Control

Control was a common theme that permeated our house and church. Every aspect of our life came down to who had control and who didn’t. From my earliest memories, I knew there wasn’t much I had control over. Getting older I thought I would have more freedom, but it never arrived. It didn’t matter how old I was or what my ambitions were in life, I didn’t have any control until I left. Church members had a lack of control as well. From where they could work to what they could spend their money on, but the level of control imposed on my immediate family by my father went much beyond what church members experienced.

There were few decisions any of us could actually make about our lives. Years before I was born, my father controlled my mother so much that he made her change her first name. He didn’t like her name because he thought it wasn’t feminine enough, so she changed it. No, he didn’t hold a gun to her head as she made her way to the courthouse to the hearing. He made her do it in other ways. I wasn’t there so I won’t really know, but my father had an amazing skill back then of controlling people and making you think you were making your own choice, when you really weren’t. 

With the advantage of hindsight, I realize that almost everything my father did was about controlling others to benefit himself. Even if he gave you a compliment, or expressed empathy or love, you could never be sure if it was because he really meant it, or if it was because he wanted to control you to get something. I don’t doubt he did love his family in his own way, but any expressions of this love were fleeting. I remember thinking to myself - “Maybe he really means it?” - when he would tell me he was asking me to do something because he only had my best interest at heart. The hope was always there but was rarely realized. I don’t think I can count on one hand the number of times I actually felt a sincere expression of his love for me and the rest of my family.

One of his favorite phrases he would use was “if you really loved me, you would [insert thing you should do for him here]”. This plagued me all the way into adulthood and it took years for me to be free of it. My father was very good at getting you to think of his troubles and of his feelings while ignoring your own. If you didn’t do something that he wanted, he would lay on a massive guilt trip and use religion and his self-professed direct connection with God to explain why you were wrong and to get you to come around to giving him what he wanted.

When I was 17, my father had a Mercedes-Benz E320. He always wanted to drive nice cars, and after his Jaguar XJ6 (which was always in the shop), he got his Benz and felt he had finally arrived. I remember him telling me that nobody would respect him as a church leader or an attorney if he didn’t drive around in a nice car. This is why he always needed the best - or the best he was able to buy. 

In the late 1990s, his monthly car payment was over $700 per month. That’s about $1,200 today taking into account inflation. It was more than he could afford and this was just when things started to fall apart for him. He regularly was behind on his bills and resorted to check kiting among his associates to make ends meet every month. He had bounced one too many checks for his Benz payment and one month he asked me to write a check from my personal account for his car payment.

I had about $25 in my account and did not  want to do this. The extent of his fraudulent activities weren’t really clear at the time, but I knew things were going on a downward spiral. Even so, he launched into all of the reasons why I should write a check for his payment.

He would pay me back before the check cleared my bank (about 3 business days). He couldn’t loose his car - what message would that send to his staff and church members? How could I allow them to lose faith in him, an end-time prophet? Helping him would be the same as helping God. Isn’t that something I would want to do? Losing the car would make my mother distraught and worried (she already was). I wouldn’t want to do that to her, would I? You want to be a good Christian, right? Good Christians listen to their parents and help them in need. What would it say about you if you don’t do this?

An entire life of experiencing control like this led me to give in and write the check for him. I was nervous, but told myself I did the right thing. True to his word, he wrote a check to me before the check I wrote cleared my bank. The money was available in my bank and the check for his car payment cleared.

But my father’s check bounced a few days later. My account was then negative over $800 with the overdraft fees. I told my father about it, and he gave me some excuse and the same speech over again. He promised he would pay me back when my bank started to “get serious” about the state of my account. I wasn’t sure what that meant.

After about a week my bank started charging me an overdraft fee of $30 per day. This ballooned into hundreds and then thousands of dollars. Every chance I could get, I told my father about it. I pleaded for him to repay me so I could get my account current. He asked me, “Is the bank bothering you?”

“What do you mean by bothering me?”, I asked.

“Have you gotten served any papers from the court?” 

“No.”

“Okay, come back to me when that happens.”

I was astonished and couldn’t muster the courage to confront him or take it any further. So I did the only thing I could do, which was wait and hope.

My bank eventually did sue me and the total was over $4,000. For me, this was an insurmountable amount to repay. I brought the papers to my father and he went over the same thing again, explaining that he couldn’t help me and there were more important things to take care of. I begged for him to repay me, but he just told me that God would resolve the issue. I just had to have faith. What kind of Christian would I be if I didn’t have faith, he asked.

Not knowing were to turn, I had no choice but to wait for my court date. It came and a judgement was entered against me. I had no idea how I would repay that money. Thankfully, my loving grandmother finally got through to us (we were not allowed to see her for years) and offered to help my older brother and I get out. I told her about the judgement against me, and that I couldn’t pay it and didn’t know what to do. Nobody would rent me an apartment. My credit was ruined.

I am forever grateful for her kindness in paying the judgement for me without ever asking me to repay her. I would never have been able to have gotten out of my situation if it weren’t for her. It was the first step I took in finally becoming free and it further confirmed to me that my grandmother wasn’t the monster my father had made her out to be for all those years.

Up to the end, my father tried to control all those around him. When he lost this control things started to fall apart and that marked a turning point in his life. I was able to escape his control, but the experience of living that way from the time I could walk until my early twenties wasn’t something I could just sweep under the rug and forget. It had significant effects on the way I am and my personality.

I’ve done my best to not let it control me.