Wayward: A Memoir of Spiritual Warfare and Sexual Purity

recollection.

Prologue

I banged my head against the concrete wall. My panic subsided with every dull thud, replaced by a numbness that felt like mercy. Thud. Thud. The back of my scalp was bleeding a little, but I knew my hair would cover it. That was why I didn’t cut myself. I was a TV and film actress, and I never knew when a job might require me to be in a swimsuit. The knives in my kitchen tempted me, just as my parents’ knives had tempted me to slit my wrists when I was thirteen, but the thickness of my dark hair covered my self-inflicted wounds less conspicuously than bandages. I touched the back of my head with my fingertips. Blood was a comforting reminder of my mortality. Life will all be over one day, the red droplets whispered.

I was twenty-one years old in the fall of 2007. My panic attacks had been a nightly occurrence for nearly two weeks. I didn’t know then what a panic attack was, or why I felt too afraid of the world to leave my home, even to get food. I didn’t connect the dots of the terror I was experiencing to my Christian upbringing.

My skull buzzed from the slamming. My heart rate slowed. I felt dizzy, peaceful. A dreamlike high of endorphins swept over me, lulling my aching body into the limpness of relief. For a moment, I felt like laughing. A giggle escaped my mouth, followed by a fearful whimper. My sliver of tranquility faded with panic’s return. It slithered from my gut to my neck, crushing my lungs and making them beg for air. Panic bore its way through the haze of my body’s natural painkillers, and I tried to fight it, but panic won, forcing me to my feet. I paced my loft in circles. Time didn’t exist those nights. When I needed a break from my relentless walk, I slapped myself as hard as I could until my face tingled with shock. For a moment, I could hold still. My lungs drained empty. My heart pounded between my ears. Peace lasted only a few seconds before panic forced me to pace again, wringing my arms and contorting them into twisted shapes. When I wanted them to stop, I threw my hand into my mouth and bit down as hard as I could, my knuckles raw from where I chewed them earlier. I kept chewing until I tasted the rusty tang of broken scabs.

Sometimes I felt like there were two of me: the girl going insane and the observer who watched her, helpless, yet indifferent. Without God, there was no longer a point to life.

1

The Lord’s Army

Attennnnntion! hollered the children’s pastor, a smiling young woman we called Miss Valerie. I joined the clamor of a dozen or so kindergartners lining up in even rows to face her. Knock your feet together, she said. The rubber of tennis shoes squeaked into place. Right hands to your eyebrows. Everyone mirrored her military salute. And march!" We stomped our feet while our young voices belted the stirring tune.

I may never march in the infantry

Ride in the cavalry

Shoot the artillery

I may never fly o’er the enemy

But I’m in the Lord’s army

Yes, sir!

It was my favorite song. Every time I sang it, I fantasized about riding a penny-colored horse into battle amid cannon blasts, like a soldier in the movie Glory that Mom and Dad liked to watch. My siblings and I weren’t allowed to see the Civil War film, but one time I claimed to have accidentally forgotten a toy in the living room so I could sneak a peek at the TV screen. The guilt of lying made my ears prickle, but the combat scenes accompanied by sweeping music mesmerized me. I didn’t know the gruesome effects of real warfare. I just thought Denzel Washington and Matthew Broderick looked handsome with their navy uniforms and bayonetted rifles, their brows furrowed and voices tense with a sense of mission. I wanted to be part of a mission. Singing I’m in the Lord’s Army was as close as I could get.

After my peers and I finished the song and took our seats on the worn carpet, Miss Valerie explained the deeper meaning behind the lyrics. They gave me my life’s purpose.

There’s a war going on between God and Satan, Miss Valerie said. "Satan wants to hurt you. He wants to steal your souls away from God. But God’s on your side. He wants you to join His army and help Him beat Satan and his bad guys, the demons. Does anyone know how we do this?"

Miss Valerie’s ominous expression made me squirm on my heels. I shook my head, eager and a little scared to learn how I could help God fight Satan. A girl raised her hand.

What are the demons? she asked.

Demons, Miss Valerie said, are the angels God banished from heaven when he sent Satan to hell. They’re the bad angels. We have the good angels on our team. Does anyone know how we can help God’s angels by being good teammates? No?

She opened her Bible and read from the book of Ephesians. ‘Put on the full armor of God so that when the day of evil comes—’ She paused to look up at us. That means when Satan and his demons come. ‘You may be able to stand your ground. Stand firm with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. Take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.’

