I.
The Church of Christ in Dayton, Ohio, had deep cherry wood pews and a carpet in the auditorium that I remember smelling like mothballs. Children's Church was in the basement, half-finished and cheered up by bulletin boards decorated in construction paper arks and elephants.
My parents picked me up one morning after the sermon to a teacher supremely flipping out: apparently, the basement was also home to a dead bat, and young-Kaitlin had enough curiosity and tenacity to slip my minders and go pick it up. This, unfortunately, did not make me Batman, but did begin the pattern of my touching things the Church told me not to.
We moved away from Dayton when I started school and it wouldn't be until my junior year of high school that we'd return. That Church of Christ had shrunk a bit since we last attended—the youth group more like a youth *coupling*, and while their puppet ministry was in need of more hands, it wasn't enough to keep our family engaged. (Or my rapidly developing thirst for leadership contained.)
A more progressive option (they wore jeans! they sang "All in All"! they clapped on Sunday nights!), nestled 20 minutes to the east of Dayton and Wright-Patterson AFB, ended up being our choice. After years of moving around, we had become experts in church finding. Churches made up of active and retired military were almost always more welcoming of new families than those run by legacy members, so we slotted in perfectly.
My junior and senior years were spent with the Xenia youth group—an eclectic group of kids who were kind, funny, and passionate about Jesus. I found my place (as much as an Air Force brat-only-child-with-anxiety-and-social-awkwardness can, at least) and wriggled seamlessly into the role of good-girl-who-sometimes-said-things-that-made-boys-angry.
It was a Sunday morning, not long after we started attending, and the church was in the middle of a youth minister search. The youth in question had not been asked about their own requirements and were feeling a bit overlooked and I, sixteen and feeling over-confident but also desperate for friends, "organized" a teen meeting to discuss what we wanted to elders to know in their search. My idea of organization was really just catching all the teens before they left for lunch with their parents and promising them pizza if they stayed for an extra hour. And then bullying my dad into buying us all pizza.
The brain remembers really interesting things. I cannot, for the life of me, remember what I ate last week, but I can remember everything about this 20 years-in-the-past-moment, down to the way the rough fabric of the couch in the teen room felt under my sweaty palms. The kids agreed to meet. We holed up in the teen loft and I sat to the left of the chalkboard and meticulously filled it with notes on what we wanted out of a new youth minister. Kind. Funny. Young. Good at games. Heart for Jesus. Will let us listen to Relient K. Will take us to Winterfest. Has a degree in youth ministry. Married so the girls would be able to bond with his wife.
After an hour of back-and-forth, I was brimming with excitement. Not only had I made some kick-ass suggestions—I was obviously rocking this friend thing. I was going to have so many friends—it was going to be a record. Best move yet.
And then [name redacted] raised his hand when I asked if there was anything else. The Thing is.
The Thing is.
(In the 1990s and early 2000s, the Church of Christ youth group had a well-defined pecking order. It went like this: preacher's son, senior boy who attends regularly, junior boy who attends regularly, sophomore boy who attends regularly, freshman boy who attends regularly, senior boy who doesn't attend regularly, senior boy who is visiting, Junior High boys who attend regularly, all other boys who don't attend regularly, preacher's daughter, senior girls who are friends with the preacher's daughter, all the rest. It's good to know this. It's good not to forget this. Even if you are excited and new and just want to make friends.)
[Name redacted] was my age, a junior boy who was a regular attendee at Xenia. His Bible was dog-eared almost as much as mine, and so, when he raised his hand, I turned and smiled and forgot, for a moment, the Rules. The Rules that every good Church of Christ girl was handed during Cradle Roll: "bros before any walking, talking female-shaped human and hos."
"Why are you leading this instead of letting one of us do it? The Bible says girls shouldn't have authority over us."
(Have you ever eaten a stone before? I haven't, but I swear my stomach didn't know the difference between that and the pepperoni pizza my poor dad bought for us.)
I remember [name redacted] shaking his head smugly and everyone just sort of…dispersed. Someone suggested ending on a prayer, but none of the boys volunteered, so we turned off the lights and went home. My dad picked me up in his truck and it was a very quiet, 20-min ride back to the base. (Our house at Wright-Patt looked like a fairy cottage. This is an insignificant detail, but it also had a loft that I claimed as my room when we moved in. There was a walk-in closet that faced the backyard, and I remember dodging boxes—because we hadn't completely moved in yet—and curling up in the beanbag chair I tossed in there. I remember thinking it would make a good prayer space. I remember feeling devastated. I remember not understanding why.)
I took a nap.
My mom knocked on my door to let me know I had a phone call. It was the preacher's daughter—a volunteer with the youth group, a lovely and kind and welcoming force who I had already begun to look up to in the few short weeks of knowing her. She was gentle in her reprimand, thanked me for my passion, and suggested that the "next time I felt called to have a conversation like that" to "run it by the elders" instead.
You know.
Just to keep everything biblical.
We eventually got a youth minister. We went to Winterfest.
The elders were super supportive. I assumed if I brought any conversation I wanted to have to them, they would have been very loving and sweet. I don't know for sure; I tried to avoid any need for that.
I graduated high school while in Ohio, and my dad was transferred to Illinois right before I started my freshman year at Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas. Before leaving, Xenia had a senior send-off. We received Bibles and a card, signed by the congregation.
There were many adjectives written next to my name, "sweet," "kind," "all smiles," "nice Christian young lady," but one stuck out to me: "biblical."
It would be a label that followed me to college.
But that's a story for another day.
This is the first part of a multi-part series I'm writing this month (maybe next couple of months), detailing my experience growing up in the Church of Christ. I'll be posting here (on Facebook) and also my substack (I know, surprise, bitches! I never write in that thing), so you can subscribe to that as well.
Part II takes us back further to Hawaii, middle school, and church camps run by fundies who don't think they're fundy. Let's get our heretic on.
So excited to follow you on substack! Here for all of this❤️🔥
Great essay. Sorry it has been hard. Men, unfortunately, still control much of society. I attend an Episcopal church which has much stronger female participation in leadership. It is good that you write about this