For most of my life, my story was dictated to me. God had already planned my days, and if I wanted to honor him, I was supposed to follow my father’s interpretation of the Bible in order to fulfill God’s plan.

I was always a secondary character in this story. One could say the protagonist was God, the controller of the universe, but since he’s invisible, his stand-in was my father, eventually to be replaced by my future husband.

I remember once as a twenty-four-year-old, when I was trying to assert myself, I was told, “You can think whatever you want, but you can’t act on it.” That statement encapsulated the essence of the spiritual abuse I was experiencing…

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