Pinched for Jesus

Chapter 2

Today, in 2025, my children have families of their own, and I’m retired from my career. Maybe it’s the quieter days, or simply getting more sleep, but my childhood stories have drifted back to me. They had been silent for a long time, tucked away in some far corner of my memory.

Some stories, like Patch Baby, felt frozen in place for decades, as if someone had slammed a giant pause button in the middle of my childhood. My parents, Ray and Joy, were married for twenty years (1955–1975) before a bitter divorce. In the calm that followed, I had a brief stretch of peace. And then came Emmitt. Overnight, life with my dad and brothers just ended.

My mom married Emmitt in 1977, right after my eleventh birthday. I remember our first meeting—it gave me an odd sensation, as if all the air had been sucked out of the room. He talked nonstop, filling every silence and absorbing all the attention. Emmitt wasn’t interested in stories unless they were about him, and he never let me finish a sentence without cutting me off. It made me feel small, almost invisible. That’s when I quietly put my stories on a shelf, saving them for a time when it would feel safe to take them out again.

After fifth grade, we moved into Emmitt’s house, leaving behind everything that had shaped my childhood: our home on 57th Street, my school, my friends, my church. I missed it all—the pink bedroom my mother had decorated for me, the freedom of pedaling my bike to friends’ houses, the smell of my favorite cinnamon rolls cooling on the counter, and yes, even the comfort of my Baptist upbringing.

Three years before I ever met Emmitt, my faith had already taken shape. When I was eight, at a Baptist camp called Nunny Cha Ha—yes, that was actually the name—I asked God into my heart. It was simple and sweet. Even though I still got into trouble now and then, I grew up believing “once saved, always saved,” trusting that God would live in my heart forever. I didn’t realize it at the time, but my Baptist faith was going to be tested.

The church I grew up in was calm, almost like a safe little bubble. Emmitt’s Assemblies of God church was nothing like that. The drums pounded so loud that I felt it in my ribs, people shouted in tongues, music ricocheted off the walls, and some even danced right down the aisle.

I will never forget my first service. I sat wedged between Mom and Emmitt, trying to stay calm. Right in the middle of the preacher’s prayer, someone behind us erupted into hallelujahs…then launched into full-on speaking in tongues. My body betrayed me. I started shaking with nervous laughter. Mom swooped in, arm around my head, hand clamped over my mouth, while Emmitt simultaneously pinched my leg above the knee. I was trapped in a human vise, trying not to die of laughter. They didn’t release me until they decided I could be trusted to sit still.

The new style of service wasn’t the only shock. New rules surfaced—rules unlike those from my Baptist education. When I found out I had to confess my sins every single night just to stay on good terms with Jesus, I panicked. It felt like God had started paying extra-close attention, zooming in on everything I did. And the rule about keeping my thoughts pure? Yeah, right. I was eleven—half my brain busy scheming pranks, rolling my eyes at grown-ups, and plotting tiny rebellions. I didn’t stand a chance.

Prayer worked in both faiths, but the Assemblies of God took it to superhero levels—people being healed right there in the pews, as if miracles were on tap. It terrified me, but what mattered most then was being accepted by my new stepsisters, so I became a little church chameleon, doing my best to blend in. Had I been older, I probably would have said, “Thanks, but no thanks,” and marched myself back to the Baptists—no harm, no foul.

The most painful part was watching my mother give in to a religion I don’t think she believed. The real tension, though, was between me and Emmitt—a man telling me what to believe and refusing to let me ask questions. I was eleven. My faith—small and fragile, like a mustard seed—was crushed before it could grow. My world felt smaller, controlled. Mom said Emmitt was the head of our family and that we had to accept his faith without question. That’s when my struggle with religion began and a lifetime of questions started.

We’ll get back to the story of religion later.

Looking back decades later, I see my mother differently. There was no winning with Emmitt, so she gave up. Her broken heart became damaged by disease—familial hypercholesterolemia—which eventually led to open-heart surgery at sixty.

By then, we weren’t close; I came home only for holidays, keeping everything on the surface. In my thirties, living eight hours away in San Antonio, Texas, I needed the distance. And yet, I realized how fragile and fleeting our connections had become. I still feel guilty that it took a health crisis to remind me how much we mattered to each other.

This was before the internet, so I began calling her every Saturday morning from my kitchen landline, giving her a rundown of the kids’ activities. My children were both our favorite subjects. She listened closely to every detail; nothing about them was too small to matter.

Later, in the 2000s, email joined the mix, allowing for deeper conversations and giving us a new way to connect across miles and memories. My relationship with my dad was just blood and history. Nothing more. We spoke rarely. When we did, he never quite met my eyes, choosing instead to look somewhere over my forehead. Still, every once in a while—usually over email—he’d let something through. A question answered, a detail offered, and for a moment, I could see the dad I remembered.

Little by little, those glimpses grew. By the 2010s, my dad, Ray, was offering more—typing out answers, thoughts, and memories I’d never heard him say aloud. Once, he wrote that the happiest time of his life was coaching the boys’ baseball team at Southwest Friendship Baptist Church after I was born. The very next email I received—from my mother—said the exact same thing. Without knowing what the other had written, they had both named the same moment of their lives as the happiest.

That was when I decided to preserve our stories—not simply as memories, but as pieces of a past my parents could no longer share with each other. Their matching answers, after decades of separation, revealed that even broken families once shared a whole, unspoken beginning.

My voice is important, and by writing my stories, no one can cut me off or interrupt me. In giving these stories a home on the page, the memories that were once silent now speak—for themselves, and for me.