Over the next few months, I am impressed by how the whole country comes together, businesses donating millions of dollars of supplies and food. By Christmas, the worst of the crisis has passed, and Laura is back on her feet.
With my probation over and AIDS tests clear, I receive an invitation to move to the young adult Home in Taipei. It’s a Home with five couples around my age, and only two FGA couples, one of which are the Taiwan area leaders, JB and Sweetie. This setup is supposed to give us young people, SGAs, more of an opportunity to run our own Home, rather than being in a Home where the older adults decide everything. Mama Maria recognizes our need for self-determination, within the bounds of the Family structure and rules.
At first, I’m happy to be with my peers, but my attempts to build new friendships fall flat. It’s a large ten-bedroom house, but couples and families take the larger rooms, and I share a tiny room with an eighteen-year-old girl—the only other single in the home. At twenty-two years old, I am still unmarried and heading into spinsterhood by the Family’s standards. I can’t avoid the stigma, but I put my self-consciousness to the side and try my best to fit in. Yet no matter how much I smile, I feel a subtle yet pervasive air of jealousy and suspicion.
I soon learn that the Shepherds have instructed the married men in the house to share God’s love with the single girls. The wives are supposedly fine with it, but this is blatantly untrue. As soon as one of the married men approaches me, his wife begins to ice me out. I reject his advances, but he persists, magnanimous in his willingness to share with me. This is a road I’ve been down before, and I don’t want another breaking. Instead of resisting and rebelling, I submit, once, and then I avoid letting him catch me alone so that he can make another “request.”
I make sure to schedule any sharing near my period to reduce my chance of getting pregnant. Still, there is no one I am interested in marrying and, after meeting most of the Family guys in the region, I have little hope of finding one soon.
My anxiety remains at a low-level burn while I try to put on a joyful face. The only person who seems to care that I’m suffering is John, one of the few older men who lives in the house. Married to a Japanese woman, John has a head full of white hair and kind, open eyes; everything about him seems trustworthy, steady, reliable. He often takes me along as his witnessing partner or errand buddy.
He encourages me to express myself, so I talk about how lonely I feel, about my doubts and fears, and boredom. But I keep the worst of it to myself. I look at him and the other forty-and fifty-year-old adults and see my life stretch before me in a long monotonous line. I feel like a dead tree, not learning or growing, drooping and slowly decaying. At night, I lie awake, plagued by questions. What is the Family really doing? We blow in and out of countries, bringing a few boxes of clothes or aid, wearing our martyrdom like a thick winter coat.
In this Home, we aren’t even doing humanitarian work like I did in Kazakhstan. With the earthquake crisis mostly passed, things are back to normal, meaning we are selling CDs to raise money while showing pictures of all the good works we’ve done in the past. My days are the usual round robin of Devotions, cleaning, fundraising, more cleaning, with only a weekly movie and glass of wine to look forward to. For Devotions, we read variations on the same material over and over, no new ideas. I didn’t think I’d miss the repetition of writing out Chinese characters, but I want to learn something, anything new.
The pointlessness hits me hard. I’ve always prided myself on being resilient, being able to stay positive when things are bleak, or at least being able to bounce back in a day or two. And I rarely ever cry, a few times a year at most, and I’m proud of that. What’s wrong with me? Why do I feel like bursting into tears every day, all day long? Over and over, I feel the tears welling up in my eyes, and I ashamedly try to dash them away and buck up.
I pour my heart out in the only place I can—my journal.
Sometimes, like now, I feel so low, so worthless, like I count for nothing. Like I am not and cannot accomplish anything of note, of worth, so why live?
If I’m not doing anything worthwhile in the Family through all my struggling and trying, then why don’t I just leave and live for myself. Here I feel like I’m constantly trying to please God, but I can never make the grade spiritually, never be good enough, selfless enough. What am I doing if I’m not making a difference?
I want to LIVE. I want to DO. I want to MOVE. I want to SHAKE. I want to CHANGE . . .
After the tiny taste of freedom in China, I can’t understand the reason I’ve had to sacrifice so much. Things I’d taken for granted seem almost unbearable now. I can’t understand why I can’t have any money or why I need permission and a buddy to walk to the 7-Eleven. I don’t want to leave God’s service, but I don’t know how much more misery I can take. I find myself longing to be anyplace but where I am. I’d thought about it fleetingly in China, but for the first time, I seriously entertain the idea of leaving the Family.
I’ve heard whispers that a number of young people have left in the six years since Grandpa’s passing, either to rebel against the restrictive rules and constant supervision, or to indulge in worldly behavior. Some of the FGAs blame the Internet and its worldly influence for the growing exodus.
I have no contact with the Backsliders. Once someone leaves, we don’t have a forwarding address, so finding someone who has left the Family is nearly impossible. Secrecy is built into our DNA. New disciples never use their legal names; they are known only by the biblical ones they take upon joining. Even those who are born into the Family often take a different name when they get older, as I did briefly with Jewel. This makes finding people even harder. It also ensures that if someone leaves with a grudge, they will be unable to name others to the authorities. But even though I don’t know how people leave or where they go, we all hear the stories about what happens to them—dark, ugly tales of how those who reject God’s will end up on drugs, working as strippers, or in jail.
I don’t want that to happen to me.