Neon Bibles, Thongs & the Fall of Faith

Author’s Note:

These are the first three chapters of my memoir. It’s a story about growing up as a pastor’s kid, the cost of silence, and learning that vulnerability is stronger than perfection.

Chapter One: Neon Bibles and Thongs

The summer before eighth grade, I felt like I had to be the best Christian girl out there. I was a pastor's kid at a mega church, and the pressure to set an example was real. Everyone was watching. And so, in my mind, the only way to be a “good” Christian—scratch that, the best Christian—was to be on top of it spiritually. And by “top of it,” I meant memorizing James Chapter 1 in one summer and making sure my friends did the same. Because let’s be honest—what says “Godly” more than knowing a whole chapter of the Bible by heart at the age of thirteen, right?

This idea hit me one afternoon at Barnes & Noble, a store that felt like a treasure chest for someone like me who was all about collecting things—whether it was books, Bibles, or anything that could make me seem more spiritually accomplished. I remember walking through the aisles, skimming through books I had no intention of reading, until something caught my eye: neon-colored pocket Bibles. These weren’t just any Bibles—these were statements. Bright, bold, and impossible to miss, they screamed, “Look at me, I’m committed, I’m flashy, and I’ve got faith in all the right places!” Of course, they also screamed, “I’m in middle school and I still think neon is cool,” but I digress.

I immediately knew I needed to get them—not just for me, but for my friends too. A few of my closest pals, five of us total, had been talking about getting closer to God. I thought, “What better way than to give them these neon Bibles and tell them to memorize James 1?” I didn’t just think it would help them spiritually; I thought it would prove to the world, or at least to the five of us, that we were serious about our faith. After all, isn’t being the best Christian girl all about proving it with your actions?

So, after picking out the Bibles, I also thought it would be fun (and, of course, holy) to add a little something extra: matching thongs. Yes, thongs. Not your typical middle school Bible study kit, but hear me out. We were at that age—just starting to step into our “grown-up” selves, and I thought, What’s a better bonding experience than wearing matching thongs with your Bible verses? I can’t explain it. It made sense to me at the time. I was convinced this was the perfect symbol of “Christian girlhood” in all its awkward, coming-of-age glory.

So there we were, five of us, ready to dive into Bible study—each armed with a neon Bible and matching thongs, reciting James 1 over and over, convinced that the more we memorized, the more holy we’d become. I remember being the bossy one—insisting that we memorize the entire chapter. I mean, who needs to stop at a verse or two when you can have the whole chapter under your belt, right? If you’re going to do something, you might as well do it to the fullest—that was my mindset. My friends weren’t exactly thrilled with my idea, but they went along with it, probably just to avoid a long, drawn-out argument with me.

Looking back, it’s pretty funny. We were this quirky group of pre-teens trying to do the most “Christian” thing possible while also trying to navigate middle school drama, crushes, and figuring out what it meant to “be a woman of faith.” I thought I was setting us up for some kind of spiritual success, but honestly, I was just trying to keep up with the expectations of being a pastor's kid at a mega church. I thought that if I could show people I was doing it right, maybe I’d finally live up to the pressure I felt.

But despite all my bossiness and the strange ways I tried to “prove” my faith, James Chapter 1 stuck with me. The verses about perseverance, asking for wisdom, and trusting in God through trials stayed with me far longer than I could have imagined. They became more than just words on a page or something to memorize. They were, in some weird, roundabout way, a message that would help me when life got harder—when everything started to fall apart and I needed something to hold on to.

Today, my beliefs have changed a lot. What I thought was “being spiritual” then—memorizing verses and showing off how much I could recite—has shifted to something far deeper. I now know it’s not about checking off boxes or proving to others that you’ve got it all figured out. It’s about the strength you find when life gets messy, and the ability to keep going, even when everything seems to fall apart.

But you know what? I look back on that summer with a lot of appreciation for young Paige. Despite my weird ideas and misguided beliefs, she was doing the best she could with what she knew at the time. She planted seeds of wisdom—seeds that I’d eventually understand when I was ready. And in a weird way, that bossy, neon-Bible-holding, thong-wearing, "I’m going to be the best Christian" version of me gave me something powerful to hold on to when life would eventually get tough.

Chapter Two: When the Ground Crumbled

By the time I reached my junior and senior years of high school, the world I had known—this image of a perfect Christian family—was already in shambles. As a pastor's kid in a mega-church, I had been conditioned to believe I needed to embody the ideal Christian girl: obedient, kind, pure, and always willing to lead by example. But behind the closed doors of our home, things were far from the picture-perfect life I had been trying so hard to project.

My father’s battle with opioid addiction had begun years earlier, and it was slowly consuming him. His first overdose was in 1997, when I was only six. I didn’t understand addiction back then; I had no idea what an addict looked like. All I knew was that my dad—my gentle giant—was starting to disappear, but I couldn’t quite put the pieces together. The fact that my father was caught up in something so destructive seemed too impossible to comprehend.

