Sanctified and Silenced
I grew up in a world where we didn’t go to the doctor.
We didn’t take Tylenol.
We didn’t get vaccines.
We didn’t call ambulances or fill prescriptions.
We prayed.
We anointed with oil.
We waited on miracles.
That world was the Church of the First Born—a tight-knit, fundamentalist Christian sect that rejected modern medicine in favor of what they called "faith healing." And for a child like me, who craved both safety and understanding, it was a world that felt both sacred and unsettling.
Every Sunday, we sat in hard wooden pews while men and women—most of them family—stood up and confessed their sins out loud in front of the entire congregation. I was just a little girl, but I remember the weight of those moments. The deep silences. The trembling voices. The whispered apologies to God, delivered like courtroom pleas for mercy.
As a child, it was confusing. And more than a little frightening.
Adults we looked up to stood and named their failings: “I’ve been struggling with pride.”
“I lost my temper with my wife.”
“I felt hate in my heart this week.”
It was meant to be cleansing, redemptive. But to a child, it was disorienting. The people I was supposed to trust most were openly declaring that they were broken—and somehow, that was supposed to reassure me?
It didn’t.
I remember asking my mom quietly one day, “If they’re saved, why do they cry so much in church?”
She didn’t have a simple answer.
When someone got sick, we didn’t talk about doctors or medicine. We gathered to pray. Sometimes for hours. I remember watching grownups cry over tiny babies with fevers and cancer-ridden elders too weak to stand. Their pain was sacred, but our response was prescribed: no hospitals. No treatment. Just faith.
And when people died—because sometimes they did—no one questioned it publicly. There were whispers, yes. Private grief. But never, ever public doubt.
Eventually, we left that church. We moved from Oklahoma to Arkansas, and with that move came some freedom—geographic and spiritual. I was older. I had questions. I started to see the cracks in the system that had shaped me.
But that kind of indoctrination doesn’t just vanish. It’s stitched into your bones. Even years later, I still hesitate before taking a prescription. I still carry guilt I never earned. I still hear those voices from the pews.
And then—recently—came the surprise.
My youngest sibling, who was born after we left Oklahoma, recently said something that startled me. She spoke about the Church of the First Born almost with reverence, almost defensively—as if it had been unfairly maligned.
It caught me off guard.
She never sat through the bone-chilling confessions.
She never watched someone gasp for breath while people gathered and prayed instead of calling 911.
She didn’t grow up holding her coughs because you didn’t want people to think you lacked faith.
To hear her speak about the church like it was misunderstood felt... ironic. Almost surreal. How do you defend something you never survived?
But then again, that’s the thing about legacy. It isn’t just passed down through rules and rituals. It’s passed down in silence. In the things we don’t talk about. In the ways we protect what once protected us—even if it also hurt us.
I don’t write this to attack the people who still cling to that faith. Many of them are sincere, devout, kind-hearted. But I also know this: faith and fear can live in the same house. And when they do, children often suffer in ways adults don’t see.
I’ve come to believe that medicine and miracles can coexist. That confession doesn’t have to be public to be powerful. That questioning your upbringing isn’t betrayal—it’s survival.
And most of all, I’ve come to believe in breaking the silence. Because the truth is, there are a lot of people like me—raised in churches like that one, carrying stories they were too afraid to tell.
I’m not afraid anymore.
And I shall not be moved.
If you were raised in the Church of the First Born or a similar faith-healing community, your voice matters. I see you. Let’s talk about it.