I met the most wonderful man on the internet a year and a half ago. He made me laugh, made me smile, and made me feel like I had self worth again. When he asked to be my boyfriend, I felt like my life was complete. When his mom offered to let me move in with them, I thought life couldn't get any better.
I knew he went to a church that was slightly different than mine, but I was determined to give it a chance, since I wanted to know what sort of religious background he was from. At first I managed to go with it. There were only surface differences as far as I could see. But as time went on, I noticed that they really had some wacky, non-Biblical views on things that really bothered me. I pointed these out to my boyfriend, showing him what the Bible actually said, and it didn't take long for him to realize the same things I was starting to realize.
I figured since his mom was so sweet and loving towards me that she would understand and listen to my concerns. However, that was not the case at all. Not only did she refuse to listen to me, she called in all sorts of people from her church to talk to me and try to convince me that their church, and their church only was correct, and everything I was raised to believe was true was wrong. It scared me pretty bad at first, to think that I would be so terribly wrong about a God I had known my whole life.
I dug into the Word of God furiously and ate up every letter. I listened to Bible studies, took notes, and double checked all my references. I prayed in every spare moment for God to help me find the answers, and He did.
This church didn't line up with the Bible.
But even after I backed up all my beliefs with scripture, even after I confirmed everything to be true with nothing but my Bible, no one listened to me. They all told me I was going to hell because I didn't agree with them. Whenever I had them caught between their beliefs and what the Bible actually said, they would back out and condemn me like I was the devil himself.
I figured it wasn't worth fighting, since I would never be able to change the hearts of these people anyways. This was a job that was best left up to God. All I could do was pray and remain strong in the Word. I continued to go to this church with my boyfriend's family, never putting up a fight, never complaining, just waiting patiently for my turn to take my boyfriend to the sort of church I went to.
One particularly hard day, I asked my friends on Facebook to help me with some verses that talked abut churches like these, churches that claim to be the only way to heaven. My boyfriend's mom snapped after that. She bought me a plane ticket to send me back home without my permission, even though I have a job and a life here now. I tried to explain to her as simply and as gently as I could why I couldn't believe what her church believed. I showed her the verses, read her large sections of the Bible, and asked her over and over why she still thought I was going to hell and why she was kicking me out. She gave me not one Biblical answer, but instead explicitly told me over and over that her church was the only true church, and no one outside of it was going to heaven. She then told her own son multiple times that because he believed what I believed, he was going to hell.
Right to his face told her own son he was going to hell.
I went to bed that night heartbroken and defeated. Never had I dealt with someone so prideful and hard-headed as her. Never had I experienced such rejection. One moment I thought she really loved and cared for me. The next, she's sending me out of her home because I refuse to "convert" to her religion. It hurts so bad knowing I'll never be able to let my kids know their grandma. I can't risk her telling them they'll go to hell if they don't go to a particular church. It hurts that, because of this church she belongs to, we wont ever be a family.
It sucks.