Most of the verse went over our heads, but Miss Valerie was a creative teacher. She set down her Bible and grinned at us. I brought toys.

We all cheered. From a box, Miss Valerie pulled out several kid-sized medieval armor pieces. First, she said, holding up a plastic silver belt. We have the belt of truth. It’s very important to always tell the truth. When we tell lies, we give Satan power, and his army advances. But when we tell the truth, God’s army advances.

Miss Valerie handed the christened belt of truth to a boy sitting in the front row, telling him to pass it around.

We took turns trying on the props as Miss Valerie described what they symbolized. The breastplate of righteousness, she said, means that we always need to do what is right. You know the bad feeling you get when you know you’re doing something wrong? That’s God reminding you that you’re letting Satan get closer. God gave us feelings so we can understand what the Holy Spirit is trying to tell us, so we stay fighting on God’s side.

I knew the bad feeling she was talking about. I didn’t like it, especially now that I knew the feeling meant Satan was getting closer. I imagined a hideous monkey with horns, decaying flesh, and red eyes creeping up behind me. I wouldn’t be sneaking peeks at Glory anymore. Not if my prickly feeling of guilt meant I was letting Satan’s army advance.

The shoes on your feet should always lead you to walk in peace, Miss Valerie continued. God doesn’t like fighting. He doesn’t like when you argue with your parents. He doesn’t like when you’re mean to other kids. Jesus said, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers.’ Do you want to be peacemakers?

I nodded with everyone else, but something didn’t sound right. If God wanted us to be peacemakers, why was He calling us into His army to fight?

Miss Valerie held up a plastic shield with a coat of arms stamped on its front. The shield of faith is one of your most important tools in God’s army, she said. There are people out there who don’t believe in Jesus, and Satan’s going to use them to try and get you. If you ever doubt God’s love, you let Satan win. Faith is the weapon you need to block out his evil arrows.

I promised myself I would never doubt God’s love.

Miss Valerie explained that the helmet of salvation was our belief that Jesus died on the cross for our sins. You don’t want to sin, do you?

We shook our heads.

Good. And last, we have the sword of the Spirit.

Several kids ooh-ed and aah-ed over the grand finale of armor, clamoring to be the first to hold the plastic weapon.

The sword of the Spirit is God’s word, Miss Valerie said. How many of you have your own Bible?

My hand rose, along with several others.

Very good, said Miss Valerie. The Bible is your sword, and with it, you can kill thousands of demons. Satan’s afraid of God’s word, because he knows it contains the truth. So whenever you’re feeling scared, you just read your Bible and Satan will run away.

I imagined flinging open my illustrated children’s Bible at the horned monkey and watching him scuttle into the shadows.

And remember, Miss Valerie continued. There are people out there who don’t believe in God, and they’re going to try to destroy you with doubt. Satan appears as an angel of light, a good angel, so even if they’re saying things that sound true or feel good, you need to turn away from them. Memorize Scripture so you can be prepared to defend your faith. You have the truth. This is your sword, and with it, you can help God’s army grow and beat Satan and his evil bad guys!

I wasn’t much of a cheerer, but even I was swept into the victorious whooping.

On our way out the door when children’s ministry ended, Miss Valerie handed us each a sheet of paper with a picture of a medieval soldier printed on it. She’d written down what each piece of his armor symbolized according to her Bible lesson. This is to remind you to suit up in your armor every day, she said. Truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation, and the Bible.

I committed the picture to memory. I would be a good soldier in the Lord’s army.

People would always say I took things too seriously. My faith in particular left no room for mistakes, not when the consequences were heaven or hell. That night in my children’s ministry class was the first time I can remember being taught how to wage spiritual warfare. From a young age, I understood being a Christian was a grave matter.

I was seven years old the first time I questioned God’s goodness. My family had gone to visit a Baptist church no one can remember the name of. There was no Sunday school for children, so I was sitting in the pew when the pastor opened his sermon with the story of how his two-year-old daughter had accidentally suffocated to death in a dry-cleaning bag.

I didn’t understand how God could let something like this happen, the man said, tears pouring from his eyes. But the Lord asked me to have the faith of Job.

Job, I learned, was a man in the Bible whom God allowed Satan to torment by killing Job’s family, among other tribulations. God wanted to prove to Satan that Job’s faith would remain solid no matter what. Seeing the pastor cry made me cry, and back at home, my mind refused to let go of the image of a toddler gasping for air in a clear dry-cleaning bag. It could have been one of my brothers or sisters. My belief in God’s omnipotence and my horror at the things He allowed collided for the first time. I found Dad in the dining room, his lanky frame bent over the table as he read his Bible.

