An Exvangelical Memory in Minor Keys
Content Note: This essay contains vivid descriptions of religious ecstasy, bodily autonomy, and the complex relationship between pain and devotion. It may resonate deeply with those who’ve experienced high-control spirituality, menstrual stigma, or the pressure to perform faith. Please care for yourself as you read.
I. Invocation
It was a vortex of forgetting.
The singing. The shouting.
Hands raised in praise—or surrender.
Sweat covered my body, from head to stomping feet.
I clapped. I danced. I was worshipping God.
I was losing myself.
I had lost myself.
I forgot myself.
I wanted to forget—
Forget the pain of problems I didn’t ask for,
didn’t want,
couldn’t carry but had to.
II. The Slaughterhouse
People danced in the aisles, between the pews—
bodies trembling, spinning, falling.
Some collapsed to the floor,
writhing in the Spirit,
mouths pouring out tongues too wild for translation.
The music rose—fierce, relentless—thundering in my chest,
filling the sanctuary, lifting us toward heaven.
We sang to God.
We danced to God.
We offered our bodies like incense—smoke and sacrifice.
The choir sang songs of enchantment,
and we followed—
our voices joining the cauldron of spell-making.
We were spellbound.
All of us.
We were slain in the Spirit—
murdered by God, and thankful for it.
The sanctuary was a slaughterhouse
of bodies in various stages
of spiritual, euphoric death-to-self.
We were touched—
by His holiness,
by His presence.
It was a palpable electricity—
thick in the air,
threading through pews,
curling into lungs.
Making us holy.
Making us perfect offerings.
There was no escape.
The ushers—
dressed in white uniforms or black suits—
guarded their posts with solemn vigilance.
No one left the sanctuary
unless they deemed your request reasonable—
a whisper into their ear,
or a shout—
just to be heard over the music
and the chaos of holy dancing in the aisles.
III. Silent Blood
I didn’t leave these sessions often.
Part of me was fascinated—
part of me horrified—
by what was happening around me.
But mostly, I stayed because I didn’t want to explain
that I needed to change my period pad.
The sweat and blood between my legs had soaked through.
Sometimes, I doubled up—
two pads layered for extra front and back protection—
hoping it would be enough
to keep me dancing, worshipping without womanhood staining the scene.
IV. Mirrors and Masks
It was fascinating—
watching the children mimic,
almost perfectly,
everything they saw us doing.
The clapping.
The shouting.
The falling.
They were little mirrors—rehearsing devotion before they could spell it.
And it was horrifying—
to know they might grow up to be like me.
Scared.
Performative.
Fighting to stay authentic on the inside.
Carrying unanswered questions
like sacred contraband.
V. The Tambourine
In those worship sessions, whenever I could,
I reached for the tambourine.
It was a sanctioned way to move—
to perform my faith,
to show how in tune I was, how musical.
But inside?
Inside, I was beating out my frustrations.
My unspoken questions.
My doubts.
My sins.
Each rhythm was a confession.
Each jingle a cry.
Sometimes I struck it so hard
my hands swelled,
and tiny drops of blood
escaped from my unholy palms—
drawn by the pins that held its jingling pieces together.
No one saw the blood.
Only the praise.
There were times I got lost—
lost in the rhythm,
in the sound,
in the pulse of bodies swaying like tall grass in a storm.
I clapped. I danced. I played the tambourine
as though my survival depended on it.
Sometimes I didn’t know if it was sweat or tears running down my face.
My body had to release the agony somehow—
the ache I was living in,
the questions I was not allowed to ask,
the suffocation I was trained to call salvation.
Worship became a kind of exile from myself,
and also—
a return.
VI. A Clock Inside the Wound
I remember wearing a watch with the face turned inward on my left wrist.
The small, ribbed adjustment knob rested just below the line from my palm’s base.
When I clapped,
the knob would press into my skin.
Sometimes, it cut into my wrist,
and a faint trickle of blood slowly collected beneath the watch face.
Not much—just enough for release.
Looking back,
I realize I was self-harming without even knowing it.
Those who saw it were impressed—
that I worshipped with such force,
clapping so loudly and passionately
that blood was the result.
I knew how to worship.
I knew how to dance.
I knew how to speak in tongues.
I knew how to be just like them.
But did they want to be like me?
VII. Grief and Freedom
That tiny scar on the inside of my left wrist
has taken years to fade.
Every time I catch sight of it,
I’m reminded of that slaughterhouse of praise and worship—
the place where I bled to appease a god
who demanded I be a slave,
who asked me to give up my life
in exchange for conditional love.
Remembering those Sunday night praise and worship services—
testimony services or spontaneous praise breakouts—
doesn’t make me queasy the way it once did.
I don’t miss them.
I grieve them.
I grieve the time wasted in self-abandonment
to a religious system built on manipulation.
A system that kept me anxious,
frightened,
always performing.
I grieve the moments I didn’t say phuck it and walk away.
But where would I have gone?
How would I have survived?
As a teen, everything and everyone I knew was in the church.
The world beyond those walls was unknown, unreachable.
I was dying.
And nobody knew.
VIII. A Pulse of Rebellion
In no small way,
rhythmically beating on that tambourine
saved something sacred in me—
that deep, authentic part of myself
that refused to be erased.
It offered moments of escape,
of comfort,
of release—
bursts of stolen freedom
amid the cacophony of tongue-talking,
holy-rolling,
charismatic spell-inducing music.
That tambourine was my rebellion—
loud, percussive, insistent—
but cloaked as praise.
An acceptable offering to a god
who demanded my silence,
my obedience,
my phucking life.
Yet,
I offered him music.
And through that,
I found my pulse again.
As you’ve come to the end of this piece, know that you’re not alone on your healing journey.
With an open, tender, and healing heart,
Meagan