There’s a moment in church when the pastor raises his hands over the choir, eyes closed, face tilted toward heaven, and everyone believes something holy is about to descend. I remember standing there, my mouth open in praise, my voice blending with the others, and the only thought running through my head was: We are going to hell.
Not because of the music. Because of what we did after.
But let me start at the beginning—because the beginning is the only place that explains how I ended up in that choir loft, wearing borrowed righteousness, with a married man’s money in my purse and his secrets tangled in my hair.
The House I Grew Up In
My father was a violent man.
Not the kind of violent that explodes once and then apologizes with flowers. The kind that lives in the walls, that seeps into the floorboards, that becomes the rhythm of every day. He beat my mother. He beat other women too—any weak woman he could coerce into submission. I grew up watching survival disguised as love. I grew up learning that pain and affection sometimes wear the same face.
So when I became an adult, I didn’t know how to recognize anything healthy. Toxic relationships felt like home. Chaos felt familiar. Peace? Peace made me suspicious.
By the time I was 24, I had bagged myself an anthill of problems: broken relationships stacked like wreckage, heavy debt I couldn’t see my way out of, and an ex-boyfriend so violent I had to run—literally run—to stay alive. I couldn’t hold a job. Couldn’t trust my own judgment. Couldn’t look in the mirror without wondering how I’d become the kind of woman my father would have preyed on.
I had nothing left. So I did what people do when they have nothing left: I turned to God.
The Church
I was 25 when I walked through the doors. A fresh start. A clean slate. I became a loyal member—there for every service, every Bible study, every prayer meeting. The pastor noticed my commitment and urged me to join the choir.
I said yes. And that’s when I saw him.
He was one of the musicians. But he didn’t look like he belonged. While everyone else wore pressed shirts and restrained smiles, he had dreadlocks, tattoos trailing up his arms, and a presence that felt more like the neighborhood I’d escaped than the sanctuary I’d entered. Dark complexion. Rough edges. But something in his eyes said smart. Something in the way he carried himself said survivor.
Perfect, I thought. Or at least, perfect for me.
He was 35. Married. Two children. And he was never shy about complaining. His wife didn’t understand him, he said. Couldn’t satisfy him. Couldn’t see who he really was. I listened. I nodded. I told myself I was just being a friend.
That’s how it always starts, doesn’t it?
The Carnival
He took me to a carnival. Loud music, spinning lights, the smell of fried dough and cheap beer. I don't remember the rides. I remember the way he looked at me when the Ferris wheel stopped at the top. I remember the way I didn't look away.
That was the first night we had sex.
After that, it became a rhythm. Saturday nights with him—wild, secret, full of things he said he'd only ever fantasized about. And Sunday mornings, standing beside him in the choir, singing about redemption while our bodies still remembered what they'd done. We probably did it over a hundred times in the 54 months we played that game. Every Saturday night, I was his. Every Sunday morning, I was the Lord's.
I used to watch the pastor pray over us—hands stretched out, voice thick with conviction—and I'd think, He has no idea. None of them do. We were standing in the presence of God with the taste of sin still on our tongues, and no one knew.
Except us. And maybe God.
But if God knew, He wasn't stopping me.
The Arrangement
He liked to impress me. Expensive restaurants. Spending money slipped into my hand like I was something precious. But my favorite was the vacations—the ones where we flew somewhere no one knew our names, where we could pretend for a few days that the world didn't exist outside our hotel room.
I'd watch him lie to his wife on the phone. "Working late." "Out with the guys." "You know how it is." He was good at it. Smooth. And I'd chuckle to myself, high on the secrecy, giddy with the power of being the one he chose to betray her with.
We had a deal: friends with benefits. No feelings. No obligations. Just pleasure and convenience. I didn't want more. He didn't offer. It was clean in its dirtiness—or so I told myself.
My mother noticed, of course. A woman doesn't go from Payless to Gucci without her mother raising an eyebrow. "Where are you getting these things?" she'd ask. "You're not working." I'd lie. A contact. Doing hair on the side. She'd look at me—that long, knowing look mothers have—but she didn't push. I was 25. Old enough to make my own mistakes.
And oh, I was making them.
The Crack in the Glass
Then I got pregnant.
I stared at the test for what felt like hours. Two lines. Two little lines that turned my whole world upside down. And in that moment, something happened. It was like scales falling from my eyes. Suddenly, I could see everything clearly—the lies, the risk, the sheer absurdity of what I'd been doing.
I love babies. Always have. But I knew—knew—this was not the time. I was in a cosmetic program, working toward something real. A beautician I knew, who owned a successful brand, had promised me a job on her marketing team as soon as I graduated. I had a future. A clean one. One that didn't involve hiding in the shadows of a married man.
I told my mother everything. Her face crumbled. I'd never seen disappointment like that—the kind that doesn't shout, just sits heavy in the air between you. But she didn't abandon me. She made sure the problem was resolved. And I went through with ending the pregnancy, knowing it was the only way forward.
He was sorry. So sorry. He wanted me to keep it. Wanted to make me his secret family. Another set of children he'd visit in stolen hours, another woman he'd lie to while pretending to be faithful to the first.
I almost laughed. Almost.
Was he going to explain to his wife why his mistress was suddenly carrying his child? Was he going to sit through the destruction of two families and call it love? He didn't understand consequences. He didn't understand what it would cost—the scandal, the shame, the slow unraveling of everything we'd built our lives around.
I thought about my cousins. Broke. Alone. Fighting over food stamps. Visiting their baby fathers in jail. I thought about the women my father destroyed. I thought about my mother, who had finally escaped one man's tyranny only to watch her daughter walk into another kind of prison.
I was not going to end up like them.
The Escape
I dodged a bullet. Not a small one. A fat one. The kind that would have taken years off my life and left me with nothing but regret.
I stopped going to that church. Couldn't sing those songs anymore without feeling the weight of my own hypocrisy. I found another congregation—Bethel Church—where nobody knew my history, where I could start again in silence, without the ghost of a married man standing beside me in the choir loft.
Thank God for my mother. She held my hand through the worst of it. She didn't say "I told you so." She just loved me, steady and unshakeable, until I remembered what that was supposed to feel like.
I'm free now. Not because I'm perfect, but because I finally learned the difference between running toward something and running away from it. Between what feels good and what actually is good.
But I still think about that moment in church sometimes—the pastor's hands raised, the choir singing, the secret burning in my chest. And I remember what I thought as the prayer washed over us:
We are going to hell.
Maybe I was right. Or maybe grace is bigger than any of us understand. All I know is, I got out. And that's more than some people ever get.
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