Banished: Surviving My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church by Drain Lauren

Author:Drain, Lauren [Drain, Lauren]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Spirituality, Psychology, Biography, Biography & Autobiography / Religious, Religion
ISBN: 9781455512423
Amazon: 1455512427
Goodreads: 15791137
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2013-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts; and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.

--1 Peter 3:15

Throughout high school, I lived a tightly controlled life. Teenage girls not in the church experimented with makeup, looked at cute boys, went on dates, and danced at the prom. The teenagers within the church were expected to focus on daily picketing, school, and part-time jobs. We were also supposed to help our parents by contributing to the family finances and babysitting the younger children. At first I resented it, but eventually suppression started to feel more like support. Most of the church members seemed so cheerful and friendly in their judgments of me that it didn't feel like they were condemning me, and I really was trying to learn the right ways. Compared to my house arrest in Florida, I felt like I had a lot more freedoms now. I could go to the movies, have a cell phone, borrow the car, travel to pickets without my parents, and hang out at my friends' houses. These freedoms came with heavy monitoring, but that didn't really bother me. The longer I was there, the more I bought into the concept that if I needed to be corrected, these were expressions of love. Sometimes I had a fleeting wish that I could have a boyfriend, or at least talk to some of the guys in school, but I wouldn't have traded anything for my support system in the church.

I loved sports and being athletic, so the fact that physical fitness was a priority in the church was great. The pastor demanded that we respect our bodies like temples, as stated in the Bible. At one time, the pastor had been overweight himself, but he had overcome what he'd seen as a weakness of character and was now a health nut who insisted everybody in the congregation partake in an exercise program of some sort, although I noticed that different people interpreted this regulation differently. As evidenced by the range of body sizes among church members, the fitness program was self-administered, not official.

Megan and I frequently exercised together, from practicing in front of an exercise/belly-dancing DVD in her bedroom to running a five-mile loop from the house to the high school football field and back. If we didn't have much time, we'd do laps on the track in the yard, where sixteen laps made a mile.

We liked to run every day because we were cross-country runners on the high school track team. We traveled with our teammates on the school bus for the meets. Nobody bothered us about being Westboro members, and we didn't try to incite controversy unless we were picketing. Sometimes I'd run five to ten miles on my own, loving the freedom of just being out of the house for a while. As long as I carried my cell phone, Mom allowed it.

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