I grew up in a church that focused on a "born-again" version of christianity. Everyone was expected to "accept Jesus as their savior" at some time in their lives...the sooner, the better. This was important not only to save your soul but also for you to become a voting member of the church. Which reason was more important I could not always tell.
My mother was the religious leader in our family. This would have been strange ordinarily because she had had nothing to do with Jesus and becoming saved until she met and married her first husband. In other words, she was newly saved and very devout. I don't know anything about her first husband's beliefs but I imagine, from what my mother told me about him, that he mostly put his needs before those of Jesus. On the other hand, her mother-in-law was a very strict godly woman who demanded, because she believed that her christian beliefs were the only true christian beliefs, that everyone had to follow her teachings in order to be saved and have eternal life. Unfortunately, even though my mother was nothing like her mother-in-law, she was indoctrinated with those same beliefs, and brought her children up to believe the same way.
I can understand how my mother was susceptible to these teachings. Her husband joined the Army Air Force soon after they were married, leaving his wife pregnant and alone with his family. She wasn't wanted as a wife for their son, and wasn't completely accepted as the right mother for their grandchildren especially after their son was dead and she remarried. She was so afraid of displeasing them that she followed her mother-in-law's dictates in every way. Her mother-in-law forbade my father's adoption of her grandchildren, which he wanted to do, because they would no longer have the family name. This meant that my older brother and sister went through school with a different last name then the rest of us in a time when all the children in a family were supposed to have the same surname. I remember friends and teachers saying to me that they never knew that person was my brother or sister, and why do they have a different last name? This hurt me because I never remembered that we had different fathers until someone made me remember. In my own mind, my older sister and brother were no different from my younger sisters and brother.
My mother must have been miserable most of the time during those years with her in-laws. Her one savior was her husband's grandmother who accepted my mother unquestioningly and loved her as as her own. It's possible my mother accepted her husband's family religion out of love for his grandmother, and I hope that was the reason. Her mother-in-law certainly gave her no love, but she did give her plenty of emotional abuse. In the days when I believed in god, I always felt that the death of her first husband was god's way of saving my mother from a terrible life. If her husband had survived the war and come home, my mother would have had nothing but heartache. She admitted this herself to me several times, and from what she told me of her life when she was with him, I know she was right. She loved him but he was selfish and spoiled and she never experienced the same kind of love from him.
After years of believing that I was more sure than others of receiving eternal life, even though I never could accept it completely, I finally came to my senses. I have felt such relief ever since that I no longer had to be afraid of that terrible religion's teachings. It's such a relief to know that I am in charge and answerable only to myself whenever I do something to cause me joy or pain. There is no angry or judgemental god up there watching over me, and in this I rejoice.
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