I grew up a fundamentalist. Twelve years spent in fear, waiting for the world to end. I lived so close to death that I could feel it brushing against my fingertips. Always around the corner was the Rapture, the Tribulation, the falling bombs, the assaults of the devil. I tried to root the evil out of myself, first by starving, then by systematically divesting myself of the things that I loved. All my efforts seemed hopeless. God didn’t want me – or so I thought. It turns out that the root of the evil wasn’t inside me at all. It was in the mental virus that plagued my church and those around it. My homeschool community. My world was full of it.
The Phoenix and Olive Branch
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