Dad, I said. Why did God kill the little girl?

Oh, he didn’t kill her, honey, Dad said. He allowed her to die.

But why didn’t he save her?

Dad cleared his throat. Well, he said. Sometimes God does things we don’t understand.

But he can do anything, I said.

Yes, He’s all-powerful. There’s nothing in the world God can’t do.

Then why didn’t He stop her from suffocating?

Dad explained that sometimes God challenged us by allowing bad things to happen, and we wouldn’t always get to understand His ways.

Outrage surged through me at this perceived injustice. I didn’t have the vocabulary to share my feelings with Dad.

But God loves us, Dad continued. And everything He allows in our lives is to bring us closer to Him.

It occurred to me that maybe Dad wasn’t being truthful. Maybe he knew the real reason God allowed bad things to happen and he just didn’t want to tell me. Maybe he thought I was too young. Troubled and unconvinced, I gave up asking why God had allowed the little girl to suffocate. It didn’t make sense to me that God would let such a thing happen and then not even comfort her parents by telling them why. Either Dad was lying to me or God wasn’t as loving as he thought.

My family of seven lived in Rockford, Illinois, a once-thriving industrial city that had lost its sense of purpose. Our house was a shabby but striking Victorian peeling with paint and surrounded by tall oak trees. I loved it from the moment I saw its gingerbread trim. A turret curved along one corner, where floor-to-ceiling windows spilled sunlight over the designs of a parquet floor. Three slate fireplaces, crown molding around every window, and a spiral staircase that wound four stories high made me feel like I lived in a castle. The Victorian would be the only place that ever truly felt like home to me.

The church my family attended was called Vine City Fellowship. Vine City wasn’t an average church with two services on a Sunday morning. Neither did its members like referring to their gatherings as church, opting for the less formal term fellowship to describe their Saturday night assemblies in the basketball gym of a local school. Potlucks were called common meals, Sunday school was called children’s ministry, and the people of Vine City thought of Jesus as a salt of the earth dude who didn’t need His followers to dress up for Him. They encouraged a come-as-youare environment emphasizing Jesus’ love for the downtrodden and outcast. My parents, who had been missionaries and pastors in the Foursquare Gospel Church, liked that Vine City was nondenominational. Though the fellowship had roots in the Vineyard denomination, which had further roots in Pentecostalism, my parents and the people of Vine City felt God could move more freely when we didn’t limit Him with branch doctrine.

For all of their emphasis on being nondenominational, Vine City’s members seemed to like thinking of themselves as a Messianic Jewish congregation with Pentecostal leanings. Like Messianic Jews, we practiced certain traditions of Judaism while believing Jesus to be the Messiah. Like Pentecostals, we let our services be guided by the spontaneity of the Holy Spirit. Ours was the kind of church where people danced and waved streamers during worship, where young and old alike skipped down the aisles carrying homemade banners emblazoned with the Lion of Judah. We celebrated Christian holidays, like Easter and Christmas, and Jewish holy days, like Passover and Rosh Hashanah. I went to Jewish dance classes and Hebrew summer camp. Dad said it was important for Christians to stay close to their Jewish roots. After all, Jesus had been a Jew.

People would always ask why my parents decided to homeschool my siblings and me. Was it for religious reasons, they wondered? Did my parents not trust the government? The truth was that Mom simply enjoyed teaching. My college-educated mother happened to be a good teacher. I wouldn’t be able to appreciate until I was an adult how well rounded her homeschool regimen was compared to others. In some circles in the early ’90s, teaching one’s children at home bordered on child neglect. Mom’s diligence kept us prepared in case a social worker ever came knocking. When I picture a typical homeschool day, I see Mom cooking at the kitchen stovetop with a wooden spoon in hand and a teacher’s curriculum on the counter, my siblings and me gathered around the yellowed oak table. Mom’s faded linen apron over navy blue sweatpants is the uniform she wears in my memory; her cola-colored hair scrunchied into a bun with a cowlick of bangs arching above her freckles. Dad called the arch her quail tail. His brown eyes always twinkled when he bopped it.

I never stopped wondering what it would have been like to go to school. As the eldest of five, my two brothers and two sisters gave me constant playmates, so I rarely felt deprived of social interaction. When we went to Vine City on Saturday nights, I felt the sting of how sheltered I was. The jokes I didn’t get and school gossip I couldn’t follow excluded me from most conversations. My parents forbade me from most of pop culture, so whenever my peers debated FernGully, Home Alone, and Jumanji, I had two choices: pretend to know what they were talking about and risk being exposed as a dweeb, or remain in the background. I usually opted to remain in the background.

