112. Freedom in your Story - Shannon Makujina

Welcome to the For Freedom Podcast. This podcast exists to bring the freedom of the gospel for everyday Christians with everyday issues. Now here are your hosts, James Seyfried and Brett Martin. Welcome to the For Freedom Podcast. Thank you for being with us today. We've got a great show for you today. And man, we're coming up on Christmas break, James. Man, yeah. Hey, do you guys do Santa and the elves and all that at your house, Brett? We absolutely do. Hey, man, my wife does. I'm a Scrooge when it comes to that stuff. But I let her do it and we're... Dude, I am... Christmas music starts for me September. Oh my... I started listening... You're worse than JC, man. In secret behind closed doors. About October, I bring it out in the public and I'll listen to Christmas music in front of my family. And then by this time, I'm just all Christmas music all the time. Listen, I came across a meme that I sent to my wife. I'm going to send it to you. But it said, Scholars now believe that Saul threw a spirit David for playing Christmas music well before Thanksgiving. And I'm a firm believer that that is what happened. We were... We went... Christmas... We have a family here at our church that goes old school, into the woods, Christmas tree shopping. They went out and they invited me to go. They said, hey, you go. We'll pay for the tree as many as you want. And so we just got one tree for the family. It was a great experience. But my wife's like, hey, we're going Christmas. She's shopping. We got to play Christmas music. And I'm like, no, no, we don't have to. And she got the better of me and she played it. We played it on the way up. I couldn't play it on the way back. It was just too much. And so we were able to do that. And I had a great time with them. And so we've got a tree on our front porch, a real tree for the first time ever. We put it outside. We'll put our fake tree inside and we're going to decorate both of them. But, yeah, it's pretty interesting to be able to do that. Look, I know that this episode is going to come out after the fact. Yeah. But tomorrow is National Turkey Day. Amen. And I got to know your top three stars. What are the top three on your list that you're looking forward to on that table? I got mine ready. All right. My top three. Got to have a turkey. I mean, it's turkey day. Got to have a turkey. Got to. Got to have those deviled eggs. That I'm going to do. Dude, your Kirby. Your Kirby meme of the deviled eggs. Oh, my. I have shared that with every person I could find. Has to be that one. My number three. It's a toss up between these two. But I'll go either way. Pumpkin. Or I'm sorry. Pecan pie. Oh, yeah. I love pecan pie. Or a sweet potato casserole with pecans on top of it. I'll go either one of those. But that's my top three, four. If you throw a dessert in there, which one. I see them both there. I don't know which one I'd get in the moment. But if one or either of them are there, I'm a pretty happy guy. I'll tell you. Turkey, number one. But fried turkey. Yeah. And I'm a white meat guy. All right. Then we've got, of course, deviled eggs. You know, that's for sure. And then my wife makes some hash brown casserole that I have to have. Like, it rivals the hash brown casserole you get at Cracker Barrel is good. Yeah. But this hash brown casserole rivals the Cracker Barrel hash brown casserole. And I look forward to it. Wow. And if you throw a dessert in there, I'm looking for the pecan pie. And if I don't get anything else, I'm going to get a slice of pecan pie. So we're looking forward to tomorrow. We've got two Thanksgivings to go to this year. We're doing one big one at my house. And at two in the morning tomorrow, we're recording this on Wednesday. Two in the morning, I will be up in the morning. And I'm using my stepdad's smoker, or my father-in-law's smoker. And so I'm smoking a Boston butt and a turkey. And so we're going to do the whole, the full 20-pound turkey. We're smoking it. Oh, it's going to be so good. I've got everything ready. I've got everything at the house. So as soon as we get done, I'm going home and I'm starting to prep it. I'm getting everything ready for that. It's going to be fantastic. I can't wait to smack into that thing. Man. Man, I think I might actually go to bed early tonight. All right. So, well, Brett, where are we at today? We've got Israel coming up quickly, about a year and a half away, a year and a couple months away. We pushed our trip to 2025. And I hope you can join us when we go to that. What else we got coming up today? We've got our, well, like we mentioned earlier, we're going on Christmas break. We've got a couple more episodes. And we're going to post some sermons for a little break. And we're going to come back in January and get started on a new church series. And then we've got some other things in the works that we're looking forward to share with you going forward in the future. Well, Brett, next up, we have an interview with Shannon. Yeah, I finally got her name right. So glad of that. Shannon wanted a disclaimer before she got started. She wants you to know that while her time in the IFB was very dark, she blames the false teaching of the IFB church for what she lived through at home. She loves her parents and the people of her former church. And she knows that they're only doing what they were taught and thought what was right. She has no personal vendetta against her family or any individual. She simply wants to see these false teachings exposed so that it will stop hurting people. And she chooses to share her story to reclaim her voice. We're so excited about having her on the show here in just a little bit and excited about her story. So thank you for listening today. And we're going to jump right into our interview now with Ms. Shannon. Well, welcome to the podcast, Shannon. We're excited to have you here today and excited about having your story been shared and looking forward to being encouragement to other people. I know that by sharing your story, you're going to be able to impact a lot of people. You're going to be able to touch people. And inevitably, people is going to reach out to you and find out where you're at and what life is going through. And so Shannon's here with us. And so let's get started, Shannon. Let's tell us about who you are, the intro to who you are, and then we'll begin going through your background and where you came out of. Yeah. So thank you for having me on. I'm super excited. And like you said, I hope that sharing today will impact people, connect with people in a different way, but it will probably also make a lot of people mad. So if you're listening to me right now and you used to know me, maybe you're listening to me at some point in the future and you're my mom and dad. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. This is always awkward doing this kind of thing because I don't know who's listening and what they're going to think. Right. I get I get lots of people who reach out to me and tell me they're very encouraged and blessed by what I've been able to share in my little social media ministry. I also get lots of paint. And I mean, that just comes with the territory. But if you're listening to me and you knew me in my old life, you knew me when I was IFB, just just listen to the story. I'm not angry at anybody. I'm not going to bash anybody. I love you guys. And I just encourage you to give it a listen and just just try, you know. So my name is I am 19 years old and I left IFB about one year ago. And it was a deeply troubling experience for me to leave. It was really hard. I mean, I went through a lot of really painful stuff. It was really hard for me to get out. Since leaving, I launched a website. It's called shannamacagina.org. And what I really wanted to do was give people a really vulnerable look at what it looks like to leave. There's a lot of people who tell their stories and they tell their story from a point where they're looking back on their story, you know, 10, 15 years in the past. And they talk about how God completely transformed their life and how everything is so different now. And God has done a lot of that for me and he is doing some of that for me. But I wanted to give people a really raw look at what it looks like to be in the process of leaving. And to be just going through those very first stages of getting out of the IFB church and dealing with some of the abuse and the pain that I went through. I want people to interact with me on social media, who read the website. I want them to know that the feelings they're experiencing, their grief, their pain, their trauma is not at all unique. They're not alone. The things that they're feeling are very normal. Even the doubts that they're having, maybe the anger at God or church, that's normal too. And it's just part of the journey and you just got to take the journey sometimes. So I started speaking out just in an effort to be really vulnerable about what it looks like to leave a cult. And vulnerability comes with a price. It's not always easy. Sometimes I share things and people are like, why did you say that? That doesn't sound like Christian or whatever. And I, you know, I understand that. My story is evolving still. But I really just wanted to give people a very raw look at what it looks like to leave, the good and the bad. So, yeah. Shannon, I definitely understand what you mean when you say that you experienced some hate when you left. I know for me personally, people turned against me that I never thought in the world. Now, I have friends that are still my friends today, but I have other people that just kind of instantly turned their back on me that, you know, I didn't think they would ever do that. And just like you, I mean, I remember from my experience, I