My parents started a church many years ago. They were one of five families that planted a church in a wealthy, white suburb in St. Louis.
Were they ordained ministers? No. Were they equipped to lead other people? That’s debatable.
My father ran his own ad agency and my mom was a teacher and homemaker.
After several years, the church they planted grew into a massive congregation. And they were prominent leaders within it. They became church elders.
One Sunday afternoon, after countless piles of Sundays spent in this hallowed place that they seemed to revere above all else, my parents attended a rather contentious church meeting. To this day, I don’t know why it was so tense. I just felt the heat as soon as people started filing into the auditorium.
I had been at the church since the early AM, serving in children’s ministries. I had sat through a youth group sermon, and then an adult sermon. I wasn’t allowed to be a part of this meeting so I had to wait outside in the lobby.
To say that I was always at church, is not an exaggeration. My brother and I were homeschooled and we spend countless hours at this place, doing homework and helping to do volunteer work. We were at every prayer meeting, visiting hospitals, building sets for summer bible camps, running audio/visual equipment, setup/teardown, doing demolition work to renovate a church office, stuffing bulletins, you get the fucking idea… we were always there and always serving.
So to say, I was pretty much done and ready to go home on this particular day, would be a massive understatement.
I was a compliant kid. I didn’t get in trouble with authority - at all. Ever. Except for my father. And my mother. There were different consequences for “breaching their trust”. An ever shifting target of expectations that had to be met.
On this Sunday afternoon, I was alone. I was hungry. I was a teenager and bored out of my mind. I was not old enough to drive yet and my parents didn’t really seem concerned about what I had going on while they went and did their thing in yet another church meeting.
While it was going on, a fellow teenager and I started talking. That talking led to laughing. That laughing got loud enough that the church auditorium could hear us.
His mother came out, we got yelled at and told to be quiet. Fair enough. And so we were. For a while.
And then we got bored again, and we started laughing again. The meeting was not short.
And then it let out. And we went home.
So I’m getting ready and washing up for dinner. My dad meets me in the hallway of our home. He had a very displeased look on his face.
D: What were you doing?
Me: What? Nothing.
D: What were you DOING? Mrs. X told me that you and her son were up to something.
Me: We weren’t doing anything. We were waiting for the meeting to let out.
D: WHAT. WERE. YOU. DOING.
Me. Nothing.
And it’s at that point, that my feet left the ground. My body flew back several feet, and I hit the hall closet door. I was thrown against the wall and knocked down to the ground. I can still see it. And I can still feel the fear that I felt then.
I’m not afraid now. I can just feel that feeling from that moment. It’s seared into my neurons.
My father stood over me, fists clenched, and began to yell at me with absolute rage. He demanded that I stop lying and to tell him exactly what I had been doing.
I was in full fight or flight mode at this point. I was like a caged animal and I was absolutely terrified. I would have told him I was snorting coke off of a hooker’s ass - I would have told him anything in that moment. My father had viciously and without warning attacked me, assaulted me, and was now threatening me with further violence.
But I was telling the truth. We hadn’t done anything, much less anything wrong. And as a habit, I didn’t lie.
At this point, my mother came racing up the stairs and demanded to know what my father was doing to me.
Without missing a beat he yelled that I was lying and hiding something. And she seemed terrified. Shocking, right? She put up a bit of a fight because she knew what he was doing was wrong.
But a woman must submit to her husband in Christianity. And frankly, in retrospect, I think he was violent towards her too.
So she stood there looking terrified while he berated and interrogated me.
He rounded on me and continued.
D: What were you doing?
Me: Nothing. We laughed and joked. Mrs. X came out and yelled at us to stop. After a while we pretended to pull the fire alarm but we didn’t, dad. And then laughed because we thought that it would be funny and we could go home.
D: I knew it. You were lying. You were goofing off.
My father felt justified. He had rooted “the lie” out. His son of 14 years old had pretended to pull the fire alarm on a Sunday afternoon because he was bored and wanted to go home. Again, I didn’t pull the fire alarm. The other dude and I were just laughing because we thought it would be funny to pull it and then everybody would have to leave. Stupid shit. We were just joking.
We knew it would be hell to pay if we actually did it. But it was hell to pay anyway.
This wasn’t new, it was just the most violent he had ever gotten with me. He had come at me many times before threatening me with violence. He would yell at me a lot. Often I didn’t understand what I had done wrong. If I tried to defend myself it only made things worse. If I questioned him, his thought process, or his authority, I paid.
Once as a grade schooler my father hit and slapped me for crying because I wasn’t playing regularly on our school soccer team. I was in second grade. So 8 years old. My dad slapped me around with magazines and yelled at me because I didn’t understand why I didn’t get to play in our school’s games. They had always rotated all the kids in and out of each match. I went to every practice. I did the drills. The coach just wouldn’t play me. I wasn’t a bad kid. I listened. I did what I was asked. I did goof around and I laughed a lot. But I also did do what I was asked.
My dad accused me of whining. I was just heartbroken that I didn’t get to play and there wasn’t any explanation. I was looking for one and thought he might be able to help me.