On the ice was the only place I ever felt cool; the only place I felt I stood out among my peers in a good way. I’d been taking figure skating lessons since I was four. Whenever school kids came to the rink for field trips, their mouths dropped when they saw me land a sequence of jumps or when they admired my ice-scarring spins. Sometimes a few kids even asked for my autograph, thinking I might be the next Oksana Baiul. I secretly hoped so. I loved skating. The cold rush of wind in my hair and the sparkly costumes I wore in competitions made me dream of being an Olympic gold medalist, like Kristi Yamaguchi. The trophies on my dresser told me I might have a shot if I worked hard enough.

My two best friends were Danika Muller and Bethany Andersen. Their families also went to Vine City, and while Danika wasn’t always there and Bethany was a year younger than me, we played a lot because our parents were good friends. Every weekend seemed to include a sleepover at someone’s house. I liked going to Danika’s because she made me laugh until I cried, and her mom made the best sunny-side-up eggs. I liked going to Bethany’s because she enjoyed inventing businesses with me, from lemonade stands to church newspapers, and her mom always had chocolate chip cookies.

My mom was what she proudly called a homemaker. My dad, a former police officer and pastor, operated a self-owned snack vending business. My parents loved the freedom self-employment offered. There was nowhere they would rather be than in the great outdoors, and on weekdays with good weather, the seven of us enjoyed the emptiness of state parks and visitor’s center museums. Sometimes Mom brought our schoolbooks with us, so she could instruct us on picnic blankets while we took turns fishing, or drill us with spelling bees before treating us to cider doughnuts at a local orchard. Mom never failed to turn an outing into a fun learning event.

By the time I was eight, I had grown comfortable with the routine that shaped the elementary years of my childhood. I homeschooled and ice-skated Monday through Friday, went to Vine City Fellowship on Saturdays, and usually did something outdoorsy with my family on Sundays. I didn’t know it then, but these were the years I would one day yearn for, the memories of stability I would cling to as God started asking my parents to do unstable things.

2

Signs and Wonders

In January of 1994, on the snow-covered plains of Ontario, Canada, a spiritual revival was birthed that would change my family forever. It would come to be known as the Toronto Blessing. Some say it began when a pastor named Randy Clark prayed over a small congregation in the outskirts of Toronto. The Holy Spirit fell upon them, and just like the first Pentecost in the book of Acts, the worshippers were bathed in laughter and weeping. The professed anointing spread to other local churches, and then to churches farther still. By the time the Toronto Blessing reached my fellowship in Rockford, the movement was fast on its way to becoming a worldwide phenomenon. It changed Vine City in a matter of weeks. We had always been a tongues-speaking church, but the Toronto Blessing allowed the power of God’s Spirit to fully unleash in ways that reminded me of the Great Awakenings in my homeschool history books. The first time I watched grown-ups seize and fall to the floor frightened me. Soon, the symptoms of God’s touch became just another Saturday night.

Adults called it being slain by the Spirit. They likened being slain to being drunk, and the manifestations of the Spirit did indeed mimic symptoms of alcohol intoxication, with raucous laughter and uncontrollable weeping accompanying the slurred words and staggered gaits of those affected. Get drunk in the Spirit! became a popular catchphrase, not unlike the Get high on Jesus! slogan from the revivals of the ’60s and ’70s.

I never got slain by the Spirit. I desperately wanted to be.

Perhaps no one was more famous for pouring out the wine of the Spirit than evangelist Rodney Howard-Browne. I was ten when my parents took me to see the self-proclaimed Holy Ghost bartender. Rodney Howard-Browne was known for his ability to channel God’s sense of humor, and Spirit-led fits of the giggles interrupted the schedule of many a conference where he was present. These mass giggle fits were called Holy Laughter. When Dad encouraged me to receive prayer from the man who could send people howling to the floor with the point of his finger, I knew that if the Holy Spirit would slay me through anyone, it would be him.

Mr. Howard-Brown was puffy-chested and red-faced with a thick neck constrained by a tie. He doled out Holy Laughter from the stage as I made my way toward him, watching with nervousness as people were yanked backward by an invisible force. They landed on the floor in breathless states of delirium. I worried being slain might hurt, but Mom told me it didn’t because God cushioned people’s bodies supernaturally when they fell. I reached an opening that allowed Mr. Howard-Browne to see me. He seemed excited to spot a child among the throng of adults, motioning me up the center stairs leading to the stage he stood on. I was almost to the top when his meaty hand fell on my head and stopped me. I stood with my arms limp at my side, focusing on Mr. Howard-Browne’s belt buckle. It felt like everyone’s eyes were on me.