was, when I left, I was lost. I mean, I had no idea. My whole world was in that bubble. And, you know, I've said this several, several times, but, man, I felt like I was on an island all by myself. And nobody could relate to anything that I went through. And that's why I'm glad that we have access to this community. And just like James said, you're helping so many people. I came out and I heard somebody tell their story like you're telling your story now. And it was a help to me. And like James said, you're definitely going to help, you know, help people tell your story. And it's not an easy thing to do. I know it takes a little courage to stand behind a microphone and speak out. And so I do commend you for that. Let me ask you, what exactly is your background in the IFB? I was born IFB. But if I had stayed, I probably would have died IFB. But my parents were as IFB as you could possibly get. I cannot think of how much more IFB they could have been. And I've heard different people talk about their stories. And some people say they went to an IFB church. But when they got home, you know, the television came out and the worldly music and, you know, all that stuff. It was just a church thing. For me, it was not just a church thing. In fact, my parents were stricter than most of the churches we went to. So my father has a doctorate in Bible. He has a doctorate in I think it's Old Testament linguistics and interpretation. He has a real doctorate. It's not from like Hiles Anderson or anything. He's an intelligent, intelligent man. There are few people I respect as much as I respect my dad's expertise on what he does. But with that came a lot of really, really bad teaching. You know, he was very happy about his PhD, very proud of his PhD. And unfortunately, he used that to silence me and to silence a lot of other people. But growing up, I just thought my dad was the smartest man in the whole world. And so if he said it, it's got to be true because he has this diploma, you know. And plus, we were taught to revere the pastors, the man of God, that kind of thing. We didn't come out of like the Jack Hiles or John R. Rice circles or anything like that. Though the churches I went to were definitely running in those circles. We were more like Bob James. Okay. Um, we were IFB with a little bit of polish to it. If you know what I'm talking about. Um, I was homeschooled. My dad was well known in IFB circles for a book he wrote. And it was about how rock music was basically, you know, satanic. And it was inappropriate for Christians to listen to. And I think it was called like Measuring the Music, a second look at the contemporary Christian music debate. And this book kind of put my dad on the map in IFB circles. And so he went and spoke at like the Wilds. He went and spoke in London at the Metropolitan Tabernacle at one of their conferences. He would go all over the country sometimes and speak about why rock music was evil. Right. And he published this book and it was required reading at like Bob Jones and several different IFB colleges. And so I kind of grew up, um, with my dad's shadow hanging over me. Everyone knew who my dad was. And I would go to like summer camp at Bob Jones and people would see my name tag in the hall. And they would stop me like teachers, professors, faculty. They would stop me and they would say, please thank your dad for his incredible book. You know, and I was, I loved it. I was full of pride that my dad was somebody in IFB. You know, I don't think either of you have heard of him before. But I've run into other people who have. So I was, I was really proud of that. On my mom's side, she grew up IFB. My dad didn't grow up IFB. He grew up in a non-Christian home. My mom grew up IFB, very heavily influenced by Bill Gothard. Those kind of people. My mom went to Northland Baptist Bible College. And she got a degree in something called neuthetic biblical counseling. Which contributed to a lot of misery for me later in life. Because that kind of counseling was used to really, really hurt me. And it's been used to hurt a lot of other people. For those who don't know what neuthetic counseling is, it basically denies that mental health is a real thing. It denies that depression is real. Anxiety is real. And it would say it's all a spiritual problem. It's all, you know, like, you didn't read your Bible enough. You didn't pray enough. You must be doing something wrong. And neuthetic counseling also, many neuthetic counselors, including the people who headed up the movement, didn't believe it was okay to report crimes to the police if the crime was committed by a Christian. So that was also very problematic. And that led to a lot of abuse being covered up in many churches. So that's what my mom got her degree in and went to school for. And my parents, this is kind of interesting. My parents were partially, not partially, my parents were completely, I was going to say I'm partially, my parents were completely reformed. They were five-point Calvinist, which is very, very unique for IFB, right? Them being Calvinist was a secret to the churches we went to there. Like, we couldn't tell anybody about that in church. But I had pastors who would preach against Calvinism. And I would come home and my dad would tell me that the pastor was wrong and that I needed to be a Calvinist, right? So there was a lot of confusion, even at a young age, just trying to figure out, is the pastor right? Is my dad right? And they were both saying that they were right and I needed to follow their authority, right? So that was very confusing for me. I lived inside of a bubble growing up IFB. I didn't know anything else. We didn't participate in hardly any of the youth activities at the church. Like I said, my parents were usually stricter than the churches we went to. So there was a lot of times when we wouldn't even be able to participate in youth activities. And I didn't know many, sometimes any, other kids. I didn't really have any close friends to play with. I can count on one hand the number of times I had a play date with another kid before I turned like 11. And it was always somebody else who was IFB. So I had never really met anyone who wasn't IFB. And, you know, the rest of the world looks at the IFB movement and thinks we're super strange. But I looked at the rest of the world and thought they were strange. Because that was literally all I had ever known. My father was big into the biblical patriarchy movement. We did the, you know, the Gothard umbrella protection thing, which her umbrella sadly was full of holes. But we were big into that. And my dad believed that he had just complete control over all of us and would continue to control us, especially me as a daughter, till I got married, till they arranged a marriage for me or something like that. Practice courtship. And we're big into purity culture, all that kind of thing. I remember as a very young child being told that by my dad, being told that I was his slave. And he would use the Bible to justify that. He would say in the book of Galatians, it says that children are not much better than slaves while they're living at home. And he would say, you know, I'm a kind master. I'm a good master. But y'all are still my slaves. And even at a very young age, probably like six or seven, there was something in me that just knew that wasn't that wasn't how things were supposed to be. That wasn't right. My parents would say that I've always been rebellious. I would say that even from a young age, God has got it already put a desire in me for freedom. Right. We were big into biblical patriarchy. And I just grew up expecting that I would get married and have, you know, 10 kids and be barefoot and pregnant and making cookies all the time. You know, and there was nothing else that I could do. There really wasn't anything else that I could do. I was expected to go to college like Bob Jones or something. But I was still expected to, you know, to go to get married, to get that MRS degree. So, yeah, that's kind of my background in the IFB church. A lot of the typical stuff, you know, most people talk about when they talk about IFB. I experienced most all of it, either in my family or in my church to some degree or another. Well, that's great, Shannon. We love that story, that part of your story. As hard as it is to hear, a couple of things you said that I want to go back and recap on. I feel like so many times myself, Brett, he shared this at the RFP meetup just a couple weeks ago. Man, it feels like so often we are on an island. We are stuck. We feel like that we're the only ones there. I mean, how often did we hear it preached and taught in the IFB that the IFB was the only way to God? And so you feel like when you leave that mentality, you're by yourself. You're on an island because no one else is right. And then all of a sudden you begin to be around people. And I don't know how many times it was, you know, I would go to a conference or a meetup or a convention somewhere. And people would begin asking, well, what's your story? Where did you come out of? And I'd say, well, I came out of a little small movement. You know, they called the Independent Fundamental Baptist. And they would all look back and like, oh, he's one of those guys. Like everyone knew, but it was such a small niche of the Christian movement. But we just felt like we were on an island when we left. So I definitely can relate to that. Man, the slave mentality. If my dad would have ever said that I was a slave as a child, I don't know how I would have responded. That was just insane to hear that. And man, if you've ever heard that teaching before, I don't know if it's a gother teaching or what. But man, that is some extreme. I'm preaching on children and the home this coming Sunday. And I have yet to find that in