I was born in Blanchard, OK. A wide spot in the road with a population of about 150, who were primarily Conservative Baptists. However, my paternal grandmother attended a Pentecostal Holiness Church in a nearby town of Amber. I was just 5 years old when she took me to my first service at her church. I tell you, when the preaching reached a fever pitch and the congregation started wailing and speaking in tongues, with some, flopping to the floor, and writhing and jerking with eyes rolled back in their heads...it scared the crap out of me! It was such a traumatizing experience that I didn't set foot in another church for years.
My family moved to Oakland, CA to escape the draught ridden dustbowl Oklahoma had become. A young woman named Mona, who lived down the block, started a young people's bible study group in her home and I was invited to join in. I was 7 and my mother's older sister Tillie, lived in a small house next door to us with her 2 boys, Lonnie and Coy. Coy was 14 and mature for his age, and was often my babysitter while the adults all worked. He started sexually molesting me right from the start. He made me promise not tell anyone and that what we did was a secret. Everyone loved him for his cute ways and had a witty sense of humor, so since none of the adults took notice of what he was doing to me, I simply accepted it as a normal way of life. At bible study, I learned that Jesus loved the little children and protected them from harm. I couldn't understand why he wasn't protecting me? I decided that I must be bad and Jesus didn't like me. Subsequently, my feeling of self worth and self esteem fell to the gutter. I became introverted and isolated myself from everyone as best I could. My little room became my world, and a collection of stuffed animals became my only friends. School was torture but I managed to survive by living in a make believe world all my own. The only one who invaded my world was cousin Coy when he slipped into my room late at night to perform his act of 'sodomy' on me. This went on for 2 years until aunt Tillie and the boys moved to Washington. Free at last.
I didn't attend church again until my teens when several of my friends attended Sunday school at a local Protestant church. I was invited to attend and reluctantly did so. I tried to ignore my feeling of discomfort and went through the motions of weekly services. During ensuing years, I drifted in and out of many different churches, always with the same detached feeling. Finally, from age 25 to 55 I rarely, if ever, set foot in a church. It was while casually surfing the internet one afternoon, that I happened upon a website on Deism. As I read the contents, my excitement began to grow with each paragraph. It was as if a light had switched on in my brain! This is what I had been searching for all along and I was stoked. I devoured everything I could find on Deism and the more I read, the more enlightened I became. Since that day, I have compiled a vast collection of material on Deism that I study avidly on a daily basis.
Today, I am happy and content, knowing that I have the truth to rely on and not the destructive lies that the bible and Christianity evoke. I love Deism.