Chapter 4 “Hey God, Is That You?”
“Hey God, Is That You?”
PUT A DAMN DRESS ON. WE’RE GOING TO CHURCH,” Mindy said. What the fuck? Our family didn’t go to church. We were a rock ’n’ roll family with drugs, sex, porn, and liquor, and I couldn’t imagine setting foot in God’s house.
We’d just packed up and moved from Houston to Las Vegas, allegedly because of Bill’s job.
And this might be pure speculation on my part, but it seemed obvious to me even then that Bill was having an affair.
I’d hear Bill and Mindy scream at each other all night long, and it wasn’t hard to catch the gist. One thing Bill was gonna do was Bill—no matter who it hurt.
Instead of hell, we went to Vegas’s fiery inferno.
We had to get away from it all, and it was time for a new start without the lying, cheating, good-for-nothing version of Bill in Texas.
And just to be sure the change of location worked, Mindy needed some way to keep Bill in check, something that could take up all of Bill’s time and focus, leaving no room for him to wind up in another woman’s bed.
The Pentecostal Church would do the job.
By then, I was about nine, and being as young as I was, I had no other choice but to convert like my parents.
Life changed overnight. I’d grown up with Pops’s band practicing across from my room with the bass at full volume and crashing drums on school nights, partying, drugs, and so much music.
So it came as a huge shock the day my holier-than-thou folks decided to tell me I was no longer allowed to listen to secular music—ever.
What the fuck do you mean? No AC/DC, no Madonna, no Cyndi Lauper?
Surely this is a joke. It wasn’t. (I’m not complaining though—Crystal Lewis, DC Talk, and Carman fed my soul.)
Music had been my only escape. One Christmas, I was gifted a little yellow boom box with a tape recorder built in.
I would sit outside in my driveway for hours recording music off the radio, and then between songs I would do my own DJ show.
This is what replaced hanging out in that damn boat.
I recorded hours and hours of tapes. My DJ name was Lacey Carter, and I was bringing you the hits!
It was one of the few joys I had as a child—and now they were taking it from me.
I didn’t have a choice but to abide by their Bible-thumping rules, even if it hurt like hell.
But every night when it was time to go to sleep, I would put my little yellow boom box under my pillow and turn on the radio as low as I could without getting caught.
It was my only sense of normalcy until I woke up one morning without any music playing.
I lifted my pillow up and saw that sometime in the middle of the night, Mindy had come in and cut the black wire to my boom box.
How could you do that to a child, knowing it provided their only sense of peace?
I got ready for school in shock and cried my eyes out on the school bus.
I could now only watch G-rated movies, so at least that took care of the porn, and we’d left Andi behind in Houston anyway.
No TV was allowed—ever. So that meant no more of the MTV that I’d practically been raising myself on.
Add in dresses down to my ankles—that Mindy decided she wanted to sew herself.
Just envision Little House on the Prairie, and I was Laura fucking Ingalls.
Bill and Mindy took our newfound faith to the absolute extreme.
Church was every Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night, and there were Bible studies and Bible camps and youth groups too.
If I wasn’t babysitting Baby Sis or doing my list of never-ending chores, I couldn’t do anything but eat, sleep, and church.
My life was so restrictive, it felt like I couldn’t breathe or think for myself.
It was so forced and abrupt, and enough to turn anyone off religion.
I had whiplash from the shock of our new life.
In the midst of this transition, I got a special job.
I was the offering girl, and I’d carry the plate around collecting cash from the congregants.
Whoever decided I was trustworthy enough to have even this title must have been fooled by my angelic smile and big, bright eyes.
They didn’t see that my horns were there to hold up my halo.
It didn’t matter if I went looking for it or not—trouble always found me.
Think of the cartoons where the angel is on one shoulder and the devil is on the other: That’s my entire life.
I was a natural-born hell-raiser. I’ve always been a rebel without a cause.