scripture in my study of a child being a slave. But yeah, that's that's where we're at. And hey, one last thing I want to recap on is you mentioned new thetic counseling. I'm getting my my certification through biblical counseling, new thetic counseling. So one of the things that me and John, we did an episode about I think it was episode 85 or so 80 or something on new thetic counseling, biblical counseling. And when we talked through that, we hit a little bit on how the IFB loves to pervert things. And this is one of the mishaps of where we were at in the IFB. So often they would take a verse of scripture and they would twist it. They would take something in that world and they would twist it to say what they wanted to say. And this is new thetic counseling. This is one of their things. They took John Adams, Jay Adams teachings on new thetic counseling, competent to counsel, and they twisted it to pervert it to say, you know what, we're not going to report things. We're not going to do things by the biblical standard. And so I can see where new thetic counseling, you could have that that pushback. But for the most part, in me studying through this, I can definitely see that new thetic counseling is is an amazing tool to use the Bible in the right way. If it's used in the right way, any tool can be used in the wrong way. And so it's B it's very careful that we've got to guard ourselves. The Bible talks about it all the time. Guard your heart, guard your mind, because even though your heart is pure, you can take something like that and you can pervert it and make it wrong. And so that's that's fantastic to think through. So we've talked about your background in the IFB. If you were to look back, what would you say? Because, you know, I've shared my story, but but how has the IFB affected you in your mental state, in your spiritual state, your emotional state? What's been the effect of that background in your life? So at the time, it led to a great deal of pride when I was about, you know, 11, 12. In fact, I became even more legalistic than my parents were. Like you were saying about being on an island, we look back on that and realize it's something bad. Right. But at that point in my life, I thought that was something good. In fact, I thought that it made me special that I was set apart from everyone else in the world. And I think IFB kind of satisfies the craving we all have inside of ourselves to be part of something special, to be right, to be part of, you know, a movement, to be the ones making change, to be the ones who are better than everyone else. And that's something that, you know, some people are more drawn to than other people. But I do think that the island mentality is appealing to people. It really is. It can be appealing to feel like you are set apart and you are different than everybody else. So that led to a great deal of pride for me, really. And also looking back, I told you I became I became even more legalistic than my parents were. I started we were allowed to wear pants. It wasn't often and they had to be like, you know, so baggy they were falling off. But we were allowed to wear pants sometimes. And I decided I wasn't going to wear pants at all. I also decided I was going to wear a head covering to church and that I wasn't going to do anything on Sunday except read my Bible and pray. And my parents didn't necessarily agree with those three things. But I remember my parents, especially my dad, telling me they were so proud of the direction I was moving in life. And now I look back on that and I'm like, why would they be proud that I was getting more and more legalistic? You know, they're not proud of the direction I'm moving in life now. But back then they were proud that I was becoming even more legalistic than they were, you know. So I feel it to a great deal of spiritual pride for me. I felt like I was better than everyone else. I was right. And that definitely affected me when I started to talk to people who weren't in the IFB. I was very argumentative. I was very proud of who I was. I was very proud of who my dad was. And I was very proud that I was an independent fundamental Baptist. As far as effects of my background on me now. I mean, I've been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. I live with the effects of growing up IFB every single day. And it gets easier with time. It does. But there are days when it's really, really hard to deal with. It's probably on a weekly, sometimes daily basis that I realized something I was taught that I only believe because I grew up IFB. And when I think about it, I'm like, you know, that's not true. Or that's not necessarily true. So I'm constantly having to learn to re-challenge my thinking, right? Just because I was taught not to question. So that's definitely one of the effects my background had on me. Even just as a woman, I was told I was supposed to be feminine and shut up and just shut my mouth and not have an opinion, not say anything. And I find myself struggling with that sometimes even now. You know, just understanding it's okay for me to have a voice. It's okay for me to talk about what's happened. And I don't always need to even be super sweet about it. Like, it's okay for me to be mad about the IFB. I'm not mad at my parents. They're mad at the people in my church. But I can be angry in a righteous way about the IFB movement and how much harm and destruction it's caused to people. Well, Shannon, I can definitely relate to you on the proud issue. I mean, I remember, you know, being in my Independent Mental Baptist Church. Man, we were so proud of, man, we had the right Bible. We had the right church. We had the right pastor. And we were the only ones that were right. And that was a source of pride for us. And so I definitely can relate to that. Another thing is you talked about legalism. Now, me and James have had this conversation. I talked about this in my story, how growing up in this IFB world, you're taught that legalism is for salvation only. And, like, there's this mentality of there's no such thing as too many rules. In fact, the more rules you have, the more spiritual you are, the closer to God you are. And, you know, you talked about living for the approval. I mean, you didn't say this, but what I kind of got was kind of living for the approval of your dad. I was like that. I was living for, I got to where I was living for the approval of my pastor. And so many people, like, I wasn't doing what I was doing to please God. It would have pleased him anyway. But I was doing what I was doing to please my pastor. And, you know, I do want to say that people experience so much trauma in this type of lifestyle that when they leave, they just, you know, want to go the other way. They want to leave the faith completely. They just want to throw everything out. And, you know, I'm encouraged that, you know, you still want to love the Lord and serve the Lord. And so I'm very thankful for that. One of the things that I was reminded of listening to you speak just now was my wife. We got to the point where, you know, my wife was supposed to be subservient to me. She wasn't supposed to talk back to me in so much that for a few years I would get on to her. Now, I've changed and I've repented of this, but I would get on to her for correcting me in public, even if I was wrong. Like I said something, if I said something and I was wrong, I would give her the look because that's what we were taught to do. And then one day I was blatantly wrong and I did it. And the Holy Spirit convicted me. What did you just do to her? What did you just say to her? And so I, I mean, I broke down crying. I repented to my wife. I said, I'm sorry, but this isn't right. But I definitely can relate to everything that you're saying. And so can a lot of our listeners. Now, I do want to ask you and what, what eventually led you out of this movement? What led you out of this mentality? What was the catalyst that drove you to leave? So there were three things that started me down the road towards leaving. And I can identify each of them very clearly. I know exactly what they were at, those three things. You're still a good activist. Got to have everything in threes. Love it. Right. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. So there were basically three reasons I left. The first one, this may be kind of amusing. I discovered Southern gospel music when I was about 14. And that was a big no-no in our family, like a big no-no. And there were people in my church who liked it. That was actually how I got introduced to it. The pastor, they had a revival service. And the pastor had his son come and his son did Southern gospel. And it had the drums. And it was really loud, you know, and all that cool stuff. And my parents were horrified. And my dad made us all, you know, like walk out of the church. Because he was into public displays of that sort to show his disagreement. I remember that kind of thing. Us all walking out to the bathroom. And, of course, the bathroom was at the front of the church, you know, like at Nathan's church, where you got to walk all the way down the front, out the door, so everybody can see you. I remember how humiliating that was still. I can't hear you. I said, wow, that is incredible. Okay. I was just making sure your mic was open. Oh, good. Wow. That's awesome. That Southern gospel music was one of the reasons. And, Brett, have you ever, I guess, I mean, I guess we were left. But, man, have you ever seen that happen before? Where people just get up and leave because they don't agree with something? I mean, I really haven't really, really seen that. I do know at Howes Anderson, Southern gospel was, you know, was against the rules. You would have your CDs confiscated. Oh, yeah. You know, so that kind of stuff happened