, for I am with you. Don’t be discouraged, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will hold you up with my victorious right hand.”

I thought my MRI would be like the only one I ever saw—the one Stiles had in

Teen Wolf. Some parts were similar. The machine itself was the same. The procedure

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would take just over an hour to complete, and the noises the MRI made were the same as well. It was as expensive in real life as it was on the show.

But Stiles got a pillow.

After I laid down, the radiologist put a cage on my head. It tightened so that I couldn’t move at all. There was a mirror just above my eyes so that I could see the window where the lady would be sitting, but other than that, I was completely closed in.

There was no pillow. Just cold, hard plastic.

The nurse put a blanket over me and left.

The first 15-30 minutes weren’t bad. Loud and clanky, as expected, but not awful.

“Okay, get ready for a quick pinch.” The radiologist had returned. I hoped she would let me out of the cage, but instead, she gave me an injection of a contrast that would allow her to see my pituitary glands more clearly. Then she left.

The cage clamped tightly on my head.

Ka-THUNK. Ka-THUNK. Ka-THUNK. Ka-THUNK.

I closed my eyes.

I’m alone. It’s cold and painful.

Ka-THUNK. Ka-THUNK. Ka-THUNK. Ka-THUNK.

No. I’m not alone. I know God is with me.

I began to recite scripture in my head.

Isaiah 53. One of the most beautiful passages in the Bible. So poetic.

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Who hath believed our report? And to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief—uhhh—can’t remember. . . Surely he hath born our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

Ka-THUNK. Ka-THUNK. Ka-THUNK. Ka-THUNK.

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone unto his own way, and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all—and I can’t remember the rest. What are the rest of the verses? I knew all twelve in high school.

Ka-THUNK. Ka-THUNK. Ka-THUNK. Ka-THUNK.

Sing instead. Sing about Jesus.

I spent the rest of the MRI trying to recite more scriptures and sing songs in my mind about Jesus. It was comforting to me.

I wasn’t afraid.

I felt like God was right there with me, even in the cold darkness of the MRI machine.

I wasn’t alone.

My phone was ringing.

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Incoming call from Gyno.

“Hello, is this Stephanie?”

“Yep!”

“Hey Stephanie. Some good news for ya. There’s no tumor. You have some sinusitis issues your family doctor may want to look at, but your pituitary glands are fine.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful.” I sank onto the couch behind me.

“Sure is. That means everything has just been caused by your underactive thyroid.

We’re going to refer you to an endocrinologist now, and they’ll take good care of you.”

She explained that once I was put on medication I would be on it for the rest of my life, but that it should fix the problems with my period. She said my life would feel completely different and that I would feel so much more alive.

Thank you, God.

I’m so glad I finally went to a doctor to get all my health problems figured out.

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XIII. OKAY

My favorite thing about teaching at SWA is that it gives me the chance to help teens growing up in homes like mine. They’re attending the same school I attended from kindergarten through my senior year. Most of them also go to my church. Most are

Wesleyan Methodist or something similar. I firmly believe that God has placed me in a position where I can help teens going through the same things I went through and make a difference in their lives.

“Miss Giles?” One of my students caught my attention in biology just as I was starting the new chapter. “Why do we have to learn about evolution when we believe that

God created the world and everything in it?”

This is a question I feel like a lot of Wesleyan Methodists would ask. My parents know next to nothing about evolution simply because it doesn’t fit with their own worldview, so they don’t even bother to learn about it. My mom once asked me if the Ice

Age actually happened. She grew up believing it didn’t exist because it is typically associated with the idea of evolution, therefore “it must be wrong.” I quickly informed her that there is biblical support for an ice age.

“Good question.” I nodded in approval at my student, “I know not a single one of you in this room believes evolution. We have all been raised believing that God created the heavens and the earth. Every creature, every plant. It was all created. But that doesn’t

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mean it’s not important to study a view that isn’t your own. Can anyone give me some ideas as to why we should study other beliefs?”

Students shyly began suggesting things. We discussed how important it is to be mindful of other people’s beliefs and to realize that our belief isn’t the only one that exists.