So, as I carried that plate, loaded with singles and fives, I wondered, Why on earth would I not swipe some for myself?
I was doing the Lord’s work, wasn’t I? I was only nine when this was happening, so did I even know any better? Wink wink.
To this day, I feel awful, and I’ve since apologized to that church publicly.
But as a kid, my eyes popped out of my head when I saw all that cash.
They’re trusting me with this plate full of money?
No one would notice five dollars missing.
Candy bars were calling my name. Whatchamacallits were my addiction, and I was going to feed it any chance I could.
I was like a crackhead for some chocolate.
At home, Mindy governed everything I ate.
I was never allowed to freely take anything from the fridge or cabinets.
And to be able to snack between meals? Never.
I was only allowed to eat what was served to me at dinner—which was a one-way ticket to an eating disorder.
Sugar wasn’t allowed in our house, so that was another secret I kept along with the string of others I’d learn to collect over the years.
No one ever caught me stealing from the offering plate—or maybe they did and just never said anything. But we moved on from that church after a short time and the ’rents were ready for a wannabe megachurch down by the Strip.
I actually started looking forward to the Bible camps because I could get away from my shackles and cage and just be—because even if Bill and Mindy were thumpin’ their Bibles with fervor, they were anything but good and loving Christians at home.
The abuse didn’t stop—church just gave them new rules to enforce and new punishments to dole out.
The hypocrisy disgusted me. But the worship leaders were different.
They were the first adults to ever give me grace, and they would show me that not all adults are out to hurt you.
They just tried to help me understand that I was a child of God.
* * *
A FEW YEARS OF LOVING the Lord and hearing testimonies encouraged me to speak out about things that happened to me as a child.
By the time I was twelve, I was feeling confident in myself and in my walk with God.
I finally decided to confide in my parents about what had happened with our family friend’s son.
I didn’t say anything about Andi—I’ve never said a word about that until I sat down to write this book.
This was the moment I was going to tell them where so much of my anger was coming from so hopefully they would be able to see me like my pastors and friends at church.
You would think that being good Christian people, their hearts would have softened, but it was still a military base at home.
Still, I was finally ready to tell my truth.
“You’re lying, Alisa,” Mindy said without any hesitation.
It felt like being slapped in the face. She and Bill exchanged looks—and then they laughed at me.
I was so stunned by their reaction I couldn’t even process it.
All I knew was that for the first in what little life I had lived, I truly felt alone—and most certainly unprotected.
Fuck all the ass whoopings, fuck being grounded all the time, fuck them not even liking me because I was a reminder of the past. I was sitting there telling them a man touched me, and they were calling me a liar? Fuck you.
I realized I never wanted to be like them, and I vowed never to confide in or trust my parents again. It sparked a rage inside of me I had never felt before.
Years later, I was proven right when that same guy ended up in prison for serial rape—on top of what he did to his own flesh and blood. Checkmate, bitches.
With years between me and that horrible abuse, all I can say is: If a child ever comes to you, believe them. They’ve already been through enough trauma at that point. There’s no need to add to their therapist bills later in life.
* * *
I’D ALWAYS KNOWN THERE WAS a higher power, even in my earliest memories.
I have six planets in the eighth house, and if you know anything about astrology, that means I’m obsessed with all things spiritual, occult, mystical, and dark.
Lucky me. I’ve been seeing ghosts and spirits since I was a child.
I guess that’s why I can read someone in five minutes flat when they walk into my energy.
I remember the first time I saw a ghost—I now know it was a spirit who was playing with me.
I was in my room throwing a fit because Bill was practicing with his band across the hall from my room, and I wanted to hang out but Mindy had said it was bedtime.
How dare she. As I kicked and flailed my arms, I grabbed my pillow over my head and screamed in it.
When I took the pillow off my face, my entire Strawberry Shortcake bedspread was suspended in midair in the shape of a ghost. The hair on my neck stood up, and I walked on air running to get out of my room—which of course landed me an ass whooping because Mindy didn’t believe me.