all the time. But I hadn't seen anything like that. Especially like a whole family. Like every once in a while you may see people get up and leave. But like a whole family that gets up and leave. Man, that is bold. I love it. That's awesome. All right. Go ahead. Number one, Southern gospel music. Who would have thought Southern gospel music would be the reason why you left? But go ahead. So it made me start questioning. Is my dad really right about music? You know, we did like the super conservative music, the Bob Jones, you know. It really made me start questioning. Is my dad right about this? And it did something else. So instead of questioning, just questioning that my dad was right, it made me start questioning myself. And I started to feel like I was backsliding. And everything bad that would happen to me, I would delete all the secret Southern gospel files on my computer. And I would be like, I must be doing this to me because I'm listening to the devil's music. I'm disobeying my parents, right? So it brought this fear. It really did bring this fear. But it also came with a fascination. I was very fascinated. From there, I started listening to like Keith and Kristen Getty. That kind of stuff, right? So very light contemporary Christian music with great theology. And I was confused because I had always been told that one of the reasons we didn't do contemporary music was because they just sang the same words over and over again. And the lyrics were heretical, blah, blah, blah. And then I start hearing songs like In Christ Alone or The Power of the Cross. And I'm like, hey, this is better than some of the stuff we sing in our church, you know? So that also kind of threw a wrench in there and confused me about whether my parents were right or not. And it also, here's the other way it confused me. I was told that the pastor was right. I was told that being IFB was like the right thing to do. But if my pastor was okay with listening to Southern Gospel and my parents weren't, then who was right? Who was my ultimate authority? And whoever wasn't right, were they committing some sort of sin that I needed to be aware of? Was my pastor in sin? You know? So that also confused me. And it made me start questioning. The second thing that happened is I was really on a legalistic kick. And I really got into the whole like suffering for Jesus thing. And I sold a lot of the stuff that I had. And I was giving copious amounts of money to IFB missionaries and all that stuff. And I'm reading my Bible and really getting into it. And I discovered this concept of being sacrificially single so you can do missions work. And I start researching it a little more. And I kind of get into like the whole Catholic concept of taking a vow and celibacy and all that. And I'm like, I'm doing this for Jesus. You know? I'm going to do this for Jesus. I'm going to go be a foreign missionary and die somewhere and all this. But I told you my family was into the biblical patriarchy. So me deciding to be celibate did not go over very well at all. I made a lot of people mad. I made a lot of people in my church mad. I made my parents very mad. And I was also confused when that happened. I was like, hey, I just want to serve the Lord. And instead, I started getting called names, which this is sad. But my dad has always been kind of, I shouldn't say kind of. He's always been verbally abusive. Okay? If we disagreed with him, he would start shouting. He would start calling us names. He would just scream. And I started getting told I was a feminist. And it was not being said in a nice way. I assure you. All kinds of names, you know? Started getting thrown at me. They basically reacted like I had told them I was going to work for Planned Parenthood. It was really that kind of a reaction. I was just in disgrace. They couldn't believe that I wasn't going to get married. And they just put so much pressure on me. You've got to get married. There's something wrong with you if you don't get married. This is your whole purpose in life. You've got to get married and have kids. And I would pull out these Bible verses about singleness being a good thing. And they would just completely disagree with them. And that also made me start questioning whether IFB really cared about the Bible as much as they cared about traditional values. Or, you know, whatever they were calling in. Right? So that also made me question. And that set up a lot of conflict between me and my parents. And I was about, like, 13 to 15 when this was happening. And I started getting punished all the time for my opinions. And I was constantly in disgrace. They took all my friends away. I had no privacy. Like, I was just, I was in so much disgrace. I got disgraced in front of the whole church. Told I couldn't play the piano in church anymore because I wasn't right with God. I was really, really confused. Really hurt. And it was then that it kind of occurred to me, maybe IFB isn't about the Bible. You know, maybe it's just about what they want for me as a woman. The third and most influential thing that happened was I made a friend who was a Southern Baptist. And if you've hung around in IFB circles for any like the time, you know that the Southern Baptists are like, you know, the Antichrist. They're the next best thing to Satan. Right? Okay. I had always been told that, you know, they had dating homosexuals and all that good stuff. And, I mean, our church was very typical in that they tried to scare us out of visiting other churches. They told us that people at other churches didn't wear clothes on stage. They wore Satan hats and had orgies and like all that kind of stuff. Right? So, it was intended to scare you out of visiting another church. And I had always been very scared of any other churches, but especially the Southern Baptists because they were preached against so much. Right? So, I make this friend online on a Bible memory app of all things. Okay? On a Bible memory app. There was like a little forum beneath the verses to study. And there was all these homeschooled kids on there who obviously have no socialization, no exposure to the outside world. And everybody's talking to everybody else. And it's so cool. Right? So, I make friends with this girl. Her name was Ava. And we make our own private group of verses to memorize. And we make our own little private chat on there. And we spend the next year becoming very, very, very close. I would talk to her for hours every single day. She went to a Southern Baptist church, actually, in Chattanooga. And it was a really good church. It was a big church, though. It was a mega church. They had a contemporary service. And she loved her church. And she also, this is what originally attracted me to her. She loved theology. And she loved to talk about theology. She wanted to get her doctorate in theology. And I remember when I first heard that, I was like, you can't do that. You're a girl. Because we had always been taught it was inappropriate for women to get a PhD. My dad said it made them unfit for marriage. Like, that is the whole purpose of being a woman. It's you have to get married, right? But if you get a PhD, that just makes you unfit for marriage. So, you can't do that. And I remember telling her, like, it's good that you want to study the Bible. But you shouldn't study theology like that. That's just for men. But I was intrigued by her love of the Bible. Because I also had a love of the Bible. And a love of theology. Because I was raised in a home with a dad who was literally a seminary professor. And she had some really intelligent stuff to say. So, she would send me, like, sermons from her church. And I would listen to some of them. And I remember I listened to her youth pastor preaching one day. And I just listened to it on audio. And it was the most powerful message I had ever heard in my whole life. And it was so different than any sermon I had ever heard in my whole life. And looking back on it, it was a pretty regular evangelical church type sermon. The pastor was preaching on sin. But he wasn't preaching on drag and feminism. He was preaching on pride and legalism, right? He was preaching on sins of the heart. And it convicted me because I had never heard anybody preach like that before. What made a difference to me was when my friend sent me the video of her pastor preaching. And I saw the fog machine and the tennis shoes and the shorts and the t-shirt. And I was like, whoa, your pastor is not a real pastor. I remember flat out telling her that your pastor is not a real pastor. And your church is not a real church. And I was upset about it. And I argued with her. But it sat with me for a while. Did the Holy Spirit not work in my heart when I heard that sermon because of what the pastor was wearing? And it really caused me to question, you know, is the Holy Spirit not able to work because the pastor is wearing tennis shoes and shorts? Is there something about that that just keeps the Holy Spirit from being able to work in someone's heart? And I started to, you know, change my mind on that just a little bit and say, you know, they shouldn't have the fog machines. They shouldn't have the electric guitars. But maybe God is able to do some good things through this church. Maybe God is able to work in people's hearts, you know? Maybe it's not such a bad thing. And that continued for about a whole year. I would attack her church and attack what she believed. And she would respond and point out that what I believed wasn't really all that biblical. It just wasn't. There was nothing in the Bible that says it's wrong to have a cross tattooed on your arm. I mean, there's nothing in the Bible that says that. And I would give, you know, we're supposed to abstain from all appearance of evil and, you know, all that good stuff. And it just didn't