The addiction was only part of the story. What I didn’t know, what I had no frame of reference for at that time, was that my father was also a perpetrator of domestic violence. I didn’t understand the full depth of what was happening. I had always thought of domestic violence as something that involved physical harm, and I didn’t see the signs in our house. But as I look back now, I realize that abuse isn’t just physical; it’s financial, spiritual, and emotional.

It wasn’t until my mother had had enough that the truth began to surface. She blew the whistle on my father’s addiction, taking it to the elders of the church. It was the first time I saw my dad turn into someone I didn’t recognize. The drinking started, and that’s when I remember seeing the first glimmer of violence. The man I had always known to be gentle and kind suddenly became aggressive, his rage breaking out in ways I had never experienced.

The day, it was a Saturday, the elders came to our house remains one of the most haunting memories of my life. Twelve men from the church arrived to sit down with my family in our large open living room. I was told to leave the room. As was my nature, I had always been the "good girl," the one who didn’t question authority or disobey what the grown-ups said. But this time was different. Something inside me snapped. I had already felt betrayed, not just by my father but by the entire situation. My sisters had known about the abuse for a long time, and the thought that my family had been trying to protect me—trying to shelter me from the truth—felt like a betrayal in itself.

I said no. I wasn’t leaving. I had every right to be there; this was my life too.

So, I sat down on the outskirts of the room, perched on a piano bench, watching as the men circled around and my dad tried to justify his actions. His words were smooth, calculated, and full of self-righteousness. He was in full defense mode, blaming everyone and everything but himself. And then, as if the moment wasn’t already unbearable, he stopped, looked at me, and decided to drag me into the conversation.

“Ask Paige,” he said, his voice dripping with venom. “Why don’t you ask Paige if she believes her mom, or if she thinks her dad is the awful man that you all are making me out to be?”

And then, in front of these twelve men, he turned to me. “Tell them, Paige.”

At that moment, I was no longer just a 15-year-old girl. I was being forced to choose between my mother, my father, and my faith in God. And what did I do? Nothing. My chin touched my chest, and silent tears rolled down my cheeks. Not a single one of those twelve grown men said a word. No one stood up for me. No one called out my father for putting me in that position. They all just waited, silent, for me to respond.

I was a kid. A little girl. And I was being asked to make an impossible choice in front of men who were supposed to be leaders, supposed to be protectors, but in that moment, they were complicit in my pain. I couldn’t help but feel the crushing weight of that abandonment.

The silence in that room was deafening. The weight of it crushed me. The fact that none of those men had the courage to stand up for me, to say no, this isn’t right—that was the breaking point. It was the worst moment of my life, and part of me changed that day. It wasn’t just that I lost my father’s love; it was that I lost my faith in the people who had been entrusted with the care of my soul. It took years for me to reconcile that truth and to come to terms with what had happened in my family. But in that moment, in that living room, everything I thought I knew about love, loyalty, and trust was turned upside down.

That day, I learned that the world I thought I knew was full of lies, deceit, and power imbalances. My father, the man who was supposed to be my protector, had become the one I feared. And the church, the place I thought was full of love and support, had failed me in my moment of need.

Once I had a moment to catch my breath, the verses I had forced my friends to memorize with our matching bibles came back to me:

James 1:26-27

If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless. 27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

I saw, with a clarity I couldn’t ignore, that the religion of those twelve men—the elders who had come to my house to “help”—was worthless. It was a religion that allowed harm to go unchecked, that justified silence when a child was in pain, that hid behind a mask of righteousness while letting abuse thrive. Their faith, their version of God, had no substance, no soul. It was nothing but empty gestures and hollow words.

James, however, laid out what pure religion truly looks like. A religion that doesn’t just talk about love but shows it. A faith that protects, that listens, that doesn’t stay silent when the vulnerable are suffering. A faith that moves beyond words and into action. That, I realized, was the God I believed in. The one that would never stand by while injustice was being done. The God I knew would never allow the abuse I’d witnessed to continue unchecked.

In that moment, surrounded by those men who claimed to represent God, I knew without a doubt that we didn’t serve the same God. Theirs was a God of silence and indifference. My God—the one I knew deep in my heart—was a God of justice, a God who protected the weak, a God who would have called out the cruelty in that room.

That was the moment I knew I had to walk away from the broken faith I had been raised in. I had to find my own path, one that aligned with the God I believed in, not the hollow version I had been forced to follow.

And that’s where the unraveling began.

Chapter 3: Facing the Church and Being a Fraud

When my dad’s addiction became public within the church, the fallout was catastrophic. My dad—my hero—was removed from his position as senior pastor, and the same people who once sang his praises now whispered behind our backs. I remember hearing things like, “How could this happen in a godly family?” or “If the pastor can’t lead his own family, how can he lead us?” It felt like everyone was pointing fingers, and we were the targets of their judgment. The rumors spread like wildfire—stories about him robbing pharmacies and other far-fetched tales.