Bless your little one, Lord, Mr. Howard-Browne said into the mic. Then he launched into a repetition of words inviting the Spirit to slay me. More new wine, yes Lord. The power of God, the fire of the Holy Ghost. Yes Lord, yes Lord, yes Lord.

I waited for the rush of the Holy Spirit that I was sure would hit me at any second. It felt like minutes passed, and I knew I was taking longer than anyone else had to fall. Mr. Howard-Browne’s voice grew louder, as though he commanded the Spirit to hurry up. The weight of his hand forced my head into an awkward angle and my neck muscles started to ache. I scrunched up my shoulders to relieve the pain, but it wasn’t enough. I stepped down one stair. Mr. Howard-Browne’s hand moved with me. Then I realized his pressure was deliberate.

I barely finished the thought when my neck gave way under his sudden force. Mr. Howard-Browne’s fingers pressed into my temples as he crushed me like a soda can, causing purple stars to blind me and a searing pain to shoot from the base of my skull through my neck. I crumpled on the stairs, my hands and knees landing on different steps. My vision came back in pulses. Humiliation coursed through my body in hot waves. Or was it anger?

I strained to look up at Mr. Howard-Browne, desperate to hope that maybe it had been an accident and he’d apologize for hurting me. He was in the middle of celebrating God’s power.

Hallelujah, he said. Glory to God. Thank you, Jesus.

Then he looked down at me. His eyes seemed to glare with a warning, as if to say, Make me look good.

Maybe I imagined it. Maybe I misread the slight rise of his eyebrows or mistook the snarl in his lip for a threat. Whatever I saw, it compelled my body to respond with automatic obedience. I quickly lay myself on the steps, closing my eyes as I had seen all of the others do before me. I did not laugh. When it felt like enough time had passed, I quietly made my way back to my chair and decided never to tell my parents what happened. Who would believe that a famous pastor had pushed a little girl down a flight of stairs?

There was another reason I didn’t want to say anything: If anyone knew the Holy Spirit hadn’t been the one to push me over, they’d know there was something wrong with me. There must be something wrong with me. Everyone else had been slain in less than a minute.

My parents hadn’t always been Christians.

My dad, Ted, grew up in a woodsy part of central New Jersey where people’s accents sounded more Philly than New York. Monday was Mondee, Tuesday was Tchewsdee. My siblings and I still poke fun at the way Dad says orange with a soft-vowel o that makes him sound like a pirate. Although Dad dutifully attended Sunday services with his family growing up, he wouldn’t consider himself a Christian until he developed his own relationship with God at the age of twenty-seven, when Jesus healed his shattered leg from a motorcycle accident. The accident occurred when Dad got off his night shift as a police officer in Berkeley, California. I heard the story of Dad’s accident so many times that I could almost recite it by heart.

It was the Ides of March, Dad always began. He relished any chance to lace symbolism and metaphor into his speech. I’d just gotten off my graveyard shift, and it was a beautiful Northern California morning, poppies blooming everywhere. All of a sudden, a jackrabbit ran across the road and startled me. My bike started to skid, so I put my left foot out, and I didn’t see the pothole coming up. My foot got caught in it and just snapped.

The spinning of Dad’s tires sent him flying through the air, landing him in a patch of stinging nettle that felt like fire on his cuts. He tried to stand up but couldn’t. He felt a burst of anger at God.

Come down! he shouted at the sky. What am I supposed to learn from this?

Dad hadn’t given God much thought. Now that he was badly injured and stranded in a ditch, God was all he could think about.

Another motorcyclist spotted Dad’s fallen bike. The grizzled biker found an ambulance less than a mile away, a fluke Dad thought was more than just coincidence, and it took him to the hospital where doctors operated on his broken leg. Steel screws were inserted to hold Dad’s bones together, but weeks after the surgery, there was still no callus buildup around the fracture, which was necessary for Dad’s leg to heal. He began to worry he’d lose his job. He couldn’t be a police officer if he walked with a limp. Dad showed up to work anyway, propping his throbbing leg on a chair as he typed a morning report. Then he felt Jesus speak to him.

Ted, what did you learn from all this?

