I was born into a large family in Greenville, SC in the U.S. I grew up in a conservative, evangelical community centered around reforming the cultural Christians of the South into those who truly dedicated themselves to living a pure life of worship to God. In that community I learned many good and many terrible things. I learned that God was love, that God was just, that God had a soft heart for the oppressed, that God was male, that God considered me vile, that God only loved me because he saw me through the lens of Jesus. I also learned that the earth was going to burn (so didn’t really matter), that women were less important to God than men, and that it was up to me to protect men from their sexual impulses (which didn’t work even though I was a good girl).

I was in that community until I moved to Chicago to attend Moody Bible Institute at age twenty-one. Humorously, people from my community warned me of the liberalism of Moody. I was dedicated to becoming what I believed was the best for God— a missionary. I met Mike at Moody and we soon married, and began preparing to move to the Philippines to send Filipinos out as missionaries. We moved to Manila with a baby and spent 6.5 years there (having two more children) building and launching an office for our mission organization.

We eventually moved to The Netherlands to re-build the European missions office there. During our time in The Netherlands, I allowed myself to ask the many questions my mind had always produced, but I had always tried to suppress. I questioned what the Bible was; who God was; what women’s place was in the family, church, and world; if there was a hell; who Jesus was; how did the earth/universe come to be, and so on. I allowed myself to ask all the questions and to seek new information in any place to which I came. Finally, missions in the sense we were doing it no longer made sense to me. Mike wanted to move out of missions for other reasons, so we moved back to the U.S. We now live in Durham, NC, on the land of the Lumbee, Tuscarora, Cheraw, Mánu, and Occaneechi nations. Mike has received his MBA from Duke University and is currently starting his own business and looking for a new day job. I am working on a farm in pursuit of learning how to live more at peace with our environment that we have so badly damaged with our misinformation and damaging theologies. I am also pursuing a Masters of Arts in Peace and Justice, focusing on building peace between humans and the environment.