I was wrong. When you are a boy and you cry you’re weak. You’re whining. You need to man up. (That thinking is bullshit)
Now granted. Kids do whine. And it can be annoying. And I did whine, too. Like every kid does. Because that’s what kids do. They have to learn to become emotionally intelligent. They have to learn to control their impulses. Sometimes kids whine when they’re tired or confused. But that’s not what I was doing there. I went to my father for help. And I was really sad because my coach completely ignored me. And he wouldn’t help me. He wouldn’t let me play. And no other coach had ever treated me like that. In fact, I usually received admonition for being a good teammate.
My dad wasn’t just abusive with his sons. He once bodily threw a client out of his office. This client, was a son of a friend. But still a grown man. And he threw an employee out as well. Physically threw both of these people out of his office. One was an extended family member.
Somehow the cops never got called. His behavior was just allowed to continue. Probably because people were so shocked that a man who owned his own business, had a family and was such a prominent church leader, could act that way. I didn’t care about his standing. I wanted to know why my father would treat me that way.
A little something called white patriarchy, I guess.
But I didn’t have any autonomy or authority, then. And I didn’t know (intellectually) that was he was doing was wrong. I trusted him. So there wasn’t much I could do.
It all kind of came to a head later on though.
I started putting the pieces together. And I got really tired of his abuse. And sadly, I started hating my own father. My trust had been broken.
That sucked. That’s not what any kid wants. He was my hero.
But he was a jerk. Mean to his own children. Verbally abusive. Toxic. Violent on occasion. Threatening violence. Always mad about something. Mad about his business. His clients. The problems he had at his work. Mad at church leadership for some shit. I once, innocently asked him if he could go get a job somewhere else. He seemed miserable running his business. I thought it might help. I wanted him to be happy. That didn’t go over well.
In short, he was a bully.
His explosive anger. It wasn’t just a couple of times. He formed the habit of intimidating his sons into compliance. My brothers have their own stories that involve abuse, too. But that’s not for me to tell.
One day he was cleaning out the gutters. It’s a fucking dirty job. I’m holding the ladder. And he starts yelling at me. I’m helping him. And he’s yelling at me.
So I yelled, “Fuck this.” Let go of the ladder. And he almost fell.
I walked through our garage and this guy comes chasing after me like a banshee. And he is yelling and screaming. And he kicks me out of the house. He tells me to leave.
So I said. Cool. I’m gone.
And I started walking down the driveway.
And this motherfucker asked me where I was going. I told him I was leaving. He had kicked me out and so that was it.
I had never done a drug, had premarital sex, gotten drunk, burned down anything, sprayed any graffiti, been in detention, missed a class, missed an assignment. I went to every fucking church event there ever was, served, loved, cared, sang, worshiped, prayed… none of it was enough.
And for some reason, this guy hated me. And so I said, ok. I’m gone.
And then! He yelled at me to come back.
And that’s when I broke. I started screaming at him. I told him to fuck off. That he was an asshole and that the next time he came at me or treated me this way, he could deal with the police. I was sick of his shit and tired of being treated like - well… shit.
That ended that argument.
You don’t ever envision having to say those things to your father. And when you’re a child, you think that you must be deserving of the punishment you get from your parents. I didn’t realize for a long time, that what I was experiencing was abuse.
That might seem weird… but when it’s happening and it’s your own family… and you’re a child, it doesn't look as clear as I’m writing it now.
And it took becoming a young man, to figure it out. I knew that what I felt made me feel horrible but I thought that I must have deserved it somehow.
I did not. No one does.
I only retaliated one time. He had come at my brother and it was wrong. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak. So I hit him as hard as I could. I’ve never hit anybody but my father. It was the worst feeling in the world. And also the best feeling.
He never came at me or anybody that I know of after that.
But I would do it again. Because somebody needed to stand up to him.
I am NOT a violent man. And I don’t believe in violence unless a person is defending themself. That’s what we did that day. My brother and I.
I have forgiven my father. He is no longer violent. We have a somewhat working relationship. I have boundaries. And I have no fear in speaking what I think to him.
I hurt for him because I know that he experienced a lot of unprocessed pain in his past. He did some hurtful things that caused my brothers and I a lot of pain. But each of us has tried to keep the door open to him, with boundaries.
I do love him. And I don’t write this to shame him. It is part of my story. It’s not pretty. It doesn’t feel good. And I wish that things had been different. But I have empathy for a man who lost his father at a very young age. And then he watched his mother drink herself to death. Both of his parents died in the span of 2 years. He spent some of his formative years scared and alone. He did try to be a good father. He just didn’t have the tools.
Those aren’t excuses. But it’s a window into who he is and a pathway for empathy. But everybody has trauma and pain. And he never really dealt with his.
I am trying to deal with mine.
I hope that anyone who reads this will think about being a parent. About the responsibility that it requires. I know I have.
For a long time, I didn’t want to be a parent. I was afraid that I’d become my father. And I didn’t want any kid to feel what I felt.
I have 4 kids now. And I love them very much. And I would never hurt them like that. I WON’T hurt them like that. They are too precious to me.
My wife is my partner. My equal. My better even. She doesn’t have to submit to me. I respect her and all that she is. Intelligent, wise, strong, drop dead gorgeous, and a fucking fierce warrior. I know that she has my back and I have hers. And my kids can whine and cry. I want them to. They’re trying to tell me what hurts and that they need help.
And I’m here to give it to them.