II.
We moved to Honolulu in October of 1998. The Air Force was no respecter of school years when it came to PCSing, so I spent most of my childhood as the very new kid in class. My formative middle school (and high school, and elementary school) years were spent in plaid skirts, blue and red WWJD bracelets, and, during one unfortunate period of life, rainbow rubber band braces. St. Elizabeth Catholic School was nestled on a hill in Aiea, overlooking the stadium swap meet and just a short walk away from McDonald’s, which, at the time, was fascinating to me because they served Portuguese sausage at breakfast time, and I was very white and very sheltered and thought I was hot stuff for eating it.
When looking back on how religion and faith formed and malformed me, Hawaii played a pivotal role. This probably had the most to do with age—it was the location of many firsts: first crush, first period, first best friend forever, first time shaving my legs. First time really grappling with the theology that I was taught against a theology I witnessed. First time questioning if it was true what the Church of Christ told me: that people who weren’t immersion-baptized in the CoC at the age of 10 or older weren’t going to go to heaven—no matter how nice they were. First time wondering why God would send my very kind, very old nun principal to hell even after she dedicated her life to Him, just because she did the sign of the cross and believed in saints and worshiped Mary. (My catholicism improved over time, but at 11, this seemed to be the scope of our differences.) Saint Elizabeth’s was my first experience of a woman teaching religion and leading prayers and even though I knew it didn’t mean anything special, I held a secret pride when, in sixth grade, I was given the Saint Elizabeth’s award for best display of Catholic faith through the year—it healed something in my Church of Christ soul that I wouldn’t discover was wounded until many, many years later.
I talk a lot about why I deconstructed and deconverted, and I know I’ve mentioned how absolutely dedicated to Christ I was as a kid. While I haven’t discussed it with many families we knew in Hawaii, I think for those who knew me and my parents between 1998-2001, it would have been inconceivable to imagine any of us moving out of the CoC, let alone Christianity altogether.
I was not the kind of eleven and twelve and thirteen year-old girl who had any sort of chill—I loved Hanson, but had no rhythm, I wore shirts with Jesus puns unironically, I was loud in places I should have been quiet and quiet in places I should have been loud. I was angsty and emotional and dorky, preferring to read about Christy Miller driving the Road to Hana with Todd Spencer, than actually doing it.
I was a ham. When my friends made fun of me being the last person to shave my legs in seventh grade and one girl called me Frodo because of my hairy feet, I remember laughing along and pretending to be Gollum. I also went home and locked the door to my bathroom and painstakingly tried to shave—it took two hours because I was so scared of cutting myself. I still ended up with four bandaids.
I was clingy. I was an only child who moved a lot and my parents and I were very close. On our first visit to Pearl Harbor Church of Christ, we sat in the back. I sat in the middle of my mom and dad and we held hands during the closing prayer. “She’s weird,” was a comment I overheard from an older girl and a label branded into my brain for years to come. I’d hear it often around the CoC (Harding especially), as if teaching children they were the only ones in a world of 7 billion people going to heaven wasn’t a weird flex in itself.
We lived on Hickam AFB, a few minutes walk from the beach and next door to Pearl Harbor Naval base. Oahu had about five or six Church of Christ congregations on the island—split by location and doctrinal differences. Pearl Harbor was the most liberal (and largest) of the handful, mainly because it catered to military families, so even the most fundamental deacon was gone in about three years. (I think it is important to note this here, before continuing this series: When I say liberal, I mean dress code wasn’t really a thing. People could clap during songs. Women prayed during popcorn prayers as long as a man started and ended it. Liberal meant baptisms happened at the beach instead of the baptistry and sometimes, those baptisms would include a husband AND wife, instead of just the husband. Liberal meant the Church of Christ college groups would spend their spring breaks with us, instead of Honolulu CoC or Waipahu CoC, both who had major beef with the…leeway PHCoC seemed to give to their youth group.)
Pearl Harbor had a small one-building auditorium with a baptistry and a low roof and a very climbable monkeypod tree out front. Several classrooms were peppered around the main auditorium and a small kitchen hosted a potluck meal every Aloha Sunday (the first Sunday of the month). The older local ladies in the congregation made ribbon leis to give to visitors, and we would have life groups meet on the beach at sunset and sing a cappella hymns until it got too cold and too dark to stay out. It was paradise. I would tell everyone who would listen (in a very evangelical way) that if you wanted to see heaven, just go worship at Pearl Harbor. Our Wednesday nights would be dedicated to church—we’d go to Bible class at 6 and then to Jack in the Box at 7 and eat with everyone until 9. There were no boundaries—my friends were welcome at my house and me at theirs, my friends' parents were my parents, vice versa, and it was like family.