“Here’s another thought.” I walked over to a table of high school boys. “Hey guys. What would happen if I tried to argue with you and prove that my Chevy Cruze is a better car than a . . .” I paused and shrugged dramatically for effect, “I don’t know, maybe a Ford or something?”

They were cracking up at this point.

“Yeah. I think you’re getting my point.” I laughed as I walked back to the front of the room. “You all know I know nothing about cars. I know a little about my own car, but almost nothing about other vehicles. If I tried to debate about vehicles with these guys over here, they’d destroy my argument in seconds. Now imagine that after you graduate, you start talking about the origin of earth to someone that believes in evolution. If you don’t know anything about it, you’re going to look as silly as I’d look arguing with these guys about cars. Learning about evolution will not only help you see the other side’s point, but it will also force you to understand your side even better. You’ll have to really focus on knowing why you believe what you believe.”

These moments are the ones that really take teaching a step further than simply teaching the material in the textbook. While it’s definitely important, I would rather my students remember that discussion than how a frog’s digestive system works.

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I’ve found that teaching is the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done. Some days I come home stressed about a bad class or about the mountain of math papers I need to grade, but those moments are meaningless next to seeing a student’s eyes light up when they finally “get it.”

“Miss Giles! I finally understand those polar coordinate things!”

“Wow. You actually made that make sense.”

“Woahhh, I actually get that!”

At Christmas, one of my Algebra 2 students gave me a card that read:

“Dear Miss Giles,

I wanted to thank you for everything you have done for us so far during the school year. You are an awesome, strong, confident, funny, and hard-working woman. I enjoy

Spanish class, and even though I don’t like math particularly, I like it when you teach it.

You have become one of my new favorite teachers and I hope you’re still teaching when

I graduate.”

I cried when I read it.

Sometimes it doesn’t feel like I’m making a difference at all. But the moments when I realize I am are worth all the hard moments in between.

Teaching is scary. I definitely don’t feel like I have things completely figured out for myself yet, but now I have a group of teens that look up to me as an adult and figure of authority in their lives—and more importantly, a Christian leader. I’ve already been asked to sign the contract for next year and gradually start teaching English classes as I transition to full-time teaching once I finish my degree. My greatest desire is that I can

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help these kids to understand what being a Christian is really about. That it goes far beyond a rulebook. It’s a relationship with God. I want to use what I’ve learned on my personal journey to help these kids.

I want them to succeed academically.

I want them to broaden their worldviews.

I want them to know the God that I know.

“Hellooo everyone!” I greet my students as I always do in the most cheerful, dramatic tone I can muster. It’s my final class of the day and I am tired, but I want to stay upbeat for my kids.

“Hi, Miss Giles!”

My students file into the room. Chairs clank as students find their places, and books thud onto the black plastic tables. I grab my teacher’s edition Algebra 2 book and place it on the podium. My students chatter amongst themselves as we wait for the bell to ring.

The last student trudges in.

“Hi, Erin!” I say brightly.

“Hey, Miss Giles.” She looks down.

I can tell instantly that something is wrong. Her normal greeting is cheerful. This time it had been dismal. She’s typically an expressive, bubbly girl, and her smile lights up my classroom. Something was off today.

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The bell rings and my students quiet down as I begin the lesson. I steal glances at

Erin repeatedly. She’s tracing her book with her finger, and her mind is obviously elsewhere.

After the lesson, I answer questions as usual.

Erin buried her head in her arms.

I don’t want to ask in front of anyone else, so I continue class as normal.

When the bell rings, she sits up with red eyes and quickly exits the room. The room empties completely, and I wait a few minutes, feeling certain she is coming back.

I’m right. I hear footsteps and sniffling coming my way down the hall.

“Miss Giles? Can I talk to you?”

“Of course. What’s wrong?”

A waterfall of tears begins. “I had a really bad day.” Erin starts telling me about her awful morning and trouble concentrating in classes, but I sense there’s more to it. Her shoulders shake as she starts telling me about some problems with her brother. I open my arms. She runs forward and falls against me, sobbing uncontrollably now. I understand very little of what she gasps out between sobs, but I hold her tight and say, “Oh, Erin. It’s okay to cry. Healthy even! We all have bad days sometimes, and sometimes we need moments like these to just let it all out.”

And I listen.

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