My mom wanted us all to sit in the front row when the elders announced that my dad was an addict and was removed from the church. It wasn’t just one service—it was three services on Sunday morning, each with well over 1,000 people in the congregation. I still don’t see why we had to go to all three services. It was painful, suffocating, full of shame. You could feel the disgust emanating from the church members, some of whom acted like this was more painful for them than it was for us. At this point in my life, I was well-versed at attending funerals and supporting those in need, but this felt like a massive funeral, except there was no one supporting me, my mom, or my sisters. There was no compassion, no love, no support—only judgment.

For me, the shame was suffocating. I felt like a fraud, as though the image of the perfect Christian family we had portrayed to the world was one big lie. I wasn’t just grieving for my dad or the chaos his addiction caused—I was grieving the loss of who I thought I was supposed to be. All those years of trying to be the "perfect" pastor’s kid felt wasted, like I had been part of this deception all along. I wondered if people would look at me differently now, if they’d think I was somehow complicit in all of it.

And the addiction itself—God, it was relentless. This wasn’t just one mistake or a bad choice my dad made. It was an epidemic that swallowed him whole and refused to let go. There were interventions, all-night prayer meetings, accountability partners, hospital stays, surgeries, and countless rehab attempts. I watched as my dad fought a battle that felt impossible to win, and I watched my family crumble under the weight of it all.

The guilt wasn’t just internal—it came from all sides. Church members would say things like, “You just need to pray harder” or “God can fix this.” Their words, though well-intentioned, felt like daggers. They assumed that if we just believed enough, if we just did enough, everything would magically go back to normal. But nothing was normal anymore. Older women in the church even said to me, “God is just preparing you for something harder in life.” WTF. That was the least compassionate thing you could say to anyone, let alone a child who was actively being abused and whose whole world was turning upside down.

Then came the Wednesday after the Sunday announcement. My mother, still very confused at this time, didn’t recognize the massive amounts of domestic violence she had been enduring for years. She insisted that I attend the Wednesday night youth group. The youth pastor at the time would have a short message, and then we would break out into our gender-specific small groups. That night, the youth pastor decided to preach on the Sunday service’s message. There was no way for me to escape. The pain, the shame, the confusion—it was all on me. I sat there, this wasn’t a message from the Bible. This was about my dad, my family, my pain and suffering that no one knew about, that no one was supposed to know about.

The quiet tears started again, but this time I knew they were going to turn into big emotions and loud sobs. I got up and walked out of the sanctuary. I knew that church like the back of my hand, so I knew exactly where I could go to cry alone. After about 30 minutes or so, I was able to pull myself together, although it was very obvious when I cry—my pale skin turns bright red, and my eyes get swollen. By that time, the youth group had already split into our small groups. I was in a group with about ten other girls my age and a woman leader in her late twenties.

When I walked into my group, thinking they would be able to support me, the leader made eye contact with me, stopped what the group was doing, and said, “What makes you think you’re so special that you can be late? Where were you?” I did not like that. I felt alone again and wasn’t sure how to respond. I said, “Sorry, I’ve been having a hard time.” I sat silently for the rest of the night. At the end of the group time, there was prayer request time. Everyone went around and stated what they needed prayer for. The leader got to me and asked for my request. I said, “I don’t have any requests this time.”

She then went off and said, “That’s not true. You need to tell us what’s going on with your family.”

I got so angry in that moment. I said no. I couldn’t take it anymore. I got up and left. I just walked home. I couldn’t handle it. We lived about 2 miles from the church in suburban Indiana. I didn’t even fully understand yet what was going on with my family. I was confused, hurt, and alone. No adults in this situation were helping or even just showing compassion and comfort. I never returned to youth group after that.

As the years went on, I couldn’t escape the feeling that I was being punished, that this was the price I had to pay for being part of a lie. I thought, Maybe God’s angry at me. Maybe this is my fault somehow. It was a heavy burden for a teenager to carry, and it left scars that would take years to heal.

Through all of this, the words from James 1 kept echoing in my mind. I had memorized them years earlier, back when I was bossy enough to make my friends do the same: “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds…” At the time, those words felt like a cruel joke. Joy? How could I possibly find joy in watching my dad fall apart, in seeing my family’s name dragged through the mud? And all this shame?

But as much as I resented those words, I clung to them. They were like a lifeline, a reminder that maybe—just maybe—there was a purpose to all of this pain. James talks about perseverance and the growth that comes through trials, and even though I didn’t fully understand it back then, those verses gave me a strange sense of hope.

Thank you for reading these first chapters. If this story resonated, I’d love to hear your reflections in the comments.

Vulnerability is how we heal — together. 🖤 Find me on socials @miss.wind.studios