She threw me right back into the haunted house, and I had no choice but to make friends with this spirit.
By that time, my blanket was back on my bed, but I could just feel its presence in the room.
After I collected myself, I found comfort in knowing a spirit was trying to make me laugh when I was so distraught.
And my spiritual openness would go on to save me from plenty of near-death moments.
Ever since then, I’ve never feared the world beyond—until I went through my suicidal depression in 2020.
We’ll get there—trust me when I say that was one of the scariest times of my life.
I’ve always been curious about the supernatural.
It was obvious to me then as it is now that we’re not alone out here.
* * *
I WASN’T ALLOWED TO EVEN think about boys.
Sex before marriage was shunned and you were made to feel dirty if you ever had “bad” thoughts.
It’s crazy how Bill so freely engaged in sexual acts my entire childhood, but the minute Jesus stepped foot in our lives, everything we once knew was bad.
Now, we were all pure thoughts, all the time.
Talk about confusion. Can you see where my anger stems from?
I’d watch the adults kiss up to the main pastor or try to impress him with their faith and hefty tithes—and for some reason, the pastor was held up on the world’s highest pedestal.
He had the perfect family, with a beautiful wife and daughters.
Gosh, they were beautiful—and they set one hell of an unrealistic standard for perfection.
But seeing my parents sweeten up for church and go home to be the same profane people I’d always known got me questioning, and I started paying close attention.
I’d overhear Bill and Mindy gossiping about other churchgoers, or my friends would confide in me about what happened behind their families’ closed doors.
Soon enough, I knew what all these people did at home, away from the pastor and from the eyes of the other congregants.
I saw the hypocrisy—especially around the fear.
My God, the fearmongering was constant. Step out of line, burn in hell.
The point was to be scared shitless. Deep down I knew this wasn’t how faith was supposed to be.
I’ll never forget the day a traveling evangelist came to the church and all the families showed up to hear his message on why secular music was so bad for kids.
He taught about “backmasking” and played records backward to reveal demonic chants.
He especially went in on Madonna—Madge had been the soundtrack to my life.
He must have felt the daggers coming from my eyes because he walked over to me and stuck a mic in my face.
Mindy looked over and beamed with pride at the attention from all the pastors and their families and the congregation. Her pride would be short-lived.
The evangelist asked me to name as many Madonna songs as I could. So I did. I named them all. I named so many he yanked the mic away.
“And there you have it, folks. That’s how much of a hold Satan has on our youth. That this young lady could name that many Madonna songs off the top of her head.” Mindy glared at me. And when we got in the car, she screamed at me the entire way home for humiliating her in front of the congregation.
To this day, I don’t think God’s as black-and-white as the church told me He was.
Jesus was a Capricorn, after all, and we share a lot of those Capricorn traits because I’m right on the cusp.
He’s all about the gray. But in those Pentecostal church pews, there was good and evil, clean and dirty, God and Satan.
And when you have a family like mine, where I witnessed sexual abuse, affairs, violence, pornography, lies—and then you’re told that all that same shit sends you to hell—you get massive anxiety and religious trauma.
It’s why I call myself spiritual more than religious now.
I cannot stand organized religion—and I truly feel Jesus can’t either.
The church had me questioning every thought in my head.
Am I a hypocrite because I cuss? If I kiss a boy, am I going to rot in hell?
I kept on rebelling against any authority figure I could.
It was how I was surviving in the world.
But it weighed on me every day—a panic that I’d see some kind of divine retribution for the bad thoughts I had, or for being angry or scared.
I figured I’d go to hell for being a normal, angsty kid.
Man, does this shit stick with you. I still can’t take the Lord’s name in vain—it scares me too much. If my daughter or my husband says it, I tell them to stop right away. God has been nothing but my divine protector. But it’s like a habit I can’t break: the unknown of heaven or hell.