hold up. So I wasn't really, I wouldn't say I left IFB at that point by any means. I was still very much IFB. What happened is my parents found out about me talking to her. They found out we were discussing theology. We were discussing church differences. And I, again, found myself in disgrace, being punished, being in so much trouble. And this time it really, really got that. They didn't let me say goodbye to her. They just kind of just said, like, you can't talk to her anymore. And they did that with several other people in my life. In fact, everyone who was my friend at that point, and I had several close friends, they just cut them all off. And they said, you can't, you can't talk to these people ever again. And really just focused on isolating me and also trying to convert me. Because I sensed that I was going astray. And they really just started trying to convert me. And it hurt me because I was going through a lot in life. I was really questioning, really hurting. And they didn't care about that. All they cared about was me agreeing with them. They didn't care about having a relationship with me. Well, I mean, they did want a relationship. But they wanted it with an IFB daughter. If I wasn't going to be IFB, they didn't want a relationship. And it was around that time they started to tell me, you're the prodigal. You're like the prodigal son in the book of Luke. And my father started to tell me, if you don't agree with us, you're not a Maccagena anymore. You're not a member of our family. And of course, hearing things like that shouted at me did not help the situation at all. It just made me hurt even more. I started developing a ton of fear because I didn't have any control over my life. I had no control over what I believed, where I went. I had no privacy whatsoever. I couldn't keep any relationships because my parents were so controlling of my friendships. And I started developing PTSD. I would have nightmares about the same things every single night. I lived in just terror constantly. I don't even know how to describe it if you haven't been there. I was terrified because I realized that I was trapped inside of my home. But if I wanted to leave, if I wanted to get out, there was literally nothing I could do. And it was a very terrifying realization. I started to just grasp at control, any sort of control in my life that I could get. And I couldn't find anything. I literally had everything taken away from me. There was nothing that I felt like I could control in my life. And I got very, very, very depressed. I spent the next two years just wanting to kill myself all the time. And I was still secretly talking to my friend. My parents didn't know about it. They found out like one or two times that I was still talking to her. And I got in huge trouble, of course. But I continued talking to her. And I'm not saying that was right or wrong with me. But she saved my life because I wanted to kill myself. And she would stay up with me at night and convince me that there was a way out of this. And there was something different on the other side that I could be a part of if I was willing to leave. And I just had to make it until I was 18, literally. That was about three years of my life. I would literally count down the days. I had a calendar in my room. And I would cross off each day until I turned 18. Because that was the only way I could have some sort of control over my life, over my existence. But at the same time, I also knew that if I chose to leave the IFB, and my parents would threaten me as well, I wouldn't have a place to live. I would be homeless. And so homelessness is part of this compounding fear for several years that's just brewing inside of me. I know there is something wrong with this. I know I am deeply hurt. My whole life is wrecked. I'm a wreck emotionally. I know I need to leave. There is something wrong with this. But if I choose to leave, I have nowhere to go. I don't know anyone outside of the church. Nobody. I have nowhere to go. I don't know how to get out. And that makes me even more frantic, right? I gave up on God during that time. A lot of people, when they leave the IFB and they experience that confusion and that deconstruction, they do leave God. They become atheists. Some people come back. Some people don't. Thank God I came back. But I became an atheist pretty much for about two years. I was really convinced God didn't care about me. And a lot of the reason behind that was because I thought God was a fundamentalist God. And I thought if that was who God was, I didn't want to be a part of that. My depression got so bad. I was hurting myself all the time. I was inducing vomiting and beating myself up until I had bruises. And I was just in a mess. I was in an absolute mess. And my mom, due to her degree that she had, thought that I just needed to read my Bible and pray more. And she refused to take all the signs, which were just abundantly obvious. That I was not okay. She refused to take those signs seriously. And finally, the people at my work, I was working at that point. I had only been at that job for a month. They forced me to call the counselor on the employee helpline because they could tell I was not okay. And I lied to the counselor. I told her I was fine. Everything was good. Because we grew up being told that anybody with a license, anybody with a certification in psychology or psychiatry or counseling from the state, I was told that was of the devil. You know, we couldn't be a part of anything like that. So I just lied to the counselor. And I told her I was fine. But I knew I wasn't fine. I knew I needed help. And I knew I didn't want to die either. So I went home and I begged my mom. I said, can you go to the doctor and just see what's going on? I said, you know, I'm not okay right now. And I think maybe it could be helpful for me to take some medicine to get through this time because my head is in such a dark place. I can't think anymore. She would tell me, well, you just need to read your Bible and you need to pray and you need to trust in the Lord. And I was trying to explain to her, I don't even know how to trust anyone right now. I'm just so depressed. And unless you've been in that kind of depression, it's hard to understand. You're like in a black tunnel. You don't see any light in it at all. And while Jesus is ultimately the hope for all of that, sometimes when you're in that kind of situation, you don't understand what hope even is. And sometimes people throwing Bible verses at you and telling you to pray more just makes the problem worse. It makes you feel even more hopeless because you feel like, yes, I know this is supposed to help me, but it's not helping me. So I must be lost. I must be too far gone. God must not be able to reach me here. and it just adds to the despair. Sometimes it pushes people over the edge, right? So my mom agreed to take me to the doctor. The doctor was a Christian, super sweet lady. And I sat on the table in the doctor's office and did the little depression questionnaire. And she told my mom, you know, your daughter needs help. And I lied for most of the questions. Of course it asked, do you want to kill yourself? Do you have suicidal thoughts? And I'm like, oh no, I would never do that. And the doctor recommended, you know, that I have my blood checked just to see if I had any, you know, deficiencies. And my mom wanted to do that because she thought that if I did have depression, that it had to be like, there had to be some medical cause for it, like cancer or something, because that was what she was taught in school. There had to be like cancer, diabetes, or some real cause of depression, not just chemical imbalances in my brain, right? So she made me get the blood test and the doctor told me, work on your eating habits, get enough sleep, that kind of stuff, and then come back in two weeks. And if nothing has changed, we'll talk about further treatment. Okay. So I did all that. I went home, I worked on my sleep, I worked on my eating and my mom made it sound like she was going to cooperate with the doctor. She made it sound like she was really going to cooperate with the doctor. And I was really raw and vulnerable with her about how I was feeling and how much it was hurting and all of that. And of course, they didn't understand, they refused to understand the whole reason I was depressed was because of what was going on at home, because I was constantly being told I wasn't their child anymore. I mean, that would make anyone depressed, right? To hear that from your parents, to be told you're the prodigal daughter, you know? So I thought my mom was going to cooperate with the doctor. And we went back for the next visit. And my mom starts arguing theology with the doctor. And she starts telling the doctor that I'm like Jezebel. And I'm like Jonah in the Bible. I'm like Ahab and Jezebel and Jonah. And I just don't want to accept the godly authority and decisions that my parents are making for me. And that's why I'm depressed. And the doctor kind of pushed back a little bit and was like, hey, that's not really biblical. But my mom was controlling the conversation. I mean, both of my parents were extremely controlling. And I didn't get to speak. I didn't really get to say anything. And in fact, when the doctor asked me again, she asked me if I was suicidal. My mom kind of like kicked me and gave me this look like, don't you say it, you know? And I just started crying. I broke down and I started sobbing just right there. Because the doctor was asking me, please promise me you won't kill yourself. And my mom was saying she didn't think any further treatment was necessary. She didn't think we needed to have any more doctor visits. She thought I was going to be fine. And she just snatched all my hope away because I really wanted