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“Remember the revivals?” my friend Dee asks me. We are drinking iced coffee on a Sunday morning in the small town we met, the town of our fiery Pentecostal days. The last time I was at this coffee shop, I was a teenager, sipping a strawberry smoothie and listening to my youth pastor talk about…

The gypsy had a layer of skin where eyes normally should go. He also had stringy hair with yellow flakes falling out, and a dirty unbuttoned white shirt. His home was made of cardboard, and his kitchen was a fire pit. The least we could do was heal his eyes. This was my second Teen…

This one is for those who have fallen away from a charismatic faith. Do you remember the days? The days the Holy Spirit was an intimate force in your life that spoke to you. Sometimes it whispered for you to approach a stranger and bless them with a few dollars. Other times it quietly, but…

When I was Pentecostal, I saw demons everywhere. They wandered around my bedroom looking for ways to oppress me. They tempted me on the days I did not spend time reading the bible. They dwelled in homes of families in bondage to “generational sin”, and they used sex and alcohol to torment my friends. “There…

Serve again. The thought popped in my head not too long ago and startled me. The widows and the orphans. The poor. The broken. The old. The marginalized. Serve them. But I don’t do that crap anymore. But that stuff is for the Super-Christians. But I’m still healing. There was a time in my life…

Serve again. The thought popped in my head not too long ago and startled me. The widows and the orphans. The poor. The broken. The old. The marginalized. Serve them. But I don’t do that crap anymore. But that stuff is for the Super-Christians. But I’m still healing. There was a time in my life…

I am a hurt, scared little girl. I am a brave, overcoming woman. I am both at the same time. I’ve been hurt by controlling church leaders, by judgmental Christians, by religious people who wanted me to look just like them. For years, I let the hurt eat away at me, slowly severing the cord that…

Yesterday I was rummaging around the garage when I stumbled on a giant Box of Christian Books. This box has somehow survived several moves, collecting dust in various closets, garages and sheds. Although its contents haven’t made our shelves in years, I haven’t had the strength to get rid of them. I haven’t even have…

I think it’s time I give you the Cliff Note’s version of my experience in and out of church. I got saved at the age of six, which is what my Vacation Bible School teacher at a tiny Baptist church in my hometown said I had to do to get to heaven. For saying the…