Separate & Holy

Hannah Comerford

My mom’s brother and sister-in-law moved to the Pacific Northwest in the 1980s. Soon afterward they lured my parents out of their Midwest hometown, promising the beauty of Minnesotan lakes and trees with a fraction of the winter.

My uncle and aunt were right—it was beautiful, but it was also a lonely new territory. And they would soon move to Colorado, leaving my parents without siblings or parents or cousins within a few days’ drive.

Perhaps that’s why my mom and dad were drawn to the Church in South Colby: they yearned for family. And maybe that’s why many of us push away warning bells as we immerse ourselves in a community. What will we give up to feel we’re safely cocooned in a loving environment—to be given a new family?

Two or more times a week, my parents and I visited a warehouse-like building in the woods for a church service. We sat toward the back of the five or six rows of folding chairs, facing the one-step altar where Sister Chris played eerie music from an electric keyboard in the corner—no singing. About fifty members surrounded us. Brother Rob stood centerstage, his black hair combed back, his wireframed glasses embracing eyes that calmly bored into every soul as he spoke passionately and quietly about the end of the world.

Brother Rob spoke of separating from the surrounding culture. He meant it in a godly way, like the Pilgrims desiring to practice their religion in peace. Since my parents were already separated from those they’d loved, it would be simple to let this church home swallow them whole. They had so few friends or family ties to unknot—they’d only need to follow Brother Rob’s commands.

And Brother Rob seemed to always know God’s will: Sell your possessions and give the money to the church. Let Brother Rob guide your parenting decisions, from forcing Sunday school attendance without parents’ presence to banning any Disney movies with a hint of witchcraft. Let the elders discipline your children for disobedience onstage as an example. Listen to Sister Chris’s beratement for raising a Christmas tree in your house. Follow your brothers and sisters in their holiness, from homeschooling your children to shaving your husbands’ heads . If you follow the rules, we will all be a united family.

Family was rules, obligations, and perpetual penance. In return, every congregant earned salvation from the damnation the rest of the world would surely suffer.

So my parents would drive forty-five minutes through Tacoma, over the Narrows Bridge, through the woods and wilderness of the Kitsap Peninsula. They sacrificed their evenings and weekends for the cause. It started with a seemingly tender, compassionate leader. They thought they’d found someone they could trust, devote their lives to. And they could dive into this community as much as necessary, serve wherever and whenever possible. Did they find it strange that no one returned the efforts?

Neither church leader nor congregant ever visited us. Perhaps it was because we had nothing to offer, no comfortable split-level with a dining room for shared meals or a large yard for children to play. We lived in a mobile home complex down the street from an Arco gas station. While Brother Rob drove a new sports car, my parents couldn’t keep up on their car payment.

Were Brother Rob and his flock ashamed of our poverty? Did they look the other way, keep us at a distance, so they were not faced with the lack of God’s blessing? After all, Brother Rob said we were God’s chosen, and wouldn’t God’s chosen be successful? Or were my parents embarrassed by the manufactured home they would never pay off?

Everyone called every other member Brother So-and-So and Sister So-and-So. The church leader himself insisted members call him Brother Rob, not Pastor. Everyone was family—just not the kind who enjoyed each other’s company.

My mom believed God spoke to her. I doubt it was a thunderous voice from Heaven or a word like lightning hitting her spirit. Yet it was a persistent calling, an impression that refused to go away: she needed to leave.

Perhaps she had a premonition of what went on beyond Brother Rob’s closed office doors, the abuse that would come to light too many years later. If she had suspicions, she never told me. All I know is she chose to follow the voice she heard.

When my mom chose to leave the cult in the woods, every lie about family came crashing down. Every church friend stopped answering her calls. Brother Rob convinced my dad to abandon his Jezebel wife and their daughter.

My mom would spend the next decade holding friends and family at arm’s length. We lived with new church friends for a season, celebrated holiday meals with friends, and learned to accept the charity offered to a single mom. Yet my mom rarely went out with adults her age, invited her friends over for a meal at our place, or spent time on the phone with a loved one. She saw her parents and siblings just twice more before she passed away.

While she encouraged me to have sleepovers and spend late nights at diners with friends, she had given up on finding close friends or family for herself.

I can’t help but wonder how much of my mom’s life I’m destined to repeat. Since her death, my relationships with my Midwestern relatives have disappeared into mirages. Like my mom, I married young and had a child years later. And in our dating years, my husband and I were immersed in a church community we thought would be our family.

They were not the cult my parents joined. In some ways, they were loving: members housed us as single young adults, regularly affirmed our strengths, and invited us to take part in their prayer ministries. And yet echoes of my parents’ church are hard to ignore upon retrospect: We were told our church leaders had an unmatched vision and that this ministry was holy and set apart from the rest. Negativity or doubt about the church and its unique calling was quickly denounced for lack of faith. When we decided it was time to leave, the members forgot us.

Today I raise a child in a home much larger than the one my mother raised me in. A high-risk mother of a toddler during COVID, this house has felt like a prison some days. With the loss of community after community ringing through my memories, it’s hard to believe that any will remain. On the worst days it feels like I will follow my mother in her lonely passing.

And yet.

We’ve stayed at our current church for ten years now. A couple from here invites us into their home every week to watch BBC shows and eat snacks; sometimes friends stay late around our dining room table, playing board games and laughing and discussing both the toxic and the good traits of our church community; our pastor delivered my favorite coffee to my door as I struggled through depression. As much as I feel alone as a pandemic-era stay-at-home mom, I realize I have so much more than my mother had in her new parenting days. Perhaps my mom longed for something like this little community I have. Maybe that’s what led her to the Church in South Colby, and maybe that’s what drove her away.

I can’t go back and give my mom the family she wanted, erase the mistakes she made, or warn her about the cult. But I can look out for the warning signs she missed and learn from her courage in leaving dangerous environments.

For her sake, I can make the most of what I have.