to get better. I really wanted to be okay. And she just snatched all my hope away. And I sat there just crying and sobbing because the doctor said, you know, promise me you won't kill yourself. And I couldn't promise her that. In fact, what I was thinking about right then, if you haven't been suicidal before, you may not understand this. If you have been suicidal, you will get this 100%. Suicidal ideation becomes a comfort mechanism. When you're that low in life, the only thing you can find to comfort you is just imagining your own death. And so I was sitting there in the doctor's office, just replaying over and over again, just imagining holding a gun to my head and the feeling of slowly pulling the trigger. And the doctor's asking me, please promise me you won't kill yourself. And I'm thinking about pulling the trigger as she's talking. And I'm just thinking about it over and over again to just soothe myself because that was the only thing that made me feel any better. And in my heart, I knew I was going to go home and I was actually going to do it. There was no hope. My parents were not paying attention to me. They weren't paying attention to any of the warning signs that I was about to go right off the edge. I was 16 at this point. It was two years still till I turned 18. And I thought there was no way I can make it out of this alive. And the doctor convinced my mom, she saw something was wrong. She convinced my mom to go out for a few minutes and let me talk to her alone. And I just broke down and I cried and cried and I told her I wasn't okay. And she told me, she said, you know, I really think you should be on medicine. I really think you should see a professional counselor, but I can tell your mom is not going to let that happen. And I just, I can't fight with your mom on this. But she really encouraged me to hang in there to have some hope to come see her when I was 18. And, you know, we could get through this together. And she probably saved my life that day there in the doctor's office. I went home with just a little bit of hope that I could get through this with hope that came from the doctor, understanding what I was going through and seeing where I was and having compassion on me. And, um, later my mom told me, she said, if you're suicidal, you can't tell anyone about it because somebody finds out they may call child protective services on us, which if you grew up homeschooled, a lot of homeschooled kids, we got the warning about child protective services. Right. And we were just taught to look out for them as a bad thing. You know, it never seemed to occur to any of us that maybe parents won't be in trouble with CPS if they weren't doing things that weren't okay. Right. But that didn't, that didn't occur to me at the time that my life was more important than CPS being called. And even if CPS was called looking back on that, the only reason my parents would be in trouble is because they refused to let me get treatment. They refused to provide medical care for me, but I thought, Oh, I have to protect my family. I just have to protect my family's reputation. So I'll shut up about it. I did half-heartedly attempt suicide several times. Um, and that was, that was a really, really dark place for me. Um, this kind of gives a little insight into my legalistic mindset, but there was one time I was taking communion at church and I knew there was communion coming up in that evening service because the pastor announced it that morning. And I thought, I can't take communion. I hate God. I'm not right with God. I'm an atheist. I don't even know if I believe in God anymore. And right before they passed the plate in the evening service, it occurred to me that it says in the Bible that if you take communion and you're not right with God, that God might kill you. And this was what a dark place I was in at that moment. I swallowed the grape juice and the bread and I cursed God in my head the whole time because I really thought God would just kill me. And that was really what I wanted. I wanted to die that badly. And I remember going home and sitting in the car on the way home and just wondering, when is it going to happen? When is God going to take my life away from me and being scared, but also being kind of happy, like this is actually going to happen. I'm actually going to get to die now. And I look back on that and I laugh because I know who God is now and that's not who he is. You know, that's not who God is. God doesn't look at people who are depressed and hurting and suicidal and just strike them down because that's what they want. But that was how legalistic I was. And I thought God was that kind of God. He was angry. He was vindictive. He was vengeful. And if I just said the right words and just pushed his buttons enough, he would kill me. So I was, I was terrified of God all the time, just constantly terrified of God and combine that with the fear of homelessness and not knowing what I was going to do when I turned 18. I didn't know what to do. I was unwilling still to renounce fundamentalism though, but it was, it was mostly because of fear. And I am so thankful to be alive right now because when I look back at some of the places I was in, in my mind, I don't know why I'm still here. I don't know how I'm still here. Um, God definitely used different people. He will put just different ones, chance encounters with people at work, at the grocery store to give me just enough hope to get through another couple of days. And I look back on those moments now and I see them as miracles because they really were. God was putting people in my life to give me just a little bit of hope to survive. And then most importantly, he gave me that friend who, who would be up with me at three o'clock in the morning while I was holding my dad's pistol and convinced me to put it back in the safe, you know? Um, she convinced me that there was a life on the other side that I could be a part of and that there was even a relationship with God that I could have that didn't involve being IFB. So that was basically what led me to leave was the music and then deciding to be single and feeling all that backlash and making a friend and realizing that other churches might not be so bad. And that led to the conflict at home that really made me question if, if this is what the Bible teaches, if the Bible really teaches that you disown your kids when they go to a different church, then I don't want to be a part of this, but I still very much thought God was a fundamentalist God. And I thought there was no way out. I thought that if I was going to be a Christian, I had to be a fundamentalist. And I was trying to, to find some way I could be a Christian and have that comfort and have that hope and not have to believe all the junk I was being taught. And I just could not see any way for that to possibly happen. I think the tool of fear is so often abused in our world. And we know that fear is controlling and we sometimes use it to our advantage. And then we hear stories like this, where we see that because of fear it begins to unravel everything. One other thing that you mentioned that I'd never, I guess I thought about it. I just never put two and two together, but the conflict of authority, how you said your dad would say one thing, but then your pastor would say another thing and which one is right, which one is wrong. Because the pastor has a supreme authority and my dad has supreme authority in my life as well. And so all of a sudden there's this breakdown in our mind of which is right. And so I think that's, that's some powerful things as well to think about and to evaluate as well. Brett, anything to follow up on that? I know you've been taking some notes over there as well, before we get to our next question. And a couple of things that I wanted to, to reference one, when you talk, one thing that really struck a raw nerve with me is when you talked about CPS being used as leverage to control you. Um, this, this is not my interview. This is not about me, Shannon, this is about you, but let me just give you just a little bit of my life so I can relate to how you felt. Um, I was physically abused when I was a child and my abuser on our way to court said, if I told the truth on the stand that CPS would come and take me away from my family. And so I was forced to lie to the judge on the stand. And I have a sore spot for people using CPS as leverage against children, because I've been there and I've experienced that. And I'm sorry, you went through that. It is not, not, not an easy thing to have to go through, but man, I really, I really sympathize with you in that situation because I know what that's like. One other thing that stood out to me was, I think the reason why when you heard that youth pastor preach and you said, what, anything special about it, it was just like any other evangelical message that you've ever heard. I think what's going on is you're hearing the difference between somebody getting up and preaching preference and somebody getting up and preaching tradition. And you actually heard somebody actually preach the Bible. That's what, that's what preaching the Bible will actually do instead of just taking one verse and just pulling it out of context and preaching your preferences. And then you talked about that verse of stained from all appearance of evil. And that's a justification for all kinds of legalism in the IFB. So those are just a couple of the thoughts that I had, James, that CPS still really struck a nerve with me because I've lived that too. Well, Shannon, we've got two questions left and we'll start wrapping this up. But what are some of the hardships that you've experienced since you've left the IFB? I know you mentioned your family and some fear of disowning you and homelessness and, you know, these