It was like family except that one time my friend’s dad chased me around Jack in the Box to put his hands around my throat because I said that freaked me out and he thought that was funny. It was like family except that one time my other friend’s dad asked me why I said Rosie O’ Donnell was my favorite actor, because didn’t I know she was gay? and what did that say about me that I liked her so much, didn’t I know how sinful it was? It was like family except that one time I went over to my other, other friend’s house and her dad yelled at them in a way that made me very uncomfortable, or that one time the elder teased me about thinking boys were gross since I was going through puberty and should have been in love them, or that one time when I had a very awkward revelation that it was either the military or the Church of Christ that made most of my friends’ dads have such short tempers.
But when we sang “Friends (Are Friends Forever)” in a cappella round, every time a family moved away, crying because it was so beautiful and so touching and so…heaven…all that faded in the background.
Our church partnered with other churches (of Christ, always of Christ, never other denominations) over the summers to host a week at camp. Aloha Christian Camp was the kind of camp they write books about. I’m not sure what kind of books, but definitely books. Nestled in Oahu’s mountains, the camp was a holdover from WWII days, complete with the cabins that felt more like bunkers than appropriate sleeping places for pre-teens. It had a pool that no one ever cleaned, and we were allowed to swim with the hundreds of dead ants, but not the boys. (I’m pretty sure there’s a metaphor in that.) Movie night brought The Goonies and The Apple Dumpling Gang on projector and a preacher from the conservative church who yelled at us for getting too rowdy during morning singing.
I thrived at Pearl Harbor and loved it with all my heart. The summer of 2001 (a few months before we were scheduled to move away—my Dad had an assignment at the Pentagon and we were slated to leave that September), the church hired two youth interns to come spend the summer with us. They were in college and we were all really excited for lock-ins and beach trips and volunteering and classes taught by people who weren’t our parents. Our preacher wrote scripts for VBS and I was in my element. (That actor dream didn’t die until senior year of high school, when I switched to dreaming of something a little more attainable, like going to college to meet and marry a youth minister so I could lead the girl’s Bible studies.) My best friend slept over every day that summer—it was fun and uncomplicated and I imagined nothing would be better than the summer of 2001. I wanted to bottle it up and keep it forever. I wanted to run away into the hills and never come back. I wanted to escape whatever would be waiting for me after that summer because surely high school in the D.C. metro area was never going to be as good as 8th grade in Honolulu. (And since the Church of Christ handled mental health like they handled a loud woman—ignore it and hope it went away—my intense need for escape was seen as normal. When my bouts of quietness and melancholy that summer were brought up, I assumed the issue was needing to get my heart right with God, and not a burgeoning issue with anxiety/depression. It wouldn’t really be until I turned 30 that I was ready to admit I had a weird relationship with emotions. And that that relationship was Discomfort with a capital D.)
I woke up on September 11th to our movers watching footage of the 9/11 attacks and my mom talking to relatives on the phone. My dad was in the office late the next few weeks as the Air Force rescheduled our move to DC as soon as the airports opened back up. Church people came and fed us and checked in on us and told us it would be ok and I drowned myself in patriotism and prayers and pretended it would be fine and I had no problem with changing schools, changing states, changing churches, and watching my dad walk into an office that had been attacked less than a month ago. It was fine. I was fine. God was good.
They sang “A friend is a friend forever if the Lord is the Lord of them,” and we got on the plane and I never questioned what would happen if the Lord wasn’t the Lord of them. I just cried and said I didn’t want to go. But we did. (Because that’s the way life works.) I had no idea what was waiting for me on the East Coast, but I was sure it would never be as good as what I had on the islands.
Of course, I never could have predicted that the small, charismatic, Assembly of God school, Word of Life Christian Academy, nestled in Springfield, Virginia, was going to be the impetus of a journey that eventually led me out of Christianity altogether. God works in mysterious ways, I guess. Or Satan. Or, affordable tuition.
This is the second 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 on Facebook) and also here (I know, surprise, bitches! I never write in this thing), so you can subscribe here as well.
Part III takes us to DC and Fairfax Church of Christ, sniper attacks, speaking in tongues, and sneaking backstage to meet dc Talk.
Wow. I can only imagine how magical island-youth group must’ve been. And also how terrifying to be an anxious middle schooler with a dad who works at the pentagon after 9/11!!! I’m sending your younger self a hug!