Leaving the Holdemans: Part 3
When I arrived in Belize this time, I settled down at home, made it clear to everyone that I was no longer going back to the Church, and attended various charismatic churches in the area.
The months rolled by. Eventually I married a quiet, dark-haired girl from the modern "Russian" Mennonite community of Spanish Lookout. Her attire at that time consisted of shorts, crop tops and short hair and she was from the same type of church as my first girlfriend but by now my beliefs had been altered, my mind opened and my spiritual understanding deepened.
The first three years of our marriage were naturally golden. However because of the "one true church" belief imprinted on me since childhood, I dragged my patient wife and baby daughter to various Mennonite churches, mentally comparing them to the Holdeman. This one was too worldly, this one too rigid and traditional, another one literally worshiped Osteen, yet another was too Amish. A few times we even attended Jehovah's Witness gatherings, once we considered joining the Adventists. I briefly dabbled in Satanism much to my own shame and regret. Finally we quit church altogether. More children arrived into our home.
When my oldest child was around 6, I began slipping into depression. This time the demonic realm hurled their forces at me. Demons would scream at me at night "Just end it right now!" As my depression deepened their cries changed to "Kill everyone!" I studied the mass shootings occurring in the US and laid out a plan of how to kill my wife, our children, and myself. But obtaining a gun was harder than I realized. So I sharpened a machete and carefully hid it. The weeks went by while I struggled with suffocating clouds of spiritual darkness as wave after wave of demonic attacks hit me. As the black clouds of an approaching thunderstorm cast a shadow over the landscape, so this spiritual gloom engulfed me and sucked me down, down, down until it seemed that hope did not exist, God was a complete joke, and the only option was to end it all and take my family with me. One night I had enough. I prepared ropes for hanging each of my family. I would kill myself last of all. But my body began trembling to the point where I was powerless to carry out the massacre.
The next morning I told my wife, she called her childhood pastor and his wife, and after much prayer, counselling, visits and casting out evil spirits, I was finally and truly spiritually free, a freedom which I had never known existed.
As of right now I continue in this freedom. We are attending a conservative but non-traditional apostolic church and have found open and caring spiritual support among its members.
When I look back and compare the Holdeman church then and now, I see several key items.
I was caught between two fronts: the church at that time was made up of an older generation (1980 to early 2000's) that held to a rigid view of the doctrines while on the other side was the rapidly approaching wave of smartphones, Internet and social media.
I had been taught to view the ministers as near perfect, holy beings who acted as God's messengers but the aggressive way they handled my situation with my girlfriend completely changed that view
I used to think being a member of the Church of God in Christ was equivalent to eternal salvation, such was the force of the "one true church" drilled into me
Yet after all this time, I hold no grudge towards the Holdeman church. The ministers were simply being faithful to the doctrines. In fact now that time has healed the wounds, I have occasionally visited with them. Now and then we attend the Holdeman church in my hometown. Sometimes I run into old friends from the US or Canada and we hang out together.
Only God knows where He will lead us next.
A. Mendoza