things that, that can sometimes drive us, but what have, what has happened since you've left? Yeah. So about two months before I turned 18, started seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. And I mean, the verbal abuse at home just continued. My parents, especially my father made it very clear. They didn't want a relationship with me if I left IFB, but I wasn't sure if I was going to leave or not. And I wasn't really sure about the whole God thing anymore. And my friend convinced me, it took her two years to convince me to actually crack open my Bible for myself and read it and just see how different it was than all my fears of God and everything my parents and my church have been telling me. So about two months before I turned 18, I started reading the Bible for myself and I started reading the book of Galatians. And one of the first things I read was the verse in Galatians chapter, I think it's Galatians chapter two, where Paul says, after beginning by the Holy spirit, are you now finishing by the flesh? And that really struck a nerve with me because I realized that is exactly what the IFB church does. They teach that you get saved by believing in Jesus, right? You believe the gospel and you're saved, but then you finish by your own works. And that's exactly what Paul is talking about there in that passage. And as I continued reading through the book, I got to chapter four, chapter five, where I read the verse about children being slaves. And I started to read that verse and it made me very angry. There was a lot of verses in the Bible that made me very angry. I would open my Bible, I would try to read it and I would just get mad because it would trigger memories of all that abuse and the ways those scriptures were twisted, right? I started reading that verse and I actually read the end of it where it says, you are no longer a slave, but a son. And if a son, then an heir. And a dam just kind of broke inside of me. And I realized that I could actually believe the gospel and be free that Jesus died because the law is a curse. It's not a good thing. It's a curse. And Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. And I started to realize this whole thing we all talk about, about the gospel being more important than anything else. I realized that if the gospel was true, just by definition, if the gospel was true, what my church was teaching was not true. So on my 18th birthday, I had a meeting with my pastor and I told him I would not be coming back to his church. And I loved him. I still love him. I had gone to that church for nine years. He was like a grandfather to me, but I told him I could no longer come back to the church because they didn't teach the gospel. And he told me, we talked for about two hours. He told me that the gospel was only important for people who were lost, that after you got saved, the gospel was no longer important. And what was important was keeping his roles. Okay. And that was, that was another one of those defining moments where I knew I could never go back to the IFB, but my parents were so really upset at me, of course. So I started going to another IFB church because my parents wouldn't let me go to a church that wasn't IFB. So I went to another IFB church. I wound up being assaulted by the choir director. The pastor did nothing for me. The people in my life who were supposed to be that umbrella of protection, you know, like Gothard talked about that umbrella of authority, those people did nothing for me. And I was left to deal with that whole situation by myself. So that was definitely a painful and awful experience for me that, you know, it wasn't something that I would have ever wanted to go through, but I can look back on that and I can be thankful for it because it really just gave me so much of a heart for helping people who have been sexually abused and especially helping people in domestic violence situations in the church and educating churches and pastors on being trauma informed and being aware of abuse and how to properly handle those situations in church. So God used that as a good thing. But shortly after I turned 18, I started making it clear to my parents, I'm not a part of this anymore. I'm just not a part of this anymore. They found this book in my car. It was called Gospel. It's by Pastor J.D. Greer. And it is literally about that. It's about the gospel and how the gospel is more important than anything else and how we should live for Jesus, not out of legalism or checking off a list of rules, but we should live for Jesus because we've already been accepted. We don't live for acceptance. We live from acceptance. Right. And the book was all about that. It was so powerful. It changed my life. It was basically the stuff I was learning in Galatians. My dad found the book in my car and I came home and he started yelling at me, which wasn't unusual, but it wasn't, it doesn't get better with time either. I mean, it happens all the time, but it never got easier either. He started yelling at me. He told me the book that I had in my car, which I had bought and the car I had bought as well. So it was my private property and I'm an adult. Okay. He told me that I had committed treason, that I had brought contraband into his home and that I could choose between owning this book or finding a new address. And he told me he no longer cared what I did with my life and I was no longer his daughter. That was, that was another defining moment for me. I knew at some point or another, I was going to have to leave. Um, but it really clicked for me. If I can't even own a book, uh, by another Baptist pastor without my, my father telling me, I have to, to go live somewhere else. If I'm going to keep this book, I have got to get out of here. I had no resources, no support group. I started posting on the RFP fam and there was another similar group for people who were recovering from fundamentalism. I started posting on there and I was so desperate. I'm like, I need help. I don't know how to get out of this. I stayed at home for about another two weeks and things kept getting worse and worse. And me and my father had another fight like that. I mean, it wasn't fighting because I wasn't saying anything. In fact, I would be crying and begging him to just see me as his daughter and figure out how to have a relationship with me. And he would say, no, if you're not IFB, you're not my daughter anymore. So we had another one of those incidents that resulted in, you know, him storming out of the house. And then I stormed out of the house too. And I drove off and, um, God provided a place for me to live that very hour. What happened was absolutely a miracle. There was a lady at my parents' church who used to go there. She didn't go there at the time, but she had gone there a while back, older lady. And it turns out she had been praying for me for years and I hadn't seen her in years, but she had just been praying for me. Keep in mind, she has no idea what's going on at home. She has no idea about the conflict between me and my parents. And just the day before God put it on, I mean, not just the day before she reached out to me and she told me she's been praying for me. And for the past several months, God has put it on her heart that she has this empty room in her house. And she wants me to come live with her. If I'm open to that idea, she has no idea what's going on in my life. So I told her I'll come, I'll come check it out and we'll talk it over the next day. And it was the next day that me and my father had that fight. And I literally drove off and I drove to her house and I didn't come back home. And I I'm sitting there right now. I've been there ever since it's been about seven months now since I left home. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. And I praise God for it each and every day, but yes, leaving home and being disowned was extremely painful. It was extremely hard. I lost my whole support system. And now I'm, I'm going on that healing journey and I'm rebuilding my life. I mean, there are so many things that I have to rebuild now. I still live with post-traumatic stress disorder. I have really hard time dealing with interpersonal relationships due to just the mess at home, being abandoned, being disowned, having friends cut off for me, that kind of stuff makes it really hard. And I'm learning what it's like. And I'm, I'm working with a therapist now and it has completely changed my life. It has completely changed my life. I'm learning what it's like to have healthy relationships because IFB doesn't teach healthy relationships. It doesn't teach boundaries. It doesn't teach respect. It doesn't teach communication. It just teaches this really toxic authority model. So yeah, I'm learning about what it's like to be a healthy person. And that is just, that's been an amazing experience, but I can say that through all of the, the hardships, all of the challenges that I've been through, it was completely worth it. And I would encourage anyone who is listening, if you're wondering if you should leave or not, and you're, you know, maybe like the Bible says, you're counting the cost. What is it going to cost me to leave? I knew what it was going to cost me when I left and it was staggering. I lost my whole family, but it was 100% worth it. I would 100% encourage you to just take that step and take the journey. It will be worth it. There is life and there is hope on the other side. And it's better than, than you could ever imagine till you actually go into it. Shannon, it's like your story comes full circle. It's like your story started off with it being pounded into you that you are a slave and your father finds a book in your car. Can you imagine that just getting in trouble for having a book called the gospel? Yes. Yes. I mean, talk about, you know, of