The question reverberated through his soul. Dad had been reading Merlin R. Carothers’s Power in Praise ever since his accident. He wanted to make sense of why God had allowed his leg to be broken, and Power in Praise offered an explanation. The Christian book described how God could change our lives for the better when we praised Him for the challenges He brought. Dad concluded the motorcycle accident was his challenge, and that God was using his broken leg to get his attention.

Sitting at his desk in the police station, Dad asked Jesus to come into his heart. Right away, Dad always said, I felt this tingling in my leg, like an arm waking up from being asleep. The next time I had an x-ray, the doctors couldn’t believe it. There wasn’t even a fracture line where my break had been.

Dad was able to keep his job after his leg healed. He never walked with a limp.

My mom, Jane, rarely spoke about her past with me, or about how and why she came to Christianity. She maintains a very private life and out of respect for her wishes, I will not share more about her in these pages than I find necessary. Mom found love in what she once described as God. The God she came to know as an adult was and is different from the God I knew as a child. We didn’t talk much about these differences while I was growing up. I assumed the God my mother worshipped was the same every other adult around me seemed to worship. Only in adulthood would I learn that Mom’s relationship with God was as unique to her as everything else about the woman who raised me. Ever-seclusive, Mom never felt the need to explain her beliefs or justify her decisions to anyone.

My parents met in the early 1980s. My twenty-one-year-old mother was a student in her senior year, and my father, twenty-eight, patrolled the UC Berkeley campus. Since Mom was a police aide, a job that involved escorting students back to their dorms from classes in the evenings, she knew of the police officer named Ted Greczyn who all her female coworkers fawned over. Mom thought he was the most handsome man she’d ever seen. She never thought he’d be interested in her, but my father had noticed the half-Asian brunette with freckles.

One afternoon at a street stoplight, Dad pulled his policeman’s motorcycle alongside Mom’s brand-new Yamaha 750. She bought the bike as a graduation present for herself, even though she could barely work its clutch.

Where do you think you’re going on that thing? Dad asked her with a teasing smile.

All over America, Mom shot back.

Dad loved her feisty spirit, and as a matter of fact, he wanted to road trip all over America, too.

If you wanna learn how to ride, Dad said, give me call.

I always imagine my father writing his number on a blank traffic ticket. Mom called him a few days later. She discovered riding on the back of Dad’s motorcycle was preferable to operating one herself. Dad didn’t mind when she wrapped her arms around him on their weekend trips up the Pacific Coast Highway.

Five years after they married, with their growing family in tow, they quit their jobs to be missionaries in Thailand and Nepal. When the funds supporting us ran dry nine months later, Dad accepted a pastorship position at a small Foursquare Gospel church in Rockford, Illinois. We didn’t know anyone there, but my parents viewed the opportunity as a door God was opening. He would always be doing that, opening and closing doors. God never wanted my family in one place for long before He uprooted us to go somewhere else.

Toronto Blessing conferences were held all over the world by the end of 1996. Nowhere did God’s might seem more powerful than at the birthplace of the revival itself. Thousands, including my family, flocked to Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship for multiday events where pastors, evangelists, and miracle workers from across the globe gathered to cast out demons, heal people’s traumas, and testify to God’s awesomeness. Each event was like a Holy Spirit convention and that December’s conference was no different.

The day began with an explosion of worship. Bass blared from surround sound speakers, and the crowd jumped in unison as people lifted their lighters like they were at a rock concert. Testimonies usually came after worship, when speakers from around the world shared the challenges and miracles they faced as missionaries and pastors. I half-listened as they testified to how God overcame their obstacles, from setting up orphanages in Mozambique to converting entire villages to Christianity. Winter’s darkness had fallen by the time they finished. I was absorbed in a game of tic-tac-toe with my sister Madeleine when I realized a worship team was climbing back on stage. Dread clutched my stomach. It was time to get slain.

The keyboardist let out a long, synthesized note. The drummer tinkled the chimes hanging above his snare. A female backup singer moaned into her microphone and the eerie tone was set. John Arnott, the fellowship’s senior pastor, walked to the side of the stage with a mic in hand. I knew he was about to announce the call-to-prayer. The call-to-prayer was what I called the last act of a conference, when the pastor or speaker invited the congregation to receive the Holy Spirit. Sure enough, Mr. Arnott faced the crowd.

If you’d like to receive the anointing of the Spirit, he said, a vision from God, or a healing, please make your way to the back of the auditorium where our elders will pray for you.

I had attended countless Toronto Blessing conferences by the time I was nearly eleven. The Holy Spirit