all the things that could have been found, it was a book called the gospel. And it was actually through the gospel that you found out that you weren't a slave anymore. Yes. Yes. Because as you know, that's what the gospel does. Yes. It does. The gospel frees us. Your story is so inspiring to know that, you know, the gospel helped you through that. And the Lord opened up the door. He provided a way for you to be where you are right now coming out of that. Man, what you just described to me is just, just like you said earlier, it's a cult mentality. It's that my way or the highway type deal. And that's with church home. So, you know, I'm your story really is an inspiration. Um, so what I want to ask you now and kind of what your needs are in that area. Yeah, absolutely. So I'm super excited. I leave on January the 17th and I'm going to be there for, we're saying right now, six months or longer. Um, part of this healing journey has been, I've been getting closer to the Lord, developing my relationship with the Lord, and I'm no longer afraid. I have hope now and it's been a process, but as I get closer to the Lord, I do have a growing desire to be a part of the ministry again and to serve. And, um, I was actually listening to, um, JD Greer preach about two months ago on the way to work. And he was talking about Christians who are waiting for God to do something in their life. And it really resonated with me because I'm waiting for God to do so many things in life. I'm waiting for God to bring restoration with several people who I lost when I left the IFB church. I'm waiting for God to heal things with my parents. I'm waiting for God to give me a clear direction in life and to help me minister to others. And sometimes it feels like I'm just sitting around waiting, right? I'm sitting around praying these heartbroken, tear-filled prayers. God, please move. Please do this. And, um, he said the posture of a Christian who is waiting should always be service. Posture of a Christian who is waiting for God to do something in their life should always be to go. Where can you go? And it hit me in that moment. There is no reason why I can't go overseas right now. I'm single. I don't have a boyfriend. I'm young. I don't have any debt. My schooling is completely online. I don't have anything to hold me back. And it's crazy because if I had had that, that dream life I dreamed of when I was 12, 13, I would have had all those things holding me back. I would not be able to go right now. If I had had the friends and the relationship with my family that I wanted to have, which would have been good things, right? But those things would have tied me down here in the United States. And instead, since I had to completely start my life over and I'm still trying to make connections and put those pieces together, I'm able to transplant my life somewhere else without it being, I mean, it is a big deal, but without it being as big of a deal as it might be to somebody else with like a healthy family and support network and all that. So it just struck me. I'm able to go. So I started, this is not a great missionary story. I did not pray about it at all. It gets better. It gets better. Hear me out. Okay. I was just like, Hey, I'm going to go and I'm going to go to a different country, go somewhere else. And I'm going to get away from all my problems. Maybe I can just leave this pain I'm feeling behind in the United States. I can leave my PTSD behind. I can leave all this stuff behind because there will be like a what, seven, eight hour time difference, which is a really stupid, stupid way of thinking. But I was like, Oh, why don't I just go experience something else? Maybe it will take this pain away. So I reached out on the RFP fam and I connected with a missionary and they're like, why don't you come stay with us? And it seemed like a perfect situation. The more I talked to them. So I talked to them for about three days and I'm like, okay, I'm coming. And I hadn't been able to pray about it at all. I hadn't had any peace about it at all. And I went to somebody's house that evening and we were talking about it and I just broke down crying. And I said, I can't do this. I'm just running. I'm running from my problems. I'm running from my pain. I'm running from God. I was partly doing it in hopes that once I left the United States, certain people who had abandoned me, including my, my family, that they would miss me. And maybe they would have a change of heart when I'm, you know, in a different country that they would all of a sudden realize, you know, maybe they should fix the relationship. Those are not healthy reasons for going as a missionary at all. And so I started crying and realizing I was running from God and I came home and just surrendered myself to God. And I said, fine, I will not go. I won't go. And I texted them that evening and I said, I'm sorry for wasting your time, but this is not the will of God for my life. I can't do this. I can't go. I've been running from God. I'm running from my pain and my problems. And I just need to stay here and wait on God and continue praying for him to work in my life. And they wrote back and they're like, yeah, but we still want to talk to you more about this. And we had planned to do a video call the next day. And so they really pressed me. Can we still do this video call and just talk to you? Even if you don't come, we want to hear what's going on in your life. We want to minister to you. So I very reluctantly said, okay, but I'm still not coming. So I started talking to them and our stories just connected on so many different levels, especially me and the missionary wife. She also grew up IFB, very similar in a lot of ways to what I went through with being abandoned and having family troubles. We just connected on so many different levels. And we talked for about four hours. And when I got off the call with them, I said, I'll pray about this. I don't, I don't think so. I don't think it's God's will, but I will at least pray about it. So I prayed about it for about the next two, three weeks. And I just felt peace about it. All the negative reasons that I had wanted to go, like trying to run away from my problems, all of that just, just kind of melted away. And I felt so much peace and I just kept praying about it. And I felt like God was telling me, this is where you need to be. This is where you need to go. And you may wonder why would I, why would I not have peace about it the first time? And then I pray about it and I do have peace about it. I think God just wanted me to surrender to him and just be willing to go or stay, you know, because I really wanted to go. And I think God wanted me to be willing to stay also. And once I was willing to do that, then he was willing to send me, if that kind of makes sense. So ever since then, I felt peace about it. Everything is worked out in so many different ways. And I am super excited to be a part of that ministry. Like I said, my story is still unfolding. So I'm not sure if I will end up being called to be a full-time missionary, but if that's part of God's plan, then I am up for it and I'm excited. So I do have needs for support right now. I'm looking for individuals who are willing to support me. I'm sure y'all know about the IFB deputation model. It's very broken. It's very hard to get support, especially as a single missionary, especially if you're going for a short-term project. So I'm not really doing any deputation. Instead, I'm asking for individual supporters who are willing to contribute on a monthly basis. I'm asking for like $20 a month. If I could get 30 people who are willing to give $20 a month, which is the cost of like two fast food meals, I would have the support I need. So if you're willing to pray about that, if the Lord leads you to do that, you can reach out to me. I think they're going to put my information below. You can reach out to me and we can schedule a video meeting and talk about that. For anybody who is a monthly supporter, I will have a private Facebook group you can join where I will be posting exclusive cool missionary content, like me eating termites and touching tarantulas and all that cool stuff. So this is a great opportunity. If you as a family want to support a missionary and maybe get your kids involved to see what it's like to, you know, be a part of missions, I'm going to be doing some really cool video stuff to give you all a glimpse of what it looks like. So if you're led to support me in that way, I would be super excited for you to be a part of that. Fantastic. Love it, Shannon. And we are going to put her website below in the show notes. If I spell it, you're not going to remember it, but I'll put it in the show notes link. Also, if you want to reach out to her on her website, there's a way where you can fill out a form, reach out to her by email and have a conversation with her. And so that'll all be there. We'd love for you guys to connect with her. Thank you for coming on Shannon and sharing your story and sharing what God has done through your childhood and growing up and leaving the IFB and where God has led you too. And we've been praying for you and January 17th is coming up quickly. Yes. So we'll be praying for you as you get there. She has received some support, but it's still in need of other support. And so if you had to do that, reach out to her, she can let you know how you can support her. And I think that's time, Brett, we'll go ahead and close the show down. And so until next time to God, not the pastor. Thanks for listening. For Freedom Podcast. If you enjoyed our content, do us a favor by liking, subscribing, or sharing our podcast or whichever podcast platform you use. Be sure to join us next time for the For Freedom Podcast.

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